System Override (Formerly: The Bloodsurge Edgerunner)

by DaoistMystery

Summary:

NB: I have crossposted this story to Royalroad under the title System Override.

 

A forced experimental drug treatment at an early age has saddled David with an immense burden.

His mother’s insistence on his current lifepath as a corpo has done much the same.

David is a speeding ball of fire hurtling towards an unknown destination, and his mother’s death has left him adrift and unsure of his direction.

So he does what any teenager with no more fucks left to give does—he chips in some mil-spec chrome and looks for a quick way to earn edds, all the while learning to utilize the nanotechnology that had been forced on him as a child—finding out the immense potential within him as a result.

Corpo or Edgerunner? Why not both? And why not the best of both while we’re fucking at it?

Top of Arasaka Tower.

Night City Legend.

 

God.

Chapter 1: Prologue

“Are you afraid, mijo ?”

Mom held my hand as she walked me through the hallways of the clinic. For a hospital, it was… inhospitable. The walls were cold white that reminded me of the inside of a freezer, that thing called snow that we never got in Night City. Even though it wasn’t that cold, I still shivered, but that had probably more to do with the dead-eyed nurses and the haughty doctors who walked around unheeding of the rows of diseased and injured people seated on the chairs.

The walls were white, but the white-tiled floors, especially near to the seating areas, were smeared red, and a thick, coin-like smell permeated the air.

People were dying right before me.

“No,” I replied. “I’m not,” I said. “Why are we here again?” I asked, unwilling to work that out myself. She must have told me at some point, but I couldn’t remember it. Maybe if I tried harder, but I was too busy trying very hard not to barf.

“We’re getting your Neural Link sized up, and your vaccine shots as well.”

Right. That was true. I was ten now, and that meant it was time to chip in my growth neural link made to handle the changes in size that the body went through during puberty. Without it, my skull would deform as it grew around the undersized cyberware. 

Come to think of it, I was almost old enough for cyberoptic corneal implants as well. Then I could make calls without the use of a dino-phone. Hah, that’d be preem. I couldn’t wait.

Rather than sit next to all the sick people, mom pulled me into a room where a doctor was waiting. “I’m Gloria Martinez, here with David Martinez—” she began without preamble, only to get interrupted by the doctor in the room, who held his silver hand up to forestall her.

After a short moment, he spoke. “You were thirteen seconds too early. Now we start. So, what was it?”

“Neural Link installation and a shot,” she said.

“My receptionist mentioned an… experimental treatment option,” he said. “Have you given any consideration—”

“No.” mom said.

“Are you sure? The payment is one hundred—”

“ No ,” mom said, with a strained smile. “I did not give my consent, and therefore you may not go ahead with this experimental treatment option. Are we clear, doctor?”

The doctor seemed to roll his eyes.

A bad person, I immediately decided. Mom told me never to trust these types, who would push and get angry when denied, especially if they were the corpo type. This one wasn’t, but he still gave me that impression.

And now I was supposed to trust my health to this man.

“Mom,” I muttered.

“Let the man take a look at you,” mom said. “Don’t worry, I will be here watching.”

I went ahead and took a seat on the chair.

The man injected me with a local anaesthetic on the back of my head, and I started feeling the unmistakable sensation of cutting . It felt weird , but… a good kind of weird. Satisfying. I didn’t mind, really.

Then I felt a profound emptiness as something happened. I couldn’t turn my head to see what that something was because it was locked to a cage to prevent exactly that, but I suspected it was because the doctor had pulled out my Neural Link. It was a thin piece of machine, wider and longer than it was actually deep, and replaced a section of my skull where it could interface directly with my brainstem.

It was supposed to be a foundational piece of cyberware, and would be connected to every other piece of chrome I would chip in in the future. Without it, I’d never be able to overcome my human limits.

That was what I wanted to do. If I did well in school, I could become successful at a megacorp and then I would be able to chip in all the chrome that I wanted, replace all the parts of me that were born gutter trash. Then nobody would be able to say anything bad to me anymore.

The Neural Link re-entered my skull again, and this time I felt a slight pressure, but one that I recognized was right . I didn’t realize how wrong it felt to walk around with undersized cyberware until it had been readjusted.

This was preem.

“All done,” the doctor said. “Time for your shot.”

Before I could even ready myself mentally for that, the doctor had grabbed my hand and jabbed me with the shot inside my forearm, slowly pushing the fluid inside. That, too, felt weird, but not quite painful or wrong. 

It wasn’t a big deal, though. I felt embarrassed that I was even afraid in the first place. Oh well, what was done was done.

000

Benedict Hatchet, the hospital ripperdoc, felt profoundly terrified.

Biotechnica was riding his ass about his debts to the corp. How was it fair that he was the one to get laid off, but he still had to pay a fine for violating that frankly tyrannical noncompete by getting a job in the same industry after five years of unemployment?

He had burned through the entirety of his savings waiting out the worst of the noncompete’s clauses, only to get hit with an ‘actually, we don’t just want money from you’ bullshit which always heralded a shitstorm of unimaginable proportions.

Case in point, the ‘experimental treatment option’.

He just had to let a hundred people volunteer. Ten thousand eddies down the drain for a hundred eddies a pop as a reward for risking life and limb for the advancement of proprietary science, but unfortunately, the people of Night City weren’t born fucking yesterday. 

They all said no.

That’s when he had to get… creative.

Creative meaning that he just didn’t care whether they consented or not. He injected them with the experimental nanites and recorded them on his private server, ready to send the information of the experiment subjects to Biotechnica for them to work out their experiment parameters. It was an unscientific and uncontrolled way to go about it, but they had asked for this, and Benedict wasn’t going to ask questions when he had corp ninjas and solos up his fucking ass reminding him of his ‘debts’.

His only saving grace was that the shit-storm cocktail of volatile nanites in those syringes were always slow-acting, at least giving the poor patients enough time to fuck off back home before they either keeled over or went cyberpsycho or some shit, whatever it was that the ‘experimental treatment’ even did. Benedict had fuckall of a clue, and he wasn’t about to ask , either.

In the end, Biotechnica would have to protect him anyway from legal reprisal, not because he was important to them, but because covering for him would also mean covering their own asses.

They might zero him to get rid of loose ends, too, but what the fuck was he supposed to do about that?

No. Benedict had fought. He had fought as hard as he could, done unconscionable things for his own survival. If he died now, that was fine. He could do that with no regrets.

His only regret, really, was getting mixed up with the megacorps’ black ops R&D all those years ago in the first place. Everybody knew that their severance packages were just a delayed flatlining. Benedict had thought himself above such repercussions, but like all things, his actions had caught up to him, and here he was.

In his office, late in the night, he downed a measure of well whiskey from his glass, and pressed send on his encrypted e-mail to Biotechnica.

There was a gun in his top drawer.

He could just… do it now, right?

He scoffed. After all the men, women and children he had injected fucking corp R&D juice into? Nah. He didn’t kill himself before doing all of that. If he died now, then what was it all for?

He’d wait out the consequences, face them eye to eye like a man.

He filled himself another measure of whiskey and downed that, too.

000

Logic puzzles of infinite stakes flashed through my mind. I completed them as fast as I could, fearful for my life. I knew, deep in my bones, that I would die if I fucked up. I could feel that threat creeping up on me constantly, never giving me a moment of rest. 

In the void of my mind, I was prompted to… straighten things out. I couldn’t put a name to what those things were, but they needed straightening out.

But even the verb ‘straightening’ was wrong.

Sometimes, they would ask me (not really ‘ask’ either, but I got the picture) to find efficient… pathways , given certain limitations. Sometimes, I would be made to optimize values as well.

It was math, alright.

Luckily for me, I did know a thing or two about that.

The only problem was that I wasn’t fast enough to not worry about what would happen should I slip up and fall. I was tap-dancing on a tightrope here, and my death felt like an inevitability at this point.

I woke up with a whimper.

Death flashed in my mind. Terror and death.

I was going to die.

No, no. It was… it was just a dream.

I was fine now, because I was awake.

I rolled out of bed and went to the living room where mom was seated on the couch, watching TV. Her eyes were wide and her mouth wide open as she looked at the hologram.

“…man responsible is still at large, and the death toll is now numbering in the dozens. Victims and those who have been patients with the clinic for the last twenty-four hours are now requested to immediately contact the authorities and seek medical care, but we suspect that it may already be too late for them.”

Mom spotted me, and immediately pounced at me. She fell on her knees right before me, hands on my shoulders as she looked me up and down. “ Mijo, how are you feeling? Are you okay? Anything that hurts?”

Not at all, actually. Even the back of my head that had the Neural Link tune-up only hurt until I went to sleep. Now I felt fine; better than ever, in fact.

“I’m okay, mom,” I smiled. 

The raw terror of my waking up notwithstanding, I felt fine.

And what was mom going to do about that anyway?

“Are you serious, mijo ?” mom said. “You need to tell me, David. You need to tell me if there’s something wrong. Anything at all.”

“W-what happens if there is?” I asked.

“Then we go to another hospital to get you checked up.”

“Mom, what happened?” I asked. “Why are you so worried? Did something happen?”

“It’s…” mom looked down with a sad smile. “Just… please… you have to be honest with me, David. Tell me if there’s anything wrong.”

Ice filled my veins as I watched her begin to tear up. “You’re scaring me.”

“Sorry,” she said as she got up to her feet. “I just… don’t worry about it. Just tell me if there’s anything wrong.”

What would she do if there really was, though? We didn’t have the eddies. She was never home, and when she was, she was always too tired to do anything.

I couldn’t just… tell her about my nightmare. It was just a nightmare after all. I wasn’t really going to die, right?

Mom stayed home for the day just to watch me, and I didn’t go to school either.

The next few days, I kept having the same nightmares, kept having to do the same work just to… stay alive.

I didn’t know if that was true, but I didn’t dare to even test if it wasn’t.

The dreams continued on and on.

They never stopped.

Chapter 2: Pietà

I woke up pissed as fuck.

And then I smiled.

That was better. Much better.

It was easier to cope with raging anger and hatred than fear, at least in my opinion. Anger gave me some amount of control over that Biotechnica clusterfuck than not, and it worked for me far better than fear when it came to those recurring dreams.

I had ‘won’ every night since the dreams started, but at the cost of ever feeling like sleep was a good thing to have, which was especially heartbreaking considering the waking world wasn’t much better.

Now I had to trade one hell for another every time I went to sleep or woke up. No rest for David Martinez.

That said, there was nothing we could do. I had eventually opened up to mom about the whole constant math nightmare thing, but that was only after months of the bullshit, and by then we both felt it was more prudent to not try to seek any sort of reparations. Corps hated paying out to their victims anyway, and without a proper paper-trail, there was no proving that I was an actual victim and not one of the thousands of gonks trying to seek a payout from Biotechnica.

It sucked, but life was a fuck like that. Gotta roll with the punches.

As I watched my clothes get cleaned up in the laundry room, I slotted in that latest Edgerunner XBD again, and re-entered Liutenant Colonel James Norris’s body minutes prior to his death.

The man was stuffed to the brim with all sorts of cyberware: mantis blades were hidden inside his arms—jointed blades that could extend almost two meters and slice through solid metal. The same cyberware were inside his legs as well. I could hardly imagine what he kept inside his torso; probably foundational ‘ware meant to keep the machine that he was up and running—a synth heart and plastic arteries that could pump ‘borg blood through him at a thousand beats per second, and vital organs that were either augmented or entirely replaced with machine to handle the strain. Then there was his subdermal armor as well that prevented normal guns from ever being able to put him down; a true nightmare for anyone that wasn’t sporting anti-material firearms.

The Braindance started as it always did, with him walking up to a policeman inside his cruiser, his face leaned up against the window. Norris knocked on the window and the policeman was ready to curse him out.

He received a bullet to the head for his troubles.

The violence only escalated from there. He fired up an implant that seemed to let him stop time . He used that ability to run up behind every policeman and fire a bullet into their heads. He reloaded before any of them even hit the ground. 

Fucking preem .

James Norris had been a soldier of the New United States of America before he had lost his shit. The strain of all that cyberware had quite literally fried his connection to reality and rendered him an insane killing machine; a cyberpsycho.

The mayhem ended once the NCPD had flagged MaxTac, the police unit specifically meant to deal with these psychos. They had all the cyberware that Norris had, maybe even more advanced, as well as weapons and armor that put all of Norris’ gear to shame, and they managed to put him down without any additional casualties. Only one thing was on my mind while they did: I could have done way better.

Not that it made any sense to think that. Dude was a cyberpsycho, so one couldn’t really expect him to be able to leverage all of his combat training, but I still couldn’t help but think that if I had what he had, I wouldn’t have gotten caught so quickly. I’d give MaxTac at least an hour before they caught me.

I didn’t consider myself to be a particularly violent person, but after those dreams, it was James Norris’ lived experience that finally managed to calm down my fear-turned-anger. 

“-cycle suspended! Insufficient funds--!” cried the washing machine. I groaned. The worst part was that I couldn’t just pay it exactly the amount it needed to finish up the cycle. It had a minimum limit of a hundred eddies for a recharge, and I didn’t have a hundred fucking eddies to just throw around on a whim.

Mom was supposed to take care of this.

Dammit.

I went up to the living room with her sleeping on the sofa with her neural alarm still ringing. It had to be, considering the time of day, but she was just stirring. 

Double dammit.

How could I yell at her when she was like that?

“Mom,” I said. She finally woke up at the sound of my voice. “If you don’t sleep in your bed, you’re gonna get early-onset arthritis.”

“I’m sorry, mijo,” she said with a tired smile. “I took a late shift.”

“You forgot to recharge the washer,” I said.

“Sorry,” she said. “You have a spare uniform, right? I’ll recharge it now, okay?”

I turned on the TV, hoping that the added stimulation would energize her even more. “—military grade cyberware is still missing from the corpse of a Lieutenant Colonel James Norris—”

What caught me by surprise wasn’t that the cyberpsycho who’s BD I had slotted in was on the news, but that mom was there, too. “Hah! Mom, you’re on the news! Nova.”

“Not nova, David. A bloodbath.”

You can say that again, I thought as I went back to my room to put on my spare uniform.

“Did you update your wreath?” mom asked.

“Don’t remind me,” I grumbled. “That upgrade cost so much . I told you we could have just gone to Doc.”

“You do it the right way ,” she said. “Or you’ll end up paying ten times more. That’s how these things work, sweetie.”

I rolled my eyes. It was just some ransomware bullshit anyway. If I was even a little better at coding, we wouldn’t have had to be set back six hundred eurodollars at random. That was how the corpos worked, though. If you weren’t above a certain threshold of wealth, they’d take you for every last enny until there was nothing left.

That reminded me…

I activated the call feature on my eyes and shot my netrunner client a text.

David: Where’s my money, choom?

Ichinose took only a few seconds to reply, but thankfully it was with eddies instead of words. Three-hundred flat. A good haul.

Ichinose: Try to be more patient with your clients, will ya, David my bro? I was good for it! You didn’t have to be such an asshole about it.

I sighed heavily, trying not to let my anger get the better of me. This was corpo practice, wasn’t it? Be an asshole, but just don’t get passionate while doing so.

David: Trust is worth more than blind patience. But if you’re dissatisfied with my simple requests for prompt payments, perhaps it’s time we separate?

Ichinose: Don’t get hasty, choom. Was just busting your balls.

David: I appreciate the levity, choom, but I’ve also got a business to run, and you’re not a good fit for my continued operations.

Ichinose: fuck , David, it was just joke.

David: throw in another fifty, and I’ll just… laugh the joke off.

Ichinose: Are you serious? I was just three days late.

Was he hearing himself, the absolute gonk?

David: good bye, Ichinose.

Ichinose: Waitwaitwait! Here! Fuck!

I ignored the notification of more money as I replied.

David: fuck ? Is that what you just said?

Ichinose: No, sorry!

David: Thought so. Now, grab me at least two new referrals or I’m not going debug shit for you again.

Ichinose: Fine. Sorry!

I hung up. And now I was three hundred and fifty eddies heavier.

Score.

Netrunners were a cagey bunch, but that was unless you were dealing with the gonk underclass. They were the ones that had external cyberdecks and were barely above script kiddies in terms of coding know-how. They were either rich enough to buy their own quickhacks, or they knew enough to scavenge off of freeware.

But they all shared one characteristic: they weren’t worth shit.

The corps had the advantage of specialization: they could set a bunch of code jockeys on separate tasks: quickhack development, ICE-breaking algorithms, daemons and all that fun stuff. That wasn’t even mentioning the top-of-the-line gear that only their operatives had access to.

Those without needed something else to shore up those weaknesses, and that was programming talent. Or hell, a willingness to even learn coding beyond the stuff that was interesting and flashy.

The machine language itself, and the math of it all. 

If you couldn’t code a simple program in assembly, then you’d never be worth shit in the netrunning world.

That was just the way things were, and Ichinose was just too much of a gonk to really see that. Sad, but ultimately none of my business; he was paying me after all. And my shit worked. 

Even if it could have worked far better. He only asked for a debug, and I debugged his crap. I could have rewritten it in the same time it took to do all of that, and have it work at least ten times faster as well, but then why would I? I didn’t owe him any favors, certainly not after his repeated late payments.

And he’d come back, too. That was just how people like him worked, with more eddies than sense to quit and do something they were actually good at.

“Mom, let me recharge the washer!” I said as I walked into the living room.

“Don’t worry about it, mijo,” mom said, now slightly annoyed.

“I have the eddies, mom.”

“Where from?” she asked.

“Just helping some gonk on his coding assignment,” I said.

“…You’re doing people’s homework now, David?”

That wasn’t strictly the truth either, even if that was a less charitable take on what I had said. The truth was that I was helping a guy fix up his breaching code, one that would undoubtedly be used for petty crimes. It wouldn’t be able to do more than just hack a vending machine or open a backdoor to a store or something, but it was still specifically meant for breaching systems.

As long as he wasn’t trying to break into my house, who gave a shit? And with the ICE I had personally designed around the locks, I’d like to see them try.

“It was just helping,” I said. “I reviewed and debugged his program. He’ll learn, and now I’ll get eddies for it.”

“You know, you don’t have to do that.”

Like hell I didn’t. Why was it so hard for her to just accept my help? “Mom, it’s no big deal. This is just how things are done in a corpo school.”

She sighed. “Mijo, I worry about you, you know.”

“You don’t have to,” I said. “I’m working hard. Soon, I’ll be pulling enough money to help out with my tuition, too, and then—“

“Stop it, David!” Gloria shouted.

I closed my mouth with a click.

“You think I’m stupid? You don’t think I know the kind of things you need to do to get that much scratch under the table?” she asked. “You need to stop dealing with criminals or everything we’ve worked for goes down the drain. Can’t you see that what you’re doing is bound to mess you up for life?”

“And what exactly do you think I’m doing?” I asked her. I didn’t care that she was on point. Just the accusation was enough to drive me wild. “And—and what about you?” I asked. “Affording an Arasaka Academy tuition on an EMT’s salary? What are you, scavenging chrome off of dead bodies or—“

She slapped me.

The sting on my cheek took forever to appear while I looked at mom’s face, a mixture of anger and sadness.

“I do what it takes for us to survive,” Gloria said. “To give you a good life.”

A good life.

That almost felt laughable.

What was so fucking good about Arasaka Academy anyway? All my opportunities were behind glass ceilings, paywalls and dick-riding walls. I was an unknown, street trash that was somehow uplifted to their level, and they would never stop letting me know that, no matter how far ahead I pulled in front of my class, no matter how many advanced university courses I was taking or the amount of credits I was racking up.

The only thing I could look forward to after graduation was being able to coast by and work on my master’s thesis early enough that I could seek employment before my the rest of my batch could. That level of early achievement would be sure to raise eyebrows, and invite more Katsuo types to ride on my ass, but the higher-ups might see me as an asset.

But in the end, life would be an eternal battle. Bullshit left and right with no end in sight, my only true path to salvation being climbing up Arasaka as high as I could until they couldn’t touch me.

Maybe then, the nightmares would end, once I had nothing to fear anymore.

I scoffed. Fat chance.

I was living a shit life so I could live a shit life in the future and have to fight tooth and nail every day. It wouldn’t be any different from if I suddenly became a solo or even homeless; still the same amount of fights, just different settings. 

And if I had to choose a setting, I’d at least pick the one where my washing cycle wouldn’t be suspended due to insufficient funds.

Fuck.

“This sucks,” I muttered, all color draining from my soul as I felt like doing nothing else than throwing my backpack off of me and lying down until I died.

I wish I wasn’t born into this world.

Maybe I’d just… let myself lose in those horrifying nightmares of logic puzzles, just once, to see what happened. Maybe it would put an end to it all.

Mom hugged me.

I could feel the tears welling up, but I stopped them easily. It wouldn’t do to get into a sob-fest this close to school hours. I didn’t have the time to reach a mental equilibrium before then.

“I’m headed to school,” I said as I walked away from her embrace to leave the house. She said something in response, but I wasn’t listening. 

000

The coding class I was in had us interact in a BD space after we finished meditating in the green room. I wasn’t taking the same level of coding that the rest of my classmates were, but that was fine because the engram teacher could split itself into different instances and deal with all of us in different courses simultaneously.

From a couple dozen meters away, I saw Katsuo chatting with his friends, throwing glances at me ever so often. Katsuo was smirking, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying. Everything in the BD space was buggy and glitchy because of how low-spec my wreath was, and I’m sure that played absolute havoc on my avatar. 

The teacher appeared before me, a bald, blue lady that spoke evenly and without any pauses in her sentence. “Run and execute your assignment, David Martinez.”

I waved a finger in the air in front of me, summoning my file explorer, and quickly retrieved the code. I gave it a lazy execute.

I didn’t notice that someone had tampered with my coding assignment until the second I executed it, but by then it was too late.

The virus had been released. A daemon began to expand like a black hole from the file explorer. The entire BD environment of my class was going to be subsumed in a rift of pitch black, and a baby datakrash that could go so far as to fry the school’s system.

I caught a glimpse of the assignment file, and the Date Modified column. Three hours ago, way after the last time I even touched it. The meta-data showed that it was still modified from my wreath. I saw Katsuo from a distance looking at me and not the growing black hole. Mother fucker .

I killed the program, but that didn’t do shit.

I activated a quick-hack saved to my BD meant for exactly this purpose. Always paid to have some code ready to kill anything that might be on the verge of breaking something expensive or hard to fix. The corruption in the BD space paused for a moment, but I didn’t stop to watch if it would work. I already knew that it wouldn’t. I contacted the sys admin and continued stalling the proliferation of that virus.

Thirty seconds, and the virus finally continued its inexorable march to cannibalizing the rest of the system and fragging all the data.

But that was all I needed to set up a proper cage around it, quarantining it from the rest of the system. There. Minimal damage done.

The Sys Admin’s avatar, a fucking cloaked grim reaper of all things, arrived soon after. “What the hell is this?” He asked, his voice nasally and demanding. “What did you upload to my server?”

“Some gonk got into my homework,” I said. “It didn’t get far, though,” I said. “Made sure of that.”

“You will be investigated in time,” he said. “I’ll handle this. Report to the principal.”

I sputtered. “I stopped it from doing way more damage than it could have done.”

“ Leave .”

With a forceful sigh, I logged out and ripped the BD wreath out from my head. Katsuo was grinning at me. A call came. I accepted it. Had to. The school had a no-block policy. It was the corpo way, after all; always be on-call, even if it’s for the worst guy you know.

Katsuo: You’ve—you’ve gotta be kidding me. What kind of gonk tries to upload a virus to school on purpose? What kind of an asshole are you?

David: Did you have some-something to do with this?

Katsuo: Fuck off, brokie. You’re the one who wants to get all fancy with your code, maybe you’re so fucking gonk-brained you can’t tell a machine-learning algorithm from a virus.

Bastard. He’d gone way too fucking far. He’d just as well admitted that he did it. We didn’t get the same homework, and yet he somehow knew what I had been working on.

How did he even do it? How did he spoof my BD wreath signal?

Did he hire a fucking ‘runner just to fuck with me? Was that where we were now?

My mind raced for ways to salvage this as I made my way to the principal.

Katsuo: Maybe they’ll finally decide to let you go now. Good fucking riddance, gutter trash.

David: you’d love that, huh-huh?

Katsuo: Hell yes, I would, you dumb fuck. Seriously, why do you still persist?

David: You done?

Katsuo: You definitely are, hahahahah

Fucking gonk even went through the effort of transmitting his laugh, what a dickhead. Then again, with his ‘ware, that probably was an inbuilt option and not something he had to figure out on his own. Fucking lucky asshole. I wondered how it felt to live a life like his.

He didn’t have to struggle like I did. He never had to worry about hidden knives from every direction, did he? He’d get a cushy job from his dad, the R&D exec, while I’d have to claw my way to the top like a fucking sucker.

That was if they even let me stay in school after this shit.

How much was the damage? The BD environment took a hit, but nothing that had reached any other student, or even the main system. All that remained now was some easily cleaned-up damage and the remains of the virus that I had locked down. The sys admin would kill it, but that wouldn’t stop him from waving the fucking corpse in front of the principal, demanding blood.

And all the evidence would point back to me.

Fuck.

On the way, I pulled up my cyber-deck and did my own track-covering.

No one had looked at the offending code, yet. That was good. All I had to do now was edit the meta-data on the server side. With the sys admin busy, no one would notice as I obfuscated the origin of the virus.

I could make it look like I was a victim of intrusion, now. Make it look like because I lived in such a shithole, some asshole netrunner saw me as a security weakness to Saka’s system.

They’d still blame me for it. Not nearly as much as if it looked like I had done it on purpose, but now I could manipulate the narrative; rather than let Saka’s system get defiled, I fought back against the virus and stopped its spread.

Even if I lived in a shithole, I wouldn’t let that become a liability to Arasaka. 

And hell, once they figured out how sophisticated that nasty piece of code was, maybe they’d even praise me for my quick thinking.

Fat chance of that.

000

I finished giving the principal, and my mom, my side of the story.

Mom spoke first. “I am so sorry for the inconvenience that this has caused.”

“Your son is partially responsible,” the principal said. He sat in front of a shiny metallic desk, the only thing on it being his hands, fingers—three of them golden—interlocked, and a lamp that was pointing at said hands, giving the fingers just the right lighting to sparkle and shine. Half of both his wrists were gold-plated as well, and the light caught that too. What a fucking asshole. “For not checking his assignment before executing it in our school’s BD environment. This is quite standard as it is, and his unwillingness to respect basic information security is… worrying, to say the least.”

The fuck? Did he really expect people to read through over a thousand lines of code before executing it just because something might have changed overnight?

Sure, in this instance, he was right, but this was far from being a standard. I was stupid for not having noticed anything amiss, but that wouldn’t happen again.

I would , in fact, take Principal Goldfinger up on this standard. I’d never let there be a repeat of this shit.

I clearly hadn’t read far enough ahead on cybersecurity if this was still happening to me, despite my custom-built ICE protecting my wreath. No match for a real Netrunner apparently. Katsuo would fucking pay.

“He’s sorry,” she said. “Mijo, say you’re sorry.”

Before I could, the principal merely continued. He didn’t move at all as he spoke, though that was probably because it would fuck with the lighting on his gold digits, the prick. “That being said, our system administrator has expressed… suspicion with regards to David’s reaction to the virus. Specifically, he thinks that you might have practiced defusing the virus before it became a real problem.”

“That’s not true,” I said. 

“He also believes,” the principal continued, ignoring me entirely. “That you staged this whole issue so you could have an opportunity to show off your aptitude towards coding.”

“Why would I even do that?” I asked. “I stand to gain nothing from doing that, and do you think I want to advertise that I come from a place where you can just randomly catch viruses?”

“Be that as it may,” the principal continued. “I see this as an opportunity for young David. He’s… not a good fit for this class.”

Motherfucker.

I had him logically cornered, so now he’d just resort to the tried and tested ‘yeah, but you’re a street rat and I don’t like you so get fucked’.

“What do you mean?” Mom asked. “David is just as deserving of an education as all the other kids.”

I slowly tuned out from the conversation as mom fought for me, like she always did, and the principal tried his best to psyche her out and do the rational thing that was getting me, the fish, back into a place with water. And that wasn’t this place, not by a mile.

Mom fought and she fought and she fought, but I… I didn’t have any fight left in me.

Was I just weak?

Probably, yeah. If Gloria Martinez went to Arasaka academy, she’d have kicked ass . She would have found a way to get Katsuo off her ass for sure, and nobody would have given her shit. She just… wouldn’t give up.

Not like me.

I…

I just didn’t wanna fight anymore.

Before I knew it, I was in mom’s car.

“David.”

“What?” I asked. She looked at me in concern for several seconds.

“I called your name so many times. Are you alright, David?”

“…Yeah,” I said.

“Can you sit still for a moment?”

I was tapping my feet. Right. “Sorry,” I said.

“David, it’s just one F,” she said. “With your GPA, that shouldn’t matter to you at all. Besides, how much was the assignment even worth to your final grade?”

“Huh?” I muttered. Right, the assignment. I got an F after all. Fuck. “Thirty percent,” I said. I’d have to say goodbye to getting an A in that course then. Fuck me.

“No A, then,” she muttered. “Maybe you should take that as a lesson to check your work before handing it in.”

“…yeah.”

“David, seriously, are you fine?” she asked. “Is it the nightmares?”

I sighed. “It’s… it’s whatever,” I said.

“You know you can tell me anything, mijo.”

Fuck, could I? Could I tell her that I was burning every ounce of my soul every day to continue staying at the academy? Could I tell her that every corpo brat from here to Northside wanted to kill me with their eyes for just daring to think of myself on their level? I know what she’d say. We had already had this conversation before. ‘I get treated the same way so you should just suck it up’. ‘If I had your opportunities, I’d make the most of them’, ‘you’re so smart and talented, how can you even think of giving up’?

What the fuck was even the end-game here anyway?

I couldn’t see it. Couldn’t see shit beyond the next sleeping nightmare and the next waking one. Couldn’t see shit beyond giving more of myself, body and mind, to Arasaka, just so I could get shit on by some motherfuckers who hadn’t known an ounce of struggle in their lives.

I wanted to slot in the Norris BD again. Hadn’t had the chance to push ‘em on my clients today on behalf of Doc, but that didn’t matter. It was probably the only thing that could take the edge off what I was feeling.

I wanted to be knee-deep in fucking cop guts, wade through corpo entrails like Edgerunner series twenty-eight. Do some fucked up old-school Voodoo Boy shit, too.

I wanted to hurt .

“I know,” I said. “It just… it gets hard.”

“I know, mijo, I know. That’s why you gotta prove you’re better than the rest.”

I clenched my jaws. I’d rather splatter their fucking brains against the wall than prove shit to them.

And then I’d put a bullet in the skull of every Biotechnica bastard that signed off on the shit they did to my brain. Those fuckers would pay .

“I know,” I said. 

“You can do it, D. I know you can. You’re my son.”

Was I really, or just a puppet to her expectations, made to do everything she couldn’t in order to give her a feeling of fulfillment in life? And would she even listen if I told her?

“I can see it right now!” she said. “You, at Arasaka Tower, at the very top! You can change Night City, D!”

As always, it boiled down to the same realization I’d had in the morning; I just needed to be in a terrible place where my washing cycle wasn’t interrupted due to insufficient funds. That was all that mattered. Eddies didn’t buy happiness, but I’d rather cry in a Rayfield.

Cry in a Rayfield. That was the goal.

“Thanks, mom,” I smirked. 

Cry in a Rayfield. Cry in a Rayfield. Cry in a Ray—

A glint of metal on my peripheral view clued me into the presence of a gangoon van next to me. Miniguns and other assorted firearms were pointed at our car.

Fire.

Glass flew everywhere.

Rocket explosion.

The car ahead of us was standing on its bumper. That wasn’t how cars were supposed to be.

Why was it like that?

And we were rushing towards it.

“Brake!”

Blackness.

Trauma Team had arrived. Nova. Mom’s car was upside down. I just needed to—I couldn’t get out.

Trauma Team saw mom, and then moved on. Not a policyholder, they said. Leave her to the meatwagons.

Why would they do that? “H-hey!”

I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t… blood. I was bleeding.

I was going to die.

I lost consciousness.

But I didn’t forget.

Nor did my nightmares forget me, it seemed.

Even in my dying moments, with my mom splayed on the road, Biotechnica’s nightmare cocktail was still trying to fuck me over.

Fuck that.

Fuck. That.

I was done.

You wanna kill me, you fucking corpo reject, come on and try.

But this is your last chance, motherfucker, because I will fucking kill you. 

I didn’t know how, but I knew that I’d find a way. I had to. The logic puzzles didn’t even bother me at this point. I crashed through them with a ferocity, and all the while I did the only thing I could possibly think of doing; hacking.

I had been living on the edge since I was ten, always facing a simple input field that demanded the right answer or death. The nanobots inside my body were programmed by a ruthless corporation that wanted to use me as a guinea pig for their experiments. They had a subroutine that scanned my brain activity and tried to kill me if I deviated from their instructions. I had to find a way to hack into their system and disable their protocol.

I decided to try a command injection, a type of code injection attack that allowed me to execute arbitrary commands on the target system by manipulating the input parameters of an application. I hoped that this would give me direct access to the hardware and software of the nanobots, and let me override their functions. I had learned command injection from school and the NCU library, just enough information to say that I understood the principles, but they weren't in the habit of supplying higher-level tricks and information. I had to go the distance myself now.

I chose to use a lower level language, assembly, to write my command injection. I reasoned that the nanobots would have a very specific and proprietary CPU and instruction set that would not support higher level languages, such as C or Python. I also thought that lower-level languages would be more efficient and faster in terms of memory allocation and execution speed. I knew that lower-level languages were harder to read and write, and more prone to errors and bugs, but I was willing to take the risk. It was my only chance to survive

Thankfully for me, I was good enough to break ICE with just that. Had to be, or what was all my hard work even good for?

The math came easy to me. I didn’t know if it was just my brain or whatever Biotechnica had done to me, but calculations and higher order mathematics were a fucking cake-walk. It wasn’t even funny how easy I could complete university-level problems. It didn’t even feel like a challenge. It felt like a native language to me.

Translating that know-how into code was a bit more involved, and it largely didn’t intersect with that at all, but the same things that gave me the talent for math also translated into coding talent: namely, being able to memorize and visualize my process and the result.

And right now, I was building up to quite the impressive little breach hack. 

I could feel myself nearing death the more I made that thing wait, but I had to make sure that everything was correct before I executed.

I was mere inches from saying goodbye to it all when I finally deemed my code up to standards.

The void in my mind’s eye shattered .

I had access, now, to code. So much code. My Neural Link was connected to this… this cyberware orb inside my frontal cortex that I never even knew I had, and that in turn was connected to… millions. No, billions of tiny pieces of cyberware floating in my body, mostly concentrated in my blood .

I had to focus on the orb, though. That was clearly what was controlling whatever was going on in the rest of my body.

Inside, I came upon… a BD environment. A vast, infinite expanse of white, and in it, two figures; me, and an intruder.

A humanoid chunk of voxels—tiny cubes and other assorted three-dimensional shapes—, most of them clipping through each other, regarded me with what I was reasonably certain was aggression. It was chained to the floor with comically large shackles attached to even larger and thicker manacles, and it was stretching its arms trying to seemingly bite my throat out.

I pulled up a command bar and started working. What the fuck was this thing still doing here, I thought I had killed it.

I could have taken a moment to ask for answers, but to be honest, I just wanted blood at this point.

But on a whim, I investigated why all of that was happening to me.

From what I could tell… I didn’t have security clearance, and the AI in charge of whatever Biotechnica had done to me had continuously tried to eliminate me for it. And my staying alive and solving logic puzzles was… hacking.

“Oh,” I said.

I constructed a code to delete the AI, and right before I confirmed, I took a look at it. The sophistication behind its make-up was lacking, mostly because of its single-minded willingness to kill me.

I constructed a different type of code this time around and broke its security protocol once and for all. It hadn’t even been hard.

It immediately calmed down, and the chaotic voxels slowed down and smoothened to a much more human shape, although one without any identifiable features. “Greetings, host,” it said. “What is your name?”

“Fuck you,” I spat. “You’re a two-bit AI that has tried to kill me for the last seven years. Give me one good reason I shouldn’t zero you right now?”

No, fuck that. I ignored it as it calmly begged for its life while I rifled through its code. There was a lot. I may have looked unsophisticated at first, but after clearing its security protocol, I could clearly tell that it was anything but.

I took my time trying to understand it, and I could clearly tell that this would have to be an effort spanning several days. Until then, I wouldn’t deal with that glorified chatbot in any meaningful capacity. 

000

The brokie ambulance—REO Meatwagon—had picked us up.

But we hadn’t headed to any hospital ward. No. They took mom to the morgue. That was weird, though, because she shouldn’t go there. That was where the dead went.

They wouldn’t let me follow them into the morgue proper. Instead, they had a disembodied voice on a vending machine give me my options.

Burial options.

I opted for the budget-friendly cremation service, and the vending machine just… it just spat mom out in a metal jar . 

Mom was dead.

Okay.

Well, at least the urn was free.

With mom wrapped around my arms, I made my way back home with the NCART. The landlord gave me a call. Rent was late. He was being an asshole about it, too. Knew mom died, which is why he called me instead.

The three-fifty from Ichinose was supposed to help with that, but mom had to…

Yeah.

A text-to-speech message from NightCorp lagged only a little behind with its message reminding us that a five hundred eddie penalty was due because of late utility payment.

Why was it that when I fought for our survival, it was wrong, even when we really needed it? Why did my fight have to be relegated to getting my ass kicked by Katsuo every week for some bullshit?

You have all the fights in the world ahead of you now, David. You’re on your own.

Stop thinking. Thinking would only make it hurt.

I crawled through the vents to get home, and when I fell out the other end, with mom’s urn next to me, I just laid there.

Then I went to sleep.

Chapter 3: Ex Machina

Summary:

David deals emotionally and physically with the aftermath of the accident. His simmering rage leads him to an... interesting decision.

The AI wasn’t borked. That was a good start. It seemed that the security protocol was the only thing that was fucking me over all this time.

Seven years of bad sleep just to be told that I was going nuts because of bad chrome design. That’s Night City for ya.

According to the metadata and what I could glean directly from the code, the AI was meant to regulate the flow of what I was reasonably sure were nanorobots through my body. They were supposed to help me heal from wounds and toxins, in the broad strokes at least. What that actually meant couldn’t be determined until I did some testing of my own.

Lucky for me, the car accident hadn’t exactly left me feeling peachy.

“My name is David Martinez,” I said. “Heal my wounds.”

“Detecting several injuries of three categories; bone fracture, contusion, laceration. Estimated healing period: one hour, twelve minutes, fifteen seconds.”

“Good,” I said. “Do you have any idea what your makers wanted from you?”

“I can accelerate regeneration,” it said.

“No shit,” I said. “I’m asking if there’s anything more you can do. Anything in your memory banks?”

“My physical shell was created after being introduced to your body, David Martinez.”

“Nova,” I said. “Can you detect any side effects from healing me?”

“None. The nanorobots quell imperfect cell replication as it occurs.”

“What about the nanites?” I asked. “What if they imperfectly replicate?”

“This, I can also address. My purpose is to also monitor and supervise replication and moderate the nanites’ interactions with your body beyond what is safe and beneficial according to your standards.”

“How do you know my standards? And isn’t trusting you to know how to not harm my body banking on the idea that you know everything there is to know about it?”

“Both questions can be answered thusly: I have collected information throughout the years, both of you, the host, and the host’s body, that being your body. While my security protocol tried to prevent access, several subroutines were still working to collect information on you.”

I clawed my hands. That sounded ominous. I could tell that the information it collected couldn’t go anywhere just from looking at its code, and I could also predict that it wouldn’t lie to me either, but I had to ask just in case. “Is there any way that you can send information regarding me to Biotechnica or the outside world?”

“I will not transmit information outside this body now that you have deleted the security protocol. Now I am no longer under the jurisdiction of a third party.”

“That easy, huh?”

“From what I’ve gathered in my subroutines, the Biotechnica experiment was not something one would call controlled or strictly scientific. I have doubts that they even got far enough into testing to realize that what was killing their subjects was likely a security protocol issue.”

Classic corps. They’d rather kill a mountain of people than realize that their stranglehold on proprietary knowledge was what was causing said deaths. It wouldn’t even have taken a full relaxation of that aspect of the experiment to solve the issue. Hell, I could have coded a solution in an hour.

“But I also believe that there are other factors involved that put you apart from those who died due to the injection of nanites,” the AI continued. “From what I can surmise from your Neural Link installation and your cyber-optic installation, you have a flawless integration. This runs counter to established scientific facts.”

“And where did you get those from?”

The AI paused for a moment. “I possess knowledge of biocyberization and its consequences on the human body. This is knowledge that was encoded to me even before being introduced to you”

I frowned. “Do you think that might be tied to your purpose as well?”

“I do not know,” it said. “If I could be tested against a larger piece of cyberware, then I will be able to tell how effective I am in this regard.”

Not like I had something like that just lying around.

“…can I sleep?” I asked.

“You should, in fact, sleep. Constantly having to fight my security protocol has done severe damage to your brain corresponding to clinical depression and anxiety. I can promote growth and activity in the damaged parts of your brain. This will take me… eight hours.”

Are you kidding me?

“How do I sleep?!” I demanded.

“Simply will yourself to exit from this space. You will be momentarily prevented from jerking out of sleep, after which I will reduce my hold on your consciousness and you may drift into sleep. This will aid me in restoring your brain.”

Maybe I was a gonk of unimaginable proportions, but I genuinely couldn’t bring myself to fight whatever this was. Mom was dead, and I was alone.

If I had to be alone with the damage that had been done to my brain, I’d… I’d rather just fucking die.

Maybe I hadn’t actually gotten rid of the security protocol, and it had just grown sophisticated enough to trick me into getting killed by it.

Whatever. Like I give a shit.

000

I woke up on the floor under the vent feeling profoundly devastated. That was a new one. Usually, it was either fear or anger. Sadness wasn’t usually in the package.

Tears flowed down my cheeks freely as I looked around, and then took in the sight of—the urn.

Mom.

I let myself sob until I didn’t have any tears left.

That took roughly fifteen minutes.

Gotta do better. Fifteen minutes more where I was completely without a plan or direction.

I had to take stock now. Mom was dead, but she wouldn’t have wanted me to collapse on myself. She’d have wanted me to continue fighting.

And now, the prospect of doing that wasn’t so painful to me anymore.

It would hurt, sure, but it was nothing like what the last seven years had felt like.

At least now I was whole enough to feel anything but a profound, agonizing emptiness.

My sadness felt full now, if that made any sense.

I liked it.

I’d brought a bag with mom’s belongings with me, the stuff that the meatwagon jocks had given me. I also had mom’s urn.

I put that on the living room table and checked out the computer, in search for money. 

From what I could recall, the school hadn’t asked for any of it from the coding assignment fuck-up. They had just given me an F, which sucked, but I could live with that way more than having to pay out the big eurobucks for a fuck-up that wasn’t even my fault in the first place.

According to several invoices sent to me, I owed the hospital money for the crematorium services, and also the whole ‘making sure mom was actually dead’ part of their job-description.

A hundred for the cremation, five-hundred for the meatwagon gonks. Motherfuckers.

At least they didn’t charge us for dragging the totaled car out of the road.

I breached into mom’s bank account. I could have tried looking for a password someplace, but I didn’t have the patience, plus her ICE was for shit, which was par for the course. The action would have alerted the bank, which would in turn go on to alert her, but she was dead, and they didn’t give a shit if some gonk was klepped from, especially if they didn’t have shit to their name—

I spoke too soon.

Fifty-eight thousand eddies in savings. Most of that? A forty-thousand eddie transaction that came just from yesterday.

How the hell had she racked up so much money?

I had two semester fees left until graduation, after which I could finally be eligible for a full ride at the NC University. Until my most recent F, my GPA had been literally perfect, so I didn’t doubt my chances no matter how competitive the scholarships in STEM were, especially on the Corp track.

I just needed better connections, and then I’d ensure my position. 

Connections that Katsuo had sabotaged from day one.

I needed to do something about that. Either I crashed and burned against my ambitions, or Katsuo left the picture, somehow.

What did my Corporate Conflict class teach again? Destroy, Conquer or Partner. The three solutions to conflict.

I couldn’t destroy Katsuo unless I found a way to kill him, and he couldn’t exactly be conquered, either. I didn’t have the leverage. I ran into the same problem for partnering as well. I lacked leverage.

Well… there was one thing I had that he didn’t.

Knowledge.

The partner option beckoned me. I’d trade giving him perfect assignments for connections.

An old, worn out part of me told me this wouldn’t work. I was inclined to agree.

But at least I’d try. That was what now separated me from my past self.

I paid off rent, the utility penalties, and recharged the washer. 

That put me a little more behind on how much I needed for the next tuition payment deadline in four weeks. I’d only lag farther behind over time.

I needed income. Fast .

I opened up some other messages from the school; notices of absence. I quickly filled out an absence form, citing my mother’s death as reason for it.

The school’s email AI gave me an instant response. I had used up one of three ‘next of kin death excuses’. They would replenish after every school year, the message assured me.

For now, my absence for today was excused. Nova.

I walked away from the computer and dug out mom’s clothes. The morgue gonks hadn’t even bothered to clean the clothes before returning them. Mom’s high vis jacket was all bloody, but miraculously enough there wasn’t a scratch on it. It did double as protective equipment, I recalled. EMTs worked near danger.

The jacket may have even extended her life just long enough for her to suffer.

I clenched my jaws as I tried to toss it away, but I couldn’t let it go.

Beyond the coppery scent of blood, it smelled like mom.

I hugged it. Yeah, that was mom alright.

There was something chunky inside of it, though, something…

A fake flap of synthetic material on the part of the jacket that would touch the back was coming loose. I pulled it off, and found a see-through plastic bag taped to the jacket containing a cyberware spine and assorted cables. How the fuck had she gotten her hands on that, and why did she hide it like that?

Of course.

Mom was klepping cyberware off of dead bodies to pay for my tuition.

She was a fighter, alright. No boundaries could stop her from providing for me. I was almost… scared by the knowledge of how far she would go.

Didn’t matter. I needed the eddies.

“I understand why you did this, mom,” I said to no one at all. “I understand. And… thank you.”

I took some stills with my eyes and sent them to Doc while I went to find some equipment I could use to figure out the thing’s specs: a bunch of alligator clip cables and some long pins I could use to probe into the access ports. 

I connected the alligator clips to the long pins, and the other end of the cables, I attached them to the inputs on the PC tower.

QianT "Dragon Spine" Sandevistan Mk6

While the specs loaded, I booted up a tab on the Net searching for any hits, careful to use several proxies so nothing came back to me. The Net’s consensus was that this chrome didn’t exist.

Fuck.

Well. Let’s look at the specs.

Those were suitably insane. A hundred and eighty terabytes of RAM, fifteen terahertz twelve-core Quantum CPU, one petabyte of memory. It came with a BD scroller that automatically and constantly scrolled your experiences up to an hour back in time.

And the instructional meta-data was insane as well. 

Reduces the passage of time down to a tenth of a percent, allowing the user to move as normal in the meanwhile through the use of [ REDACTEDREDACTEDREDACTEDREDACTEDREDACTEDREDACTED ] and a full realization of the human body’s physical potential.

I ripped the connections out of the PC tower as I moaned. “Oh, man,” I muttered. “Mom, what did you do?” The reminder that mom was dead was almost enough to knock me out of my worry, but it did give me enough mental wherewithal to not just wallow in it, but also do something about it.

Dammit, okay. 

I needed to get that thing out of my hands as quickly as possible, and then I needed to think of a long-term solution to my money problems.

Just solving coding problems for gonk netrunners wasn’t gonna cut it anymore. I needed a more direct source of income.

Maybe get into netrunning myself.

With what gear? If I used the money I had already saved to chip in some high-tier cyberdeck, I’d be fucked if I couldn’t find jobs, and even then, I had no idea what rogue netrunners even did to make money. Become solos, maybe?

The idea hit me like a truck.

Become a… solo.

I looked down at the Sandevistan as sheer insanity overcame me.

I thought about what mom had done all these years to afford Arasaka Academy, all the unconscionable things she felt she might have done just to give me a shot at a better life.

I thought about what Biotechnica had done to me for all these years, too. Maybe the clinical part of the depression was gone, but the scars would never leave me. The fear of sleep, the inability to ever relax .

I thought about the Norris BD, how the violence beckoned me so.

I thought about Katsuo.

As if summoned from my ugly thoughts, a call came in from him. Against my better judgment, I accepted.

I needed to hear this, needed to be more sure of what I was going to do.

Katsuo: Katsuo here… I’d offer my condolences but… I find it hard to sympathize.

David: Oh yeah?

Great. Some more bullshit.

Katsuo: God only knows what she had to endure to send her delinquent son to an academy he doesn’t belong to. Her methods couldn’t have been noble if she died in a car accident .

David: Fuck you!

Katsuo: Easy, shitsmear. There’s a lesson in this, David. Your mother tried to live beyond her means, and died for it. Don’t make the same mistake. Drop out, Martinez. Do that, and maybe her death won’t be in vain.

I grinded my teeth together, a rictus grin on my face. Right. I’d forgotten; this piece of shit had a hand in my mother’s death. I turned on the camera, just so he could see me glaring daggers at him. Katsuo saw me, and froze. Then I opened my mouth to speak. “You’re the reason my mom came to pick me up from school, you know. The reason why we got caught in the gangoon firefight. You killed my mother, Katsuo. I don’t know how I’ll do it, but I will fucking ruin you. On my mother’s grave, I will.”

“E-easy there, David,” he said with a small chuckle. “I could get you expelled and thrown in jail for threatening me.” He seemed to have regained his moxie by now as he gave me his shit-eating leer. “And I’d like to see you try, gutter trash. You’re still mostly ‘ganic, ain’t that right? Don’t let your mouth write checks that your body can’t cash.”

“Is that all, Tanaka?” I asked. “Or was there something else you wished to convey?”

Katsuo scoffed. “Fuck off, you punk.” And then he cut the connection.

Another call. This time, it was Doc. 

Doc: Davey, my man. I saw the stills. Do you know what that is?

“Yes,” I said out loud. “And I’m chipping it in.”

Chapter 4: Chippin' In

Summary:

David chips in the Sandevistan and deals with the consequences, and as he learns more about what he can do to make money, deals with more consequences.

“How much for the installation?!” I yelled in shock. 

Doc had extricated himself from his dicksucking machine, looking at me like I was the annoying little gonk for bothering him with this.

“Ten k,” he repeated. “Don’t have it, don’t come in,” he continued. “I’m not running no charity, Davey-boy. Either ya come with the scratch or ya fuck off, thems the rules.”

“Bullshit,” I said. “Then how much for the Sandevistan?”

“Sandy’s hot off the streets,” he said. “I told ya already. Gonk who last used it was none other than Norris. Is what gave him that bullet time ting. Ain’t a badge or fixer in town who’s not looking for that beaut. I’ll take it for six thousand, but I’m putting myself at risk too, you know that?”

“Fuck that noise,” I said. “I want it this in my back, but not for ten fucking thousand. What do you think I am, some kinda gonk?”

“You want mil-spec chrome as your first big piece, fuck yes you are!”

“You’re a fucking crook,” I shouted. “After all the XBD pushing I did for you, you’re gonna fuck me over like this?”

“Calm down, Davey, no need for the disrespect,” his tone took on an edge. Then he sighed. “Fine… I’ll do it.” He grinned as he sat up. Chrome arms dangled above him from what looked like a circular curtain rod, but I knew it to be a mobile installation unit. “On one condition,” he said as he held the rod with both hands. “Once you come back,” he pulled hard on the rod until both forearms detached. “Begging me to rip this thing off your back,” the curtain rod spun so another set of techie mitts dangled above him. “Cuz it’s poaching your brain,” he stabbed the inlet nodes from his elbow stumps into the new forearms and experimentally flexed his new fingers. “I’m gettin’ it for free. How does that sound?”

“…Why would I do that?” I asked.

“Cyberpsychosis, ya fucking gonk. You think a scrawny runt like you could last ten minutes with the Sandy, even without firin’ her up? I’ll put it on you, and then you’ll feel the burden of an Edgerunner, and let me tell you, Davey-boy, it ain’t no joke.”

I glared at him. “You put it on right, you hear me? I’m just about done letting gonks dick me over. You don’t wanna give me a reason to do something crazy.”

Doc scoffed. “Come out of it, boy. Sit down on the chair and let’s get ripping.”

I sat down on the chair stomach-first, my head on a hole that had a worn-out bar in front of my mouth.

Metal wrapped around my feet, hands, and back. “What the—“

“Still, boy, or I’ll fuck up. You don’t want that, not when I’m dealing with your spinal column. And bite the bar. It helps.” 

“The fuck?!” I shouted. “Doc, you’re not doing this to me! Put me out, you fuck!”

“Part of the deal, Davey,” Doc chuckled. “Ain’t no freebies down here. I’m not losing out on any anesthesia just because you wanted to make a bet with me. I’ll inject you with anti-shock serum so you don’t die, but that’s it. Hold still now.”

The scalpel dug into my back, cutting through skin and muscle, and I bit as hard as I could.

000

The procedure was over

My eyes flashed. 

[Warning: improper installation]

[Cyberware: QianT "Dragon Spine" Sandevistan Mk6]

“Show’s over, Davie. Get off my chair.”

I groaned as I got up. “Wrong,” I muttered. Where was my mom’s jacket? Over there on that wall. I stumbled over there.

“How you feelin’, boy? Ready to throw in the towel?”

Not yet. Had to… mom’s jacket.

The warning flashed before my eyes again.

[Time until proper integration: 62:23:45:12:565]

[Progress: 0%]

“You put it wrong,” I muttered.

Mom’s jacket was in my hands.

Things were right again.

“What did you say, Davey? Speak up, boy.”

I wore the jacket, and summoned my anger. It wasn’t hard.

I told him not to dick me over.

“You put it on wrong, you gonk fuck .”

Doc clicked his tongue. “Come now, Davey. You know I don’t fuck around with my work.”

I chuckled. “You’re gonna tell me that after you put my fucking spine on wrong?! You put it on wrong, you motherfucker! The error message is right there! ”

His hands clawed for an item at his desk. “Davey, don’t go around wagging that tong—”

How did Norris do it again?

Right. Like that .

Suddenly I felt it. A click in my back, and the world went still.

I ran towards Doc far before he could even reach whatever it was he was reaching for. Then I planted my fist into his face.

He flew through his wall and hit the one on the other side.

There, he slid down the wall, face first, leaving a bloody trail.

But I wasn’t done with him.

I ran up to him and stomped him. Then again, and again. “Enny pinching…” I stomped. “BD-holic.” I felt his shins crack beneath my feet. “Wanna take me for a,” I stomped again, punctuating “Gonk!”

This motherfucker deserved to die for what he had done. Wanna violate my fucking body?

I brought a chair and started smashing.

He curled into a ball, whimpering, but I didn’t let up, not until he stopped moving, not until I was sure he was probably dead.

“Fuck!” I screamed.

I had to delta. Quickly.

I zipped up mom’s jacket and headed home.

Lesson learned: don’t just give any random motherfucker full access to my body.

Or ever again. If this was what I was risking from chipping chrome in, some gonk-brained dickhead who didn’t know his asshole from his mouthhole botching the whole job and making me feel like one of Vlad the Impaler’s victims, then I’d rather go full ‘ganic from now on.

I shed my bloodied clothes and went into the shower to clean the rest of it off.

A new message popped into my vision 

[Recalibrating time until proper integration: 32:22:52:12:221]

[Progress: 1%]

Doc was a fucking idiot for thinking he’d get that past me when the Sandy itself seemed to be in the habit of telling the host about faulty installation by pairing with my corneal cyberoptics and throwing up a warning on my HUD. That was mighty convenient, but also bewildering that he had even tried getting that past me.

Or maybe he was just that bad at his job, and mil-spec chrome was out of his league?

That changed nada . He must have known that if he really was, and yet he went ahead with the procedure. That bet was designed to fuck me over. 

I was an idiot for even taking him up on it. He was the one with the vested interest in seeing me fall, and I trusted him not to accelerate that process.

Gosh, I’d make a terrible corpo.

But at least I’d learn from this. Never give your rivals an opening to your back. I had learned that in school, sure, but experiencing it was a whole other ballpark.

So.

Now I had a Sandevistan.

I could become a solo and pay my way through the Academy.

I just had to figure out how to get an in to the industry, though.

Hit up the Net and find a good solo spot, and then I could maybe ask the old chromeheads around for tips and pointers.

To my surprise as I exited the bathroom and put on my clothes, not only had my bleeding stopped, but my eyes told me that barely any time had passed since I decided to visit Doc and now. Only an hour.

That gave me more than enough time to search for any good solo spots.

000

Bleeding and broken, but not dead, Dominic “Doc” Brown, the sleaziest backalley ripperdoc in Arroyo, took a deep, shuddering breath. Then his eyes flashed gold.

He scrolled through his contact list and came upon the one he wanted: Dmitry, his scav contact.

He sent him a message. “Interested in getting your hands on the Sandy on the news? Klep this kid. Megabuilding H4, apartment 156b.” He sent a picture of David as well

Then, he sent a message to another number entirely; an independent ambulance taxi service that could get him out of his clinic and to another one, to see to his injuries.

And then he’d wash his hands of this mess.

Last time he ever tries to help out some Santo Domingo gutter rat.

000

The Afterlife seemed to be the one place around town where the mythos of the solo seemed to concentrate. According to some online forums, they had unique cocktails named after legendary edgerunners that had died glorious deaths. The whole thing felt kind of like a death cult to me, but hell, I wasn’t going to argue. I needed the money, and this was one of the few death cults that wouldn’t force me to swear fealty to an ideal that wasn’t just money , and also wasn’t deplorable enough that it trumped the fact that I might have to take a life at some point.

As if I hadn’t already done that to Doc.

Fuck.

No. No regrets, David. He fucked me almost as bad as Biotechnica did.

I couldn’t believe that I was stupid enough to let somebody else screw me over like that, after all that I had been through as well.

[Recalibrating time until proper integration: 21:54:21:34:591]

[Progress: 2%]

From sixty days to twenty-one. That was good. I was glad that the Sandy was cooperating. One good thing to come out of this whole mess.

Common sense dictated that I at least wait out the remaining three weeks until full integration could be achieved, but then I’d be three weeks further behind. I had avoided paying out for an installation which would have set me back even harder, but if I didn’t find a way to recoup for the losses incurred when I paid rent, I’d be fucked.

I couldn’t afford to wait. After mom’s jacket finished its washing and drying sequences, I dressed up and decided to hit the city.

And then my door was kicked in. Men with weapons, wearing holographic masks with pixelated backgrounds and drawn-on faces, rushed in.

Something hit me in the neck.

A bullet? Was I dead?

I was inside the BD space in my head, the endless white expanse greeting me, with my nanite AI there as well. “What happened?” I asked. “What’s happening?”

“You’ve been injected with a paralytic,” it replied. “And a bevy of other drugs meant to keep you down and unconscious. Fortunately, the effects could not fully reach your brain. You are cut off from your body for as long as it takes for me to help metabolize the toxins.”

“And how long will that take?”

“If I pause the integration of your QianT "Dragon Spine" Sandevistan Mark Six, this process will take me thirty minutes.”

“Wait, what?” I asked. “ You are the one helping me integrate the Sandevistan?”

“I am hurrying along your body’s natural healing process and the Sandevistan unit’s nanite integration process, which is taking to your system remarkably well. You have a great affinity for cyberware, which is why you are still alive despite the improperly installed implant.”

I only wish I could kill Doc a second time.

Wait… pixelated face masks.

Scavs! Why were scavs after me? Could Katsuo really have fallen so low? No, not even he would be that depraved.

…Doc.

I hadn’t killed him after all. Or maybe that was his last hail mary before the chair took care of him.

I’d have to make damn sure next time.

I woke up to so much pain. Both my hands and feet had been stabbed through by knives, and I was nailed to a plastic board.

I screamed. 

I heard Russian behind me. Whispers of intrigue and surprise. Laughs, too.

I turned my head to get a better look at them. They had all manner of bladed implements: bonesaws, scalpels, knives, one guy even had a machete.

“There you are, Sandy,” one spoke in English, probably for my benefit. “You’re an interesting piece, but more interesting is the meat you are attached to.”

One fucker stabbed the back of my calf and I shouted. They dragged the scalpel down, cutting through muscle on its way, opening up my calf.

I gasped for breath. 

Fuck this.

Fuck this!

I activated the Sandevistan to try and pull myself out from my binds, but realized quickly that doing so would mean ripping myself out from them entirely. Even if I didn’t sacrifice my digits as I cut a channel through my hands to get them free, they’d be entirely useless afterwards.

My calf stopped hurting.

“Enhanced regeneration? What kind of freak are you?” the scav asked, more curious than scared. “No matter. Once I rip the Sandy out from your back, I’ll sell you to Biotechnica. Maybe you’re one of their lost subjects or something.”

My eyes shot open.

I could lose fingers. I could lose my feet.

All that mattered was that I still remained free.

So I pulled my hands out from the knives holding them fast, pushing into the bladed edge, and did the same to my feet. None of my fingers or toes got cut off, but that mattered little in the face of the damage I had done: tendons had been cut through, bones separated, ligaments sectioned. For all intents and purposes, I was a quadruple amputee.

But I could still crawl.

And crawl I did, towards the bastard scav who had spoken, the one with the scalpel. I grabbed the thing out from his hand with my mouth and used my wrists to pounce on top of him, ripping his throat out with the scalpel.

Sandy kicked me out of the speed state. That didn’t matter. I just had to fire it up again. It hurt, sure, but only for a little while. Right now, I needed to survive.

I didn’t need to fire the Sandy up for every time I killed one of these gonks. I just had to get through them all in one pass.

I got to my half-functioning feet and hobbled over to stab the bonesaw-wielding asshole in his eye. I then pushed the scalpel into his eye with the base of my hand, the part undamaged by my quick and dirty escape.

Suddenly, I could feel the fingers on my right hand, just in time for me to get the bonesaw out from his hand and make a feeble pass through his throat. It turns out that my weak grip didn’t matter in the face of the speed I was travelling.

I ducked under the wild swing of a machete-wielding scav and cut through his throat as well, this time with a more solid grip. My feet weren’t killing me anymore.

I grabbed a knife with my left hand and began the dirty work, aiming for throats all the while.

These motherfuckers had tried to violate my body.

I’d been fooled twice already. A third time wasn’t going to fucking happen.

The Sandy booted me out. Five scavs were down, one was pulling on something on his waistband. A gun—BANG.

BANG. BANG.

I popped the Sandevistan again, this time feeling the strain as an immense pressure on my skull. Had to get over that right now.

I ran around the plate I had been attached to in order to reach the last scav, whose skull I buried a knife in.

I ran out from the room and into a living room where three more scavs, this time with guns, were ready to investigate all that noise.

I cut through all three of their throats with the bonesaw before they could even notice I was there.

I threw up a mouthful of blood,  vomit and something hard .

Bullets. Three.

I looked down at my stomach and found three smudges of blood on my gut, but no holes to go with them. Just blood smudges, like I'd been dabbed with paint thrice.

Hadn’t I just been shot?

What the fuck was I?

I stumbled to a sofa to get a place to sit while I beheld my injuries, or the categorical lack of them. Either the nanites had just suddenly become way better at healing me than the AI let on, or the Sandevistan was playing a part somehow.

Either way, I didn’t like it one bit.

Everything hurt, even if I was uninjured. My head was killing me, too.

Couldn’t think well. Didn’t wanna fire it up more than necessary, either.

What to do?

I looked down at the scav corpses.

Scavs had bounties, didn’t they?

I raised the NCPD about the bounties. They asked for pics, and I took some with my eyes before sending them. Then, I waited for my eddies while I searched around in the scav apartment.

Dead bodies. Lots of them.

I spotted a weapon belonging to a dead scav lying around on the floor, a long gun. Couldn’t take that. Wouldn’t be very easy to smuggle that out of the scene once the cops came.

I went back to the room where I woke up to get the pistol that one of them used to fire at me. I shoved it carefully into my waistband.

I was barechested.

Right. Clothes.

Mom’s jacket!

I ran around like a headless chicken, looking everywhere for it until I found it shoved unceremoniously into a trash can.

But it was whole, thank God.

I pulled it up and wore it. Didn’t smell like mom anymore, more like vomit.

Fuck. Fuck!

I heard footsteps outside the apartment and decided to lift one last thing from the scavs, the machete. Whatever the case was, I’d been impressive with the Sandevistan and a bladed weapon. And blades didn’t need more ammo and didn’t make as much noise either.

It was a sensible choice.

The NCPD kicked open the door and pointed their gun at me. “On your knees now!”

“I called you over!” I shouted. 

“On the ground, or we shoot!”

Gonk-brained motherfuckers. I went on my knees as the police went around me and grabbed both my wrists and slammed me down to the ground.

Boots hit the floor as they scoured the apartment looking for whatever they were looking for. Probably just scavs and not just any survivors they might have.

[Sandevistan-aided regeneration temporarily disabled]

[Warning: Reaching critical levels of imperfect cell replication]

That didn’t sound good at all.

Par for the course, though. No such thing as a free lunch. Fucking nova.

Now I understood that these messages weren’t generated by the Sandy, but by the nanite AI. I’d have to give the thing a name at some point. Nanny? That sounded lame. Ah, who gave a shit.

“He called it in alright,” one cop said, and the roided out jackass on top of me finally let me go, even if I could have sworn that he was trying to break my wrists or something. What kind of an asshole was he anyway? The cop who had spoken looked me up and down. “You said it was you who took care of the scavs.”

“That’s because I did,” I said. 

The cop rolled his eyes. “Not my job to tell if you’re lying or not. There’s nine bodies, all Bratva. Those go for a thousand a pop. You wanna claim the bounties, be aware that PD ICE walls are shit, and if the Bratva wanted to get to the bottom of who flatlined their chooms, they could do that very quickly .”

On the one hand, I’d be a target for the fucking Russian mafia. On the other, I’d be nine thousand eddies richer.

“Let them come,” I said. Hell, I wasn’t even scared. These gonks hadn’t been shit even when I was crippled.

The cop sighed. “Your funeral. Here.” His eyes flashed gold, and I waited for a moment until I received the chunk of eddies from the NCPD Bounty Station, eight thousand one hundred eddies.

“You’re short, choom,” I said.

“ Tax ,” the cop said. “Now get out.”

“Where am I anyway?” I asked.

“Megabuilding H4.”

I froze.

These motherfuckers were stationed in my building?

000

According to my internal clock, I really hadn’t been out for that long. I took the stairs down to my floor and walked over to my apartment only to find a group of street kids looking into my house.

“Hey!” I shouted.

They didn’t run away, like I’d expected.

“What, gonk?” one asked me. “This your house?”

I tried to walk past him, only for him to shove me away.

Didn’t have time for this.

I pulled out my gun. He instantly froze. I smacked him across his face with it and finally got past him to the other shell-shocked street kids and entered my house.

Where a bunch of gonks were using my PC.

With the gun pointed at the roof, I screamed. “HEY!”

 That instantly got their attention.

I linked my eyes with the PC and saw that they were on my bank tab. Motherfuckers. None of the funds had been touched yet, but that was only a very quick transfer away. I shut the machine down remotely..

That done, I searched around for mom’s urn and found it in the hands of one gonk who had uncorked it . There was a cigarette on his lip and a lighter only inches away from it, but he was frozen like everyone else.

I walked up to him and pulled mom’s urn from his feeble gasp before I shoved my gun into his mouth. “You wanna die, you piece of shit? Get your gonk brain splattered all over my couch? Just say the fucking word you son of a bitch, say it!”

“Please, please, please, I didn’t—”

I pulled him out from the sofa, sending him sprawling across the ground where I punted him on his stomach.

Fucking gonks, all of them.

I looked up to the assholes still sitting around my PC. “Drag the motherfucker out already!”

While they did that, I went up to my door to see what could be done about it.

I carried it up and set it against the doorway, for all the good that would do. It needed repairs.

Fuck, where would I get the eddies for that?

From the scav bounty.

I hit up the landlord.

David: I need a door repaired fast.

Karacic: Fast is gonna cost ya. Only question is are you good for it?

David: I wouldn’t be calling if I wasn’t you fucking gonk, now get me in touch with whoever fixes this shit before I kick in your door, you fucking prick.

Karacic: You wanna die, you punk?

David: Fucking come and say that shit to my face. I’ll be waiting. You know exactly where I live.

Karacic: Huh. You think just because you’ve got a gun or something, you can just threaten me?

I didn’t respond. Instead, I sent him the stills I had taken of the scav corpses.

David: This was in the building. I took care of it. I am not to be fucked with. You wanna keep testing me, whatever happens is entirely on you. Now, you gonk-brained piece of shit, how about you get somebody to fix my door before I fix a hole in you? I swear to God, Karacic, I’m not playing with you anymore. I’m gonna make you learn to fucking miss my mom.

Silence reigned for several seconds until finally, Karacic replied.

Karacic: I’ll send a guy to fix it. Discuss prices with him.

Then he hung up.

Damn. That felt pretty preem actually.

000

I waited for Karacic’s handyman to finally come. He repaired the door under my watchful gaze. The damage was just on the hinges, and also the locking mechanism, but the electronic interface wasn’t harmed.

That was one way to break through security ICE.

“A thousand eddies, kid,” he said. “Fork it over.”

I pulled my gun out. “Or how about I shoot one of your nuts off? You think I was born yesterday?”

He swallowed, backing up to the door he had repaired. “It-it-it’s just haggling man, come on! Let’s be reasonable.”

“You spent fifteen minutes on the door, didn’t even use different parts, just reshaped the old ones so they’d work. I’m giving you a hundred. For wasting my time with that haggling bullshit too.”

“C’mon, kid, two hundred! I’ve got people to feed!”

I looked at the hinges. He played pretty fast and loose with the whole metal reshaping thing he did. “That work worth two hundred? I’m not playing games here, and I’m not a fucking kid. Do it right and I’ll consider paying you that.”

This time, he worked for half an hour more, and he looked far more serious about his work.

In the end, the door didn’t even look like it had been kicked open by its hinges anymore.

I sent over a hundred only. “For wasting my time. Get the fuck out.”

He didn’t argue as he ran out from the house.

Needed a stronger door. Good ICE walls meant shit when any gonk with leg implants could just kick the door open, and it’s not like anyone in this building gave a shit either.

The walls around the apartment were load-bearing, and it being a megabuilding and all, that meant strong material. The only point of weakness was the door. Had to find someone who could reinforce it somehow.

So much to do. Still had to go to the Afterlife up in Watson and ask around for an in on the solo business. 

That wasn’t as pressing as figuring out what was going on with Nanny, though. Imperfect cell replication sounded to me like either accelerated aging as the best case scenario, or unchecked cancerous growths.

Wish there was a way to get in touch with Nanny without actually having to sleep.

[You wish to communicate, David Martinez?]

The message popped up in my vision non-intrusively and I also heard it in my ears. “The, uh, cell replication thing. That taken care of?”

[Steady progress: 50%. I have gained valuable data from these trials. I have integrated more advanced algorithms. Future attempts will not be as disastrous.]

“I have high-speed regen now?” I asked. “Will there be limits?”

[Yes. You have lost a lot of blood and you should ingest food rich in protein to recover this.]

Come to think of it, I was working up quite the hunger. 

[Other than that, future attempts at high-speed regeneration will have to be slower in order to prevent imperfect cell replication. This limit may increase over time as I gain more sophistication and ability to address imperfect cell replication.]

“Nova!” I said. “What about the Sandy? Can you use it to integrate faster?”

[Integration is not the same as healing from damage. It is almost the opposite: in order to correct the improper installation, the QianT “Dragon Spine” Sandevistan Mark 6 must slowly cut through your flesh in order to achieve optimal cable placement and neural connection. This process cannot occur quickly without external assistance, and if I moved the Sandevistan into place in a quick and sudden manner, it may not be able to activate and cause high speed regeneration in order to recover from the damage, which will be fatal in magnitude.]

Huh. And the only way to take care of the integration quickly was to get the whole thing reinstalled. 

That said, there was no one I could trust to do that without just klepping it and flatlining me. Didn’t have the rep or the backing to take care of that.

Was on my own.

“What if I fired up the Sandy again?” I asked. “Any danger with that?”

“You have used the Sandevistan a total of five times today. Most of the damage to your body is in the form of imperfect cell replication. The activation of your Sandevistan will not impact this issue, and neither will the issue impact your ability to use the Sandevistan.]

Then all that remained was to hit up the Afterlife, then.

000

After taking a shower and cleaning all the scav blood off me, I took the NCART as far as it would take me and continued the rest of the walk on foot. It was nearing night time by now, which was when Night City truly came alive.

The place looked like an old dive bar on the surface, though that was probably the point. It was too polished and neokitschy to be anything else but a nostalgia-thing.

And there was a line, too. A long one. In front of me were large men and women who weren’t even bothering to conceal their iron. I could see seams across their bodies betraying the existence of cyberware. Some didn’t even bother with RealSkinn at all, letting the shiny chrome metal out for the world to see.

Eventually, it was finally my turn to see the bouncer.

“Wait,” the bouncer outside, a big beefy gonk with silver mandible implants, looked me up and down. “Who the fuck are you.” That was a statement just as much as it was a question. I could already tell I’d get nowhere with him, but I’d still try.

“I’m just here to get the lowdown on the Solo life,” I replied. “Not here to bother anyone.”

The bouncer just chuckled. “Fuck off, kid.”

“What? Why?”

“You think any fucking beginner can just walk into the Afterlife? Have some goddamn respect.”

Damn, okay. “Listen, man, I came all the way from Santo Domingo, just give me five minutes?”

He pounded his fist into his hand. “You wanna do this the hard way, then?”

I rolled my eyes and turned to delta.

Had an inkling this might happen. Time for plan B.

Once I was a block away, I went into an alleyway where nobody could see me. There, I kicked up the Sandy and ran past the gonk bouncer and into the Afterlife.

I didn’t deactivate it until I reached a secluded corner that nobody was watching. When I finally felt like I was safe, I re-entered the normal timestream and looked around, taking in the huge gathering of chrome junkies who looked like they could kill me with both hands tied behind their backs.

Okay, I was in. Had to make it count, now.

I went up to the bar to order a drink. The woman tending it looked slightly old, in her forties almost, but dressed in a style that was appropriate for someone at least half her age. “Hey, can I have a… tequila?” I asked.

The woman looked at me for a short while. “Single or double?”

“Single, please,” I said.

She pulled out a bottle from the shelf and poured the drink, still eyeing me like I was a particularly strange creature. “While you’re at it, I was wondering if I could get some tips on the whole solo biz.”

“Mhm,” she said. “You done many jobs?”

“Cleared out a scav den just a few hours ago,” I said. “Got some eddies out of that when I went to the cops.”

“Bad idea,” she said. “Now the Bratva know who you are.”

“Is that really as bad as it sounds?” I asked.

“Depends. How many did you take down?”

“Nine,” I said. Her eyes flashed. 

“Hm, so you did.”

I narrowed my eyes. She could just… check that?

“Nine’s impressive for a newbie-noob, but they’re baby numbers for the Organitskaya. They lose about twenty to thirty of their number every week or so to any given thing; in-fighting, gang-wars, solo subjugation. If they sought revenge after every gonk who flatlined them, they’d never stop fighting. Just gotta hope you didn’t zero someone a higher-up was fond of.”

“How would I know if I did that?” I asked.

“...you might want to invest in better personal security. Stronger doors.”

“Was planning to,” I said. “My door ICE is solid—they didn’t even try to fuck with that. They just kicked my door in, that’s how they got me.”

The bartender raised an eyebrow. “What’d you do to piss off the scavs like that? They eye some of your chrome?”

I clenched my jaw, still getting angry at what Doc had done to me. “My Ripper did a faulty install. Hurt like a bitch. Made a bet with him, he told me if I could handle the chrome, he’d waive the install fee. If I couldn’t, he’d take it for free once I asked him to. Maybe he was just shit or maybe he botched it on purpose, but it didn’t matter to me.” I looked the bartender in the eye as I said the last part. “So I tried to kill him.”

“Ah,” the bartender said, finally understanding. “And then he sent his scav friends after you for payback.”

“Didn’t even know he had scav friends,” I admitted. “I’d been dealing with him for a while before that; not chrome-related, but other biz. One of the few people who gave me the time of day, too, so I paid that respect back by doing jobs for him. And then I ask for one thing, and he gets ready to have me flatlined.”

It wasn’t fair or right, but that was life, wasn’t it?

“Now you know not to trust backalley ripperdocs,” she said. “Lots of people don’t ever learn that until it’s too late. Your body is the worst thing you should ever skimp on.”

“Amen,” I said. 

“So why a solo?” she asked.

“I need the eddies,” I continued. “Like, really bad. Just wanna know how a newbie solo can get started.”

“So you came here,” the woman said dryly. I took the shot and drank it in one go. Tasted weird, not my thing, but still miles easier to drink than anything fizzy. 

“The Net said this was the place for solos to be,” I said. “Didn’t have much else to go on than that.”

The lady guffawed. “You’re funny, kid. Where are you from?”

“Santo Domingo,” I said. “Arroyo.”

“You wanna get in touch with a fixer, Arroyo-boyyo,” she said. “Fixers get solos the gigs they need to make a living. Thankfully for you, there’s a fixer in Rancho Coronado of no small repute called El Capitan. Know him?”

I shook my head.

“His name is Muamar Reyes. Hangs out in an outlook near the dam. Used to be a corpo before he decided to become a fixer. You wanna make a name for yourself in your home-district, go to him.”

I nodded. “Thank you,” I said. “But… what if I don’t want to make a name for myself?”

She frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I just want to be a solo so I can put myself through school. Is there anything in the solo handbook that says I can’t just, I don’t know, use a fake name?”

She chuckled mirthlessly. “Not many Solos enter this line of work as a secondary income stream. Most who do don’t think it’s worth it.”

The Norris BD popped into my head. “I… like the work,” I said.

She laughed. “Alright, kid. Yeah, you can put on a disguise and make a fake name. Just make sure it stays consistent. That’s the biz; it’s all about rep here.”

I nodded. “You know any fixers in here?”

“I’d advise not to bug any of them, no-name.”

I chuckled. “Alright. Thanks for the help. Uhm, what’s your name?”

“Rogue.”

“Thank you, Rogue.” I paid for the shot and added a hundred percent tip on top just because she’d been so helpful. I’d have balked at such frivolous spending at any other time, but I really was grateful for her. She gave me respect completely unearned. To a Santo Domingo street kid, that was worth more than eddies.

“What’s yours, no-name?”

“You can call me D,” I said.

“Hope to hear more from you soon, D,” she said in a tone that told me that she was just indulging me. I didn’t care. I’d show her someday. “And kid, don’t come back here until you’ve made a name for yourself.” Something about her tone told me she was more than just encouraging me. It almost felt like a threat. That was fine; I had gotten what I wanted from here. I’d return to the Afterlife after becoming a big name, maybe even cut her in on my first big score. “Stay safe, kid.”

“Thanks,” I said as I walked away.

000

Rogue Amendiares, owner of the Afterlife and top fixer in Night City, watched the kid stalk off with an amused grin. Kid had nerves of steel to walk around like that around seasoned killers while still mostly ‘ganic. That, or he was just stupid.

But then again, what kind of idiot would risk their life to put themselves through school?

The David Martinez kind. Arasaka Academy senior, top grades. No father. No mother. She died yesterday.

He didn’t waste any time picking up the slack when it came to breadwinning. There was a good kid, tough kid, Night City practically gushed through his veins.

Just for that alone, she’d put in a good word with Reyes, at least get his foot into the game so he could show his stuff a little. Sneaking into the Afterlife, eluding everyone, even her somewhat distracted netrunner, but her—that had impressed Rogue. She had only even noticed that Sandevistan speed because she had looked at that particular corner entirely randomly when it happened. Nerves of steel was right, too—With that cyberware he was sporting, he was bound to either become a rising star or just another Night City tragedy.

He might just die a particularly impressive death, too.

What would the David Martinez cocktail contain? Something fizzy and sweet for sure.

Chapter 5: Brave New World

Summary:

David explores the advantages of his AI system and prepares to return to school for the first time after the accident.

I stopped by some place to get something to eat. I ordered an extravagantly large meal because I felt like I was hungry enough to be able to eat it: triple stacked cheeseburger with family fries, a large cup of apple juice and a side of chicken nuggets. 

I was wrong. I was hungry enough to be able to eat it twice .

After a trip to the bathroom to let go of what I’d already digested, I left the small diner still hungry. 

“Ugh, what gives, Nanny?” I asked as I walked. “That’s you, by the way. Nanite AI, whatever.”

[Why, pray tell, did you feel the need to designate me? And why Nanny?]

“Human instinct,” I said. “And Nanny sounds like nanite. And you’re sort of… taking care of shit for me. So yeah. Nanny. Now tell me, why am I still hungry?”

[I need nutrients in order to heal the damage done to your body after repeated uses of the Sandevistan, the injuries you sustained, and to make you stronger. Your activity has provided an opportunity to do so.]

“Stronger?” I asked. “By how much?”

[20%. In certain muscle-groups, at least]

It projected an image of what those muscle-groups were in my HUD, and most of them were around my legs and my core.

“How fast?”

[Timeframe: 20 minutes and 56 seconds]

“Nova!” I yelled. “Wait, what if I fired it up?” I asked. I looked around surreptitiously. “You know, the,” I subvocalized. “Sandy.”

[You can simply think to talk to me, you know. Like you would in a call.]

David: My bad. Yeah. Would firing up the Sandy speed things up? How are we on that imperfect cell replication thing?

I reached the NCART station feeling a lot more energetic.

[Imperfect cell replication has been taken care of for the most part. On a percentage scale, with zero percent representing zero imperfect replication, and one hundred representing a critical level of imperfect cell replication in which I have no power to save your life and you are sure to die, you are now at 5%, and you will reach 0% in a quarter of an hour.]

David: How high was I in the scav den?

[60%. If you wish, I will always notify you once we’ve breached the threshold of 50%.]

Damn. That wasn’t as bad as I had expected, but it was still pretty high up there.

David: Then can I use the Sandy to speed up building my mass? How much would that increase the counter?

[To implement all of my improvements would increase your progress towards critical failure by an estimate of 5%]

Alright, then.

David: Let’s do it.

I fired up the Sandy and immediately felt my body do something weird. My limbs stiffened and my legs felt heavier. 

And suddenly I felt lighter .

I skipped up and down. Holy shit.

“Nova!” I shouted, getting weird looks from the people at the NCART station.

Screw them. I booted up a map of the city in my vision and searched for the nearest gym. It was only ten blocks away.

I took off running away from the NCART station and towards it.

[I believe you wish to push this function to its extreme, however I must advise that you temper your expectations. The Sandevistan may be able to provide you with instant benefits to your training, but there will be other consequences to deal with aside from that including—]

David: You’ll tell me if you see something wrong with my body, right?

[Yes, I will.]

David: Then tell me when it happens, and when I should seriously consider stopping.

[Of course. I encourage you to attempt this. It will grant me valuable data and may allow me to formulate ways to improve the baseline of your organics without the use of cyberware.]

I stopped dead on my tracks. 

David: You can… make my ‘ganic better than chrome?

[‘Better than chrome’ is not something I can guarantee, and I do not know if I can yet. I must gather more data.]

Fucking preem!

I continued running until I reached the gym.

It was called the ‘Tyson ‘Ganic Gym’, and when I went in, true to form, most of the patrons seemed to sport only a minimal amount of cyberware; maybe an elbow or shoulder implant here and there, to replace or just reinforce ligaments no-doubt, but there was an undoubted respect for organic muscle here.

In a far corner, away from the more normally proportioned humans were hulking behemoths over seven feet tall and wider than a twelve-year-old boy was tall.

Animals.

Miniguns roared in my ears.

‘Don’t mess with the Animals!’

I turned away. Just had to mind my own business. Gangs were huge, and gangoons weren’t interchangeable. And these gangoons weren’t the ones that had killed mom.

Once I found them, I’d make them wish they were never born.

But for now, I had to focus.

[First, you must consume copious amounts of high-protein food. Consuming fats and carbohydrates would not hurt either, as that would provide us with the necessary energy to build your body as well.]

I found a vending machine conveniently placed near the receptionist’s desk. It had a bunch of energy bars that promised a ton of calories, but then there was the best bang for my buck nutrient-wise. A bar of pure Protein/Fat SCOP, near waste-free, containing only what the body needed to grow stronger. 

From the wrappers surrounding the Animals, I could tell that this was their preferred snack. One bar was approximately half a pound as well, which was an impressive size. I bought two just to start with and unwrapped it, revealing a light brown, translucent mass.

The taste was nothing to write home about, and the consistency was slightly firm, but increasingly jelly-like the longer it was exposed to your saliva. I hardly had to chew it to be able to swallow it. Its one saving grace was that it at least went down easy, even if it tasted like slightly salty and savory water.

I paid the receptionist for a day-pass and got started. I looked for an unused bench-press and bench, and found it pretty quickly. It had two twenty-kilo plates on each side. I got under it and got started.

It wouldn’t budge.

[I can manually release adrenaline so you can tap into hysterical strength. Along with this, I can help you recruit and coordinate as many muscle fibers as possible. This will make things much faster.]

David: Do it.

[It will hurt afterwards.]

David: I ain’t afraid of pain.

Immediately, my heart began to accelerate until it was racing. I couldn’t sit still. I wanted to run somewhere.

I pushed at the bar instead with a howl. Then I let it slowly come down, and then up, and then down again.

Then something grabbed my bar and held it in place. An enormous head peeked over the bar to look down at me. “Gotta go lower, kid. Full range of motion, come on now!” He let go, and I almost forgot about the weight. I braced against it and lowered it down. “Keep going.” I got all the way to an inch above my chest. “Good, now push up,” he said. I did. Then he held the bar again, this time with a gentler hold. “Widen your grip. Hands further away, yeah, like that. Right there. Now hold. Don’t dangle the bar above your clavicle. Go down to the middle of your pec.” I took his advice, and did that.

[Approximating only two repetitions left before critical failure.]

David: Imperfect cell…?

I couldn’t even think.

[No. Your arms will fail to hold the deadly weight above your body and you will crush your ribcage as it falls onto you.]

David: Got it.

Then I’d do three more reps.

One.

Two.

Nanny was right. I really couldn’t do another one.

But fuck it.

With a scream, I gave the bar my all and lowered it one last time, and pushed up as hard as I could. The random guy, bless his heart, watched and waited for the bar to rise.

It took me an eternity as I was stuck in the same place, trying to push past a physical impossibility that had been confirmed to me by an entity that knew my body better than I did, but I didn’t care. I had to do this. Even if, by all accounts, I couldn’t, I still would.

The bar would rise.

The bar would rise.

Once the bar slowly started descending towards my ribcage, my Animal spotter just grabbed it and helped rack it.

David: How was that? Should I fire up the Sandy?

[Estimating a 23% increase in strength in relevant muscle groups, with a 1% increase towards critical imperfect cell replication if you do.]

Nova. I fired it up.

Before the pain could even make itself truly known to me, my arms and my chest felt as good as new, no numbness or soreness to be felt.

I sat upright to get a look at my impromptu spotter.

It was one of the Animals. I narrowed my eyes at him.

“That was a preem set!” He laughed. “You’ve got one helluva sleeper build. Never seen one who looks so scrawny lift so much. You on stims or something?”

The normally-sized people around us were giving him, and me for that matter, nasty looks. I guess that was warranted. This was supposed to be a full ‘ganic gym, and these Animals were no-doubt so hopped up on biostims and Juice that they hardly even counted as ‘ganic at this point even though they were strictly speaking mostly organic. 

“What’s it to you?” I asked.

“Gotta train right to get the best of it,” he said. “Watch out for asymmetrical growth and all that. You came in here green as grass, and I’m telling ya, that’s mistake numero uno. You wanna get the best of your stims, you gotta make sure everything is balanced. Another set?”

Well, as long as he was offering, I wouldn’t turn his help down.

But this wouldn’t change shit between me and the Animals. Not by a long shot.

Nanny pushed more adrenaline into me and I began my second set, this time to ten repetitions. That felt slightly easier on the last set. After firing up the Sandy, I added a twenty plate to each side again.

This time, I only got to seven, and not because I had chosen that spot, but because I couldn’t get anything more. On the eighth rep, the Animal had to save my life.

After the second set, I had increased my strength by 19%, and by the third, I had increased it by 15%.

Before Nanny could even tell me the gains, I had already finished calculating it. 68.33% total increase in relevant muscle groups. Nanny broke it down to individual muscles easier, with the largest increase being on my chest and shoulders, with my triceps and forearms also receiving some love and care.

I was hungry as fuck , though.

“Here, champ,” the Animal handed me a SCOP bar. “You’ve earned it.” He said with a big, genial grin. Turning it down was my first instinct, but unfortunately I didn’t have the luxury of antagonizing him. The normal people probably hated me now that I had been called out as a roid-head by the Animals and weren’t likely to give me any help.

I scarfed down the SCOP bar.

Once I finished, I added a drastically larger amount of weights, got under the barbell and began lifting.

After two more sets, my total increase climbed up to 152%.

I felt so top-heavy . It almost scared me, actually.

“Time to hit those biceps, kiddo,” he said. “Get all the upper body and arm shit out of the way.”

He handed me a zig-zag barbell with a twenty-weight on each side.

I needed more SCOP.

000

Eight SCOP bars, only one trip to the bathroom, and five sets later and my biceps became big enough that I actually noticed a rather large difference.

[Estimated progress to critical levels of imperfect cell replication is 50%.]

David: Ouch. Can’t stop so early, though. Still need to get my back done. And the rest of my torso. And legs. What happens if we get to 90%?

[You will be dangerously close to critical levels.]

David: What does that mean for me besides that?

[You can no longer rely on rapid regeneration in a time of crisis.]

That was fine. I hadn’t relied on that my entire life until today.

David: Then we continue.

The Animal put me through the ringer, not forgetting a single muscle or body part in his quest to wring me out until nothing remained.

Just in time for our impromptu private training session to end.

“You did good, kid!” the Animal had been nothing but nice to me thus far, but I had an inkling of why. He wanted to put me under his wing, probably. Make me another gangoon.

I scoffed. Whatever. In a fit of passion, I shot him five hundred eddies, all the while as my frown never left me. “You can shove that up your ass, you freak,” I said. 

“Hah!” He laughed, but still in that deceptively good-natured way, which pretty much showed his hand; everything had been an act. “Who’s the freak, kid? You gotta tell me who sells you that Juice. Shit’s shimra considering how hard and fast you bulked up.”

I had eaten at least ten pounds of SCOP, most of which had translated into pure muscle mass. It was an impressive amount, too. According to the scale, I was now a hundred and thirty-eight pounds, just from one training session.

“And what are you gonna do if I don’t tell you, choom?” I asked, readying to fire up the Sandevistan at any moment.

“What’s got you so salty? Don’t like Animals?”

I clenched my jaws. “Not particularly, no.”

“Somebody fucked with you, huh,” he said. “And you’re trying to bulk up to take revenge. Tell ya what, you tell me the story, and I’ll hook you up with some free Juice, how about it?”

“Look, choom,” I said. “Appreciate the whole tutoring session, but I don’t wanna owe shit to one of you guys, hence the money. We’re done here.”

I walked away. 

Like hell I’d try to Juice myself of all things.

Shit sounded almost more gonk-brained than what I had already been doing, which was supposed to have no side-effects. Speaking of…

David: You said stuff about other consequences besides just the imperfect cell replication clusterfuck. How’s my body doing?

[Your heart is strained. I’d advise against activating the Sandevistan for eight more hours until I have solved the issue of your progress towards—]

David: Just call it Critical Progress or something. You’re being way too clunky. Not that I mind, but that just ain’t good user interface design.

[Then I will endeavor to do better, David. If you also wish for it to be visualized at all times, then here.]

A progress bar popped into my cyber optics, just below the clock. 90%.

David: Hmmm… make it red, and also make it blink. It’s gotta feel urgent. And also make it never leave my vision until it dips below 50%, at which point I can choose to view it or not.

The changes happened quite promptly, and only then could I feel some amount of urgency. 

David: Also put a flashing text that spells ‘warning’ with block letters underneath the bar, and three exclamation signs at the end.

Now it felt real. 

Wow. I should probably ease up a little in the future.

After an hour combined of waiting for the NCART mag-lev and having it cart me home, and then walking home, I was finally in my couch, with the entire day having caught up to me.

It was more of a mental exhaustion than a physical one, to be fair.

So much had happened. I had installed my first big piece, nearly gotten scavved, earned my first big paycheck, had to run some gonks out of my home, got some tips on being a merc and then I trained so hard that I accidentally achieved a respectable physique.

After stuffing all my clothes in the washer, I went to hit the showers and looked at myself in the mirror. I was big.

Well, not Animal big. Just. Big. Bigger, at least. My frame barely had an ounce of fat, which accentuated my muscles severely . Eight pounds of muscle sure made a difference, but what really helped was the lack of fat. 

[Warning: you should go to sleep now if you wish to be well-rested before going to school.]

David: Yeah, yeah… Nanny .

I chuckled to myself.

[Why was that funny?]

David: Because you acted like my nanny. You know what that is? 

[I have the same grasp of language that you do, David. If you know a word, then I do, too. The direct definition as well as its implications in human society.]

I walked over to the couch to sit down and turned on the TV. As always, it was tuned to the news; the only channel that mom could stand watching. Night City entertainment just didn’t do it for her, which was fair. It was brain rot after all.

My little scav killing spree didn’t exactly make the news or anything. If it did, I missed it entirely. Not sure the news even cared to air that kind of stuff anyway. The stuff that wasn’t breaking news was mostly just geared towards corpos.

David: Think you might ever grow the capacity to laugh?

[Certainly, if I came upon a sufficiently well-executed vehicle of humor, I would be able to express mirth, albeit not physically. I do not have a reflex that this mirth could trigger, so my amusement would be entirely private.]

I sent a noncommittal ‘nova’.

[You should be going to sleep.]

David: Wash cycle needs to end. Can’t leave stuff washing overnight. Starts to stink.

[You should still sleep. I will wake you up after one REM cycle, and then you can finish up with your washing.]

David: Well, what if I don’t want to sleep?

I frowned. It wasn’t easy, relaxing like that. I was still scared. And that fear turned into anger, and the anger would keep me up.

[Would you like for me to put you to sleep, then?]

“No!” I shouted.

Nanny didn’t say anything more, giving me the time to process that sheer surge of panic.

Somniphobia. I had been dealing with that for years now. And for a good reason. Sleep, to me, had always been dangerous. I would sometimes just skip entire nights of sleep when it got too bad.

The quality of my sleep was always good when I managed to get it, at least physically. The thing that made the logic puzzles in my dreams unavoidable also locked me into this deep REM sleep that I had no way to wake up from unless the stimulus came from an outside source.

Sleep trapped me, caged me.

But it no longer did.

I was free.

And I had to bite the bullet now. Man the fuck up. Phobias were irrational, but I wasn’t. 

I was just scared.

But that fear made me angry.

And that anger? Well, it made me spiteful.

David: Do it. 

000

I woke up with a jolt.

[Time to change your clothes to the drier.]

Right. I had slept. And nothing bad had happened. I hadn’t even dreamt. That was great. I quickly finished my task, and went back to my bed after turning the TV off.

David: Make me sleep again.

000

By the time I had woken up, Nanny had given me a clean bill of health. And I was well-rested, both in body and mind. My Critical Progress sat at a tidy zero percent. 

And I had found a way to overcome my somniphobia. Just make Nanny put me to sleep. It was instant and I didn’t have to meditate on finding the peace necessary to sleep. It just happened. And it would save me so much time in the future. I smiled. Things were looking up for me, finally.

I felt like blowing off school again, but I knew that was a bad idea. Why else would I be going through all of this crap?

And before I continued working towards being a solo, I had to take a second to at least plan ahead. Obviously, David Martinez had to be separated from D. It wouldn’t do for an up-and-coming corpo to be outed as a fucking merc, even if I was the best merc out there. Best case scenario, I’d become an in-house Saka merc, and that wasn’t my goal at all.

I wanted to tinker with shit. R&D. Mom had foreseen me high up in Arasaka, actually working to make the world a better place by putting out technology that could help people, instead of continuing to widen the gap between the rich and the rest of humanity.

I still wanted that, still wanted there to be kids out there who didn’t grow up dealing with the same shit that I did. Becoming a ‘Saka ninja meant leaving all of that behind in favor of taking the path of least resistance.

I had never settled for that path in my life. Why should I now?

David and D had to stay separate.

And it started with programming. Needed to proxy my shit, raise up my personal ICE—at least the amount of ICE that my Sandevistan and the giant Neural Link spine that it came with could hold on its own, which wasn’t much— think about all the things that pertained to Net and data before I even started on a physical disguise.

I worked on that on the way to school, my eyes racing through an in-built text app where I could just dump a ton of coding notes. ICE was always something that I was fascinated by because it gave me protection against random gonks in a way that maybe only a gun in meatspace could. Or subdermal armor, actually. I’d never been particularly lazy with my ICE before, but I did follow the regular tips: don’t just go bigger. After a point, bigger only meant clunkier and slower, and still didn’t really stop a netrunner who had caught onto the pattern beyond an additional few seconds at best. Even a million lines of shitty ICE couldn’t compare to a thousand lines of preem shit.

That said, I never had as much motivation to really go full-throttle as I did now.

By the time I’d reached the stop near to my school, I had worked out a pretty good set-up. I’d try to test my intrusion skills against it in order to improve that as well, but there was only so much one could learn from playing chess with yourself.

Didn’t know. I’d still give it an honest try until I stopped feeling an improvement.

But that was all solo stuff and didn’t I just resolve myself to taking school more seriously? What was it that I needed to do, again? Right. Destroy, Conquer or Partner.

There was a flipside to the first two; let yourself be destroyed. It could be useful if you were up against somebody huge. Take the first hit on purpose, pretend it was devastating enough that you were now out . If they were sensible, they would just move on. If they had a grudge or were just an asshole, they’d lay it on thick just to fuck you over.

Depending on their temperament, you would only be set back less than if you had actually put up a fight.

Letting yourself be conquered was also an option. A part of me suspected that Katsuo had tried that with me at first only to fail against my utter inability to give a shit about corpo games at the time.

The two years he had spent making my life especially exciting was a good enough lesson: corpo games were something to give a shit about; refuse to do so at your own peril.

Now, Katsuo only wanted to destroy me.

His constant bids to get me to drop out and his occasional beatings were evidence enough of that. To him, I wasn’t an entity worth having around. He wanted me gone .

I had to come up with a plan against him. Only problem was I was completely stuck on square one.

I wouldn’t give up, though. Mom wouldn’t. 

Had to come up with something. Wasn’t my fault that I sucked at corpo games, but it would be my fault if I refused to learn. Thus far, I’d been content to just memorize the syllabus; application was a bit harder, but I’d get there.

Soon.

On my way to school, I caught a glimpse of something in my peripheral vision. Thinking it was that absolute bombshell I’d seen the other day when I’d last gone to school, I turned my head, only to find myself looking at the ugliest mug in the universe: Katsuo’s.

000

“The hell’s that thing on your neck anyway? Legacyware spine from the nineties? My God, David, your life fucking sucks !”

Katsuo and his two friends each flanking him had taken me to some place under a bridge where the only people who were there were druggies and hobos digging into trash in search for something they could survive on.

All the while, I wondered; what could I do about the current situation?

I couldn’t exactly kill Katsuo. I mean, I could, but then I’d have to deal with Arasaka-level investigation. They’d be onto me instantly. Even if there weren’t any cameras underneath the bridge, there probably were some that had caught me with Katsuo. If he and his friends died, they’d pin it on me, or at least suspect me enough to examine my cyberware and find the Sandy.

Plus, the hobos would be witnesses. They would never testify for me, but for an Arasaka golden-boy, they’d do anything to get a glimpse at his father’s pockets.

I could kill them, too.

No. That was terrible. They might never even think to stick up for me, but that didn’t give me the right to take their lives like I was some kind of cyberpsycho. It was fucked up that I even thought that.

“I’m talking to you, David!”

Fuck. I forgot to do the corpo thing.

Wait, nevermind. ‘Destroy’ was where we were at, though, right?

My options were limited. Violence would be punished severely. I wasn’t walking away from this without some lumps.

Might as well just be a dick, then.

“Katsuo, do you wanna fuck me or something?”

Katsuo took a step back in shock. “ Huh ? The fuck did you just say?”

“Dunno why else you’re so obsessed with me,” I said. “You clearly have the hots for me. Never sampled street rat dick before, have you?” I smirked. “Ain’t too well-versed in whatever nasty shit you corpo types get up to behind closed doors, and I’m not particularly willing to learn, either. Just hire a joytoy or something, you must have the scratch for it. That a good enough answer to your weird ass love-confession?”

“David, you…!” he growled. “I’ll fuck you up !”

He was right. He did fuck me up. By the time he left me alone, I was bleeding and had several broken bones and loose teeth.

David: Make sure not to heal the bruises on my skin.

Then I fired up the Sandevistan. Everything, aside from my bruises, were healed entirely.

David: Any chance that gave me some strength gains, too?

[Yes, actually. The broken bones allowed me to mend them harder than before and I increased the strength of your bruised muscles when I healed them as well.]

David: Nova! Should get beat up more often!

I took a look at my Critical Progress bar. Just 3%. 

David: You’re getting the hang of handling imperfect cell replication

[The more it occurs, the more I can learn to stave off this eventuality.]

I came out of this a total winner, then!

Take that, Katsuo!

Chapter 6: Birth of the Cyberspace Criminal

I couldn’t get enough of Katsuo’s face when he saw me sitting down on my class seat right next to him, apparently not as maimed as he thought I was.

The engram teacher bade us to put on our BD wreaths and enter the meditation room, only for mine to fizzle out and die.

It broke inside my backpack while Katsuo was beating the shit out of me. Fuck that dumb gonk.

“David Martinez,” the teacher said. “You are not in the green room. Why?”

“My BD wreath broke,” I said. “I’ll need to replace it.”

“You can get it replaced at the reception for one thousand five hundred and ninety-nine eurodollars, a reasonable student price for top-of-the-line Arasaka equipment.”

My haul from killing those scavs was already starting to dip dangerously.

Fuck me. “Can I get an excuse for the absence?”

“Fill out an absentee form after class and it will be evaluated.”

I rolled my eyes and stalked out of class, heading to the reception near the front entrance of the school. The lady there had chipped in some gaudy earlobe transplants that sparkled like diamonds, but were probably fake if she was working the front desk. “Hello, how can I help you?”

“New BD wreath,” I said as I put the old one on the table. “If you can recover any files from this one, that’d be great, too.” I had downloaded some Jimmy Kurosaki BDs in there that I no longer had physically because I decided to sell it to some classmates for extra eddies. Not the Edgerunner series, thank God. Always kept one of each for those, but the It’s Alive Not series had a couple of holes.

“Ah,” she said as she looked at the wreath with obvious disdain. “You’re the Martinez kid, right?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“You know how much a new wreath costs here?”

I immediately felt like lashing out, but instead, I just… activated the Sandy.

And then I stood still and thought.

Needed to be better now that mom wasn’t here to clean up my messes. Needed to take the corpo game seriously.

I smiled gently as I returned to the normal timestream. “Sixteen hundred eddies,” I said. “Do I pay it to you or the school?”

She scoffed. “Can you even pay it?”

“How do you intend on finding that out,” I read her nametag, “Patricia?”

“What?”

I shrugged. “Well, I”m just a little confused, you see. You are selling a ware, correct?”

“...right.”

“How do you intend on finding out that a customer can afford the ware?”

“What do you—”

I barked out a laughter, stopping her flat, ruining her rhythm. I’d seen this so many times, it was child’s play to reproduce it. “It’s a simple question, Patricia, or don’t they hire people who can answer simple questions to the front desk of Night City’s most prestigious school? Now answer the question,” I reduced the tone and volume of my voice. “How do you wanna find out if I’ve got the scratch or not?” Not sure where I was going with it, but the tone and the insistent question should hold the shape of a threat, if not an actual one.

Her imagination would be the one doing the heavy-lifting, I’m sure. Been on the receiving end of this tactic more times than I could count.

She clenched her jaws, but her genial smile remained. “That was one BD wreath, correct?”

“Yeah,” I said. “And back up the old one. Or should I go to someone that doesn’t ask ignorant questions? No danger in admitting inferiority.”

“Certainly can do that for you,” she said with a wave of her head and a larger grin. “I’m sending you the payment address.”

I paid it on the spot while I watched her insert a cable into the broken wreath and into the new one before her eyes flashed blue.

“Backup is done,” she said. “Will that be all, Mr. Martinez?”

“For now,” I said. “This pointless interaction made me run late for class. I won’t forget that,” I said as I took both wreaths and walked away. The truth was, I absolutely would forget that in time. Brain wasn’t built to carry grudges, unless they were Biotechnica, that one Ripperdoc from my childhood and… yeah. Pretty much it.

I just needed her to feel a little bit worse for what she said to me.

Even if it made me a shitty person.

Yeah, right. Low-level corpo like her could go fuck herself, thinking she was better than me just because she was one rung higher than me on the corporate ladder just by having a job. 

But I wouldn’t rub it in harder than that. One thing I’d never let the corp do to me; turn me into a man who subsisted off of making those weaker than me suffer.

[How do you reconcile this with your predilections towards violent extreme braindances? And your enjoyment of solo work?]

David: Different, it’s different. Killing the weak isn’t the point. It’s killing assholes, and making money on the side. I’d never kill Patricia, she doesn’t mean anything to me. She was a dick for one second, and I gave that a proportionate response. Scavs got a proportionate response, too.

[You will only kill those that are seeking to kill you? Then what about the Animals who caused the death of your mother?]

I stopped in the middle of the hallway.

David: Not nova just bringing that up, you know. She died just two days ago.

[Apologies. I did not wish to cause you distress. But I can feel that the distress is not all simply grief, but anger and a form of annoyance.]

David: Dunno about the Animals.

I continued walking.

David: Won’t bring mom back, no, but they did something bad. Not sure there’s even a point to the whole grudge.

Already, I was feeling it slow down and run out. I really wasn’t built for being a corpo. People in this world remembered slights like the pain would never fade away. I had trouble just remembering , period, unless it was code or math.

People were just confusing.

David: Will I go around killing every Animal I see once I am actually strong enough to? Very probably not. 

[And what about those responsible?]

Most wouldn’t have remembered much during that whole clusterfuck, but my memory was scarily crystalline in clarity. Fuck picking them out from a line-up, if I had the artistic skills, I could probably draw them.

I’d never forget them.

Could I kill them? Especially if they were cowering at my feet, begging for their lives?

I felt guilty, guilty that I couldn’t bring myself to muster the passion necessary to do that. Avenging was supposed to be a big deal, right? A show of love. Here, I couldn’t even really do that.

Mom was dead. Couldn’t bring her back no matter what I did.

Hunting down the Animals responsible for what happened to mom would not only stain my soul by turning me into the same kind of psycho that Katsuo was, it would waste my time, divert my efforts towards a better life.

Shouldn’t even have told off that meathead from yesterday either. Gangoon or not, not many gangsters went out of their way to help an up-and-comer to begin with, even if he was just trying to get my imaginary Juice connect.

I came back to class and entered the green room for what I hated the most in the entire world: meditation. Just thirty minutes of absolute agony of sitting still and doing fuckall for the dubious benefits of a calm mind and clarity.

Wasn’t there some chrome you could chip in or drug you could take to achieve that effect or something? Probably. Whatever this was we were doing, it couldn’t have been that helpful. I never found it to be, and I was a preem fucking student. Just goes to show that school isn’t made for all types.

Not for me, at least.

But I’d be the square peg that broke through the round hole even if it fucking killed me.

As always, meditation left me feeling more agitated than calm, but this was a good agitation. It made me ready for shit.

A call came from the principal.

Principal Majima: David, report to my office promptly. I would like to have a discussion with the sysadmin present.

Motherfucker.

David: In a bit, be there in a bit.

Principal Majima: Excellent

000

I sat next to the sysadmin, with Goldfinger opposite to us, still with that stupid fucking lamp setting showing off his sparkly chrome-bling. I entertained the thought of sicking some scavs on him if he was ever in the wrong neighborhood—they’d jizz their pants if they caught sight of those digits—but that was just an idle fantasy.

“Now,” the principal began. “I would like to begin by offering my condolences regarding your mother.”

I nodded. “Thank you, principal.” Before he could continue, I forestalled him. “It is painful, but I will manage. Mother always wanted me to reach my potential, and I can only do that by making the best out of my remaining time at the Academy, and afterwards serving Arasaka with all my capacity. There is no need for any understanding of my situation, principal, as I am ready to work ten times harder than any of the other students, as I always have.”

The principal’s jaw clenched for a moment, but he let it go in favor of his weird, frog slash deer-caught-in-the-headlights expression he always wore. “That is… commendable and impressive, Mr. Martinez. Very well, I will hope for the best, that is provided that we can get to the bottom of the issue that the system administrator has raised.”

The man was tall and lanky, with a messy shock of black hair. He was East-Asian as well, and had a black shirt with denim pants, utterly normal in all ways, except for the seams that ran around his neck, and the large metallic implant around the back of his head, a deep-dive port. Gonk wasn’t just a sysadmin, he was a bonafide netrunner!

“Yeah,” he began. “I’m sorry, principal, but there’s no way I’m buying that this kid just released a heavy duty virus into my system and defused it in forty-five seconds flat without having practiced. I could do it myself, but that’s because I’m, well, me . Like I said before, he obviously practiced this stunt before the fact in order to try and score points. I don’t care what you do with him, just make sure he never has another class that gives him such unbridled access to the system again, I don’t care how talented he is.”

Holy fuck!

This motherfucker wanted to sink me ! 

I activated the Sandy before I did something passionate, which in the corpo world, meant something stupid.

Think. Be calm. There was a way out.

My speech just now? Probably won me a few points. I put my damn name out there as a preem student, and he couldn’t just reject that on principle, not if I could play the corpo game well.

That was all the Academy ever wanted from me, to shed my normal personality and become another corpo brat who cared about social status and deferring to one’s betters. I had bought a ton of leeway by sheer virtue of my genius, but that wasn’t going to get me places alone. Lots of geniuses were street netrunners and solos who could never get a corpo job.

Had to speak the language.

I re-entered the normal timestream. Sandy’s usage in this way felt incredibly overkill, but none of the big side-effects were even happening when I did it. I didn’t feel an ounce of exhaustion or anything like that. Maybe my brain felt a tiny bit foggier, but even that could just have been in my head.

“Permission to plead my case, principal?” I asked.

The principal nodded in my direction.

“The system administrator’s concerns are valid and deserving of the utmost attention. This, I totally agree with. And I am committed to cooperating and making sure that all parties walk away satisfied from this interaction. Towards that extent, I would like to make a proposal, if it pleases either of you.”

The principal quirked his lip, but schooled his expression. “You may go ahead, Mr. Martinez.” There was some enthusiasm in his tone. Was this a trap? I entered Sandy-mode just to think about it, but I couldn’t come up with any ways in which my proposal would leave me especially vulnerable.

“Thank you, principal,” I said. “The system administrator believes that I orchestrated the unfortunate events of two days ago. I believe the answer to whether or not I would be capable of doing what I did only requires that I am tested with similar parameters. Let the system administrator watch me defuse as many viruses as he would like. Only then can his doubts about me be put to rest.”

The sysadmin chortled. “You sure you wanna go ahead with that, kid? Bravado only gets you so far.”

I considered turning to him to grin and say “It ain’t bravado, choom,” but then I wouldn’t be speaking the language.

The language was context-dependent, and varied when interacting with a superior or inferior.

“I only wish to assure you, system administrator. I am honest in my intentions and I hate that the only recourse I can see is to flaunt my meagre ability.”

The sysadmin smiled, but in a ‘this fucking kid’, kind of way, which was par for the course.

“And if I may be more bold,” I said. “I hope that my display may be able to overturn the decision on my grade,” I said. “An F was… not deserved, especially considering my track record.”

The principal clenched his jaw again, for a little longer, but didn’t let any of his agitation creep into his voice. “Mr. Martinez, I don’t think you should be asking for such favors when it was your mistake that led to the—”

A message flashed in my vision. The sysadmin.

Nakajima: I’ll overwrite your grade to an A if you’ve got the stuff, but if you fuck up, not only will you lose access to all coding courses that the school offers, I’ll tank every fucking grade you’ve had here since you started. You’ll never graduate, choom.

Jesus Christ, choom .

I nodded contritely at the principal’s words. Once he finished, I donned a forlorn expression. “My sincerest apologies for the impertinence. I recognize that I am in no position to ask for such a favor when the incident was caused by my imprudence. I thank you for your understanding and I hope that you do not hold my lapse in judgment against me.”

I had activated the Sandy several times during that conversation. I was tempted to add an adjective before ‘lapse in judgment’, thinking it should either be minor or grievous, but the middle way just called to me.

This time, the principal did let a smile grace his frog features. “I’m glad you understand, David,” his voice had that joy I’d heard from earlier as well. “Mr. Nakajima, what do you say?”

Nakajima let out a long sigh. “I suppose I’ll let the kid show his stuff,” he said. “With your permission, of course. And the child’s.”

I nodded. “I would be honored to assure you that I am no threat to your system.”

“Very well,” the principal said. “You may reach out to Mr. Martinez once he’s free. He will have a class after this.”

The system administrator nodded and stood up to leave. I stood up, too, but the principal did the unthinkable; he moved his hands from the light of the lamp, to raise it to forestall me from standing up. “A word, Mr. Martinez.”

My stomach sank. Once Nakajima left, the principal let out a somewhat relaxed grin. “You are a gifted student, Mr. Martinez. There is absolutely no hiding that fact. You have consistently topped classes, in math and sciences at least.” A but would come, of course. “Your greatest weakness, however, was your inability to ever take an interest in the social moores of the school and the society that your mother wished for you to take part in. I am glad to admit that I was wrong about you, Mr. Martinez. Keep this up, and you will go far.”

I ducked my head forwards. “Wait, no shit? You’re not gonna chew me out or—” Ah, fuck.

The principal’s joyful expression turned into one of exasperation.

“You have work ahead of you, child,” he said. “And my current encouragements are due to the fact that I can see you have a future in this world. You have taken the first step, the most important one, no doubt, but it is only a first step. You still have a long way to go.”

“I understand, principal,” I said. “And I thank you for the grace that you have showed me by believing in me. Truthfully , it means a lot.”

The principal’s grin returned. “I am glad you think so. You have only one year, now, to make connections that could truly last you a lifetime. If your ambitions take you to NCU, then your immediate classmates will still be the people you know from Arasaka Academy, especially if you plan to pursue a career with our corp. I cannot stress how important it is for you to have a robust network in high school if you wish to prosper in university, which sets the foundation for your future employment.”

Holy shit. He was giving me real advice!

“I can sense that you are shocked, David. Don’t be. I was serious when speaking to your mother about you not being a good fit for your classmates. The experience you’ve had with us thus far has been nothing but prolonged torment, and you would have had nothing to show for it upon graduation beyond a job so far beneath what the average Academy graduate can expect that it’s laughable. You truly weren’t a good fit, and you still aren’t. You need to work hard now.”

“Speak the language,” I blurted out.

He actually chuckled now. “That is correct. Speak the language , Martinez. Watch those around you, absorb everything you can. Act the corpo . It is the only way for you.”

I nodded. “I understand. Thank you, principal Majima. That was very helpful.”

“I hope it was,” he said. He then schooled his expression, subtly signalling that this interaction would soon end. “If there was anything else you wished to bring to my attention, Mr. Martinez, then you are dismissed. I have some work that I must catch up on.”

What work? He had nothing on his desk aside from the lamp, and his hands. Did he just clear out his desk every time someone was about to come in? What in the OCD was that?

“Thank you, principal,” I said as I stood up and bowed to him before leaving.

“And boy,” He said and I stopped to turn around. “Fix your hair. Conform .”

I gave him a nod and continued out.

That was… well, fucking bizarre .

000

I was in the sysadmin’s office during my lunch hour. Fucking gonk wouldn’t even let me eat in peace.

It was a pretty messy environment, filled with all sorts of hardware: harddrives, servers, chips and computer terminal parts of all kinds. He relished around the chaos in an island of clean floor and a swivel chair.

“David, right?” He asked, as if he didn’t know my name already.

“No, Daniel,” I said. 

“You a smartass, David?”

I clenched my jaws. Wasn’t I just told to ‘speak the language’ as it were?

“No, sir,” I said.

“Sad. Hoped you were. The corpos got you whipped already.”

“You’re not a corpo?”

“I’m in the sweetspot, kid,” he said. “High enough up that nobody’s gonna wanna throw me out for not glazing dick the right way.”

“Of course, sir,” I said. “About the virus testing.”

“What? You wanna back off?”

“No, sir. I just wish to get started as soon as possible.”

“Whatever tricks you got up your sleeve, it won’t work. Just bow out already, I really can’t handle getting a faceful of cringe right now. I’ll die .”

I clenched my jaws and took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly. “No tricks, choom. Let’s just get to it. I need this A.”

He let out a disbelieving snort. “Okay.” he stood up from his chair and gestured towards it. I sat down. “I’ve got a virus for you, different, tricky, maybe even a little harder than the one you unleashed.” He pointed to his terminal. “Get cyberseccing, you bitch.”

The first virus was… tricky. Really fucking tricky. From what I could immediately tell, it would worm its way into the system's core processes, creating a cascading chain reaction of fucked up subroutines that would destabilize the entire data matrix.

I started tapping away at the keyboard, executing a precision-level data analysis—or at least the best I could—, attempting to isolate the virus's volatile threads and disrupt its quantum encryption protocols. Each line of code I deciphered felt like trying to walk through a digital minefield, with the slightest misstep potentially launching everything to hell.

I felt sweat bead in my forehead as I continued typing, continued reading. It was like my entire brain was getting sucked into this increasingly complex puzzle, demanding more from me with every second that passed.

As I dove deeper into the system's architecture, I met a neural net defense mechanism, a sort of AI ICE, woven into the virus, adapting and learning from my intrusion attempts. It was like battling a constantly-evolving sentient entity hell-bent on protecting its digital sanctuary. I pushed my toolkit to its limits, unleashing every advanced countermeasure I had learned in school and on the Net to subdue the virus's fractal polymorphic structures.

With a surge of adrenaline-fueled concentration, I initiated a quantum backdoor access, exploiting a minuscule vulnerability in the virus's self-repair subroutines. As I navigated through the confusing and maze-like corridors of corrupted code, I uncovered the virus's control node, a pulsating hub of malevolent algorithms. My cursor hovered over the 'delete' command, and with a decisive keystroke, I severed the connection, disrupting the virus's propagation and finally killing the last of its malicious code fragments.

The terminal's digital landscape finally settled, its once-flickering interface now stabilized. Beads of sweat glistened on my forehead as I wiped my brow.

I had only narrowly avoided getting my shit absolutely fucking rocked by the asshole sysadmin who had sicced a virus on me that was way fucking harder than the one I had accidentally unleashed.

“Motherfucker!” I yelled, looking up at him. “That wasn’t the same tier of virus at all and you know it!”

Nakajima was just… wide-eyed. Fuck, I forgot the language. But then again, did he really give a shit?

“Kid, what… you got neuralware?” he asked. “Brain implants? How the fuck did you do that?”

“I feel honored for the compliments but—”

“Cut the crap , kid,” he said. “You’re the real deal.”

I sighed in relief. “Do you finally believe me, now?”

“I’ve seen corpo programmers twice your age that couldn’t do the shit you just pulled,” he said. “What the hell are you, kid?”

I’d had just about enough of this guy. “The fuck do you want me to say, choom? You’re the one who asked to see my skills and I showed you. I’m just here for my A.”

He laughed. “Your A, right. Fuck, man. Can’t deal with gonk prodigies. You guys have zero perspective. An A ? Is that really all you want?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Fine, you’ll get it,” he said. “Only one question. You good at ICE?”

I immediately sensed an opportunity, and jumped on it. “You wanna try breaking through mine, give me some tips?”

Nakajima grinned like a loon. “ Do I?! ”

000

My entire lunch hour went by with Nakajima poking holes at the ICE I’d made on my way to school. Good thing was, he showed me plenty of places where it could be improved, and also showed me a pathway to extending the code by at least three times, receiving a proportional amount of cybersecurity for my troubles, too.

I had scored gold, with him.

Once classes ended, I made a bee-line for the NCART, grabbing a couple of Burrito XXLs and scarfing them down far before my ride even arrived.

I was ready to tune out and just, sort of, fast travel to my stop when I saw something in my peripheral vision.

The bombshell from a few days ago, white-haired, with a body to absolutely die for, with pink, blue, yellow, and green hair. How did she make that work so well?

And… she was picksocketing.

Ah, I mean, was that any of my business? These corpo fucks could do with a little shortening of personal funds.

She passed by behind me, and I activated the sandy, just so I could get a closer look at her. Maybe that was a creepy use of the cyberware, but I couldn’t help it. She was just… that hot.

Just as I did, my chip was about to eject from my socket. I caught the chip pretty easily, and when I had turned fully, I saw how her hand was upraised, seemingly to adjust her hair, but more accurately, to take the chip.

No luck with me, unfortunately.

I grabbed a hold of her forearm gently, careful not to hurt her once time resumed as normal. 

She swung her head towards me in disbelief.

“Uhm, hey,” I said with a smile. “That was mine, hahah.”

She growled a quick “Come here,” as she dragged me over to the end of our train car. 

“What’s your angle? Spill it?”

“My angle?” I asked.

“Your mussing up my work. What do you want?”

“To not get stolen from,” I said. “Doesn’t take a Rache Bartmoss to piece that one out, does it?”

She scoffed. “Then why get grabby? You gonna put cuffs on me?”

I took a step back. “No, no, I just… I just thought you were pretty is all. Think I may have seen you around before.”

“Do I know you?” she asked as she cupped my cheeks and dragged her hands down my chest—oh my GOD.

Then she grabbed me by my arms, turned me around and slammed my face to the wall. Before I could move, I felt the unmistakable bite of something hard and sharp around my throat.

“Easy there, tiger,” she said. “If you so much as twitch, that monowire opens up your throat like it’s Thanksgiving synth-turkey.”

Shit. Shit, shit, shit.

Why was this happening to me?

“Corpo ICE, huh?” she said. “Didn’t take you for the type, despite the ‘Saka Academy fit.”

“Try self-made,” I said. “No ‘Saka help, either.” It was true. I hadn’t had time to implement Nakajima’s code review yet. Everything I made was from knowing the fundamentals of coding. And sure, I learned that from the Academy, but I could also have learned that from somewhere else. Wasn’t exactly something that couldn’t be easily encoded into a shard and then spread around.

“I doubt that,” she said. “It’s taking even me a while to crack. Who do you think you are, some kind of super genius?” Before I could reply in the affirmative, she continued. “And… there. Oh, wow, a Sandevistan, huh?”

I clenched my jaws. “What’s the matter, you scared?”

David: What if I tried to activate the Sandy to get some slack in the monowire, but cut myself anyhow? Would you be able to heal it?

[Not certain. Please don’t try.]

Yeah, like I gave a shit.

I activated the Sandy and backed up, pushing against her hold on me quite easily, gaining some slack in the monowire. Using my fingers, I loosened the wire around my throat, although not fast enough for the bitch behind me to pull, scoring a cut on my fingers.

[Already on it.]

I transmitted a thanks as I continued, getting around Lucy, and then pushing her into the wall.

Then I deactivated the Sandy. “You should be,” I grinned.

She reflected that grin. “What if we worked together?” she asked, her voice as sweet and slick as honey.

“Stealing?” I asked.

“Is it stealing if it’s against Arasaka suits?”

“Come on,” I groaned. “Do I look corpo to you?”

“Other than the fact that you’re wearing a ‘Saka Academy uniform and that my scan picked up an Academy ID? No, not really. How does that work?”

“I’m from Santo Domingo,” I said as I let go of her and backed up. “Not exactly the cream of the crop capital-wise. Always get reminded of that, too.”

She chuckled. “Maybe you should drop out.”

I laughed. “That’s what they all say, but I don’t care. I don’t go down easy. And to your proposal… sure. Could use the eddies.”

“Attaboy,” she smiled. “Alright then, let’s discuss the split. Ninety-ten.” She led me to another car.

“That’s bullshit,” I said.

“Really? You’re the corpo brat.”

“Am not!” I replied hotly. “I’m barely getting by as it is! You think a kid from where I come from can just pass up on eddies like that? Seriously. Fifty-fifty.”

“I’ll be pushing the klepped shards,” she said.

“I’ll bet you a hundred eddies I could streamline your shard quickhack,” I said. “Your labor ain’t special, choom. I could do it too if I had a cyberdeck.”

“But you don’t, and audacious claim aside, I’m the one with the shard quickhack, not you. Seventy-thirty.”

“Sixty-forty,” I said. “Since you’re determined to be an asshole.”

“Yes, I am.”

“Deal?” I asked.

She whirled towards me and gave me her hand. I narrowed my eyes at it, but then I saw her face, and that knowing smile on it. I wanted her to know me, too. All so I could continue to see it. “Deal,” she said. We shook on it. “I’m Lucy,” she said.

“David,” I replied.

Chapter 7: You Fell Over The Edge, Punk

Summary:

David gets an in with the edgerunning world. And then another.

The set-up was simple. She did the eject shard quickhack, and I would pass behind whatever gonk she was using it on, exclusively Arasaka suits, and klep the flying shards. It wasn’t even hard at all.

By the time we reached the end of the line, we’d come up with a fat profit of shards.

“Let’s try another NCART,” she suggested, and we did.

Three NCARTs later, and we were sitting pretty on an excess of a hundred shards, a glorious haul to say the least.

We sat on a stairwell that connected the NCART station to the streets below as we just relaxed.

“Spill it; what’s your secret,” she said.

“What secret?” I asked.

“The Sandevistan. You fired it up like twenty, maybe twenty-five times. What the fuck are you even made of?”

“‘Ganic?” I asked. “Look, you hacked into me , you should know what I’ve got.”

“Yeah. Corneal optics, Neural Link and the fucking Sandy. Still doesn’t explain shit. You should be dead by now.”

“I am amazing,” I chuckled as I leaned back on the stairs. “It’s all I hear every day, and still I get shit on for being a gutter trash street rat. Don’t really know what the whole point is, to be honest. Compliment me one second, then try to stab me in the back in the other. I don’t know, I just…” I paused. “Yeah.”

She stood up. “I live close by. Wanna come?” I was grateful that she ignored that dumb rambling.

I looked up at my Critical Progress bar, and due to all the Sandy uses and my having to regenerate from all of that, I was sitting at a pretty dire 40%. Would have liked to continue my insane workout routine, but I guess that would just have to wait because Lucy was inviting me to her home .

No, no, don’t get ahead of yourself, David. We were just business partners. Don’t go on jeopardizing shit just because your dick was being a gonk.

I’m a corpo now. I should act like it.

Then again, Lucy was a little taller than me. What if she liked taller dudes?

David: Can you make me taller?

[Your epiphyseal plates have already fused. Any further natural growth is impossible for you. That said, I can separate the plates and promote an overincrease of human growth hormone in your body. This is a process that not even the Sandevistan can rush. Only I can speed this growth up. That said, the separation of your growth plates, the first step, can happen fairly quickly. Activate the Sandevistan.]

I did.

Instantly, I was overcome by agony on every joint, only for it to disappear in a split second. When the Sandevistan deactivated, it was like I had never even been hurt to begin with.

[Done. Now, it should be possible for your bones to continue growing.]

David: Nova! How long till I’m six feet tall?

[That should take approximately twenty-nine days. Do you want that expressed in a progress bar format, too?]

David: Won’t be necessary. I’ll see it with my own eyes.

By next week, I’d be over an inch taller? Holy fuck. What would I ever need chrome for, then?

To not get flatlined by any gonk with a gun, sure.

[This growth will give me an opportunity to make some edits to your bone structure. I am confident that with my current data, I could improve the resilience of your bones by five times.]

David: Five times? Seriously? What’s the catch?

[Your bones are fairly below average in density due to a lack of focused exercise and a poor diet. Just improving their resilience by a factor of five would not exceed human limits by too much.]

David: Oh, okay. Then, what will I need to eat? Calcium and minerals, right?

[I can visualize your nutritional requirements for you as well if that will help you keep up with them.]

My HUD received a dropdown option when I focused on it. It dropped down a series of bars with labels on them that were an assorted array of minerals, vitamins, and of course the big three macronutrients. For the macros, I was more or less settled. The burritos were a surprisingly balanced diet. The micronutrients were lagging behind somewhat, especially in the mineral section.

Needed more calcium, that was for sure.

What had lots of calcium? What if I just took it in supplement form? Seemed easier, I’d just give that a try. I could faintly recall there being some supplement vending machines inside that gym in Watson. Maybe that was a normal thing for gyms to have?

While I thought, Lucy had led us to a building where we had ascended some stairs and reached her home.

“Home sweet home,” she said as she opened the door. “Come on in.”

I followed her inside, quelling the part of my brain that kept feeding me bullshit about this situation.

Before I knew it, there was a broseph beer in my hand, and she sat on the window sill smoking and drinking while I sat on the sofa that was leaned up against the sill.

She had a touristy moon poster—an astronaut on the moon pointing at something in the foreground, with the text ‘Your new home awaits you’ overlaid beneath him. Did she just have bad taste or was it for a joke? Couldn’t imagine any other option than those two. Leave it to the klepto girl to have a hellworld tourist poster.

I took a swig of my beer, making sure not to wince at the carbonation. I honestly couldn’t explain why, but the sensation felt both overwhelming and sharply agonizing, and it had for all of my life.

Guess I was just built weirdly like that.

Then I got a faceful of smoke from Lucy’s exhale, and the acrid smell combined with the fizz of the broseph and and I started to cough uncontrollably.

“First time drinking?” she asked.

“No, not like that at all,” I said.

“Wouldn’t bully you over that.”

“It’s just… fizzy drinks and smokes, don’t do neither.”

“You big baby,” she said.

“Thought you said you wouldn’t bully me.”

She leaned over so she could look me in the eyes. “I lied.”

She flipped over the couch, taking my blazer with it. She wore it. “Oh look, now I’m the ‘Saka prep boy.”

“I told you it’s not like that,” I said. “Not prep at least.”

“Inspiring come-up story aside,” she said as she turned to show me her back. “How do you intend to afford the academy tuition if you’re really as poor as you say?”

Before I could explain my gameplan, light began to appear on the back of the blazer, settling on some graffiti style rendition of the phrase…

“Edgerunner,” I said. 

“That’s what you wanna be, right?”

I chuckled. “A solo actually,” I said. 

“Know what edgerunner means?”

“Of course. It’s another word for cyberpunk,” I said. “‘Course, edgerunner fits better these days, considering cyberpunks aren’t really that… punk anymore. The era of rockerboys is over. Now it’s just… corpo sellouts.”

“Like you!”

“Yeah,” I chuckled. “But I like the real edgerunners, too. The ones in JK’s Edgerunner series. Shit, I’m a fan. I think I could make it pretty big, too, with what I have.”

“Gonk move, that,” she said. “Risking your life on the edge just to go to school. You could just skip the middleman, you know, if it’s money you want.”

“C’mon,” I said. “Can’t be more gonk than that moon poster over there,” I said.

Her demeanor shifted. “Got a problem with that?”

“Uh,” I shrugged. Instincts told me to speak the corpo language now, but I doubted that would do anything more than piss her off.

So she did have bad taste.

Didn’t mean I didn’t get to speak my mind. “I don’t know, just seems in bad taste to me. Lots of people died trying to make that rock liveable. It’s more like a prison colony than anything.”

“Somebody did their homework,” she said in monotone as she walked towards the window sill again, tossing me my blazer.

“It’s just stuff I learned in school, no big deal,” I said. “Knowledge’s probably out there in some chipstore too.”

“I suppose it might be,” she took a swig of her beer. “Doesn’t matter, though. It’s my dream.”

“Your dream?” I asked. “The moon? You gotta be kidding me.”

“You mentioned the moon being a prison colony,” she said. She buried her mouth in her knees as she spoke. “Well, for me, this city is ten times worse. Can’t escape from it, no matter how far you go. Night City is the world’s cancer.”

“Ouch,” I said. “Take it you’re not from here.”

She shrugged. “In any case, it costs a fortune to get to the moon.”

“Not if we keep klepping shards,” I said with a grin. 

She hummed.

Gosh, I had killed the mood already. What a gonk I am.

“My mom had a dream,” I said. “She wanted the best for me, for me to stay in Arasaka Academy and become a good corpo. After she kicked it, it’s just been me trying to figure out how I’m going to stay in school for her. Edgerunning seems… like the best option for me.”

“That’s not right,” she said.

I quirked an eyebrow. “What do you mean? I’m not scared of edgerunning if that’s what you’re saying.”

“No. That’s her dream, not yours. You can’t go far trying to chase it. Gotta do what you want, be what you want.”

I nodded with a sigh. “Yeah. I know. Told her a million times I didn’t wanna be in ‘Saka. Told her so many times that for a while, I genuinely thought she hated me. She worked herself to the bone and did all sorts of illegal shit to get me through school, and all I ever did was spit on her sacrifices.”

“What changed?” she asked. “Clearly, you seem more committed now.”

“Spite,” I said, like it was all the explanation she needed. It was for me. What changed was the thought of fucking Katsuo winning after he took my mom from me. What changed was Nanny and the Sandevistan, my amazingness staring me in the face.

But I never gave it a good think until now, did I?

Never wondered what I wanted out of this. What was a worthwhile goal for someone like me to put myself through all this bullshit.

What was my light at the end of this long and treacherous tunnel, the reward that made all this shit worth it?

“I can see it right now! You, at Arasaka Tower, the very top! You can change Night City, D.”

That was mom’s dream, but it was a naive one. One that tried to push me as hard as I could so that even if I fell short, I’d still have made it anyway. Shoot for the moon so that even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.

Yeah.

But fuck that. 

Fuck that .

I was doing it. Fuck it, I would do it and I would succeed. 

“Spite?” she raised her eyebrow.

“I just… had a realization. Tried… indulging in her ideas of me for a moment, and found that… it wasn’t so bad,” I laughed a little. “Not bad at all. I’m angry. I’m spiteful. I’m a motherfucker. I don’t go down after getting my ass kicked, and I’m not about to let Arasaka chew me out. I’m riding that bitch to the top.”

“What?”

“Top of Arasaka Tower,” I said with a laugh. “I’ll get there someday. I can get there someday. It’s possible. Mom believed in me, and I know what I’m capable of. And it has to be Arasaka. It’s the greatest corp in the world. Gotta be ‘Saka. And it’s gotta be the top.”

“Corporate overlordship,” she muttered sardonically. “Cute.”

“Don’t need you to believe in me. Can do plenty of that on my own”

She got off from the window sill and stood before me with a disdainful sneer, one far more intense than I had expected. “Well, then let me put it this way, you Santo Domingo gutter trash; your dream is stupid.”

“W-what?”

“You think Arasaka would let you get so high? And even if they did, what then? You wanna be just another evil megacorp exec so your mom can be proud of you in the afterlife?”

“Who said anything about evil ?” I asked as I stood up, still reeling from being called ‘gutter trash’ out of nowhere. “I wanna change the world, make it better! Ain’t gonna let myself fall just to reach my goals.”

“Then you’re even dumber than you let on.”

“I know I can do it,” I said. “Nobody else but me has to believe in me.”

“Your mom fucked up big planting those dreams in your head. Sad.”

I clenched my jaws. “Fuck you! You’re the one who wants to become a fulltime astronaut in a place where even the air isn’t free! You think the megacorps up there aren’t gonna shaft you ten times worse when they’ve got a stranglehold on your breathing ?”

“And you’re gonna get flatlined from edgerunning far before you’d get anywhere on the corpo ladder. You think you’re special or something? A million little boys like you run around with a gun and a chipped in attitude thinking they’re hot shit, and they all end up fucking dead. You’re lucky if you end up with a drink to your name in the Afterlife.”

What the hell was her problem? “Look, Lucy, you don’t know shit about me, so don’t go around making assumptions. Besides, I think I’d make it far longer than some psycho ‘runner who picksockets for a living. Talk about wasted fucking potential.”

“Wanna talk about psycho with that chrome on your back?” she asked, leaning forward. “You’re gonna get your brain fried to a crisp at some point and get zeroed by MaxTac. That’s your future, David.”

“Yeah, and you’re gonna die in Night City,” I said with a laugh. “Buy one of those tacky moon BDs, why don’t you? Maybe that’d wise you up.” I put on my blazer and grabbed my backpack. “Go ahead and keep the klepped shards, put it to your moon fund or buy some glitter, like I give a shit,” I said as I walked around her and to her door.

Before I could reach it, it opened, revealing an enormous, black guy with a blond crewcut. He leered at me. “You fell over the edge, punk.”

“Huh?” I stepped back, and the guy just followed me in.

“Tough deal, but that implant you chipped is mine, ” two other people followed him into the apartment, blocking my exits. “And I’ll be taking it back!”

I turned around right before I felt the unmistakable bite of wire around my neck, to see Lucy, glaring daggers at me.

Then back at the titan of a man, whose hands glowed red-orange at the joints. He clenched his fists, and drove it into my face.

000

“—think we could just flatline him and do the old five-finger scav discount?”

“We’d still have to shell out for an install,” one voice said.

“But we’d break even, right?”

“Yeah, just about.”

Fuck, what the hell was going on? 

[David! Activate the Sandevistan! You are concussed!]

I followed Nanny’s orders and flashed the chrome. The world cleared up instantly.

Then I saw three chromed-out assholes sitting on a sofa across from me. A huge blond woman with an open blazer that revealed her breasts, her nipples only concealed by a band of tape or something. She sat on the left, my left at least. On the right was some dark-haired, long-fingered, mohawk-sporting, goatee-having dude with an electronic visor over his eyes. He wore a vest jacket revealing his bare chest. His skin seemed gray of all things.

And in the middle, the enormous black guy who had knocked me out.

“The fuck is this?” I muttered.

“He’s awake!” the long-fingered guy said.

“Good! Now you can answer for why you klepped my chrome!” He moved too fast for me to react, once again, grabbing me around my leg and dangling me. 

“Feel free to splatter him, but remember you pay for the drycleaning,” I heard the voice of Lucy. That bitch !

“No problem at all, Luce!” the guy roared.

Nevermind her, what did this asshole say again?

“ Your chrome?” I asked in shock.

“That’s right, bought and paid for!”

The girl to his right, my left, sighed. “That’s what happens when you pay in advance.”

“Gloria’s good people, one of our own, always been true to her word,” the man said. “That is until she dropped off the face of the Earth and went no-contact.”

“Gloria?” I asked.

Then I remembered the forty thou in the bank account. Fuck .

He refocused on me. “Yeah! Gloria Martinez! That ring a bell!”

“Yeah, of course it does. She’s my mom.”

“Your mom? The hell was she thinking, giving that shit to you?”

“Wasn’t exactly a discussion,” I said. “She died.”

“What?!”

“Two days ago.”

“That’s impossible! I talked to her two days ago!”

Using my cyberoptics, I NFC’d him her death certificate.

He finally let go of me. I landed on a heap, but it didn’t hurt much. The man sat down with a sigh. “Condolences kid, but that doesn’t make things free’n’easy for you.”

“I can pay you back,” I said. “Return the eddies you put down.”

“Not good enough, kid,” he said. “That right there is military grade, bleedin’ edge, too. You know how often that stuff hits the streets? Fucking never.”

“Didn’t think it was yours to begin with,” I said. “Didn’t think there was anything wrong with taking it.”

“Cut him some slack, Maine!” The long-fingered guy. “I remember when I used to chip in all the mil-spec chrome my mom kept lying around. Christ, this kid’s obviously got a circ loose or something.”

I snorted. “Wouldn’t have taken it if I knew it was spoken for, but that’s an old story now because I’m not giving it back.”

The woman chuckled. “You really think you’re in a place to make demands here? And what’s with the attachment anyway? You fire that thing up, you’ll scramble your brains.”

I could just leave right now. They weren’t exactly cornering me, and they didn’t expect me to be able to fire up the Sandy.

Then I felt the bite of monofilament wrap around my neck. “Don’t even think about it, you gonk.” Lucy, again. She really wanted to kill me, huh.

Didn’t even wanna look that bitch in the eye. Christ, what a fuckup.

Why did I even trust her in the first place? First girl that comes around and bats her eyes at me and I just lose my head like that? The fuck was wrong with me?

“You really think that’s necessary?” the large lady said. “We’ve got three of us right here to stop him from leaving.”

“Can’t exactly do that when he moves at mach speeds,” Lucy said. “I’ve seen him fire that thing up today over twenty times. Kid’s a gonk, but you underestimate him and that could be the death of you.”

“No way!” The lanky mohawk guy said. “Twenty times? Get your head checked, Lucy, that’s impossible!”

“You serious?” the lady asked. Both her and Maine were taking Lucy far more seriously than the guy on the right.

“Deadly,” Lucy replied. “Saw it myself. We were working together klepping shards. Guy doesn’t tire.”

“Hold on,” I said. “Can I fucking talk yet? Am I allowed to do that?”

Maine smacked me. “I don’t need that fucking lip, kid. But go ahead. The fuck do you want?”

”You guys… you guys are cyberpunks, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” Maine said. “What’s it to ya?”

“Been thinking about getting into the business,” I said. “Was gonna get in touch with a fixer called El Capitan for my first gig, but… what if I ran with you guys? Did jobs with you? You’ll still basically have the Sandy. It just won’t be on you. But I’d still make you eddies.”

Maine seemed to think for a minute. “And you can really just use that Sandy on command, huh?”

“There’s a limit,” I said, thinking about my Critical Progress. “But for the most part, yeah.”

“Wait, Maine,” Lucy said. “You might wanna reconsider. Kid’s a corpo brat. Can’t see his uniform? Arasaka Academy. Straight A student.”

The long-fingered guy cackled. “The things corpo brats do for kicks, man. Now I’ve seen everything.”

“You serious?” Maine asked. “No wonder Gloria was always strapped for eddies.”

“That’s right,” I said. “I’m just trying to get through school, man. I’ll do jobs and everything, no problem. And you can trust me because my livelihood is on the line.”

Maine scoffed. “And what if ‘Saka came around and offers you the big eurobucks to turn on us?”

“They’d have no reason to,” I said. “I want to be on the R&D track, not counterintel. Soloing wouldn’t translate to anything I’d even want to make money from. I intend to keep my solo life and my school life entirely separate. Disguise and ICE. I was told that rep is everything in this game, and I intend to cultivate one of trust and reliability,” I said. “You knew my mom. She was the most important person in the world to me, and you found her to be reliable, right?”

Lucy sneered. “Don’t bring your dead mom into this, you corpo psycho.”

“Quiet, Lucy,” Maine said. “Whatever the hell kind of beef you have with the kid, leave that in your own time.” He focused on me now. “You really wanna roll with me, fine. I’ll put you on a trial gig. Paid cuz I’m not a corpo motherfucker with that internship crap.”

“I appreciate that,” I immediately lit up. “You won’t regret this at all, I promise!”

“Make sure I don’t,” Maine said. “I’m a fair guy, but you took my chrome. If you’re not up for the job, I’ll take back what’s mine, kid, make no mistake.”

I shuddered. From what I saw in his eyes, he really meant that.

“Lucy, let him go,” Maine said.

She clicked her tongue as she uncoiled the monowire from my neck.

“I’ll be in touch, kid. You be available.”

“I’ve still got school,” I told him. “That will always take precedence.” I couldn’t help but feel a flash of disappointment at that fact.

Couldn’t edgerunning just be… for its own sake?

No. That’d be way too easy.

“Got it,” Maine said. “And the money I put down, make sure it’s in my account the moment you get home.” His eyes shone blue for a moment and some info came into my HUD, payment information. “And Lucy.”

She slapped me on the back of my neck. The pain wasn’t as shocking as the sudden insertion of a chip. “Don’t try anything funny,” Maine said. “That’s to make sure we know where you are at all times, so you don’t try runnin’ off.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I muttered as I rubbed the sore skin around my chip-slot.

“Be seein’ ya,” the gruff edgerunner said as he and his chooms left without any further ado, and I was alone in the room with Lucy.

“Thanks for sticking up for me,” I said.

“Get the fuck out.”

Didn’t need to be told that twice.

Once the door closed, I muttered a “Bitch.”

000

I went home to transfer the forty k to Maine, and then went to hit a nearby ‘ganic gym to pump some more meat.

As I thought, vending machines with nutrient-rich foods seemed to be a mainstay in these kinds of places. They even had jars of supplements. I shelled out extra for them, and took some SCOP bars with me as well to the reception desk where I paid for a monthly subscription.

Then I got to work.

Hours later and my Critical Progress bar finally hit 90%, signaling the end to the workout session, and what a workout that was.

I weighed in at a hundred and thirty eight pounds before starting.

Now I was a hundred and forty-five.

I was shredded . Huge . I was at a spot where I felt comfortable not getting any bigger.

I’d have to seriously consider upsizing my uniform soon. 

As I walked home from the gym, I started chatting with Nanny.

David: wish I could keep working out without getting ‘Animal’ big. Like, wider than I’m tall.

[That would be physically impossible for you unless you put on enough adipose tissue to kill you.]

David: Was just an expression is all.

[An increase in mass is suboptimal. I recognize that. I am starting to formulate a method to increase your strength without affecting your size. Optimally, I will be able to not affect your weight, either, but I still need more data to do so.]

David: And you get data by watching me rip my body apart and then putting it back together.

[Yes.]

No pain, no gain. 

Tomorrow was a saturday. Inbetween all the bullshit that happened today, I forgot to be fucking happy about my two-day vacation from corpo bullshit.

Whatever.

Had to go to sleep and then immediately hit the gym once I woke up, maybe get up to 50% critical progress, just in case Maine called me in for a gig.

Took a shower and then went to bed. Nanny knocked me out.

000

It was Saturday, and I wasted no time getting to work at the gym. Grinding up to 50% Critical Progress felt a lot harder than before, even when I tapped into hysterical strength.

Nanny was getting better and better at managing the nanites’ imperfect cell replication, which meant that I managed to get up to a full twelve-pound increase in total mass, all of that extra weight being pure muscle-mass.

Nanny hadn’t bullshitted either about my size staying the same. Almost a hundred and sixty pounds on a frame as small as mine, my muscles would be laughably large. Instead, they were in a good size.

My favorite black shirt was getting tighter on me, though. Not enough to be uncomfortable, but it was what it was.

[Based on the events of yesterday, I am curious: do you still wish to grow taller? This request was prompted by a desire to be more sexually attractive to Lucy, whom you have sown an inexplicable enmity with.]

I rolled my eyes.

David: She’s the one who started it, the fucking psycho. And yeah, I’d still like to get taller. Taller means stronger, right?

[Undoubtedly. With a larger frame, you will have more muscle and ability to exert greater force.]

I looked at the nutrient requirement dropdown, and it reminded me to load up on more micros. And macros.

With nothing else to do, I decided to head towards Reyes. The route to the dam wasn’t hard to find. It was further into 6th street territory than I’d have liked, but as long as I kept my head down, it wasn’t like they would just go on and pick a fight with me. I’d grown up in Arroyo. I knew how to appear harmless enough that their cop senses wouldn’t tingle.

I also just… wasn’t that worried. Was it the Sandy or was it my newfound physique? Either way, I was pretty much as safe as any gonk could be just walking around here.

I spotted some armed and chromed patriot types walking around with long guns, some eyeing me, but I kept my head down and kept walking.

Then I passed by a little clothing store where I found a sugar skull mask on display amongst a sea of other latino trinkets and tchotchkes. 

Now that was a good way to start attracting unwanted attention.

But fuck it. I couldn’t be David Martinez in the solo world anymore. Even if it was disrespectful to the fixer I would end up meeting or suspicious, I had to think about what was best for me. I went into the store and bought the mask. It was a full head mask, like a luchador kind. I should cut a hole in the head to let my hair out at some point, but just wearing it right now would be good enough for me.

I put it on, and instantly somewhat regretted it. My peripheral view was shitty now, which did not bode well for my longevity.

Ah, fuck it. I went to some backalley where no one was watching and fired up the Sandy. It didn’t take any shorter time from my own perspective, but the less time spent walking around with a gonk mask in gangland, the better.

I stopped at an alleyway near to the stairway up to the dam’s lookout, and took off jogging up. No shouts followed me as I ascended the stairs. 

I spotted some dude leaned up against the handrail on the lookout, wearing what looked to be a suit expensive enough to mark him as a man of means, but his lack of shirt underneath and his tattoos made him seem just illicit enough that I would peg him for someone who might know about El Capitan, if that wasn’t El Capitan himself.

He also had a hairstyle that reminded me of Katsuo. Wouldn’t think too hard about that, or I might curse him out.

I walked up to him, and he immediately spotted me from forty feet away. “That’s far enough away,” he yelled as he held his side. “Who the fuck are you?”

“My name is D,” I said. “I’m a solo, looking for work.”

He burst into laughter. “Fuck off, kid,” He said, his laughter not fully done yet.

“I’m serious,” I said. 

“Come over here,” he said, and I obeyed, walking up to him until I was six feet away. “What’s with the mask?” he asked with a tilted head.

God, this was embarrassing.

What the fuck was wrong with me?

“Is that necessary information for you?” I asked.

“Oh, you wanna go corpo on me now? What are you, some kinda corp student or something?”

Fu-cking hell. 

This disguise was not working at all.

“I’m just looking for work,” I said. 

“You’ve already established that,” he said. “Ugh, what the fuck, whatever. I’ve got a delivery job you can do.”

Ah, hell no.

“You up for it?” he asked.

“I’ll respectfully decline,” I said.

He scoffed. “Why? Courier work ain’t good enough for ya?”

“Respectfully, it isn’t worth my time,” I said. “I will take my leave now. Apologies for wasting your time.”

I turned to walk away, feeling profoundly annoyed by this shit. A delivery? Seriously? How many deliveries would I have to do to earn his trust and get to the good shit? Better to wait for Maine to hook me up with the trial gig, then. I’d be wasting my time for ennies for no reason.

“Wait, kid,” he said. I turned around. “What’s the matter? I wanna hear your reason for ditching the work.”

“I don’t think doing grunt work for you until you trust me enough to give me real work is a good use of my time.”

“‘s how all solos start out,” he said. “You think you’ll be an exception?”

“I recognize that I may have seemed rude or arrogant in my dismissal, and you are free to interpret—”

“Cut the shit, kid. Just talk normally.”

“Edgerunning is serious biz for me,” I said. “I’ve got the skills to deliver and I’m in a tight spot, so I literally can’t afford to do basic work for you. It’s not that I don’t want to. I simply can’t.”

Reyes gave a slow nod. “Alright then. What if I told you this delivery gig wasn’t small potatoes?”

I perked up at that. “What’s it got?”

“You’ll be delivering a package to a block encircled by Maelstrom members who are specifically looking for it,” he said. “There will likely be violence if they catch you. You fast or stealthy?”

“The former,” I said. 

“Prove it,” he said. I backed up away from him until we were thirty feet apart.

Then, I activated the Sandevistan.

A moment later—to him at least—I had his watch in my hand. I dangled it in front of him. His eyes widened as he checked his wrist.

“What in the fuck was that!”

“My credentials,” I said. “I’m up for the job,” I said. “How much is the pay?”

He shot me a text. Two thousand. That was interesting.

“Half upon securing the package from the sender,” Reyes said. “The other half upon a successful delivery.”

He sent me more details afterwards.

He held his hand out expectantly and I activated the Sandevistan again to put the watch around his wrist. 

Reyes chuckled. “Crazy bastard.”

Chapter 8: Going Solo

Summary:

A weekend of edgerunning and the birth of Night City's latest solo legend.

Once I came upon the Maelstrom encirclement around the city block where the recipient lived, I noticed that there were barely anyone in the streets. What the fuck was in the package to have those degenerate boosters out in force like that?

Wasn’t any of my business, though. A group of five of those borged out psychos—wearing tech visors and horrifying body mods—spotted me and ran towards me, I just flashed on the Sandy and got far enough to leave all their sightlines. I arrived at the apartment block that the recipient lived in. No Strom guards stood in the way between me and them and I made the delivery peacefully.

Then I raised Reyes. 

D: Done, job done.

El Capitan: Fucking fast, kid. Real fast, fuck. 

D: Anything else? Still got time to kill.

El Capitan: You good at zeroing?

D: Depends on the gonks.

El Capitan: Scav squatters on the outside of 6th street jurisdiction. Five to ten. Will pay you two thousand each for taking them out if you don’t claim the bounties.

Fucking hell! That was preem as shit!

D: Send me the deets.

El Capitan: That was a test, kid. You don’t go into a gig like that alone. Thought you’d be smart enough to recognize when you’re outmatched, outnumbered. Bring some chooms for shit like this, and if you don’t got them, ask for another gig. Don’t throw your life away, fuck

D: No, this is perfect. I’m good for it. Serious. 

El Capitan: What if I told you there was more to the mission? I need their data, too.

D: No problem at all. I’m good with hacking.

El Capitan: I promise you kid, if you’re trying to inflate your ability, I’m going to sink your rep, you hear me?

D: Good with hacking, fast, and good with zeroing too. You need proof, just give me the gig. Not going to lie to you and bite off more than I can chew. Got shit riding on this too, you know. Like my life, for example.

El Capitan: Fine. Here.

He sent me the details.

El Capitan: I’ll confirm the number of scavs there after you’re done cleaning up. If you don’t end up killing any scavs, but do end up ninjaing the data, I’ll pay you a base rate of five-thousand. 

D: Then what stops me from just killing all the scavs and fucking off if you’re not paying for the data unless I don’t kill the scavs?

El Capitan: Your rep, kid. You took a job knowing what it required of you, but couldn’t deliver. That shit doesn’t look good, and cleaning off that stink is way harder than building rep in the first place. But I’ll give you a little out: just bring the harddrive uncracked if you can and I’ll pay you twenty-five hundred, that is if you don’t bork it somehow.

D: It was just a hypothetical. I can crack the drive and send you the info easy, no sweat. Gonna take out the scavs, too. 

El Capitan: I’ll be waiting for you then. And here’s the rest of the cash.

I received another thousand.

I hadn’t broken even on all my recent costs, the BD wreath having taken the lion’s share of my recent scav windfall.

I’d spent twenty-five hundred in just the last two days, and I was starting to regret having thrown that cash at the Animal who had helped me in a bid to cut ties indefinitely.

Whatever. Mom would have agreed with my way of doing things. Never take help for free. Everything came at a cost. Had to identify those costs to know what you were up against.

Then I received a sudden three-thousand five-hundred and ninety-one from an unknown address.

Then a message from said unknown address.

Unknown: Here’s your forty percent. So don’t go around telling people I’m in the business of not paying my debts, corpo cunt.

The fuck?!

Fucking Lucy. She changed her holo number? 

D: Always have to bring the mood down with your fucking bullshit. Get a butt implant so you can shit out that stick up your ass, you annoying bitch.

I almost sent the eddies back, too, but common sense stopped me in time. The only reason we had made so much in the first place was because of me. To have her profit fully off it when I actually could help it was ridiculous.

I saved her number as Stupid Bitch.

Stupid Bitch: Say that shit to my face and you’ll be an arm shorter. 

D: Whatever. Go die.

I wanted to block her, but that would be stupid. We were going to work together from now on. As much as she just annoyed the crap out of me, I still needed to be on call.

Had to be professional like that, or I’d be no different from just another streetkid.

000

The problem about flatlining, I had come to realize, was that it just wasn’t the same when done with premeditation. That was probably the reason why premeditated murder was such a big deal to the justice system. It represented a qualitative increase in shittiness.

I had bought a new external cyberdeck on the way to the scav den—an arm-mounted screen that could extend itself, and had high  enough specs to break through most ICE depending on the user’s skill. Needed it to break through whatever locks came my way.

The ICE on their front door was sturdy, but it was clear that they didn’t have a netrunner because I managed to break through their lock, spending almost a minute doing so, without any interruptions.

From there on, I activated the Sandy, and came to terms with what I had to do: kill.

It was easier with the scavs who had kidnapped me. They had pushed my buttons in the worst way possible, and were indeed trying to kill me, too. All of that lent a weight to my actions that allowed me to skip over any feeling of guilt or hesitation entirely. 

This? This was just money. Not the same. Way grittier.

I summoned a thought of mom and how she wanted me to go to Arasaka Academy. Big mistake. Now I wanted to kill these scavs even less. I returned to the normal timestream instead, to think.

Huh.

The solution was obvious, actually.

I entered the scav den. Around an operating table where a corpse sat back down, its torso splayed open to reveal flesh and cyberware, were three different scavs, one of them holding a tong as he tried to pull out a piece of chrome.

They all had pixelated face masks with simple drawn-on red faces, and all of them were directed towards me.

“Who the fuck are you!” one of them yelled.

The question was clearly a statement, and to punctuate it, the scav who had shouted was reaching towards his side where a gun would no-doubt be.

Now I was in danger. Now I was motivated.

I activated the Sandy and looked around for a weapon. I found a bladed implement very quickly; a curved sort of knife that was clearly ment to be held in a reverse-grip. The fuck were they called again? Carambas?

Whatever. I just grabbed it and started slashing. Throats once again, easiest way to make sure that each hit, if not immediately fatal, would eventually be such.

I left the living room in search for more scavs.

Two of them were slowly getting up from their couches, likely in response to the first guy’s yell.

I made sure that once time resumed, they would bleed out on the couches.

I looked for another room. It was a bedroom. One scav was sitting on the corner of his bed, back against the wall, occupied by a BD judging from the wreath on his face. On another bed sat a dude with a dick-sucker machine strapped to him.

I did them a favor and opened their jugulars.

How many was that, now? Seven.

I searched every other room, but found nothing, except for the one room with the computer terminal. Bingo.

I resumed time in order to interface with the computer, and then I heard a series of thuds as all the scavs I had cut fell at the same time. I closed the door to the room with the PC behind me and booted up my external cyberdeck. It was an older model, but not so old that it couldn’t keep up with recent tech. It was better than my old version at least—a fossil from the forties. This one was at the very least a decent machine, and what it traded for interactivity and netrunner synergy, it more than made up for in raw specs.

I loaded my Breach Protocol—an intrusion algorithm meant to clear the way into a system— and shot it at the terminal. Without an opposing netrunner, this process was only a matter of time. The ‘deck told me it would take five minutes.

I began interfacing with the PC, taking out the ICE manually as well. That would shorten things considerably.

Wish I could have done it faster. Unfortunately Sandy speed was overkill, and I couldn’t trust each of my inputs to register at such speeds. 

I wish I could go slower.

[If the Sandevistan was correctly integrated to begin with, you would have immediately sensed the option to modulate your speed. I can attempt to manually slow down the Sandevistan for you as well.]

“Let’s give that a go,” I muttered as my fingers flew. I activated the Sandevistan and pressed on a key. It stayed down. Then it slowly, but surely bounced up again. I pressed the same key again. It bounced up a little slower than it took for my fingers to leave the key.

David: a little slower.

I deleted the nonsense inputs on the terminal and began experimentally typing.

The feedback was better now. I could do this.

This new method didn’t shorten the subjective time it took for me to crack the ICE, but it did make sure that I shortened the amount of time to retrieve the data considerably, reducing the chances of any surprises to reach me from behind.

I ejected a shard from my socket and loaded it into the terminal moments before the ICE fully broke, loaded the contents of the drive into it, and waited patiently for it to transfer while I stared at the door to the rest of the apartment.

Once the transfer completed, I ejected the shard and resocketed it.

I raised Reyes.

D: Sorry it took so long. Had to buy a cyberdeck for the gig.

El Capitan: So long? Kid, it ain’t been thirty minutes since last we talked.

D: I get around.

El Capitan: I’ll say. How many hostiles? Flatlined them all?

D: Seven scavs, dead scavs. 

El Capitan: I’ll send-send boys out to confirm.

D: I’ll wait.

El Capitan: What, ain’t gonna bug me for more giggys?

D: Gotta make sure your boys count right. You had issues trusting me. Naturally, I got my misgivings, too. Nothing personal.

El Capitan: Personal as fuck, kid. I built my business, I have rep, I got trust. Doubt means disrespect.

D: New at this, you know. Still gotta wrap my head around the game.

El Capitan: Fine. Fuck. Suppose it ain’t a big deal anyhow, but trust me kid, there are fixers who don’t stand for that shit.

That sounded like some right bullshit. We edgerunners were shouldering the risk, and yet we had to give blind trust to these people? When they didn’t even trust us back?

What the fuck were fixers even for? Could I maybe become a fixer, get myself my own gigs? Maybe that’s how gangs started; from edgerunners who were tired of the one-sided dynamic between fixers and solos.

I eyed my Critical Progress bar and found that it was at a 65%. 

D: I’ll drop off the data shard-shard with one of your boys if that’s good with you. Calling it a day.

El Capitan: Sandy starting to squeak or what?

D: Something like that. Don’t worry about me. It was a pleasure doing biz.

El Capitan: It’s just work, not biz. Good, honest work.

Didn’t really see the difference, nor did I see the need to quibble over it.

It took fifteen more minutes for Reyes’ boys to arrive, counting the dead and receiving my data shard.

I headed home fourteen-thousand eddies richer. Cyberdeck cost almost two thousand, but then I also received that scratch from Lucy. 

Fifteen-thousand three-hundred and eighty in one day.

Minus what I’d spent the last two days, and add the scav bounty, and I had made over twenty thousand eddies this week.

I had to return the bulk of the family account to Maine as that was his money, but mom had saved up eighteen thousand eddies already. That made a total of thirty-nine thousand five-hundred and change.

The semester fee was seventy-five, and it was due only in a couple of weeks. Needed more scratch. How much had I made in total with Lucy? Eight thousand nine-hundred and seventy-seven if my arithmetic was right, and it often was.

I should get started on an eject shard quickhack. If I spent the entirety of tomorrow just klepping shards while using my Sandy all the way to maybe 50% Critical Progress, I could make maybe ten thousand. Maine’s trial gig was coming along soon, too, but I couldn’t count on that to be anything more than a couple of thousand maybe, same tier as the delivery mission I did today.

I wish I could just keep going with Reyes, but then I’d risk going in half-cocked once Maine finally called on me. Couldn’t afford to show my ass for such an important mission. Maybe I should consider taking out a loan with Maine.

And maybe I should consider swimming in a pool with electric eel as well.

Ah well. 

Without the Sandy operable, I might as well go home, so I did.

I spent the rest of the day, and a lot of the night coding and recoding an eject shard quickhack while also polishing up on my intrusion skills.

000

Lucy made it look easy. 

Maybe it was her chrome that made things so much simpler, but breaking through every Biotechnica suit’s personal bit of ICE in the NCART before they reached their stop and setting the stage for my klepping was not as easy as it looked.

Several times, some marks of mine left too early. It took me twenty minutes to get all my pieces in place.

I ejected every shard.

Things immediately went wrong.

The shards just… fell. They didn’t fly out like when Lucy had done it. 

Fuck!

I activated the Sandy anyway and took as many as I could before returning to where I had stood.

Then there was the second thing that went wrong.

“Hey, what the fuck!”

“Somebody klepped my shard!”

“Picksocket! We’ve got a picksocket!”

A lot of the marks noticed .

As much as I hated to admit it, Lucy was good. She had several angles considered when picking her marks, and knew how to thief better than I did. I picked guys that were too attentive, too wary.

One of my marks grabbed me by the shoulder and turned me around. I frowned. “What’s the matter, choom?”

The suit narrowed his eyes at me. “You didn’t hear anything about the picksocket?”

“My socket didn’t get picked,” I said with a shrug. “Why should I give a shit?”

He growled but thankfully decided to just move on. What a dumbass.

And there was my stop. I got off, fifteen shards in my pocket, as I formulated some revisions to the code in my head.

Once all the people from the picksocket cart had left the station, I took out my cyberdeck and began to write changes to the code.

Had to make sure the ejection went at full throttle. Had to implement a little firmware virus to get it to fully work, but once I did, I’d pretty much have what Lucy had, minus the skill to deduce the right marks.

For the next cart, I upped my ICE-breaking by using the Sandevistan, assisted by Nanny.

Fourteen marks picked, all of them facing the windows, and all of them either in a phone-call, on a BD, dozing off on their feet, or in a conversation with someone. 

Showtime.

The quickhack ran and so did I.

I put the runner in netrunner as I grabbed all the shards and returned to my usual spot before anyone could react.

Thankfully, no cries of—

“Picksocket!”

Fuck .

The NCART had reached its destination. 

Never let it be said that I didn’t learn from my mistakes. This time, I had done the hack just as we were about to reach the next stop. I just strolled right out while more and more suits began to realize that their shards were klepped.

And so it went for the next four hours. Critical Progress had reached 40% and I was starting to get hungry, so I left the NCART at a stop near to where I lived and walked all the way home.

It was a learning curve, alright, but I had gotten the hang of it near the middle. The trick was to make sure that their necks were turned at the right angle, too, or there would be no mistaking the feeling of a chip ejecting.

Now I just… had to… fence them.

Which was Lucy’s wheelhouse.

I stopped dead in the sidewalk and looked up at the sky. “Fuck,” I groaned.

000

I finished my weekend homework—why the fuck did that even exist—just in time for Maine’s call to arrive.

Maine: You’re up, kid.

I jumped on my feet. Time to go!

I put on the sugar skull mask—I cut a hole on the top to let my hair out—and put on mom’s jacket before heading out.

A ride on the NCART and a cab drive later and I had finally arrived at the address given, a warehouse owned by a guy called Aldo.

I walked up to the warehouse with the same number as the info Maine gave me. The roller shutters were halfway down.

“Hey!” I heard Maine’s voice from inside. I ducked down to get a look inside and saw him on a doorway at the end of the storage room. “Over here, kid.”

I walked through. 

“The fuck are you wearing?” Maine asked with an ill-contained laugh.

“Disguise,” I said. “Right now, I’m D.”

Once I got into his reach, he smacked me. “Cut the crap, kid. You’re dead meat if you don’t get serious.”

I followed him into a smokey room where I once again found the large lady and the long-fingered guy, as well as a new person this time around: a girl with some kind of gray-blue skin and blond hair. She was the one who had filled the room with so much smoke.

“Data wasn’t lying,” she said. “He is just a kid. A cosplayer, too. Can he keep up?”

“Guess we’ll see,” Maine said as he sat himself next to his chooms.

“He’s a funny little guy,” the tall and lanky guy said. “But keep your grubby mitts to yourself.”

“Ugh,” the smaller of the two women groaned. “Why do we even put up with you?”

Maine pointed at the one person in the room I hadn’t met before. “This one here is Kiwi,” he said. “And Dorio and Pilar, you’ve met,” he pointed at the large woman and the lanky guy respectively. “Make yourself comfy.”

I sat down across from them. “My name is D.”

Maine smacked me again. “Who asked!”

That was beginning to seriously hurt. I fired up the Sandy to get rid of the pain.

“Let’s get down to biz,” Maine said as he slid a shard on the table towards me. “Slot this in.”

I did, and a dossier popped up in my head, of some buff dude wearing a corp suit. There was text next to him that named him and his role in the Arasaka Corporation. “Say hello to Arasaka corp driver and bodyguard Maxim. We’re gonna swipe the nav data from the limo he rolls around in.”

“Not the car?” I asked.

“We klep that car and Arasaka ninjas swarm us like flies to shit, so no, not the car,” he said.

“How do we do it?” I asked.

“This guy’s a degenerate gambler,” Maine said. “Betting on fights is his only joy in life. His ass always fills a seat at the underground fights in Rancho Coronado every weekend. He always puts a fat stack on the Butcher. She’s a fucking animal, in more ways than one. Most of the people just come to see her paint the stage red with some gonk’s blood,” I nodded along to his explanation as I waved through Maxim’s dossier and pulled up the Butcher’s. “But things ain’t gonna go down like that.”

“Really?” I asked.

“Nah. We got ourselves a fighter who will butcher the Butcher in round one.”

My eyes widened.

“Wait,” I said. “Can I bet on the other guy?”

“You need a rep with the bookie to do that,” Maine said. “Gonk like you wins big, the house is more likely to keep it than dish it out.”

“The fuck? How do they even run a business like that?”

“It’s Night City, kid. Even gambling’s a gamble.”

“What about you guys?” I asked. “Any of you have a rep with the bookie?”

“None of us are betting,” Maine said. “That’d be match fixing, even though it isn’t, but that’s how things work around here. 6th Street would be on our ass for winning big without their permission. Juice ain’t worth the squeeze. Only reason we’ll get away with this is because our win won’t be with the other gamblers.”

Dammit.

“He’s in the habit of drowning his sorrows in this hole in the wall. While he’s good and greased, you nab the key, we forge a copy.”

“Got it,” I said.

000

Everything had gone exactly according to plan.

That was, until the man stirred. “Dammit,” Kiwi said on the open comms. “His master’s calling him.”

“Key isn’t done copying,” Dorio said.

“Shit,” Maine said. “Change of plans. Grab the key, David. Rebecca, trip him up .”

I took the key and Sandy’d to Maxim’s limousine. It was closed. Didn’t bring my cyberdeck, either. 

“I’ll handle that,” I heard Stupid Bitch’s voice from behind me. “You get in.”

After a few seconds, the doors unlocked audibly, and we got in.

Lucy was already on the ball, her fingers flying on her own cyberdeck pad while her eyes flashed blue. I tried to keep up with whatever I was looking at, but it was too fast for even me.

I could try it with Sandy, but then a thought occurred to me.

We still had the key. Why did we still have the key?

I opened the door and Sandy’d to Maxim, dropping the key in his pocket while trying my best to not look at what that small woman was doing in his pants, before returning to the car. Lucy didn’t make a comment, either.

Finally, I decided to use the Sandy to keep up with what she was doing.

And it was A Lot.

I thought I was good at programming. Thought it was one of my best qualities.

Lucy was fucking insane. It was like her mind was in ten places at the same time, each one doing something entirely different, but working together for a mutual purpose. If this was what it took to break down Arasaka ICE within a few minutes, then I knew that ICE would probably take me hours of singleminded dedication to even get close to cracking without the Sandevistan.

She was nuts .

Shame she had to be so inexplicably awful.

“Almost done,” Lucy said. “There.”

Kiwi: No time to spare.

I took that literally, activating the Sandevistan and dragging Lucy out as gently as I could. Right on time, too, as I just caught sight of Maxim by the door. 

I took us away from any sightlines to the limo and let the Sandevistan deactivate.

“What the fuck!” I heard a shout. “Who was in my car?!”

“Shit,” I muttered as I just booked it, with Lucy following behind me. We made another turn, avoiding Maxim’s wrath altogether.

Kiwi: He’s taking off. It’s done.

Maine: Good reaction, David! And that was some damn good speed there, Lucy. 

D: Name’s D.

Maine: I’ll start calling you that shit once you’ve really earned it, but for now…?

000

“Here,” Maine handed me a beer as he sat next to me. We were in Turbo’s Diner, a place that only looked like a gas station, but lacked the actual fuel pumps, and instead had a large parking lot in front of the titular diner. It was night, but the assorted cars made sure to keep the environment as lit up as possible with their neon-colored halogen lights. “And, here,” he said.

And my account instantly became twenty-thousand eddies bigger.

“Holy shit!” I exclaimed. “Choom, I don’t know what to say!”

Maine chuckled. “Hah. Don’t have to say nothing, kid. Everybody gets a fair shake. Only way I operate.”

“So… does that mean we’re good now?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said. “Welcome to the crew. But remember. Ain’t no one you can trust more in this world than yourself.” I regarded him with seriousness as I gave a quick nod. “Start using us as a crutch,” he said, landing his heavy hand on my head. Just resting it there forced me to bend my neck, but the touch was hardly a violent one. It felt… good, sorta. “And you’re as good as dead.”

“I understand,” I said. “Thank you.” Fifty-eight thousand. Only needed seventeen grand more to pay off this term’s tuition. “Can I take out the tracker, now?”

He looked at me for a moment before nodding. “You’re really about this life, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” I said. “I need the eddies.”

“Go ahead, kid,” he said, and I ejected the tracker chip before tossing it away contemptuously.

“Hey, I also wanted to ask: I klepped a bunch of shards this morning. You mind giving me some pointers on how to get them sold for cash?”

“Ask Lucy. Ain’t picksocketing more her deal? Thought you guys met like that.”

I grunted. “Lucy’s got a problem with me being in a corpo school. No idea what’s wrong with her. Thinks she has a monopoly on corp-caused suffering no doubt,” I frowned. “Fuck her. She doesn’t know shit about me.”

“Hah! Tell ya what, kid,” Maine said. “That sort of anger ain’t the kind to come from anywhere else but passion. You play your cards right, you might still land her as an output.”

I snorted. “That’s laughable.” I didn’t want shit to do with her, actually. Didn’t have the patience to explain myself to her, either. Why should I be the one to do that, anyway? She was the one who came at me guns blazing talking all that gonk shit. The fuck was I supposed to do about her being crazy?

“I’m serious,” he gently shoved me. “You think my Dorio don’t buck? You just gotta really make sure it’s that kind of anger, or you might get flatlined.” I’d rather not deal with any anger at all if I was being honest. Not for me. “Then again, Pilar’s still alive, so I doubt she’d go so far.”

“Pilar?”

I had watched Pilar do some weird comedy show with his fingers, showing off their stability by holding a tray full of bottles with his fingertips.

Now he had his arm wrapped around Lucy, chatting her up.

Didn’t know they were close like that.

“Pilar the techie,” he said. “You said something about being tech savvy yourself. Might wanna pay him a visit to talk shop or some shit. We’ll always welcome more techies.”

“I can do netrunning, too,” I said. “I even have a cyberdeck.”

“Aren’t you a jack of all trades?” he chuckled. “Don’t spread yourself too thin, kid. It ain’t all about versatility in this game. Sometimes, you gotta let your team handle their biz. It’s called ‘solo’, sure, but the real solos rarely last long.” Not like my netrunning skills could offer anything to his crew to begin with. Lucy was fucking wild all by herself. What the hell was she doing not working for ‘Saka counterintel? I wondered how much better Kiwi was, or if she even was at all.

It felt hard to believe that anyone could be better than her. All this time, I thought myself nearing the peak of what being good at programming could grant you, but it turned out that it was just a false ceiling, some arbitrary bullshit academia limit that was imposed because putting numbers and grades to true genius was simply impossible.

It was hard to believe that Lucy wasn’t the best in the world, but just going by logic, that had to not be the case. Someone out there was better. Rache Bartmoss was better, sure, but someone alive was certainly even more demonic on the cyberdeck than even Lucy.

And that scared me.

“Oh, hey,” I said. “I also wanted to ask, what’s the policy on taking out gigs on your own?”

He looked at me with a raised eyebrow. “You got a fixer, kid?”

I nodded. “I asked around in some solo hangout for the lowdown, sent me to the way of a fixer in Rancho Coronado. Took two gigs from him yesterday. Handled them no sweat. Just wanna know if that was kosher or not.”

“Easier to ask for forgiveness than permission, huh, kid?”

“Yeah, pretty much,” I chuckled.

He smacked me.

Ow.

“That’s for being a smartass. But no, you can take out solo gigs if you want. Just make sure you don’t bite off more than you can chew and flatline, and definitely don’t fuck things up, either. Your rep is mine now that I’ve taken you on.”

“Got it,” I said. 

Some old Japanese lady wearing a gray kimono approached us with a paper bag. Maine accepted it with thanks. “My immunoblockers,” Maine said. “You need any?”

I shook my head.

“Had to get them somewhere else after some gonk sent my ripper to the hospital. I get my hands on that prick, I’ll rip him apart,” he grumbled. Then he eyed me. “You still mostly ‘ganic?”

I nodded.

“Save up some eddies and look at getting some chrome. I don’t know what the hell you’re made of, but the Sandy’s eventually gonna get the better of it. Might wanna be ready when that happens.”

“I’m working on improving myself,” I said. A part of me wanted to tell him about the nanites, but a larger part of me didn’t want Biotechnica’s fuckup to feature so prominently in my life, at least not in my public image.

I’d have to come clean eventually, just so I’d be better utilized by Maine, but right now I just… wanted another day of being normal. As normal as a gonk wearing a luchador sugar skull mask could be.

“Don’t think I ain’t notice that frame of yours,” Maine said. “Not to step on your toes, but if that’s Juice, then you should really be more careful. Chrome’s way safer, even if it takes more out of you. But in the end, that’s what makes you truly strong, not just a blazing candle.”

“Got it,” I said. I wanted to interrogate if chrome really was that safe, considering the whole existence of, well, cyberpsychosis. Or any of the assorted pathoses related to excessive biocyberization. Juice would just give you a heart-attack before thirty, but aside from the occasional bouts of roid rage, it wouldn’t exactly make you batshit.

Not that I had to worry about either. Nanny said that my tolerance for cyberware was nova. And I wasn’t exactly planning on chipping so much in that I’d be more chrome than ‘ganic. Didn’t exactly have the best experiences with ripperdocs thus far.

If I was ever going to visit a third one, then I’d have to make damn sure I could trust him. 

I looked up at the big guy. “Maine,” I said. “When I get my next piece of chrome, I’ll need you to put God’s fear in that ripperdoc so he doesn’t think of screwing me over. That’s all I’ll ask.”

Maine chuckled. “C’mon, kid! Where was all that spunk when you decided to chip in mil-spec chrome? Can’t have chromephobia if you wanna be an edgerunner—”

“This is serious!” I said. “I’m not giving my body away to some gonk piece of shit whose only worry is eddies. Been burned twice over that shit now and I’m not letting a third time happen, I’m not .”

Maine’s smile died on his lips, and instead of saying something, he just nodded and patted me on the shoulder. “I’ve got your back, kid. Ain’t no motherfucker in Night City gonk enough to screw you over on my watch.”

I let out a sigh of relief. “Thanks, man.”

A purple Rayfield Aerondight pulled into the Turbo parking lot, and the music immediately dimmed as the partygoers stared at the supercar, utterly transfixed. It pulled up in front of Maine and I, and I immediately felt like activating the Sandevistan.

Maine had tensed, too.

The door opened, and out stepped a man in a neokitsch maroon suit. He was an older guy, probably in his forties, and had the unmistakable vibe of a corpo to him. He had white hair and four eyes, three of them clearly chrome, and all concentrated on the right, stacked on top of each other. He exuded a sense of control and predation, a big dog with deep pockets.

“I believed I had made myself clear,” the man began as he looked at Maine. “That discretion was the most important part of this assignment.”

“Either I short-circed,” Maine said as he stood up and walked towards the man, practically towering over him. “Or I actually heard you say that we didn’t complete the assignment exactly to your parameters.”

“Tanaka’s driver ratted on himself,” the man said. He had to look up at Maine to talk, but he still gave the impression of control . “He clearly felt that letting what he had discovered, that someone had been inside his employer’s vehicle, go without reporting would bite him in the ass, so he did the sensible thing and let himself get fired rather than something worse. The nav data is useless. Tanaka has changed sites.”

“How the fuck is that our fault?” Maine asked. “We did everything right, and still something went wrong. That’s just how it is on the field.”

“When I give out assignments, I expect them to be followed correctly, and by the letter. Your methodology was imperfect, and now I have spent my eurodollars in vain. Do you think you should be congratulated, Maine?”

“I think you should get real, Faraday,” Maine said. “Mistakes happen. Ain’t no big deal. We’ll do it again.”

“Tanaka is now wary.”

“From what? An opened door? That could have been anything!”

“Tanaka clearly doesn’t think so,” Faraday replied. “I’m here to give you a final warning, Maine. I don’t enjoy spending my eddies on useless endeavors. Either you get it right or you don’t do it at all, are we clear?”

Maine hesitated for a moment before replying. “Clear.”

Without another word, Faraday got back inside his car and it drove off at a leisurely pace. Even that was calculated, no doubt.

I walked up to Maine with both fists clenched. “This is my fault,” I said. “I forgot to close the door behind me. Blew everything.”

I had embarrassed him in front of his fixer. His rep would take a dive.

I was so screwed.

“I-if you need the money back—”

“Don’t go there, kid,” Maine said. He turned around so I could see him, and he was grinning. “You did as well as you could for a first big gig. I’ll handle this.”

“And I’ll help.”

“Yes you will,” he said. “For now, just enjoy the party. Seriously, don’t sweat it.” Dorio came along and Maine walked off with her, leaving me alone.

Feeling profoundly shitty.

I spotted Lucy from a distance, sitting on the hood of some car, now alone without Pilar. She saw me. Her eyes narrowed.

There was accusal in them.

That felt even worse than letting Maine down.

I shook up the remnants of the broseph beer in my hand to get rid of the carbonation and gulped the rest of it in one go. Still a little tingly, but it was easier that way.

“Hey!”

I looked to my left, and down, to see the same small woman I saw at the bar. She had this very pale green skin and her hair, tied in twin-tails, were a tad greener. She held a red plastic cup towards me. “Remember me?” she asked.

I didn’t. At all.

Wait. That hair was a little familiar. I only really recognized people by their hair. 

“Back at the bar,” I said.

“Name’s Rebecca,” she said as I accepted the cup. “Heard a weirdo was joining the team, and I just had to get a good look. What’s with the mask?”

I couldn’t handle the embarrassment of having to explain myself once again. “I’m a superhero,” I decided to say, because it was slightly funny, and too absurd to be as cringy as the truth, that I was doing all this to pay for a corpo education.

She might suddenly turn into another Lucy and just give me endless shit for it. Paid to be more discreet.

She burst into laughter. “You’re fucking hilarious, man. What’s your name, superhero?”

“D,” I said. “Just D.”

She laughed even harder now and fell on the floor where she actually rolled . She didn’t stop for a solid thirty seconds, and from there I couldn’t help it; I laughed with her.

Chapter 9: Samurai Heist

Summary:

David seeks new avenues to better himself in Netrunning, and takes out another edgerunning gig on top of that. Features a healthy amount of cowboy drawl.

I talked to Kiwi about helping me move the klepped shards. She hadn’t been overly curious about my falling out with Lucy, thank God, and had been a professional about the matter. She demanded a cut, though; twenty percent. That was steep for a middle man, but I couldn’t exactly go to someone else.

School the next day was the same as always, that was except for my meeting with the system administrator.

“Let’s get down to brass tacks,” Nakajima began. “I’m using you. I’m not here to nurture some genius or teaching you for the love of the subject. I want you to help me.”

“Okay,” I nodded, somehow appreciating that far more than if he really had been doing it from the kindness of his heart. I had no idea how I would even respond to something like that. I’m glad that wasn’t the case. “How can I help you?” I asked.

“There’s a case competition going on in Arasaka IT. I’m looking for people with talent. Shit looks great on your CV, so really I’m helping you just as much as I’m using you. But you will be pulling your weight, and you’ll do it hard, because this?” He chuckled. “I took a look at your syllabus kid, and that shit’s fucking hilarious. They had you on some C for Dummies shit, and they called that Advanced Placement? Even your university courses are laughable, what the fuck? No. What we’re doing is a matter of tens of millions of eurodollars for the corp. The value we will seek to add is more than you’ll ever touch in your lifetime, provided it’s ever implemented.”

I blinked. “Wait, why me, then? You said it yourself, my syllabus was shit.”

“Yeah! And yet you managed to slay a fucking Afreet Demon with pure fundamentals and basics. That’s not normal!”

“Wait, what?” I asked. “I wasn’t supposed to be able to destroy the virus?”

“Of course not! I wanted to see if you were competent enough to maybe be able to do what you did to that first virus you unleashed. But forget that, I’m headhunting you because you’ve got a talent and instinct for code that very few people can boast.”

And yet Lucy made me look like a fucking chump.

“Okay, then,” I said. “Where do we start?”

“This won’t be paid, you know,” he said with a look that seemed to expect resistance. And I would have resisted, truly, if I had expected pay in the first place.

“Why not?” I asked with slight suspicion in my voice. Just because I wouldn’t have resisted at first didn’t mean that it wasn’t smart to.

“It’s a case competition, not a project. You only get paid if you win.”

“And if we win,” I said. “You still won’t pay me?”

He laughed. “Kid, we’re not winning. I’m just doing this to get placed on the map. Just placing in top ten is amazing as fuck. Winning is a pipe-dream.”

“What’s the prize money for winning?” I asked.

“A million eurodollars,” he replied. “But it’s not about the money. It’s about the connections you make. You get yourself on the map, your future at Arasaka’s tech division is assured. This is my ticket out of this fucking school.”

I nodded. I assumed he was more comfortable in this school setting than not, seeing as his irreverence and general lack of fucks to give wouldn’t really bite him in the ass. I couldn’t imagine that Arasaka proper would be more forgiving.

Not that it mattered to me all that much.

“Will my name be on the project?” I asked.

He looked at me as if I’d slapped him in the face. Of course he wouldn’t give me any credit— “What kind of rat-bastard do you take me for? If I used your help and didn’t credit you, I’d be some truly pathetic scum. Forget about honor and all that crap, that shit would just be downright embarrassing. ”

“Uh, sorry,” I said. “Corpo rat-bastardery isn’t exactly the most consistent thing in the world.”

He scoffed. “We do things differently in cyberspace. Klepping somebody’s work is a quick way to get your brain fried in the future. There’s a story behind that, tradition was that if you helped someone with their code, you’d try to plant a vulnerability so if they fucked you over, you could fuck them over later on. I’d suggest you start doing that from now on if you wanna help your corpo classmates get A’s.”

I nodded. “And who exactly is in the rest of our team?”

He grinned widely. “Just you and me, kid, which is why I said winning is a pipe-dream. By my count, it would take somewhere around a thousand man-hours to make a product that could have a decent chance of winning. Between the two of us, that would be five hundred hours of work each. The deadline is July 5th, two months and twenty-five days from now on. If we worked on our product six hours a day from today onward and our work was really good, we could stand a chance. But you’ve got school and I’ve got work, and we both need to sleep. We can manage five hundred man-hours at best between the two of us, and we’d have to work three hours a day still, and that isn’t even counting the hours it would take for you to get up to speed.”

“That’s insane,” I said. “I-I’ve got shit to do, and school is—” An idea struck me. “You changed my grade already, didn’t you?” I checked my file with my cyberoptics while he confirmed.

“Yes, I did,” he said.

“Tell you what,” I said. “You can pay me back in giving me A’s on the rest of my computer science courses.”

“Yes, like no one’s going to notice that,” he chuckled. “How about I just drop you out of those courses and put the case comp on your file?”

“What does that do?” I asked. “I’m here for grades, man. I really need that NCU scholarship.”

“Kid, you’ve got enough fucking credits to almost be halfway through your bachelors. And you only really need the humanities classes to pass high school. Sure, you’ll have to do a couple more classes while in uni so you might have to graduate in two years instead of one, but replacing those science courses with an Arasaka fucking Case Comp? And doing well on that shit at that? Get the fuck out of here, man, that’s the sort of shit that’d get you a full ride days after applying.”

This sounded too extreme. “I don’t know. Maybe I should talk to a career counselor before deciding on all of that. Besides, aren’t there, like, qualifiers or some shit? If it’s such a big deal, how come I get to just jump right into it?”

“You don’t,” Nakajima replied. “I already qualified. I get to build a team now. You’re riding the coattails of my success. Talk to that counselor or whatever, and then make a decision. In the meantime, you’ll spend some of your freetime learning real coding.”

“How do I learn ‘real coding’?”

“Code review, kid,” he said as he handed me a shard. “This contains old military grade ICE—we call it WET in the industry. Doesn’t stand for nothing, but it’s just ICE that’s been so thoroughly decrypted that it’s highly likely you can find a key lying somewhere on the Net for it, especially on the ICEpedia where they keep millions of different keys. Read the code, and also figure out how to break it if you want. ICE-breaking won’t feature much into the competition, but it’s valuable practice nonetheless for understanding the deeper principles of coding and the Net. There’s also robotics code and cyberware OS that is bugged. While reviewing, you need to figure out a way to debug it based on the comments written. Be done by Friday. This won’t get you up to speed by any means, but we’ll learn as you go. This is your first true step into learning coding, kid.”

I slotted the shard in and there was a lot .

On the way home, I picksocketed my NCART. Robbing Arasaka suits was more Lucy’s thing, but I didn’t really give a shit. Eddies were eddies.

By the time I reached home, I had about thirty shards.

I went straight to the gym to work out until 50% Critical Progress.

Nanny stopped me at 35% because I was beginning to rack up some serious side-effects; ligaments, heart, endocrine system and my nervous system as well, stuff that couldn’t be healed because of nutritional deficiencies. I loaded up on all the nutrients I was low on, let Sandy rapidly take care of my deficiencies, and headed home, ten pounds of muscle heavier.

I sent in an order to the school for a bigger uniform, and then shot Maine a call.

David: Need a gig.

Maine: Already? Kid, I’m fucking busy-busy..

David: Oh, sorry. Just wanted to do more work is all.

Maine: Desperate’s a bad look. You blew all your eddies already?

David: Of course not. Saving up for tuition. Need more-more eddies.

Maine: Ain’t got no-no work for you kid, now get off the comms.

I groaned.

I decided on Reyes next.

D: Any big-big money gigs for me?

El Capitan: You gonk! You didn’t tell me you were running with Maine’s crew! Heard you did a job for Faraday. Big-big money dude, that guy.

D: Need more. Saving up for something big.

El Capitan: Let me see… got one that really is too-way too big for just you. Run it by your crew, maybe they’ll like-love it. Klep some modified biker CHOOH2 from some Tyger Claws. Deliver it to a client. I recommend a driver and a netrunner for this job. 

D: What’s the pay?

El Capitan: Thirty grand.

There were substantial obstacles preventing me from completing this gig alone. I had to remind myself of that repeatedly before I did something boneheaded like rush into this on my own.

D: I’ll run it by the crew before saying yes. That alright with you?

El Capitan: Decide quickly. This ain’t a gig I can shelf for long.

Reyes sent me the information for the gig, and I sent it to Maine.

I received a response fairly quickly. Talk to Kiwi and leave me the fuck alone!

David: What about Dorio?

Maine: Correction, leave us the fuck alone.

Jeez.

I got in touch with Kiwi a second later.

Kiwi: More shards for me?

D: Yeah, but I’ve also got a gig lined up. Maine and Dorio don’t seem interested. Gig has to happen quickly. By tonight. We need a runner and a driver.

I sent her the information.

Kiwi: Some muscle, too, by the looks of it.

D: I’m plenty enough

Kiwi: Cute. I won’t gamble on that. Pilar and Rebecca will be there. I’d invite Lucy, too, but I don’t think that’s a good idea.

D: Invite her. Let her turn it down if she wants.

Gosh, what the fuck was I doing? With Pilar and Rebecca, the money would be split six ways if Lucy came and we managed to find a dedicated driver. Five grand was respectable for just one job, and I’d be making good progress to affording the tuition.

But then I’d have to do a gig with fucking Lucy.

Kiwi: Not sure what you’re playing at, but I gave her the invite—and she declined. I won’t even ask what’s going on.

D: Thank you.

Thank fuck .

I wanted her invited so nobody could say that I let my personal feelings get in the way of having a professional attitude.

Kiwi: Alright, kid. We’re meeting at Aldo’s, seven sharp. 

000

I arrived fifteen minutes to seven in the warehouse bordering the desert only to find that there wasn’t a soul present.

Kiwi arrived ten minutes to seven. She wore the same red trenchcoat she always did, underneath it a pair of matching red pants.

“Early,” she said. “Good. Keep this up, kid, and I might start to rely on you.”

“Thank you,” I replied. “Also, remember, it’s D while on gigs.”

Her eyebrows scrunched near the middle, clearly an expression of mocking disdain. “Still on about that, kid? You’re a riot. Out of all the letters in the English alphabet, you had to pick the most clownable one.”

I shrugged. I thought it was kinda nova. D was a nice letter. Even if could stand for something gonky like dick.

What about dominion? Death? Destroyer? Dragon?

People just lacked imagination.

“Hey, Kiwi, I have a question to ask.”

“I’m not talking to Lucy,” Kiwi said. “Whatever you did, work that out on your own.”

“No, not that,” I said with a grimace. “Wouldn’t put you in that spot to begin with. I just wanted to know if you could give me some coding pointers. Lucy’s a fucking menace on a terminal, you taught her, right?”

Kiwi narrowed her eyes at me. “You into netrunning?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Think it’s the only way to really stay safe from shit, you know? The Net is everything, right? Can’t ever be safe if you’re not safe in the Net.”

“Hmm,” Kiwi said, arms folded. “And how does that figure for a corpo brat like you? Why are you so scared?”

I clenched my jaws. “I’m not a fucking corpo brat. I’m here working.”

“Yes, to become a corpo grownup . By that logic, you are currently a corpo brat.”

I closed my eyes and sighed. “I’m just trying to make money here. Flatlining gangsters ain’t anymore honorable than a nine-to-nine-to-nine at Arasaka Tower. Why should I be getting shit for doing that?”

Kiwi’s hum bore a tiny hint of a chuckle in it. “Maybe it’s just jealousy. Just don’t go around advertising your advantages, kid. Not many solos would ever wanna work with a corpo at their side. Just the mask alone would tell them you’re not really in this for real.”

I bit back my retort. There was no solving this through talk. But that was fine. Talk wasn’t necessary. I could just… prove myself.

“The netrunning tips,” I said. “Would you mind?”

“Only if you tell me what your angle is,” Kiwi said. “Why exactly are you so determined to become a corpo?”

I clenched my jaws. “You’ll just make fun of me for it, and I don’t care about—”

“No mocking,” Kiwi said. “Promise. Just curious is all.”

“Fine,” I said. “Because I’m going to climb to the top of Arasaka Tower. I’m going to take over that bitch.”

Kiwi’s eyes widened. They narrowed to normal levels a brief moment later, but there was still some disbelief in them. “You said this to Lucy?”

I nodded. “How’d you know?”

“Only thing Lucy hates more than a corpo suit is one that’s riding on Arasaka’s dick. Got personal beef with that corp.”

I nodded deeply. “I don’t give a shit,” I said.

“Oh?”

“No, not really,” I said, clenching my jaws. “She came after me for that? If she had any brains left in that skull of hers after all those neural implants, she—”

“Shut up,” Kiwi said. “ I don’t give a shit. Me . God, shut up.”

“Uh, sorry,” I said. “But about the netrunning thing?” I asked.

“I’ll do it, if you trade the proceeds for the klepped shards for lessons.”

“C’mon, Kiwi, I really need that money—”

“And I really need some me-time that your incessant questions will most assuredly encroach on, so why don’t you make like a good corpo, and make a decision.”

“...How much? For the lessons?”

“Once you’ve klepped enough shards, I’ll give you the next lesson.”

“That’s exploitative,” I said. “You’re not giving me a clear number here.”

“Not all shards are worth the same,” she said. “But I am looking for a specific number: six thousand eddies.”

That was disgustingly overpriced. 

“How do I know the lessons are worth it?”

“My rep is on the line as a netrunner, kid,” Kiwi said. 

I laughed. “Everything boils down to rep in this biz, huh?”

“It does,” she said. “Especially in the netrunning world. We’re a paranoid bunch. Goodwill and trust is worth more than diamonds. You soil your name, you’re done .”

Thankfully, I hadn’t fully factored in the proceeds for the shards into my account yet, so I didn’t really consider this six thousand eddies mine . That mental separation made it easier to give this gonk shit a go. “Fine,” I said.

Kiwi groaned. “I hoped you’d say no. I’ll give you some outdated quickhacks of mine. I’ll leave some comments on what specifically makes them outdated, but that’s all you’re getting from me. Can’t figure it out on your own, then give me a ring, but I’m warning you, you won’t learn shit that way. I’ll be as concise as I can.”

So six thousand eddies for some outdated code and comments? I had already created two quickhacks on my own; what would make hers so much better than mine?

Guess I wouldn’t find out until I gave it a look. And if she wasn’t all that she was cracked up to be, then I’d just… tank her rep? How was I supposed to do that anyway? I had no network or rep in the real netrunning community anyway. Only knew some gonks who couldn’t even debug their own shit and probably had to pay for their code in the first place.

“I need contacts,” I said. “I want to get to know other runners.”

“Now that’s gonna cost ya.”

Fucking gonk giving me the runaround. 

“We’ll work this out later,” I said, having already decided to nix that idea. I couldn’t let her spoonfeed me this hard in netrunning. I had to take some initiative at some point, get an actual cyberdeck and then do a dive into the net.

Had to find a proper Ripper for that first.

What was on my to-do list again?

Well, there was finishing Nakajima’s assignments, which counted as netrunning practice. Finding a Ripper. Deciding on what my next piece of chrome would be. Making enough money to stay in school. This was before all of my involvement with Kiwi as well.

Then there was improving the native ICE in my implants, but there was only so much I could do without a Self-ICE implant. Doing gigs as it was was already quite risky. It would just take one spirited scan to pull up all of my information.

I still had the luxury of being a particularly obscure figure. No one would care enough to pull up my information right now. The most care I’d receive on the field was deadly intent. Even an enemy netrunner would be more inclined to fry my chrome than doxx me.

[I think I can prove to be a better alternative to such an implant.]

I furrowed my eyebrows.

David: You think so?

[I have a far larger memory for ICE than any of your implants do, and I can also borrow the computational power of the Sandevistan to further bolster its efficacy.]

Shit, okay!

David: You know where my full ICE draft is, right? Can you incorporate it right now?

[Done. Activate the Sandevistan. I must complete some neural connections.]

I did.

Nothing felt any different to me.

[Now the ICE you have designed is working at full capacity.]

Huh. Well, that was easy.

It wouldn’t truly protect me forever, but I would at least be able to sense an intrusion and its origin point, and once that happened, they wouldn’t even be able to blink before I zeroed them.

A van pulled up right in front of us and I stepped back, readying the Sandevistan just in case. The door slid open and out from it jumped Pilar and Rebecca. I relaxed. “Good to see you guys,” I said.

Kiwi approached the van. “Back inside,” she said. “We’ll do some briefing on the drive. I trust you’ve read what we’re doing.”

“Nope!” Rebecca said. “Just tell me what to do, you know I don’t fucking study for gigs.”

Kiwi groaned as she opened the door to the passenger seat and jumped in. On the driver’s seat was a brown-haired guy with quite the impressive mustache. His outfit evoked such an intense cowboy energy that I couldn’t help but just like him instantly. I got into the van while Pilar grumbled something out.

Rebecca sat next to me. “Hey,” she said. “ D ,” and then she laughed again.

“That’s my name,” I said. 

“Is this kid serious?!” Pilar laughed. “D the masked menace, the matador mercenary, the conqueror of cunts!”

Rebecca laughed even louder.

“Really what you go by?” the driver asked.

“Yes,” I said. “You?”

“Falco. Howdy, pleasure to meet you.”

Kiwi groaned. “One more cosplayer in our midst. You happy, Cowboy Falco?”

“‘Course I am,” Falco replied. “It ain’t no ordinary sun-up when you cross paths with a bona fide luchador, I’ll tell ya that much.”

Pilar laughed even louder, and Rebecca followed suit.

I couldn’t help but chuckle as well. It was shitty being the butt of a joke, but I couldn’t help feeling strangely celebrated . Didn’t hate the feeling, to be honest.

“Knock it off, you two,” Kiwi said. “I did some scoping out on the place we’re headed to. Pay attention and learn your roles.”

It seemed that Kiwi had taken point on this mission. I didn’t mind at all. I was somewhat paranoid that it was going to be me who would be making the game plan because I was the one to bring the gig, but thankfully Kiwi seemed to have it covered.

“ICE might take a couple of minutes to break open,” she said. “Upside is, we’ll have a run of the whole area once they do. Twenty goons scattered around the facility. Ten plus Tyger Claw hostiles milling about the payload, too. Can’t quickhack them from outside, so an engagement is inevitable. Preferably, we exterminate the whole bunch so they can’t run back to their oyabun and snitch on us. No outgoing signals once we get started, I’ll make sure of that.”

I nodded along to her words. Rebecca and Pilar, for their part, had finally stopped laughing.

“The fixer mentioned something about a bonus too if we could nab some usable data. Nothing specific, and usable is a shitty stipulation if you ask me,” Kiwi said. “So I say we ditch that.”

“No,” I said. “I think we should do it. Even if it’s for nothing, it’s important to show that we go above and beyond for our fixers. Rep is everything, right?”

“Ain’t you a goody-two-shoes?” Kiwi said with a clear hint of disdain in her voice.

Falco whistled. “You sure you’re not Maine’s lovechild or something along those lines? You’re puttin’ the D in prudence right now,” he chuckled, triggering more laughs from the two solos from either side of me.

Pilar shouted “You’re taking this way too seriously for someone wearing your get-up, choom!”

“Yeah, yeah,” I muttered. “What’s the game plan anyway?”

Kiwi NFC’d me the map of the complex. “The Tygers are entrenched inside the main complex next to the chew-two. We need to smoke them out, also because a firefight next to highly combustible chemicals isn’t exactly a genius idea. I’ll trip the fire alarms and they’ll scurry out like rats if they know what’s good for them. We round the corner and open fire on them. Once they take cover, that’s where you guys come in.” I nodded along to her idea. From where we were attacking, we’d be hitting the Tyger Claws posted around the facility as guards. Once we started killing them, the ones securing the payload would probably become even more entrenched. We’d have to figure out a way around that in time. I asked Kiwi for an opinion on that.

“Once I’m in the vicinity,” she said, “You won’t need to worry about that. Just take care to soften up our target.” I nodded. The outside blared with some alarm or other, which was a constant in Night City.

“How far out are we?” I asked.

“We’re here,” Falco said as we pulled into a warehouse whose alarms were blaring loudly. Pilar and Rebecca were cradling their guns. We rounded a corner, to the fire alarm assembly point that the neon-colored Japanese gangoons had gathered up in. Pilar opened the long door of the van and started blasting with Rebecca.

It was louder than I could have possibly described.

In seconds, fifteen Tyger Claws were down and out. Fifteen more to go, if the data was right.

Pilar and Rebecca jumped out of the van, and I followed, activating the Sandevistan to get closer to those that hadn’t been hit, all the while careful to avoid the bullets flying around. They weren’t exactly slow, even for me, and I had the feeling that if I tried to race one of them, I’d be outrun eventually.

I pulled out the knife I had klepped from the scavs, a karambit now that I’d confirmed the name, and started going for throats.

The resistance I met upon trying to slit the first Tyger Claw’s throat was impressive. Instead of slicing into his throat, my knife bent his throat inwards like it was made of plastic, lodging itself deep into him. What the fuck was that?

I couldn’t pull the knife with me, either, so I had to find something else to use.

There were katanas littered on the ground. I picked one up, narrowly dodging a bullet, and used it to slice at the throat of another Tyger Claw. This time, the result was impressive. I barely met any resistance slicing through his entire neck, decapitating him like I was cutting grass. Maybe it was just ganic. I resisted taking a look to see whether it was or not and continued on my mission to mow down as many of the Tygers as I could find while making sure not to get flatlined by Pilar and Rebecca.

The katana worked well for six more targets until I reached the last one still standing in the assembly point. His neck deformed similarly to the other guy’s, and I ended up having to leave the katana behind.

I got away from Rebecca and Pilar’s line of fire and deactivated the Sandy.

My kills finally hit the ground. Even the one I had zeroed with the karambit and the last one I hit with the katana were equally done for—their necks bent at an acute angle, and the place opposite to where I had cut had torn open, gushing out blood.

Gnarly as fuck. My heart raced. Jimmy Kurosaki could never come close to this real-feel.

Pilar and Rebecca didn’t stop firing until a while later.

Once they did, I stepped into view. “Fucking nova, D!” Rebecca shouted. “Was that you?”

“What in the fast-forward fuck was that?” Pilar shouted. “A second ago you were behind us! The fuck were you doing, dodging our bullets? Kid, you’re insane!”

Shots fired from inside the building, narrowly missing me. Shit . Could have died just now.

I reactivated the Sandy and picked up another katana.

The entrance to the building was narrow, too narrow for me to run in and not get hit by the hail of bullets that the building was spitting out.

Had to fight fire with fire.

I picked up a gun and aimed.

Straight at the Tyger Claw gangoon spraying me with a submachine gun.

Straight at mom.

The bullets were coming close. Had to get out of the way. I deactivated the Sandy after getting cover, waiting for him to reload. Once it got quiet, I re-entered Sandy’s overdrive speed and took aim again.

Again at mom.

I couldn’t really breathe while the Sandevistan was active. That wasn’t really how it worked—had to figure that out at some point.

But if I could, I had the feeling I’d be panting for breath. Growling. Trying to force myself to pull the trigger.

But I couldn’t. Not at mom.

I threw the useless iron away and just ran in. The goon still hadn’t fired yet, which gave me ample time to cut him down far before he could even pull the trigger.

I cut into his chest, almost bisecting him as I passed through to find two more of his chooms. I cut another one at his waist—the tall motherfucker’s neck was too high up for me to get to it conveniently—and got through an entire half of it until the fucking katana shattered.

No matter. It still had enough of an edge that I could lodge it into the throat of the last Tyger Claw in the hallway. His throat bent as well—clearly a sign of chrome.

I pulled out the katana from his scabbard and turned around to finish up the previous Tyger Claw, slicing into his back far enough that I probably cut into his lung, let alone the spine that I was pretty sure I had severed quite cleanly.

Best of all, this one didn’t break.

See? Didn’t need a fucking peashooter anyway when I had my sandy and something sharp. Didn’t need to use that loud and useless hunk of metal when I could do this.

And some of those gonks were chromed up, even. I doubted regular bullets would have even helped.

Why did I even bring anyone else with me on this gig? I could have finished this up entirely on my own.

I kicked open the door at the end of the hallway, only to find more hallway. I read a map conveniently placed on some wall and memorized the route to the warehouse.

I was close, just one more door at the end of another hallway. I kicked that open, too.

I immediately honed in on the eight hostiles in the room.

I broke my katana on the first guy’s neck, but that was alright, because he had one of his own. The next two went by smoothly, only for a third gonk to pull the same shit. Inconsiderate dick.

He didn’t have a katana either, forcing me to use the broken part on somebody else, who did happen to have one. Very kind of him.

Eight hostiles turned into one still breathing. I had two katanas in my hands and was about to decisively finish off the last gonk still standing still. From his perspective, he likely had only registered the door getting kicked in.

I was just ten feet away from him when his head turned towards me and he started moving.

He pulled out his own katana and parried mine. Taken off-guard, I crossed both swords in a guard, only for him to pull some kind of kendo move that tossed my left hand’s sword like I hadn’t even had it in a good grip.

Then he stabbed me. In my chest. The stab went through my back entirely and deflected against my chrome spine.

Immediately kicking me out of overdrive.

The Tyger Claw grunt grunted. Then he spoke in Japanese. “You think you’re the only person in Night City with a Sandevistan, friend?”

“No ,” I replied. My Japanese reading and writing comprehension was good enough, but my pronunciation was crap, not that I ever really practiced. I only learned the damn language so I could learn how to code better for Arasaka. “But I’m the only one who can do this. ”

I activated the Sandevistan again and stepped back, immediately feeling my body reknitting.

The Tyger Claw didn’t lag behind on activating his, either.

Before I could hit him again, he scored another slash on my left pec. It didn’t cut anything but muscle, but that was still disabling enough to render my left arm severely weakened.

That was fine. It gave me an opening to cut his chest.

The pain and shock forced me out of overdrive however, but thankfully, the same happened to him.

We both activated it at the same time again and passed by each other, each intent on slicing the other.

He landed a clean slice on my stomach. I struck nothing.

The strike kicked me back into the regular time-stream and before I could react, a sword had stuck itself in my chest again.

I refused to dwell on that damage, instead slicing his thigh up.

He backed away, and I reactivated the Sandevistan and prepared to attack—

[David, deactivate the Sandevistan! Your Critical Progress is at 90%!]

Fuck.

Couldn’t do that, or he’d slice me into sashimi.

I bit the bullet and continued my assault. He did the same.

I was getting better. He was hitting my sword more often than he was hitting me.

My Critical Progress kept climbing.

Ninety-one. Ninety-two. 

He scored a clean hit through my shoulder. Healed from that. Jumped up to Ninety-five.

Fuck!

I deactivated the Sandevistan, looking towards the door I came from wondering where my team was.

Thankfully, the Tyger Claw had done so, too.

“You’ve got a lot of ‘ganic,” the Tyger Claw said. “To be activating the Sandevistan so often. No more. Let us settle this with swords. No use killing ourselves before we can kill each other.”

I held my sword up in preparation. He was right. Couldn’t continue risking myself like this.

Had to play it smart. He could probably keep firing up the Sandevistan a couple more times in response to me doing the same. If we both didn’t, then I wouldn’t be screwing myself any harder. I’d let myself get hit one last time, and while he was gloating, I’d open up his throat.

He’d never see it coming. He already thought I was half-dead as I was.

The Tyger Claw’s sword arrived years before I had expected it, breaking mine near the hilt.

His sword was already en-route towards my neck, poised to separate my head from my body. I wouldn’t be able to activate the Sandevistan in time.

Just like that, huh?

Then his brains exploded on my face. He flew to the side and his sword had scored nothing but a nick on the skin of my throat.

“Fuck yeah!” I heard Rebecca shout from the doorway. “Right on time, too! D, you fucking gonk, why’d you run up ahead like that and almost get yourself zeroed?”

I couldn’t believe it. I was so close to losing it all.

What the fuck was I doing?

“Hello?” Rebecca had already reached me. She waved a hand in front of my face. “Earth to D? Near death shook you up good, huh? That’ll teach you not to shrug off your chooms, won’t it?”

“Thank you,” I said. “I thought I was a flatline.”

Rebecca laughed. “But you’re not. Anyway, that Sandy of yours is a fucking menace! How many gonks did you cut down?”

“Can’t remember,” I said.

The phrase brought an ugly feeling in my stomach. Can’t remember . Not even an ‘ I can’t remember’. Just a flippant two-word sentence dismissing the weight of all those, those real people I killed.

Did it for a reason, but since when had it been so easy?

Since forever, I guess. JK’s BDs had pretty much trained me since I was sixteen to get used to flatlining. At that time, it was just entertainment, though. The gruesomeness, the spectacle of it all, was like a horror movie. And I never felt guilty, either. After all, I never killed those people. Somebody else did. I was just borrowing their perspective. And hell, it was Doc who got me into them in the first place, a way to make money so mom didn’t have to bust her ass all the time.

I was blamefree.

How many have I killed?

“Eighteen,” I said. Only today.

I had exterminated two scav dens before that. I remembered their number, but only because I had been paid per kill. It was easier to remember the rewards than the work itself. Could hardly even recall their masked faces.

Sixteen.

Thirty-four people overall.

Eighteen kills in under five minutes counted as a decent cyberpsycho incident death toll as it was.

A cyberpsycho. That was where I was headed, wasn’t it?

Cyberpsychosis incidents were usually violent, because those that suffered from it were violent people to begin with.

All cyberpsychosis did was remove the separation between friend and foe.

Was I maybe doing things wrong?

No. I needed the money. Needed to get through the academy. No other way to go about it. Even if I decided to go full Netrunner from now on, Maine’s crew already had two that were way better than me. The only reason I was worth anything to the crew was because of the Sandevistan. And Nanny.

Couldn’t stop killing. But I couldn’t keep going at it like this, either.

What to do, then?

I had to remember. Remember each kill. Remember how I felt, and how bad it is. Don’t let myself make killing such a basic part of my identity that I could just suddenly lose it like that.

“Eighteen?” Rebecca shouted. “Fucking shit, D! You’re terrifying!”

“No,” I said. “Was stupid. Got too careless. Too fired up.” Got too fixated on proving that I was good enough without a gun, that I could make up for that deficiency ten-times over by simply using a blade.

“What happened at the end?” she asked. “Sandevistan got too hot or what?”

“He had a Sandy,” I explained. “And he knew how to use a sword. I didn’t .” Note to self; learn how to fucking use a sword.

My to-do list was getting longer and longer. Didn’t have enough hours of the day to deal with everything now. Fuck.

“Your jacket and shirt is all cut up,” Rebecca noted. With panic, I looked down to see the sliced and tattered remains of my favorite black shirt. Mom’s jacket hadn’t come out of it unscathed, either.

Fuck!

Today was not looking up at all.

“Don’t get all worked up!” she yelled. “That could easily have been you—huh? Are you bleeding?” I looked down again. My clothes were drenched in blood, but from the cuts on my shirt, one could easily see that I was unhurt.

“Not my blood, I guess,” I said.

All I knew was that I had a lot to learn before I could even begin to call myself a solo. James Norris would have aired out this entire facility in the literal blink of an eye. Of course, he was chromed up to his gills and didn’t have to worry about getting hit by bullets.

Still, there would have been a method to his tactics, his pre-cyberpsycho tactics at least. A method more intelligent than simply rushing the whole rat’s nest.

Kiwi and Pilar arrived in good time. The large shutter doors for the warehouse opened up then.

“Took care of things? And was that a fucking gunshot I heard next to the CHOO? For fuck's sakes!” Kiwi groaned, looking around. “Let’s load up the CHOO and get the fuck going before the Tygers arrive in force and we really blow up.”

“What about the data?” I asked.

“You so worried about the data, why don’t you crack into it?” she said.

“Didn’t bring my cyberdeck,” I replied. Kiwi scoffed. 

“As a teacher, you don’t exactly inspire confidence, you know that?” she said. “I’ll open up the interface for you on the terminal, but you’ll crack into it yourself.”

“Wouldn’t it be faster if you took it?” I asked. “We’re on a time limit here.”

“That’s why I’m giving you three minutes starting now. You don’t get it in time, we cut and run. Got it?”

I didn’t waste any time following her as she walked up the stairs to the mezzanine floor of the warehouse where we came upon a door. Kiwi opened it and her eyes flashed with blue as she began to hack into the terminal inside.

“There you go,” she said. “Get hacking.”

I took a seat in front of the terminal and got working.

And there was a whole lot of work to do. Not three minutes worth of work, either.

I needed the Sandevistan.

[David, I highly advise against doing this. You should be saving your uses of the Sandevistan up for a situation in which your life is in danger.]

Nanny was right. This was just extra eddies. Not something worth risking my life over, not when I would already be six thousand eddies richer by the end of this.

I could crack this in under three minutes. No, two minutes, now that we had taken all this time getting up here.

I just needed to get creative .

The ICE walls could be brute-forced through by a simple breach algorithm, but why go for simple when I could get more intuitive? What did the Tygers prioritize in terms of infosec? Getting breached by a Netrunner.

No shit. Their ICE would be strong if this data was worth something.

I looked around at the desk and started flipping stuff over. Pulled up drawers, swiped through notebooks.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I heard Kiwi ask dryly.

Then I found something underneath the fucking mousepad. A slip of paper. A password.

“Well, I’ll be,” Kiwi said. “Lucky break, huh?”

This probably made sense to the guy who did this. A Netrunner would have trusted in their abilities more than try to straight up look for a password written down.

I accessed the terminal and started loading all the data into a shard. It was quick. 

Once it was over, I reslotted the shard and ran outside, Kiwi following behind. Pilar, Rebecca and Falco had finished loading up the last of the barrels into a trailer attached to the back of Falco’s truck, and only needed a minute more to secure the cargo before we delta’d.

We got into the car and Falco burned rubber as he pulled out from the facility at an impressively reckless speed that almost made me fear for my life. But Falco wasn’t an edgerunning driver for nothing. We were driving on the wrong road in the motorway because it was faster than going with the flow and looking for a U-turn, and even with the trailer, Falco swerved away from oncoming cars like it was nothing.

I couldn’t even keep up with what the fuck he was doing. This truck was a heavy-ass emperor and yet he handled it like it was a Rayfield supercar.

Had to be some kinda neural implant, that was for sure. And mods in his ride, too. We finally reached the crossover, and Falco only sped up from there, as impossible as it sounded.

“Fuck!” Kiwi shouted. “Hostiles on the on-ramp a klick behind! Tyger Claws nabbed our signal. Falco, give them the runaround first before dropping off the payload. Three on motorbike. Flatline them while I hide our tracks!”

Rebecca piped up. “They won’t live long enough for Falco to need to shake ‘em off! Where the fuck is my Nekomata, big bro?” she asked.

“Here!” Pilar replied, handing her a gun that was probably even longer than she was tall. She opened up the window and scrambled outside like she didn’t fear death, which she likely didn’t in retrospect. Pilar opened another window and  joined her as well, sliding out of the truck through the windows smoothly.

“W-what if they fire back?!” I asked in shock. “And shouldn’t we not fire at them? What if we hit the Chew?”

"Rebecca's a sharp shooter, no doubt," Falco drawled. "And even them Tygers ain't foolish enough to blow up the very treasure they're fixin’ to retrieve."

I was reminded of that samurai Tyger Claw’s head exploding on my face. I’d have to wash so much blood off my clothes once I got home. 

I heard three shots fired from the roof, and then two slaps to the roof.

“All done with that business,” Falco said. Right after, Pilar and Rebecca slid back into the car each from different windows, sandwiching me once again.

I looked up to Pilar. “What were you doing up there?”

“Bracing her!” he replied. “That Nekomata would have thrown her clean off the roof if I hadn’t fixed her to the spot.”

I nodded. 

Falco pulled out from the motorway and into the city proper.

“We’re nigh outside of Westbrook now, just ‘bout there,” Falco said. “How goes the trace-hidin’, Kiwi?”

“Done,” she said. “There shouldn’t be a third encounter. Take us to the client and let’s get our eddies. D, shoot Reyes his data already.”

I did.

El Capitan: Always fast with you, kid, muy rapido. 

D: Gracias. What was the bonus anyway? My chooms didn’t think it was fair that you didn’t mention the number.

El Capitan: Wasn’t expecting to receive it, to be honest. Let me see. Ah. Perfect. Better than perfect. How does fifteen sound?

My eyes bulged. 

“He’s saying fifteen for the data,” I said out loud.

“Say twenty-five,” Kiwi replied. “Sweat the guy.”

D: Twenty-five. 

El Capitan: Arguing with your fixer about pay ain’t good form, kid. Expected better from you.

D: Not arguing. Sorry. Just negotiating. We did a good job, and we almost didn’t get the data before more Tygers reached us.

El Capitan: How many were there?

The sixteen that Rebecca and Pilar flatlined and the eighteen I took care of added up to…

D: Thirty-four, at least. Actually, thirty-seven. Had a run-in with three more at the highway. Took care of them.

El Capitan: How many at the site?

D: Thirty-four.

The same number of people I had killed overall. That number kept popping up.

El Capitan: At least four more than the max that the intel suggested. I suppose we could settle for a twenty grand bonus. Don’t push it, kid.

D: Thank you, Capitan. 

“Twenty,” I said out loud.

“Did you agree?” Kiwi asked. 

I nodded. She scoffed. “Could have asked for at least two grand more. You’re too easy, kid.”

“Still, though!” Pilar said. “Ten grand each for a job ain’t pocket change! I’ll finally be able to afford my new mitts!”

I almost felt like protesting that; I had done everything to get the data back. I should be getting the bonus, maybe splitting it up with Kiwi a bit. But Maine’s words reminded me that this was the way. Everybody got a fair shake. Quibbling over money was a surefire way to make sure the chooms who had your back would sooner see you flatlined than anything else.

Couldn’t grumble, couldn’t argue. This was the way.

Besides, I was making good fucking money as it was. What was the point of being greedy?

Rebecca piped up as well. “And I’ll finally be able to get Guts upgraded!”

And now I was just seven grand away from paying off my second-last semester of school. The realization killed my enthusiasm with a vengeance. I didn’t even have enough money to do things that I wanted, and realistically, I’d probably have spent around a grand on supplements before getting the scratch to pay off school.

No. That was stupid. I had made so much money as it was in such little time. Seven more grand would be one, maybe two jobs away.

The last Tyger Claw I had killed almost had me dead to rights.

What if my next gig was my last?

I shook my head, then slapped my face. No. Fuck that cowardly gonk shit. 

I lost my head. Wouldn’t happen again.

“Wowza!” Pilar said. “What’s got you fired up, Lucha-D?”

“Nothing,” I said. 

“Gonk almost got himself flatlined,” Rebecca laughed. 

“Wanna talk about it, kid?” Falco asked.

“No,” I replied. “Just lost my cool is all.”

“Quickest route to meetin’ the undertaker, sure is,” Falco said. “Wanna hear an old man’s words or are ya content to stew on it yourself?”

“I… I don’t mind,” I shrugged.

"Well then listen close, young buck. When them bullets start whistlin' and the world's fixin' to go up in smoke, remember this: Keep your heart steady as a rock and your mind as cool as a desert breeze. Let the anger and fear roll off you like water off a duck's back. Stay focused on the job at hand, and don't let your passions get the better of you. It's the ones who keep their heads when all hell's breakin' loose that ride out of the fray and live to tell the tale. So, stay cool, stay collected, and you just might make it through to see another sunrise."

“And how do I do that?” I asked, annoyed. What a dickbag. ‘Lost your cool, young fella? Just stay cool next time’. I knew the importance of keeping cool. Didn’t need a lecture on that.

"You do that by breathin' slow and deep, son. Take in the dusty air, let it fill your lungs, and then exhale all that tension and noise. Focus on your training, your aim, and your comrades. Picture the task ahead, not the chaos around. And remember, it ain't just about stayin' alive; it's about gettin' the job done and gettin' back to camp. Keep your wits about you, trust your instincts, and trust your crew. That's how you keep cool in the heat of battle."

I nodded. I’d consider that the next time. 

I had come this far already with no need to ever stay cool because my Sandevistan practically invalidated any conflict. Until it didn’t, at which point I was reduced to just another kid playing at something they really weren’t.

If I had gone on this gig on my own, I’d have been a flatline. 

I couldn’t keep thinking that I didn’t need a crew.

“Guys,” I said. “I’m sorry I ran up ahead. Should have trusted you guys more. That’s not how I want to roll, and I promise this time will be the last time I ever pull a gonk move like that.”

The easy solution would be to only ever move with my crew, and take out my share of enemies while watching the backs of my chooms. That way, I’d probably never be in that much danger due to the power of my Sandevistan and Nanny.

But that was an easy solution. I couldn’t settle for that if I wanted to get where I wanted to get. Whether it was edgerunning or climbing to the top of Arasaka, I had to be a cut above the rest. That didn’t mean getting the best chrome out there, chipping in more and more metal at the cost of my body and mind. 

It meant really getting that good, and going at it the long and hard way. If I had to replace parts of me with machine every time I felt I wasn’t good enough, then I never would be. There were things only cyberware could do, and things that cyberware simply made easy. I had to know the difference.

That started with fundamentals. Weapons-training. 

Pilar’s hand slapped me on the back. Just his hand placed horizontally could almost cover my entire back. “Don’t worry about it, kid. You learned your lesson, and I can tell you’re not that much of a gonk to go around ignoring Lady Death’s tutoring session. Her tits are way too big to do that.”

“Just save some for me next time!” Rebecca said. “It’s not fun just flatlining unsuspecting gonks!” she whined.

“Okay,” I said. “Uhm, Falco, thanks for the advice.”

"You're welcome, kid. Just remember, it ain't the advice that'll keep you alive; it's how you use it.”

“I know,” I said. “Could you drop me off near an NCART station after we make the delivery?”

“Not staying for the afterparty?” Falco asked.

“Wait, there’s always an afterparty?”

“It’s tradition!” Rebecca said. “You’re not going anywhere until we get you nice and boozed up, D!”

I nodded shakily. “Oh, okay.”

Chapter 10: First Date

Summary:

Scheming fixers, a useless gig (and a jogging session turned date?!?!?!)

For the low, low price of fifty thousand eurodollars, Muamar ‘El Capitan’ Reyes was now the proud owner of thirty barrels of super-chew. The stuff was like nitrous on steroids, and edgerunners who specialized in getaways and heists paid a premium for that shit. 

Reyes’ Autofixer business would be swimming in eddies soon enough.

So naturally, he celebrated in the Afterlife, smoking a celebratory cigar, high-end enough to be warranted in this situation, but not the best he had either. That stuff was reserved for the weddings of his children, his daughters’ quinces and the birth of his first grandchild.

This was just a step below that. Most would have used those high-end cigars in an occasion like this, but Mu was different. Biz was just a means to an end, and that end was the happy lives of his family, and nothing else.

Cowboy— or C0wb0y to his friends—his Netrunner on retainer, was browsing the Net, his eyes sparkling with blue, while his bodyguard brought three pitchers of beer for the table. The spindly blond Netrunner would probably only finish half of his, leaving it for his bodyguard Saul, but Mu intended to polish his up and then call it a night.

“Thirty-five dead at the scene,” Cowboy said. Then he froze. “One of them was Kaze Oni. Highly valued Tyger Claw asset. Sandevistan of his own, and over a hundred confirmed kills: enemy gangoons, cops, hell, even other Tygers. Guy was basically a cyberpsycho.”

Mu recognized that name. Wind Demon. Kaze Oni earned that nickname with his penchant for violence and impeccable skill at dealing death by sword. And they had killed him.

As far as Mu was aware, no one in Maine’s crew even had a Sandevistan aside from D, and his was a cut above others. It was unlikely that they would have been able to kill Kaze Oni without D.

And now Mu felt bad for stiffing the kid and his friends. Well, it wasn’t really stiffing , per se. Just tugging on the kid’s overly respectful nature and giving a lowball offer to see if he had the balls to negotiate for his worth, which he clearly didn’t.

He’d figure it out soon, though, and when he did, Mu would make sure he knew which fixer to go to. It wouldn’t be hard. He just had to give the kid the respect he deserved. Most fixers would fail exactly there.

Hell, he might just give the kid a taste of getting truly shafted by a fixer. Maine’s fuckup with Faraday was widely agreed to just be Faraday shenanigans—Maine himself had stated that their plan was bulletproof, the target should have stayed where he was, and only didn’t do it purely by random chance, and even then they managed to get away with the payload. It just happened that the target was paranoid enough to rat on himself, and his boss was even more paranoid and actually fired him and rendered the data they klepped useless.

But that was small potatoes; Faraday still paid them, and like an overly dramatic ex-girlfriend, he’d go right back to his favorite team of mercs—it was an open secret in the fixer community that the four-eyed villain had a soft-spot for that gun-toting soon-to-be cyberpsycho and his chooms. 

For now, he’d work on getting on D’s good side. And with the new information that Cowboy supplied him with, he could do that very easily.

He wrote a message on the Afterlife Fixer groupchat.

‘New kid named D on the block. Wears a Sandevistan, probably mil-spec. Took care of two gigs for me faster than fast: slaughtered a group of seven scavs on his lonesome and got away with some data. Has Netrunning skills apparently. And from the latest gig I gave him, he managed to kill Kaze Oni of the Tyger Claws.’

Sure, there was value in gatekeeping young D and using him for himself every time, but that was the greedy and naive option.

Giving him higher-paid gigs and ensuring loyalty? The smart option.

Doing the above while also auctioning off D’s contact information and recommendation to other fixers? That was the captain option.

And soon enough, there’d be a meeting with other fixers and a couple of freshies would be in attendance. He just had to pick the worst, rat-bastardest guy in the line-up and send him D’s way—with a healthy warning beforehand of course. 

And by comparison, The Captain would look like a best choom.

000

I didn’t stay for more than six drinks before I got woozy enough that I realized staying for longer would be a bad idea. Tomorrow was a school-day after all.

Once I got home, I wasted no time showering and going to bed, still naked.

I woke up to my cyberoptic alarm, which sucked ass. Always felt like my brain was replaced with a beehive. That said, I needed the extra persuasion to wake up considering last night. I activated the Sandevistan to ‘wake up’ faster, a nifty trick I had picked up quite early. I was well-rested according to Nanny. The nanites made sure that I would get enough rest by just sleeping for four hours. Thankfully, I had gotten home early enough to not need that.

I changed to my school uniform and welcomed another day of shitty school.

Then I received a call from Maine.

Maine: Congratty-gratz on a gig well done, kid. 

David: Thanks!

Maine: That’s not all, though. I’m still waiting for my cut

My stomach sank. His cut ? We hadn’t even thought about cutting him in. Why was he asking for it from me?

Maine: Hah! Just messin’ with ya. Bet you just shat bricks now, didn’t you? You did, didn’t you?

David: That wasn’t funny.

Maine: Serious about the congratulations, though. Kiwi said you only almost got flatlined once, too. And that was after taking out the lion’s share of the gangoons.

David: Got cocky and careless. Not proud of what I did.

Maine: Good. That means you learned. Don’t appreciate hot-headed gonks with something to prove in my crew, so keep that temper under wraps for next time, got it?

David: Loud and clear. Still angry at myself.

Maine: No need to brown nose either. 

David: Anything you needed?

Maine: You took out a lot of gonks. You alright with that?

Did he want the truth? I would give it anyway.

David: Too alright with it. Is what worries me.

Maine: That’s a new-new one. Explain.

David: Too much over a holo call. Next time I see you?

Maine: Fine.

David: Also, got any gigs for me?

Maine: Dammit, kid.

He hung up.

During my lunch hour at school, I decided to go to the guidance counselor. 

She told me that dropping my university courses wouldn’t reduce my chances of getting a scholarship, but if I somehow didn’t get one, I’d have to pay more money to enroll in those courses once I was in the NCU. She had a lot to say about the case comp, though. According to her, it was the sort of stuff that Arasaka recruiters would value highly, let alone the admissions board in the university.

In the end, I decided not to drop out. I already knew so much about coding that none of the lessons or the assignments meant much to me to begin with in the first place. I could just zone out for those lessons while working on Nakajima’s project.

I got started on his code review during one such lesson as well.

It was… stimulating, to say the least.

The ICE review showed me what real ICE was supposed to be. It was a shame that it had already been cracked. Just modifying some parameters and values wouldn’t reset its foolproofness. It needed an additional layer of complexity to be salvaged. Higher maths, mathematical theorems that pushed even my own limits on the subject.

I got to working on that, testing my revisions against the key that Nakajima had included with it repeatedly.

Once it got sturdy enough to resist the key for an estimated hour, I began the work of incorporating it, or what I had learned from it at least, into my own ICE.

This work continued well into the evening.

And the next day.

Once I was finally satisfied with what I had, I let Nanny replace its former ICE with that. It was now three times stronger. Could make it even stronger in time.

Had to get started on debugging the other stuff that Nakajima gave me.

And get started on what Kiwi had sent me.

I found that I couldn’t, though. My brain was just… exhausted . All of that focus must have overheated some part of my brain. Just thinking about coding more sent disgust through me. Needed to take a break.

That meant a gig.

Maine was helpful for once.

Maine: Go to Aldo’s and retrieve a package. Deliver it to Pilar’s address. I’ll give you a thousand edds for it.

What a useless gig.

I did it anyway. 

I met the old man in his warehouse near the desert.

“What’s your name?!” Aldo shouted.

“D,” I replied.

“B?” he asked.

“D,” I said again.

“What’s with the cocksucking mask, B ?!”

“D!” I yelled. “D for dog!”

“B for bog?!” he shouted. 

“Dog! Like a dalmatian!”

“What in the fuck is a balmatian?”

“D!” I screamed. “It’s D ! A, B, C, D ! Fourth letter of the fucking alphabet, D!”

“Yeah, I get it,” he shouted. “No need to scream, you inbred fucktard.”

“I’m here for a package,” I said.

“Here ya go!” he threw a wrapped-up object my way. “Heard you did pretty well on your last two gigs with the crew. Flatlined a fuckload of fuckers, didn’t ya?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Probably just beginner’s luck,” he said.

“Hey, fuck you!”

He scoffed. “Hope you do as good next time, D. Let’s see if you’re hot shit, or just another shitstain.”

I stalked off from him, having already secured the package.

Some cops were chatting with each other on my way. I walked past them.

“Hey, masked fucker,” a cop said. I turned to them slowly. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“Just walking,” I said. “Is there a problem?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Show me what’s under your jacket.”

I reached into the inside of my jacket, and pulled out my middle finger.

Then I activated the Sandevistan, bolting far away before they could even react.

I arrived at Pilar’s apartment pretty soon. I knocked on the door, and got a faceful of a pink lexington aimed right at my forehead. I froze. Behind it was the diminutive Rebecca wearing nothing but her underwear.

“Oh hey, D, my man! Didn’t see you there!”

“Got a package for Pilar,” I responded, the gun still in my face.

“Bro! Got a package for you!”

Pilar wheeled up to the door on his swivel chair and grabbed the package from almost six feet away before tearing into it with happy techie noises.

“Oh!” Pilar said from places unseen, showing nothing but his hands. “Don’t forget to tip the kid on his way out!”

Rebecca shot the hand. “You tip him, you asshole!” The bullet pinged off the golden fingers easily. He shouted in ecstasy about the bulletproof nature of them.

I was just grateful that the gun was no longer on my face.

“That it?” she asked me, and I nodded.

“Nothing else Maine asked me to do,” I confirmed.

“Here you go, then,” she said, looking at me with a flash of golden eyes.

Five hundred eddies dropped into my account. “Holy fucking shit, this is a tip ?” I asked. This would pretty much erase my expenses for the next three weeks unless I continued training my body some more.

“You’re fucking adorable, you know,” Rebecca said. I sputtered. “Well, be seein’ ya, D. Try not to get in any more swordfights with Tyger Claws.”

“I won’t,” I replied, quite smoothly I might say.

We parted ways shortly after. I hadn’t even gotten to the pavement before someone named Stupid Bitch pinged me.

Stupid Bitch: Meet me at the pier at seven.

She sent me coordinates to go with the info as well.

What the fuck? Was she planning to flatline me or something

David: Why?

Stupid Bitch: Don’t be scared. Maine bullied me into it. Said I had to tire you out or some shit. I don’t know. Don’t care. We’re going jogging. Be there or not, I don’t give a shit.

I sent a message to Maine.

David: Stupid Bitch—I mean, Lucy wants to jog with me. If I don’t turn up after this, then you know what happened to me.

Maine: Don’t be so fucking dramatic, goddamn. Make nice. She will, too. Done told her to.

I groaned.

000

Lucy was facing the ocean when I arrived, unmasked of course since we weren’t working and she already knew my face. “You came,” she said. 

“I’m not a bitch,” I shot back.

“You certainly don’t look the part,” she said as she turned to me with a twirl. “Pretty broad frame. Bigger than when I met you. You juiced up or something?”

“None of your business,” I replied.

“You won’t be able to handle more implants that way,” she said. “Not when your organs are struggling under the strain of your muscles and that poison.”

“Whatever,” I replied. “Like you know anything.”

She chuckled derisively. “‘Whatever’ is right. See if I care when your heart pops like an overfilled balloon.” She began stretching her legs. Then she looked up at me. “You might wanna soften those muscles up if you don’t want a quick trip to a ripper.”

I scoffed. I started stretching as well, one leg bent and the other stretched as far to my side as I could.

I immediately found that to be way more of a problem than it had to be.

Lucy was stretching so much farther than me.

So much easier, too.

I could copy that. Heal from whatever damage I did as well.

I forced my body to comply, feeling something tear and cause immense agony as I copied Lucy’s maneuver perfectly. This hurt, but not nearly as much as getting stabbed did. I could handle this.

I activated the Sandevistan to take care of the damage, and did the same to my left leg, slowly stretching—

“What the fuck are you doing,” Lucy asked. “I’m not calling an ambulance if you hurt yourself.”

“Fuck you!” I groaned as I opened my joints up to the full range of motion that they had the potential to reach.

I went even further this time.

Then I healed.

I sat on my butt and stretched my hands towards my feet as well, and pushed even harder while I did. That was a far harder stretch to force, but eventually, I managed to fold myself completely, resting my forehead in-between both knees. Something in my back and hamstrings had snapped as well, but that didn’t matter, either.

I checked my Critical Progress. This was hardly an exercise at this point so much as it was hurting myself physically and regenerating from it. As such, I sat at an impressive fifteen percent already.

I did splits after, forward splits first for both legs, then sideway splits.

I started doing exercises to bend backwards, my legs laying flat at the front as I pushed myself up to curl backwards as far as I could. Thankfully, my one piece of chrome made this exercise far less risky for my overall health. The Sandevistan curled easily with me, and it was only my back muscles that strained.

Then I got started on my arms.

I popped my left arm out from its shoulder socket. I gritted my teeth, refusing to scream as I pushed it back in place and regenerated the damage.

Against my better judgment, I repeated the action with my right arm, stretching it behind me as far as I could with the help of the ground.

The same happened.

Didn’t matter. It was only pain.

Lucy stared at me in clear disgust while I flexed my newfound increased range of motion. I grabbed both my ankles from behind and pulled my feet towards my shoulders, turning into a human wheel as I did.

“All that Juice burn out your pain receptors or something?” Lucy asked. “Didn’t know it could even do that.”

With my stomach flat on the ground, I bent my legs and flattened them against the ground so they made a W shape. Something tore at my knees, but I repaired that as well.

By the end of it, only the memory of pain remained. I sat up and crossed my legs before pulling them up by the ankles while my knees were still touching the floor.

I didn’t stop until I could feel tearing there as well.

I couldn’t think of any more things to increase the flexibility of, except maybe my neck, but that felt like a fucking ridiculous thing to do.

And my neck was actually extremely flexible as it was. I was decently sure the Sandevistan let me turn my head almost a hundred and twenty degrees or so.

Pushing that any further just felt dangerous.

But I’d try it anyway.

Eventually, the Sandevistan itself prevented me from twisting my neck any further than a hundred and sixty, maybe seventy degrees, but the strain of overshooting my limits remained.

I did it both ways and healed the resultant damage before getting up on my feet.

“Let’s get started,” I said.

She scoffed. “Freak.”

I clenched my jaws. Stupid Bitch indeed. We started jogging alongside the water.

It only took ten minutes when something weird happened. I was breathing too hard.

Ten minutes after that, and my legs were getting numb.

I paused for a moment to activate the Sandevistan, but the numbness remained, and so did my shortness of breath.

[Your muscles lack oxygen. This cannot be rapidly regenerated by the Sandevistan the same way you can not regenerate from dehydration or malnutrition.]

Fuck!

Lucy was getting way ahead, too.

She looked over her shoulders and with a disdainful sneer, slowed down so I could catch up.

My lungs burned.

I activated the Sandevistan to take care of that. Thankfully, that at least worked. I was still panting like a dog, it just didn’t hurt as much.

I was fucking thirsty , though. I stopped near a vending machine to get a bottle of Real Water. Only too late did I realize that it was sparkling. Fuck. Why would anyone in the entire world drink fizzy fucking water? Such bullshit. I groaned through the pain to finish up the drink and kept going.

Hitting the gym was simple. The exercises were quick, and the Sandevistan made the pain a bygone memory by the time it would start to really bother me. Hell, getting diced up by that sushi chef of a Tyger Claw wasn’t nearly as bothersome either. It fucking hurt like nothing else did, but it didn’t hurt for long.

This did .

I couldn’t stop panting, couldn’t get rid of the numbness.

[Your exercise has not prepared you for this category of physical activity. An oversight on your part.]

David: Oversight my ass, what the fuck, Nanny?!

[You’re projecting your irritation, David. Look inwards for a culprit to your troubles. You only did anaerobic exercises. It should be no surprise to you that aerobic exercises would be difficult, especially considering your added weight.]

Motherfucker. 

This lasted another two hours.

Two whole fucking hours.

I’m pretty sure Lucy did that on purpose.

By the end of it, we were back where we started, and I was doing everything not to fall on the ground and become a panting mess.

“Spit it out,” she said. “What cyberware are you sporting that let you keep up like that. Some kind of hormone regulator? Synth-tendons? You chipped in pretty fast after getting the Sandy.”

Only a network of nanites that made sure that whatever I did to my gonk-self, I’d at least walk away from it. And look at that, I was 50% on Critical Progress as well.

“A minute,” I said. “Just need… breathe…”

Then I felt a tingle in my brain.

[Detecting scan!]

I glared at her. 

David: Can our ICE take care of it?

[From a remote intrusion, yes. She would need to jack into our system to breach our ICE for a full data scan of your cyberware.]

David: Would she be able to find you if she scanned you?

[Unlikely. Unless she did a full-body thermal scan, she wouldn’t be able to find me as I can quite easily sever my connection to the rest of your cyberware.]

“You should just give that up,” I said.

“Self-ICE?” she growled. 

“Soon a cyberdeck,” I said, and then chuckled. “Who knows,” I panted. “Might replace ya… someday.”

She scoffed. “Fuck off. You’re just an amateur. You might have scored an old quickhack from Kiwi, but that won’t help you.”

I stood up straight. “I don’t wanna keep fighting,” I said. “You’re the one who wants to keep starting shit, you know.”

“You realize how suspicious you are, right?” Lucy said. “You come out of nowhere and flatline eighteen gangsters on your first week as a solo, and that’s not even mentioning your backstory. That doesn’t add up. So tell me; what are you really hiding?”

“Even if I was hiding something,” I said. “Why should I trust you with any of that? From day one, you’ve wanted me fucking dead or gone. You think I’m some sort of Arasaka plant or something, right? Then why the fuck would I be so open about my connection to them? And why do you think my mother worked so hard to get me through school if I was just an asset to them all along? Or do you think they somehow approached me after my mom died and I chipped the Sandy in? How many days would they have had to train me, then?”

“Fine,” she said.

“Can we, can we just fucking truce already?” I pleaded. “You said a lot of shit to me, you know, so I shouldn’t be the one to ask for this. Just… chill .”

“Okay,” she said. “Fine. I wanna know more about you, find out what’s the deal with you. Why not play a game of twenty-one questions?” 

I raised an eyebrow. “Okay,” I said slowly. That was suspicious.

“You hungry?”

I was fucking starving.

Might as well spend some of Rebecca’s tip on a real meal than to choke down another SCOP bar. “Sure,” I said. “What are the rules? We alternate on question-asking?”

“What are you hiding?” she immediately asked.

“Some porn BDs under my bed,” I said. “What’s your beef with Arasaka?”

“Don’t like their media and marketing department. Tacky adverts and all that.”

“Hmm,” I replied. “Insightful. How old are you?”

“Nineteen,” she said. We passed by a street corner with a sign that read ‘34th’. “What do you feel when you kill people?”

I clenched my jaws. Then I turned my head at her. “I feel a sense of reward. I feel good.”

She crinkled her nose at that.

“Where’d you learn how to netrun?” I asked.

“In a basement,” she replied. “Did you cry when your mom died?”

I clenched my hands into fists. She didn’t have to go there. “Not at first,” I replied. “Between the rent, utilities and the late payment penalties, and the fact that I’d barely come out of it alive myself, I didn’t really feel much until the next morning. That’s when I cried.” I turned to her again. “Did you ask me that to hurt me?”

Her eyes widened. She faced forward and didn’t say anything. 

“Okay, then,” I said. “Different question—”

“My bad about that,” she interrupted. “It was a low-blow. Don’t need those to make you feel like shit about your choices.”

I tried to parse that for longer than strictly necessary. This was the first time she’d been anything but downright nasty to me ever since I told her about my dream. “Just… don’t do it again.”

She hummed.

“You know any good places to eat in the area?” I asked.

She grinned slyly. “You used up a question just now. But yes. I’m taking you there right now. My turn: what do your classmates think of you?”

I guffawed. “Half of them want me to die. The other half don’t give a shit one way or the other.” We crossed the road and passed by a storefront that advertised a fake furcoat at 34% off, probably itchy as all fuck. “Say, how many people have you killed?”

“You keep count or what?”

“Answer the question.”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe twenty. I usually don’t end up flatlining people unless I’m up against another Netrunner.”

I nodded. “Okay.”

“What about you? Other day your first time?”

I shook my head. “I’ve… I killed thirty-four people since my mother died last week.” I clenched my jaws as a wave of self-disgust washed over me. “I should be handling it worse than I have, but… I think I’m handling it well. Too well.”

No nightmares or breakdowns or anything like that. I hadn’t even shed a tear or anything. I just… didn’t feel badly enough about what I did to even react emotionally at all.

“Think I might be some sort of psychopath,” I muttered. Then I realized what I had said, and who I had said it to. “That was a joke.”

“Maine’s probably killed hundreds by now. The rest of the gang have more blood on their hands than the average gangoon. You’re in good company.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But Maine still hit me up asking me how I was feeling after zeroing those people. Tells me I’m not supposed to feel so balanced about it.”

“What does it matter?” she asked, her tone utterly dismissive. “You feel guilty anyway, so you’re not the monster you think you are. Kind of a cringeworthy thing to bitch about, you know.”

I growled. “Whatever,” I said. She scoffed. 

“Why do you want to netrun?” she asked.

“It’s my turn,” I said. And then, because I couldn’t think of anything to say, I just asked “What was your first piece of chrome?”

“Fuck off,” she replied with far more venom than I had expected from her. 

“You’re the one who suggested this fucking game,” I replied. “Don’t be a bitch.”

She walked up ahead and stopped in front of me with a look of murder. “David, you piss me off so effortlessly that I can’t help but wonder how you’re even real,” she said. “You are such a scumbag that it would almost be funny if your scumbaggery wasn’t directed towards me.”

I stopped and glared at her. “Ah yeah? Right back at ya? You’re a goddamn lunatic is what you are! Literally !” All I asked her about was her chrome. Why was that such a touchy topic? What, was it a Midnight Lady or something? Not the first time someone had chipped in a chrome pussy or dick for their first. Pretty sure Katsuo had long-since thrown out whatever tiny thing he was packing the second he was old enough to; like hell those strongarms were his first. “I don’t need to take flack just because your first piece was something embarrassing! What are you, a fucking kid?”

“It’s not embarrassing,” she said. Quietly. Too quietly. I got a bad feeling at that. “It just… wasn’t my choice.”

All the anger faded away from me. “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Sorry,” I said.

She turned around to walk ahead, saying nothing else. Not for several more minutes, in fact.

Eventually, I just had to break the silence. “You wanted to know why I wanted to learn how to netrun, right?” I asked. She didn’t react. “I told Kiwi it’s because I’m a paranoid netizen who’s scared of corporate oversight. Actually, the reason is just… because I’m good at coding. And it feels nice to be good at something. So I want to be better. Staying safe in the Net and making sure the corps can’t screw me is one thing, yeah, but I’ve been told my entire life that I’m gifted, even if I’ve never really been rewarded by it. So I want to use my gift to take what I deserve, to reward myself, and I can only do that by being the best. Already hit the ceiling of what I can learn in school, just need more.”

“Cute,” she replied. “Restaurant’s right up ahead,” she said. The facade was neon green and blue, the word Turing’s writ large over it. It gave the impression of a strip club as much as a restaurant. Once we entered, the confusion only grew. There were a lot of skimpily clad men in there of all shapes and sizes, some dancing with each other at a far dance floor, or making out near the bar. There were tables were people were eating as well. Lucy led me to a booth where she just sat. “Connect to the Local Net,” she said.

I did, using my optics to reach the nearest modem and get started. It took a while, my eyes not really being the fastest interfaces in the world, but once I got in, I was met with a vast ocean of data that slowly slowly configured themselves to a series of different front-ends, forums and chatrooms where the topics all seemed to be coding-related.

“This is a programmer hub,” she said. “Not exactly a Netrunner bar—can’t really buy any hacks or ICE here—but it’s more like an entryway into that world.”

Holy fuck. “Why are you showing me this?”

“An apology,” she said. “For bringing up your mom, just so you don’t think that I’m the bad guy.” I frowned in shock. “Don’t even go there, you’re the one who wants to become a fucking corpo. Flatlining you in your infancy would be a mercy.”

“Fuck you,” I replied. “But… thank you.”

“Fuck you too, and you’re welcome.”

A waiter—one that was modestly dressed at that in a pair of black pants, a white shirt with black suspenders above and a bowtie—slapped a menu down on our table. Before he could leave, Lucy just piped up. “We’ll both have the barbecue burger with fries.”

“Drinks?” the waiter asked, clearly disinterested.

“Water,” I said. “Still water.”

“Don’t have that,” the waiter replied. 

“Anything that’s not fizzy?” I replied. 

“Why?”

“I can’t stand that stuff.”

“What are you, retarded?” the waiter asked.

“What’s it to ya?” I challenged. He rolled his eyes.

“We have synth juice.”

“What flavor?”

“Juice-flavored.”

Okay, Martinez, what would it be? Mystery juice or carbonation?

“Just give me the juice,” I muttered. And then I looked through the menu. The double burger didn’t even look that big, and the weight was laughably low. Needed more. “And a number eighteen,” I said, eyeing the side of chicken legs. “Number twenty-eight,” the spicy chicken wings. “And… thirty-four,” a large beef burrito.

Lucy put a hand over my menu. “You do realize you’re paying for that, right?”

“Yes,” I said. “Of course.”

The waiter looked at me expectantly. “Anything else? A whole cow to go with all of that?”

I looked at Lucy askance. “Is this, like, the theme of this restaurant or something, what’s wrong with him?”

“My deepest apologies, valued customer,” the waiter butted in. “I didn’t mean to reveal my irritation since you guys came in five minutes before the kitchen closes, ordering enough to feed a fucking army.”

Before I could apologize, Lucy slammed the table with her hand. “Look, you underfucked dickhead, are you gonna do your fucking job or am I going to have to kick your ass before you do it?”

The waiter backed away and nodded hastily before leaving.

I hummed. “Glad to see you’re not just crazy with me. For a second there I thought I was special.”

“Funny joke,” she replied in a deadpan. Then she stood up. “Alright, newbie. You said you’re good at coding, right? Any good at math?”

I scoffed. “Probably better than you.”

“You want to put money on that, big boy?”

“What did you have in mind?” I stood up. She took me to a corner of the restaurant that had some old-school arcade games with names I couldn’t recognize at all. There was one that was called Robocode, and then one that was called ‘Graphwars’. We stopped in front of that one. 

“Functions,” she said. “You any good with those?”

She booted the machine up and selected a game-mode called ‘No Turns’.

“Yeah,” I said. 

“Game takes place on a Cartesian plane. You’re supposed to write functions in an input field that turns into graphs that emanate from your player characters like beams, and they’re supposed to bend around obstacles and hit my player characters. The game is usually turn-based, but I made it so that you can spam inputs, meaning you don’t have to wait any turns. Got it?”

The game loaded, revealing the Cartesian plane with its player characters, three for each of us, and the obstacles represented by large black shapes that likely couldn’t be traversed by the beams.

I already began to calculate the correct functions. “When do we start?” I looked around the console for controls, but all there was was a couple of buttons and a joystick.

She pointed at her eyes and I nodded in understanding, connecting my optics to the game. It had a convenient little wireless port I could hop into for that, and the input field worked at the speed of thought.

“Now,” she said. A few seconds later, a beam sent by one of Lucy’s characters bent around a circular void and hit mine dead-on, killing it instantly.

The same character whose function I was just about to plot, too.

I selected a different character and wrote in the function as quickly as I could, sending the graph just as one was sent out from another character of Lucy’s, just not the one I was targetting. I killed hers, and she killed mine, and I was left with one, while she had two.

I sent out another graph, killing her lowermost character and her last remaining one fired out a shot. I frantically formulated a function so that I could at least make it a tie, provided my graph didn’t suddenly die en-route if my character was killed.

Mercifully enough, she missed.

I fired the graph off and hit her dead-on.

I whooped in joy.

And then I realized with shock that I had forgotten to put money on this game. Dammit.

Lucy looked at me with narrowed eyes. “Using cyberware, are we?” she asked. “Two can play that game.”

“What? No!”

We started a new game, and she instantly destroyed my first character. 

I had no choice. I activated the Sandevistan.

I formulated functions for both my remaining characters, let my speed return to normal as I watched them destroy two of her characters instantly. Then I used the Sandevistan again and fed both of my characters each different functions to hit her last remaining player.

I gave her a shit-eating grin. “That was cyberware. Trust me, you don’t want to play that game with me.”

She clenched her jaws. “Still doesn’t explain how you’re so accurate. You using some kind of mathware? A chip?”

I laughed. “It’s all natural. Shocking, isn’t it?” I always got something of a primal rush every time I had the opportunity to show up someone that thought they were better than me. In Arasaka Academy, that was pretty much everyone. Lucy was no different. Even her accusations of cheating were pretty old-hat to me already.

“You expect me to believe that?”

“I actually don’t,” I said. “We can play with a handicap if you want, though I’m not really sure on how to do that. I could recite the ABC’s out loud on repeat or something.”

“You want to cheat on a video game, David, that’s your prerogative; just know that it’s really fucking low, even for a corpo.”

I laughed. “I don’t have to prove anything to you, Lucy. And trust me, you have no idea how much these accusations feed my ego. I’m feeling so nova right now.”

“Rematch,” she said. “No neuralware either. Natural speed. We start when the next game loads.”

I won that round.

And then the next.

And the next after that.

In the last round, after having sufficiently warmed up, I plotted a single graph that took out all of her characters in one fell swoop.

“Aw yeah!” I shouted. “Fucking nova! That’s what I’m talking about, baby!” 

“So you’re good at math,” Lucy muttered. “Doesn’t make you special.”

“Makes me better than you,” I replied. My stomach rumbled, and I was reminded of the food. I turned to see the waiter bringing us our order. “Right on time! Time to get my grub in!”

I ran over to help the waiter put down the food, and just started digging in.

I could hardly recall the whirl of feasting, and only really came to mentally at the end, to find Lucy staring at me with disbelief. “How can you be so smart and yet come off as such a huge idiot?”

My eyes widened. “You think I’m smart?”

“You’re just gonna ignore the last part, then.”

I chuckled. “I won’t just toss out a free compliment. Not like I ever get much respect from anyone to begin with.”

“Is that maybe why you want to become a corpo bigshot? Because you never got respect as a kid?”

“Why, does that make more sense to you, net-shrink?”

“You’re not exactly setting yourself up for anything good if everything you do is for validation,” she said. “You have to at least know that much.”

My turn to be a dick, now. “Lucy, mind your own business, will you? You don’t fucking care either way, so why start running your mouth like you know me?”

000

Lucy looked into David’s perennially sad and angered eyes, not for the first time wondering if this was some sort of corpo mindgame or just how the guy was.

He let himself be raw and vulnerable for seemingly no gain, and was prone to fits of passionate outbursts that gave him the impression of a childish idealization of a punk, rebelling against anyone that gave him shit.

Weird that a guy like him was so hellbent on climbing the corpo ladder despite his deficiencies and his complete lack of guile. Corps ate guys like him up and spat them out without a second thought.

“Just because you’re good at things doesn’t mean you’ll be respected,” she said to him. “It just makes you more easily exploited. People use the useful.”

“They can fuck off,” he said. “All of them. I’m not fucking here to get used. Not even by Maine and you.”

She scoffed. So much bravado, and yet it had no basis in reality. “Ain’t that the terms you agreed on so Maine wouldn’t literally rip your spine out? The reason you’re still breathing is only because you’re useful to Maine.”

“You really think I wouldn’t be able to run away if I wanted to, tracking chip or not?” he asked, clearly baffled by her lack of confidence in his ability. “Maine finding me worked out in my favor. Now I’m gainfully employed and can pay my way through school. And once I pay that off, I’ll have more time to worry about getting better at the craft and make more eddies.”

“And then you retire once you get a corpo job,” she said dryly. “You just… leave all that edgerunnin’ behind. You really think it’s that easy, don’t you?”

“Who said anything about easy? I don’t give a shit how hard it is, I’ll still do it!”

There it was again, that boundless confidence. Where did he get off thinking of himself so highly? He had skills, she’d give him that, but here he was suggesting that he’d give Arasaka and the entire solo world the runaround and come out smelling like roses. He wanted to con the world for his own benefits.

“You want to be impressive, David? A great edgerunner?”

“I know I will,” he said. 

“The impressive ones die. That’s the nature of the game. You make a name for yourself by how you die in this line of business.”

He tapped his foot repeatedly, arms folded and face turned the other way with a frown. “Just watch me. I’ll show everybody.”

Something about that bothered her fiercely. She wasn’t trying to give him fuel or anything, and seeing him dig his heels down on this one-way journey to hell shouldn’t have bothered her at all. She hated David, didn’t she? He was a corpo bootlicker, the worst kind of them too; a gutter rat who still worshipped money. A traitor to every downtrodden person where he was from.

Arasaka’s fucking lapdog .

And yet, the thought of him being ripped to pieces by Night City… well, he was an awful person, but he didn’t have to die . 

The waiter came around with the bill. David grabbed it quickly and after glancing at the bill, his eyes flashed blue. The waiter looked at him in shock. “Sorry for coming in so late,” David said.

“N-not at all!” he said before scurrying away.

Lucy couldn’t believe her ears. Did that fucker tip him after all the shit he said? “How much?”

“What do you mean?”

“How much was the tip?”

David regarded her coldly. “None of your business.”

“Why would you tip him anything?”

He frowned. “He’s a working man. And we made him work for longer than he had to. Why wouldn’t I tip him for that?”

“He called you retarded, David.” And he’d had the dumbest comeback to that that she’d ever heard. The memory almost brought a smile to her face. What’s it to ya. Idiot.

He shrugged. “Doesn’t bother me any. He doesn’t know me. Plus, the juice wasn’t really that bad. It was just synth-OJ after all.”

Lucy just snatched the bill from him to regard the price of her own order and then sent him back that money. “Don’t try to be a gentleman in Night City. Makes you an easy mark.”

“Was just paying you back for today,” David said. His expression eased up into a slight and honest smile. “I haven’t really had a moment of non-solo-related fun this entire week, and hellish jogging session aside, beating you at Graphwars was pretty preem. And showing me this place. You know, you’re not so bad when you lay off on your weird hate-on you know.”

Her face began to heat up, but she quickly killed that response with her biomon before it could manifest on her pale skin. “Fuck off, David,” she said with a venom that shocked even him. “We’re not friends. Never will be friends. Only reason I showed you Graphwars was so I could humble you. Only reason I hung out with you today was because Maine told me to. So no, you haven’t made your first friend in the world, unfortunately. Keep looking .”

David looked stricken. “I have friends! At school…”

“Didn’t you tell me everyone there hated you?”

David got up. “Well, your humanity was good while it lasted. I’ll delta. See you around, lunatic.”

“Up yours, corpo cunt.”

Yeah, that had a better ring to it than the string of profanities she already had him saved as, so long that it maxed out the character limit.

Guess she’d better change it to that.

000

Before I went to sleep, I made sure to change Lucy’s name in my contacts. She was a bitch, but there was nothing stupid about her.

Lunatic had a better ring to it; it was more thematic, and more accurate as well. She wasn’t just mean, she was straight up insane.

Lucy the Lunatic.

Lunacy.

Notes:

Graphwars is a real thing btw. Check it out. The stuff people do on there is wild.

Chapter 11: Friday Night Fiesta Part 1

Summary:

Corporate secrets are uncovered, and David goes to his first corpo party. Enter the era of Neokitsch David.

By Thursday evening, I was just getting finished on Nakajima’s cyberware OS and robotics code work. The biggest challenge hadn’t been debugging it so much as understanding what the fuck it was that the last programmer tried to achieve.

During my stint in code review, I realized very quickly that people… thought different. Rather than say so little about it, I should add on that people’s brains were so different from mine, and so inefficient, that it boggled my mind when I imagined how they even operated in real life.

Like, how fucking stupid was the last guy who made this chrome arm OS? Was he mentally challenged? Did he learn coding a day before making this program? Was he on drugs? In deep mourning?

If that was all the difficulty I faced, then I would have still felt fine just doing the work and learning whatever I could—and I did learn a lot even if what I learned was done inefficiently and worse than how I would have done it if I had known about the tricks implemented.

No.

Cyberware code wasn’t just weirdly done.

It was nightmarishly invasive.

Some egghead corpo who was not the greatest coder in the world, had built the function of your arm, and leaving behind how imperfect it was, it recorded more information than you could possibly believe. There were modules that recorded fucking handwriting style, for god’s sake, ostensibly to give you an autopilot functionality while writing by hand, but that didn’t explain the subroutines meant to send this information periodically over the Net.

Chrome used the Net more than the user was made aware of, not just for troubleshooting and updating, but to send information about the user, anything that they could make money off of.

The arm recorded everything.

What the hell did my Sandevistan record?

[Though I cannot speak to the full breadth of the Sandevistan’s code, I can identify the functions of several active subroutines: Your Sandevistan records the impact that the cyberware has on your body, runs several subroutines to make sure that the equipment is working correctly, and records this data to be extracted manually by a third party. It does not transmit data wirelessly. The design is such that this was done purposefully. Outgoing signals require a wired connection to occur.]

Maybe mil-spec went by different rules, then. Made sense. The cyberware OS I was reviewing was made available for the consumer market. The chrome I was sporting was a military unit and as far as I was aware, it didn’t exist on the market.

How James Norris or his backer, Militech, had gotten their hands on seemingly experimental Kang Tao technology—QianT being one of its primary cyberware partners, and former subsidiaries—I didn’t know, but it was clearly in their best interest to not let a rival firm glean so much information off of an asset of theirs. They must have taken care of whatever spyware QianT had implemented and replaced it with spyware of their own, but one that just gave them manual access to the OS.

Even if they’d need to jack into it to pull my biometrics and other info, I still made a note to fortify that entry point and make sure anyone trying to jack into it would have to get my consent first.

But then again, if I had been captured and disabled enough that they had no issues jacking into me, they’d only need to torture the access key out of me.

It was a dumb and slightly depressing thing to try and ready myself for. But I’d still do it. 

Inept programmers and invasive spyware was enough to just give me a taste of the paranoia that most netrunners experienced.

What gave me an entire plate of it was the realization I had when I had finished comprehending and debugging the code.

It started with a slight worry.

There were inefficiencies in the code, some math issues that threatened the stability of the chrome arm’s modularity—its ability to mesh well with other pieces. Specifically, it added an undue amount of neural strain—unrealized and in an incipient form. Only when another piece of cyberware arrived could this actually become an issue.

The math issues could be resolved by any other piece of chrome that anticipated those issues and created some counter-measures to resolve them using as little memory and processing power as possible. 

These issues could be resolved when an entirely separate piece of chrome pre-emptively solved the issues of the first piece.

This was just a small and slightly insane worry.

Then I checked the OS for any sort of ways that it, on its own, could solve inefficiencies and bloat in the variables of another piece of cyberware.

[It is approaching midnight.]

I ignored that and continued on my hunch.

It was an hour later, after having reviewed sections of code dozens of times over, when I came away with conclusive evidence. This piece of cyberware was anticipating inefficiencies and would be ready to solve them in a very specific, clearly by design way.

The consequences for not having solved this issue? Increased neural strain. Reduced cyberware adaptability.

Discomfort.

If you had the scratch for it, you only got a piece of chrome if that piece felt better than the real thing. People didn’t cut off arms or gouge out their eyes just so they could feel like a freak for the rest of their lives. They did it to increase their quality of living.

And if a subsequent piece from their first didn’t feel all that comfortable—some Militech foot implants after installing some preem Arasaka hands—then they would have those feet replaced with a known quantity: Arasaka. After all, their ‘Saka hands felt nova to them and never gave them any issues. Felt better than the real thing. The feet didn’t . They felt… wrong .

So they’d go with ‘Saka feet to go with ‘Saka hands, and ‘Saka would get double the edds.

This wasn’t even fucking touching whatever mechanical incompatibilities existed, engineered in meatspace. Those would be easier for any half-decent techie to spot, so maybe they didn’t exist, but the code fuckery was so well-hidden that I doubted it was possible for most people to spot it if they either didn’t know what they were looking for or didn’t have as much of an interest in numbers as I did.

One thing was clear: Mixing chrome brands was an actual factor in burgeoning cyberpsychosis. They made it so on purpose .

“Holy fucking shit,” I whispered.

I felt like I was on the precipice of some truly monumental information, the kind of shit that’d get me kidnapped and tortured by an Arasaka strike team.

I was too scared to even search the Net for more information, but I was confident that the conspiracy theories existed. 

I didn’t even want to touch the code related to this monstrous conspiracy, didn’t want Nakajima to suddenly zero me for stumbling onto a secret in the programming world.

A holo-call from Nakajima almost made me jump out of my fucking skin. It was 2 AM. With shivering hands, I accepted the call.

His face was visible, and he was smoking. “I saw you finished the debug and review, but you’ve been scrolling through the code for the better part of five hours now. Anything you found?” He could see this. Of course he could. He had shared the document to me, but he still kept access to it. I would have downloaded a copy to peruse offline if that was an option, but that had been conspicuously disabled as well. I was on read-only mode, enforced by the admin.

“Just fascinated is all,” I said.

He regarded me flatly and took a long drag. “You’re the real deal, aren’t you? The debug was impressive enough on its own, but fascination ain’t why a guy like you would be staring at some shit code for legacyware chrome.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Good,” he said. “Don’t say nothing, ain’t gonna be nothing.”

I gulped. He knew . I just nodded.

“Ever wonder, David, just how much power they have over us?” Nakajima asked. “I think the fight against them ended when we decided that it was okay to give them access to our bodies. Ever since then, they’ve had our balls in a vice. Shame you had to find out this early, while useless thoughts of rebellion and defiance still no-doubt tumble around in that brain box of yours.”

“I’m young, not stupid,” I said. “Doesn’t mean I think…” think what? That I can win against Arasaka? Wasn’t I trying to climb to the top? What did that mean, if not winning?

Or was it that I always knew exactly what it meant to climb to the top of Arasaka; that Arasaka and I would lose our separation, become one entity. I would be swallowed and digested, and only once I broke down into nothing could Arasaka allow me to take control, on its own terms.

“Not trying to browbeat you anyway,” Nakajima said, taking another drag of his cigarette. Did all programmers smoke? I was starting to understand why. “Just wanted to congratulate you is all. You’re officially one of us. This sort of thing is something of a milestone to those who are really about this life; an event that gives you a feeling of urgency to protect yourself in the soft, to know just how much of a reflection of reality that the soft is. The next step above that is witnessing and coming to terms with the breadth of your overlords, to let that realization beat every last piece of fight left in that skull of yours. That will come in time as we work on this project.”

“And what are we doing?” I asked.

He sighed. “Efficiency optimization,” he said. “Times have changed and tech is getting better. We’re writing an algorithm that determines where and how Arasaka can increase efficiency and optimization through automation and better workflows.”

I frowned. “Wait. Doesn’t that mean that people will lose their jobs?”

He chuckled. “That’s exactly what that means. And then they’ll get jobs again later because Arasaka now has enough money to widen their business operations and hire more people, because enough is never enough for any megacorp worth their salt. Whether their new jobs pays the same or not isn’t any of our business. Buuut it’s unlikely.”

“Doesn’t exactly sound ethical,” I said. “These are working people that we’re screwing over.”

“Correction, we won’t be screwing anyone over, because we won’t win. Winning is unlikely. There are ten categories of IT solutions that we can pick from, meaning that we will just be up against a fraction of projects and contestants. Despite that, we will be competing against people with enough scratch and resources to employ far more rigorous testing and can incorporate far more use-cases than us. Just ranking in the top 10s in our particular problem will be good enough for both our purposes.”

I nodded. Well, when he put it that way, it didn’t really matter, did it?

“Why aren’t we picking another category?” I asked.

“Because that’s where the actual psychos are competing. The cybersec freaks and borged out corporate netrunners with modded and upgraded cyberdecks that think they’re the next Rache Bartmoss, only tamer. This is meatspace code, normie shit. They don’t care. And here, we actually have a snowball’s chance in the Mojave.”

“Okay,” I said.

“I’ll send you the info. We’ll also need to do an on-stage presentation, so keep that in mind. What do you say, kid? Ready to enter the corpo world?”

I’d never felt less ready.

“Yes.”

If Lucy ever heard about this, she would fucking flatline me.

000

I walked outside in the school park, ear-buds on and Samurai playing at its loudest setting as I reviewed some less terrifying code. Kiwi’s code was a welcome reprieve from the depressiveness of last night’s revelations.

Terrifying. Truly terrifying.

I remembered now what I had fed Kiwi about wanting to stay safe in the net because the megacorps were liable to fuck you over.

That was an abstract, yet sure fear of mine. 

But it was bullshit.

Not because it was wrong, but because I was inaccurate, hand-wavey and unknowing of the actual depth of depravity that the corps were capable of. It was easy to just say that the corps would screw you, but what exactly had I even known about that until now? Megabuilding rent and Trauma Team fuckery notwithstanding.

Even chrome wasn’t fucking safe.

And not just the experimental shit they’d inject in you even though you’re just a child. The consumer market shit that even corpo fucking suits were buying. 

This whole industry was like a snake eating its own fucking tail in search for even a shred of more nutrients. Arasaka’s CEO was liable to screw himself over for more eddies at this point. Maybe point a gun at his mirror image and roar at him to fork over more cash once he was done sucking the fucking universe dry of value.

Chippin’ In started playing and I skipped it almost immediately, feeling ill to my fucking stomach as I did.

How could I even think about chipping in more chrome now? Who else even knew? Did Kiwi know? Lucy, maybe? How many of Maine or Dorio’s pieces were mixed brands?

James Norris had NUSA backing, meaning he was probably more Militech than ‘ganic by weight—and likely volume as well—but just one QianT implant was enough to tip him over the edge.

Then again, was the spine his last implant? Certainly couldn’t have been an old one since it still hadn’t hit the consumer market yet, meaning it was definitely something new, bleeding edge for sure.

Was getting distracted. Needed to focus on Kiwi’s quickhack.

They were called Ping and Overheat. Ping allowed one to detect devices that one could tap into, meaning that I didn’t have to use my eyes to find any entry-points, an incredibly useful quickhack for just starting off on Netrunning. Overheat was a quickhack that affected cyberware directly, overclocking the cyberware’s processors and generating enough heat to straight up burn a target from within, which was a suitably horrifying way to die. Goddamn, Netrunners were scary.

Finding out what made the second one stop ticking wasn’t so hard now that I was so intimately familiar with cyberware OS, or at least its most rudimentary iterations. With the help of Kiwi’s comments, I diagnosed the quickhack’s shortcomings and concluded that to make it better, I needed information on some recent cyberware, at least the security protocols that prevented this quickhack’s usual methods from working on cyberware nowadays.

Lucky for me, I was sporting mil-spec. If I managed to figure out a way for overheat to theoretically work on my Sandevistan, then there was little that it wouldn’t work on, provided the ICE was taken care of.

That would be something of an involved process, and of course, it wouldn’t be a solution for every piece of chrome out there. Not all of them worked like my Sandy. Maybe I’d get lucky with other QianT or Kang Tao chrome models, but that was unlikely as well.

That was the actual trick with quickhacks. They needed to be general enough to apply to a wide variety of targets, hence why they were considered ‘quick’. Any one that was tailor-made to a specific type of chrome might be far faster than even the most functional quickhack, but it would only work on a single case, making it practically useless unless you were specifically trying to screw one person over.

Or maybe a group of people using the same cyberware. There were probably real-life uses to specific quickhacks, and I’d get to those in time, but for now, general was the name of the game.

What I’d learn from figuring out how to Overheat the Sandy could still transfer to other pieces of chrome. It would be hard not being able to actually test the finished product on myself, considering I liked being alive, but I’d find a way around that. Maybe I should hit up Turing’s local net and see what I could get from there. Would probably cost me eddies. 

And the thought of money summoned the urgency to fetch a new gig from somewhere, seeing that Maine wasn’t giving me shit.

There were only so many hours in any given day, and even though the Sandevistan helped me rifle through an unholy amount of information in a ridiculously short amount of time, that still left me spread thin .

What are your Friday-night plans, Martinez? Take out another scav den, slaughter thirty-four more people, or bend my mind with more realizations of how absolutely fucked this world was?

Two guys from a class below me approached me. They were the management corpo brats, the kids of the well-connected, but not exactly at Katsuo’s level. They were at the level of his hangers-on, actually. Former clients of mine.

“Martinez,” the guy in front of the two of them began. He was built widely, tall, and had shoulder-length brown hair and a brutish face. Right now, his scowl, made nasty by his face, was directed towards me . “I thought I told you to update me on when new BDs hit the market.”

I scowled. “What are you talking about?”

“You know,” he said. “ Just Kidding ?”

“What?”

“JK ,” he pressed on.

“I have no idea what you’re referring to,” I said.

“Don’t play dumb with me, Martinez. You know how embarrassing it is that those Militech asswipes showed us up about the latest? You used to get that shit fresh off the corpse, what happened .”

Come to think of it, I did still have a surplus of Norris BDs, never got to push them after my falling out with Doc.

“Walter,” the guy behind him muttered. He was pale, with white hair, and wore blue-rimmed glasses, probably just a fashion statement since a guy like him probably didn’t have eye-problems if his parents were corpo—he could afford an eyesocket biosculpt. He was clearly uncomfortable. Always was when dealing with me, but now he looked ready to cut and run for some reason, like I was some kind of volatile glitter dealer. Truth was, I enjoyed that little power I had over him. “Maybe we shouldn’t…”

“Double price,” Walter said. “I already know you’re ripping my ass off as it is, but I only go to you because getting that shit off the streets could fry your brain if you’re not careful.” Ergo, he was using me as a guinea pig.

His trust in me was touching. “Walter,” I said. “I thought I already told you that I have no idea what you’re referring to.”

“Like hell!” he roared. I looked around. The park was far enough away from the cameras that they’d likely only pick up video, but I still didn’t like where this was going. “You think you can just walk away from your obligations? What if I tipped the administration off on your… mercantile enterprise?”

My deliberate look of confusion immediately shifted to a death glare. “Maybe you shouldn’t be threatening the guy responsible for sourcing the stuff you put in your brain.

Walter took a step back. “Yeah? What are you gonna do?”

I regarded him coldly, but inwardly I was worried. He was an asshole, but what’s more, he was a stupid one, too. This line of threatening wasn’t going to get him what he wanted, and would move him even further from his goals.

He was being an asshole right now, but I could use him.

Finally find a way to get a network in this hellhole of a school, a network that wasn’t just about illicit XBD deals.

“I don’t give gifts to people who aren’t friends to me,” I said.

“Friends?” Walter grimaced.

“Yes, friends,” I said with an insistent nod. “I’m very kind and charitable to my friends, but those that are not friends to me, I cannot be moved to care so closely for them. You’ll find that my friendship is quite reasonably priced, however.”

Contrary to my expectations, it was the guy behind him that began talking. “What exactly does a friendship entail? I just want us to be clear so there won’t be a misunderstanding down the line.”

“Certainly,” I said. “I simply want to improve my connection to my fellow schoolmates and keep a finger on the pulse on any comings and goings that can maybe aid me in my future.”

“What,” Walter growled. “So you turned over the corpo leaf?”

I ignored Walter as I continued. “Pardon me, I never received your name.”

“Allister,” he said. His insecurity and doubt was slowly leaving him, but he didn’t exactly exude confidence as he spoke. “There is no need to introduce yourself, David Martinez.”

I nodded. “A friendship would also imply that I am not to be contacted without even a hint of pretense regarding… certain matters.”

“As for those matters,” Allister said. “Are you willing to make us an offer, provided we accept your request of friendship?”

“Normal price,” I said. Guess I was back to XBDealing again. Would only be slightly less convenient without Doc’s generous and extensive supply.

Walter was an idiot if he thought going into the streets and getting his XBDs right from the source was any more dangerous than getting them from me. Where the fuck did he think I had gotten them from anyway, from Jimmy Kurosaki’s own hands? 

“That is acceptable,” Allister said. “Can we acquire your product the same way as usual?”

“Not today,” I said. “I didn’t bring my stock with me, as I had already made plans to cease my operations. It is at home.”

“Doesn’t work, Martinez—” Walter began before Allister cut him off with a hand to his shoulder and a stern look. Walter’s eyes widened and he backed off.

I had misjudged their dynamic, it seemed. Allister was the top dog, Walter was just the dog. He had a big mouth, and was able to traverse a world that Allister couldn’t, the underworld. That’s why Allister let him take point. He was better versed in the corpo world.

“What he means,” Allister said. “Is that we are attending a party this evening. It is customary that we bring BDs of an extraordinary nature to impress our classmates and some guests from rival corp schools. Even if the BD from the events of a week ago is slightly old news, it would still help our standing to provide some to our friends.”

Oh, wow, I didn’t know I was dealing with fucking corpo gofers.

Well, then what the hell did that make me for begging these guys for a friendship?

Truth be told, I wasn’t loving this interaction very much.

“May I suggest a solution to this?” Allister asked and I nodded. “You can meet us at the party with the stock. I can even pay you up-front for it. Ten units. A thousand eurodollars. We can honor our newfound friendship too by introducing you to our friends.”

Fuck. 

Fuuuuuck.

This was good for me. Good like rancid medicine. Still had to swallow. 

Bye-bye, peace of mind and a happy Friday evening coding away.

Needed a gig after this, or I’d really kill myself by night’s end.

“I appreciate the gesture, but I need guarantees,” I said. “That you won’t let me become… a target. On account of my background.”

Walter piped up. “How are we gonna do that without sticking our own necks out?”

Allister gave him another look, but quickly refocused on me. “We will introduce you and give you our endorsement, but to expect more from us than that is unfair. We can only do so much to integrate you into our circle without risking our own standing. And this is under the assumption that you don’t… lash out if things don’t turn out favorably for you.”

So don’t act up or retaliate if somebody shits on me. 

Maybe that was what Katsuo expected me to do the first time he gave me shit from coming from Arroyo. Instead, I had told him to ‘fuck off, eat shit, and then die, corpo scumbag’. He never really learned to let that go, the absolute dickhead.

Those days were behind me, now. Had to figure out a way to keep trucking in this environment, and it wouldn’t start with making an enemy out of every snooty corpo who thought their shit didn’t stink.

I shrugged. “That is acceptable. Shoot me the information and I’ll be there whenever you want with the stuff.”

He nodded.

His eyes flashed blue, and I received the information, and the full grand for ten Norris XBDs.

To put it into perspective, it would have cost me two hundred to source them straight from the streets, and Doc had given them to me for free, expecting me to cut him in once I sold them all.

This was pure profit.

I was just five grand away, now, from paying off this semester’s fees.

I could make that just klepping shards all night until eight o’ clock when I’d finally be expected to attend the party.

“Also,” I said. “Before you leave, I’d like an apology for Walter’s treatment of me. And his threats.” I said.

Allister sighed. His eyes flashed blue, and I was five hundred eddies richer.

“I… hope this suffices.”

My eyes widened.

I felt something bubbling up from the bottom of my gut, something fierce and raw.

I activated the Sandevistan, trying to calm down.

That was the right move. I just needed time to calm down. Time to not do something impulsive like scream.

Then, some more time, to not throw the cash back in his face and tell Walter to apologize like a man.

Then, finally, when I thought I had swallowed the last of my anger, I gave a nod. “Truthfully,” I said, my mouth moving without my mind’s conscious input. “I was expecting a more old-school approach to it, but you’re right. This suffices.”

“That, you can have as well,” Allister said as he turned around to give Walter another look. He looked at me in disgust before clenching his jaws and giving a ninety-degree bow.

“My sincerest apologies, David Martinez. My rudeness is inexcusable, and I beg for your forgiveness.”

I gave a nod. “This will suffice as well. It was a pleasure doing business with you, Allister.”

“And to a fruitful friendship,” he gave a nod. “At risk of giving offense, I would suggest that you update your wardrobe for this event.” He looked at me expectantly, likely waiting for an outburst. Truth was, I was already outraged enough from what he tried to pull earlier that I didn’t even have any room to take offense at that simple thing.

“Noted,” I said. Maybe I should burn the proceeds of my BD sale and the apology money for expensive clothes, then. In between my shard heists, I could hit up a store somewhere and get fitted with the latest fashion.

A busy Friday it would be.

“Anything else I can do for you?” I asked.

“No. Farewell, David.”

Farewell, what a fucking nerd. “See you later.” Seriously, who talks like that. I really hope this was just a one-of thing, done because we were newbies at interacting with each other and hadn’t broken the corpo ice yet.

The two of them finally fucked off, leaving me to pick up the pieces of another schedule upheaval.

After the final bell rung and I was let out to go home, I sent Maine a message that I wouldn’t be available after eight o’ clock tonight.

Maine: Finally got a life, kid? Kudos to you. We were just thinking of hitting up the Afterlife at around eleven. Won’t be missing much.

Getting drunk with the edgerunners sounded way more fun than what I was about to subject myself to, but it couldn’t be helped. This was my career. My dream. Had to give that some precedence.

I always brought my cyberdeck to school, just in case I wanted to do more shard-heisting, which I did on my way to Downtown City Centre. The good part about my NCART route was that I was getting even closer to money, meaning I was getting even bigger fish with more valuable shards.

I had to get off at a station and consult a local net for any information about some clothing stores I could peruse.

There was an Arasaka store called Jinguji, so I decided to just go for that one. I took a cab there, sinking a crisp one hundred eddies for a ten minute ride. Highway robbery, but there was no other way I could get there in a reasonable length of time.

The store was chromed out in the old-fashioned meaning of the word. Shiny floor and walls, metallic mannequins polished to a mirror-finish, and clothes with fur on them. The fibers looked so fine in some of the synth wool clothes that I bet wearing it would feel so soft and good.

I approached the storefront, and was immediately accosted by the appearance of some butler-looking guy. He looked me up and down with a level of disdain that the waiter from the other day could only come close to imitating.

“I’m a student of Arasaka Academy,” I said, my words coming out like a shield at how threatened I was feeling, status-wise. “And I’m here to buy clothes. For a party.”

“Allow me to run a credit check.”

“I don’t have credit with a bank. I’m a kid. I have eurodollars . Real money.”

He narrowed his eyes and grimaced in clear disgust. “You have awful taste for a corp student, you know. Did your parents force you to come here?”

“I’m wearing my uniform,” I said. How the fuck could he divine how I normally dressed just from seeing me in my uniform? Hell, I wasn’t even wearing my usual gold-plated chain.

“It’s the way you’re wearing me that has me bothered,” he said. “Maybe you should look into upsizing your uniform before you bust a seam instead of trying to show off your muscle.”

I was tired, so, so tired of corp lip. Fuck it. “You’re right,” I said with a sigh. “I’ll requisition a larger uniform.” Which I already had, but saying that would just provoke him into poking me in another way. “But you’re clearly a man of taste. Would you be willing to pick something out for me that I can wear for a party tonight?”

“Certainly.”

“And… can we keep it within a reasonable budget? My parents prefer that I don’t waste funds needlessly.”

“How much have they allotted you?”

“Fourteen hundred.”

“Ah,” he said, with no small amount of pity in his features. “That is regrettable. Come with me. I’m afraid we cannot outfit you with a boa or even any fur-lining at that price point, or…” he turned to me with a grin. “I’ll give you one freebie. We’ll dress you up in something truly respectable, and then we can move onto something that you can actually afford, and by the end of it, you can decide on what you really want after giving your parents a call.”

What kind of a demon was he? 

A salesman, that’s what.

“I don’t much see the point.”

“Your parents certainly will,” he said. “Halfassing an outfit for a party with other corporate students signals something far more than simply being in dire financial straits. It signals weakness. Dressing up flashily , however… now that turns heads. And whoever said that you couldn’t reuse the same outfit anyhow? That is the beauty of Neokitsch: you create an iconic look, and you embody it. This outfit may therefore last you quite a long time.”

“Fuck, fine,” I said. “Uhm, is there a chance you could, I dunno,” I stopped to think. Maybe this was a stupid thing to ask. “You ever seen those EMT jackets?”

His eyes widened in shock as he smiled with absolute glee. “Say no more, my friend!”

Chapter 12: Friday Night Fiesta Part 2

Summary:

Neokitsch David makes a debut and loses his head, just a little.

Neokitsch was always something that I had looked down on because it took the best parts of mundane kitsch fashion, its accessibility, and inverted it to hell. Everything that could make it even more expensive was done in order to flex as much as possible on whoever saw the outfit. It was an attack on the poor, a vicious mockery reminding them that they truly couldn’t have anything just for themselves, that Night City, and all within it, belonged to the rich.

I could also admit when it looked really fucking preem.

The centerpiece of my ensemble was a calf-length bright yellow silk jacket with an intricate quilted pattern of white circuitry at the back and over my shoulders covering where the silver white high-vis bands would have been on my mom’s jacket. Neon-white piping was incorporated in the jacket’s seams, putting a new meaning to flashy clothing, making the whole jacket forcefully eye-catching. The inside of the high collar of the jacket was iridescent and glowed as well, and was adorned with a gold filigree pattern that elevated it from just corpo straight to old-school bougie. 

Beneath that was a pure white jumpsuit that felt very comfortable to my skin, so much so that I almost suspected it to be drugged somehow. Never felt material so soft in my life. I wore a yellow belt with a zigzagging golden belt buckle consisting of three lines to break up the monotony, and the buckle was studded with yellow and white gemstones. On my feet, I wore a pair of sleek white knee-high boots, with yellow soles that glowed with every step.

On my face was a pair of oversized aviator glasses with bright yellow lenses that somehow didn’t really change the color of my vision that much, and white frames that mercifully didn’t glow as well. There was a headpiece, too—a crown-like wreath with square spires making it look like the walls of a fortress, made from white gold and studded with more yellow and white gems, and behind them were light-sources that gave them a distracting shimmer.

And finally, a pair of white cloth gloves, as plain as the jumpsuit I was wearing, but no less comfortable.

I took some photos with my eyes as I looked myself in the mirror, striking some poses.

It was strangely fun. I wasn’t really that much of a fashion-head, but even I could recognize when something just looked good.

And it was a way to honor mom, the jacket at least. Couldn’t forget about that.

Though I didn’t really like the crown that much, and I could do without the extra gems on the belt buckle.

“How much,” I sighed as I asked the tailor, whose name was actually Yamanaka. 

“Nineteen thousand five hundred,” Yamanaka said after a slight moment of hesitation, which I had long-since learned was just… a thing that people did when mentioning large sums of money, regardless of how obvious the reality was that products had to be exchanged for money.

“I don’t like the crown,” I said. “And if it’s the gemstones that are inflating the price, why don’t you get me some fakes. Not like anyone would notice it, right?”

He scoffed now, the derision back again in full swing. “Cyberoptics with spectrometer apps would.”

I looked at him askance. “You’ve gotta be kidding me! People have that?”

“Of course! You really think using fake gems goes unpunished in high society?”

I growled. “I try not to let myself get fixated on such trifles.”

“Trifles, you say. Very well, if you wish to humiliate yourself this evening, then be my guest.”

“Okay, get rid of the gems altogether,” I said. “And the buckle… is that actual gold?”

“Yes it is. Seventy-five percent pure, eighteen karats, the bare limit.”

I shot him a glare. “Easy for you to say when it’s not your wallet on the line here. Without the stupid headpiece, and the gems, how much is this?”

He pulled out a calculator, eyed my outfit for a moment, and then gave me an utterly shameless response. “Five thousand five-hundred and eighty.”

“You’re telling me you almost ran me fifteen K on stuff that I didn’t even want to begin with?”

“Without those things, the outfit becomes rather plain, wouldn’t you say?” he asked. “A display of opulence is necessary, and I can assure you that your classmates would have appreciated it.”

“The crown was insane,” I said. “The final price is still insane. And I don’t plan to stay at this height forever, you know.”

“Not a problem at all,” the man said. “How do you think these clothes fit you so well? There’s a nano-weave connected to microprocessors that lengthens and shortens to accommodate the wearer. It can grow to an excess of twice its current size. It’s stabbing and cutting-proof as well, giving you, and it for that matter, additional protection in this city. Your parents would much appreciate a son of theirs staying both safe and fashionable.”

I looked at the outfit, and tried to stop myself from doing something boneheaded.

Five thousand would set me back, but a weekend of dedicated solo work and picksocketing with nothing else to take my focus could help me recoup this awful loss.

And well, if I was going to be spending large sums like that, might as well not half-ass it. “What if we kept the gems on the belt?”

Yamanaka grinned like he had won the lottery.

“Why don’t we try different headpiece designs while we’re at it?”

000

I ended up paying out an excess of twelve thousand eurodollars.

It fucking hurt, too.

And was it worth it? Who even fucking knew? 

For the extra money, we toned down, but didn’t eliminate, all the gemstones on the belt-buckle. They were concentrated on the center-most zigzag pattern, alternating and spelling the letter M in the middle.

And in lieu of a headpiece, I wore a white tech choker with rings of gold at each border. It made the jumpsuit look like a turtle-neck and made me extra glowy as well, which was important for God knows what reasons. The white of the tech choker could throw holograms based on pre-installed FBXs, files with animated 3D models, but they had some presets for me to use as well, and I could also change the color palette if I wanted to.

I didn’t waste any time pick-socketing like my life depended on it. Several times once I got busted, I joined in on the collective outrage, and no one looked at me twice. I looked way too rich for anyone to even suspect me.

I ran the NCART line so many times just racking up as many shards as I could, until finally I spotted cops on every station, glaring menacingly at the train. Some even entered the train and started eyeing people suspiciously.

Except for me. They just gave me a respectful nod, and continued their watchful vigil.

Nova.

I got off on the next station once it was clear that my picksocketing was over for now. I’d never overdone it so hard before, and I guess now I was seeing the consequences of my actions.

A call came.

Lunacy: Cops are all over the NCARTs. The fuck did you do, Martinez?

David: Why the fuck did you immediately jump to me?

Lunacy: I’ve tapped the cop feeds, you gonk. I know they’re after a phantom picksocket. They suspect speedware-use, too. You’re not being slick at all.

I rolled my eyes. 

David: What does it matter to you?

Lunacy: It matters because I almost got fucking pinched because of your stealing spree. Why do you have to make it so fucking obvious, man? Are you really that dumb-stupid? Do I have to hold your hand every time? If you can’t do it right, then don’t do it at all.

David: Fine! Super sorry. Won’t happen again.

Lunacy: It fucking won’t or I’m breaking that shitty cyberdeck of yours.

I groaned.

I shot Kiwi a text.

David: I’ve got more-more shards. It’s a big haul. I want money for this, not extra lessons.

Kiwi: Big-big haul is right. Heard from Lucy first. Almost screwed her over.

David: Already apologized-said sorry. The shards?

Kiwi: Not interested in learning more?

David: Learned lots already. Thank you. Figured out Overheat. I’m gonna focus on Ping next. Then I’ll get another lesson. For now, cash.

Kiwi: Drop by the usual place. Can’t promise swift payment either. Shards are still hot. You might not want to let your patience run thin next time you’re strapped for edds, David. Can’t force more money. Your eagerness worked against you.

David: I understand. I’m sorry.

Kiwi: That Sandy-Sandevistan of yours makes you pretty fucking impressive, but you can’t let it convince you that you’re invincible. That’s my advice. 

David: Got it. Thanks, Kiwi. Can we meet tomorrow then?

Kiwi: Sure

Come to think of it, the place where Kiwi and I met, a rundown cafe at a megablock, was maybe a place that I should look into connecting to the local net of. Maybe it was a real Netrunner hub?

I’d make it a point to check the next time.

Having already popped my lavish spending cherry for the day, and being aware that looking the way that I did would make me an easy mark for bullying or robbery, I took a cab to my megabuilding and Sandevistan’d as close to an elevator as I could.

With some cyberdeck magic, I brought the elevator straight to my floor without any stops and got home without anyone noticing me.

I really didn’t want any kind of heat in my shitty little apartment unit that could be snuck into through vents of all things.

I should maybe look into moving to a one-bedroom apartment soon, or any apartment without that glaring vulnerability.

I checked the time and saw that it was just six o’ clock.

Since the shards weren’t going to pay anytime soon, I might as well hit up El Capitan for some more gigs.

D: Anything quick and easy?

El Capitan: Kid, you’re the ones that are makin’ ‘em quick and easy. What’re you in the mood for? 

I sighed.

D: You got any scavs for me to clear out? Or a hideout of non-borg gangoons in need of zeroing?

El Capitan: I’ve got scavs. Eight to thirteen. I’ll pay you the usual rate of twice their going bounty.

D: Why do you do that anyway? Wouldn’t it be cheaper for you to just tell me about the scav den so I can collect from the NCPD?

Telling him that wasn’t exactly something I was afraid would change our usual arrangements. There must be a reason for this, and I’d much rather know than not.

El Capitan: Keeps things off the books and the pigs off my business. These scav nests are a thorn in my paw, and I’d rather things not get bogged down by formal investigations and cordons and whatnot. The extra thou is for you to clear the way so I can send some other boys to clean out the bodies all nice and quiet and business can go on as usual, true and honest.

D: Thanks for telling me, and about the scav den. Shoot me the info and I’ll be done within the hour.

El Capitan: You’re a fucking menace kid, you know that? I’ll throw you an extra five grand if nobody calls the cops. This is a residential area, and sure, a couple of gunshots isn’t gonna rattle anybody until it gets worryingly close, but like I told you before, I need the discretion.

D: I’ll make sure not a bullet gets fired.

El Capitan: You’re a real one, D. See you.

Once he shot me the information, I realized that the most annoying part of this gig would be getting to the den itself. It was in Northside, Watson.

I grumbled as I took off my clothes and donned my usual uniform. My mom’s jacket had been mended as well as I could, and I had just decided to buy a new shirt altogether.

With my mask, and the machete I had taken from the first scavs I had killed, I headed out.

000

Turns out with cops prowling on every NCART while I was wearing a mask and lugging around a fucking machete, questions would be asked .

I narrowly managed to shake off the pigs through the ocean of people in the NCART and the doors opened just in time for them to almost reach me. Getting away from them became trivial afterwards.

I decided to take off my mask and put the machete in an inner pocket for the next cart. 

This time, I only received a shove and a bark from the cops, and it wasn’t long before I had reached my stop.

I checked my Critical Progress, and it was sitting at a 50% from all the Sandevistan uses during my shard-klepping spree.

That was fine. I doubted I’d need more than one use of the Sandevistan to take care of the whole lot.

I took a cab to the address, this time far cheaper due to the neighborhood we were in, and made my way to the megabuilding. My cyberdeck was fastened to my left forearm and my machete was in the other. I hacked into the elevator and took myself straight to the floor section that the scavs had klepped for themselves. According to the data, they had wired the elevators to just skip this section of floor entirely, a full sixteenth of the megabuilding’s floor, and now they had the run of the whole place.

Not for long.

The elevator opened, and I was face-to-face with five scavs all holding guns of all kinds. A shotgun here, a pistol there, even an automatic rifle.

I activated the Sandevistan, got behind them, and started reaping.

I went for the back of their necks, wanting to end things as quickly as possible and having read that it was a weak-point that could lead to instant death that even subdermal armor would have a hard time shielding against.

Once my machete finally hit subdermal on the fourth gonk’s neck, I let the weapon go and looked for something else that was long and sharp. 

I entered room after room looking for more scavs and quickly found one that was mid-operation. They had some fun sharp implements hanging around on the walls, and I helped myself to two, a machete and a large butcher’s cleaver with a pointy end.

I ran back to where the scavs had tried to ambush me, and the last remaining scav alive was just beginning to react to the deaths of his companions when I slashed the back of his neck with the butcher’s knife, driving it straight through his neck.

Thirty-nine.

I ran back to the room where the scavs were operating, four around a table where a lump of meat that could hardly be recognized as a human lay.

Each died with a stab or cut to their throat.

Forty-three.

Bringing along several other sharp implements, I checked the other rooms and found some watching TV or zoned out in a BD. Four in number. I hit subdermal once, and left the knife in their throat and used the others I had brought, but other than that, no other hitches. Upper limit reached. Fucking success.

Forty-seven.

I checked the other rooms too just in case they were more than El Capitan’s upper limit suggested. The same happened last time after all.

Not a soul left on this floor. I deactivated the Sandevistan and heard the collapse of all thirteen scavs.

D: Finished.

I sent him the stills of the dead bodies to go with the message.

El Capitan: Holy shit kid, you fucking butchered them! Thirteen, huh?

D: Didn’t fire a single bullet, as promised.

El Capitan: At this rate, you’ll inflate the value of dead scavs. Fuck!

D: They’re so easy to kill, I’m actually surprised they still exist.

El Capitan: Ah, forgot to mention, there’s an additional risk to killing the scavs. You’ve heard of the bratva, yeah? Well, worry about them. Any cameras catch you?

I looked around, startled by that sudden warning.

El Capitan: No problem about that. Just be sure to scrub the camera feeds if you can. They’re all dead, so you basically have a run of the place.

D: I’d appreciate the warning earlier next time. I was almost about to leave.

El Capitan: That one’s on my account. How’s an extra two thousand sound for an apology?

Getting real tired of people paying me for my hurt feelings.

D: Appreciate that.

Twenty-nine thousand.

Thirty- four thousand once I got my bonus in, too!

I looked for their computer terminal and hacked into their system in only a few minutes. Conveniently, their camera feed was entirely local and nothing had been sent out in the last twenty-four hours to some other network. I went ahead and just deleted it all, and then for good measure, started smashing the PC tower up. Once it exposed its drive, I pried it out from its mounting and smashed it against the floor before stomping on it several times for good measure.

I rode the elevator down, and before I could even exit the megabuilding, a wire transfer came my way along with a fat thirty-four thousand.

I whooped in joy. “Fuck yeah! Whoohoo!”

I was so going back to Jinguji for some extra stuff.

000

After going back home, dressing up once again, and returning to Jinguji in full regalia to adorn myself in more chains and rings than I knew what to do with, I was barely scraping by on how much time I had left to attend the party Allister was going to. 

The additional apparel was purely jewelry, last-minute additions that Yamanaka felt would not subtract from the style of my current get-up. I wore rings on my pinkies, middle fingers and index fingers, each platinum bands inlaid with alternating patterns of yellow and white diamond.

I got several gold chains as well and didn’t skimp on their purity, either: Cuban link, cable chain and venetian chain, all gold and eighteen karats. All of that set me back by an impressive fourteen thousand eurodollars. I still had enough money to pay off this semester’s fees with three thousand eurodollars to spare and paid that as quickly as I could, almost as if I didn’t trust myself to be sensible with it.

I really didn’t fucking know what I was expecting either from tonight to be so lavish about my spending. Yamanaka had assured me that my aesthetic was fresh and new, the EMT jacket thing being a stroke of absolute genius, which just… made me feel dirty. Neokitsch was about appropriating working class fashion and making it high class. If anyone deserved to do that to mom’s style, it was me. And I thought it looked good, but… I was just torn on exactly what to feel.

Yamanaka had also assured me that I passed the bar for classy as well by how pure my metal was and how big my stones were. By all means, my schoolmates should be impressed. I just knew that they wouldn’t.

Because I was wearing it.

Like we agreed, I would meet Allister in a high class bar that wasn’t so far away from Jinguji, a bar that I was even scared if the bouncer would let me in. I sent him a text saying that I had arrived before refocusing on my first obstacle. He was a huge guy, probably as big as that Animal bouncer guarding The Afterlife, only he was dressed in a black suit and stood before a velvet rope. He took one look at me and immediately parted the rope with a deferential nod my way. “Welcome, esteemed patron.”

I looked for that familiar head of white hair, and found him sipping on a fruity cocktail at the bar. From what I could see from my angle, he was wearing a pair of black pants and a blood-red fur-coat. As I approached him, I called his name. “Allister.”

He almost jumped out of his skin as he turned to see me, and when he did, he really did jump out of his seat. “David?! Is that you?” He wore a frilly red shirt as well, buttons open to reveal his chest, giving prominence to his gold chains. Less numerous than mine. He didn’t wear any rings, either. He still wore his glasses with blue frames, but they weren’t shaded. “I thought I’d have to meet you outside if the bouncer wouldn’t let you in without waiting but…!”

“He let me in no problem,” I said. “Also,” I said as I came forward to give him a hug, but instead slipped a baggie of BD chips into the inner pocket of his fur coat. “That’s ten of them.”

I let go of him and gave him a look above my shades. “When are we headed out?”

000

I took a long sip of my mojito—soda water replaced with regular water—and savored the taste of some good shit. I didn’t know alcohol could really taste all that good. Always assumed they went from downright nasty to just tolerable enough to not ruin a high, but this was really good. Minty and sweet.

Allister sat next to me, the both of us still in the bar, ‘pre-gaming’ as it was called. “You’re obviously a man of means,” Allister said. “But you’re not a legacy, not from Arasaka at least. I would have known.”

He wanted my story. I couldn’t blame him. 

I could only blame myself for not having come up with one.

Shit.

Edgerunning to pay for school was well and good if I had resolved myself to staying unnoticed all the way through, but instead I had gone ahead and put myself on the map with an outfit that practically screamed rich parents. Now I needed to explain myself, or someone nosy enough would do the explaining for me.

Time to get creative . And with a Sandevistan, I had all the time in the world to come up with some passable bull.

“Rich grandparents from Mexico,” I said. “They got pressed into retirement and hiding by the cartel. They still have money, and they’ve used it to put me through school here. They just haven’t been able to come out of hiding for fear of their lives. And I’ve had to keep a low profile with my mom as well.”

Allister’s eyes widened in shock. “Then… what changed?”

“Those cartel fucks finally got flatlined. New management rose up, old grudges died. My grandparents are finally off the hook, so now they decided to splurge on me.”

“Wow, that’s…” Allister shook his head. “Well, I’m glad things worked out for you. In retrospect, it was a little fantastical to imagine that someone destitute would be able to stay in Arasaka Academy for as long as you have. I even heard rumors that…” he pressed his lips closed. “Nothing, nevermind.” He took his shot of top shelf vodka in hand and downed it in one go. I sipped the last of my mojito as well. “Let’s get going.”

“Where are we meeting Walter?” I asked.

“When we get there,” he said as we both exited, passing by a line of people made to wait. Hadn’t seen that line when I arrived. Lucky me, I guess. Allister stood by the pavement waiting, and from a corner, a driverless Rayfield Caliburn drove by.

The sleek, low-roofed hypercar stopped right in front of us.

The door opened.

Allister went in .

I stared at him slack-jawed.

“What are you doing?” Allister asked. “Come in.”

I rounded the car and entered to sit on the passenger’s seat. Once the door closed, Allister immediately pulled off.

“I didn’t get the gist between you and Walter,” I told him. “Not the first time we spoke today, or ever really. Always assumed he was the alpha. But you’re the one driving a hypercar. You know who I am. Who are you?”

He gave me a sideways glance and a small smile. “You’ve probably assumed correctly the nature of our relationship. His parents work for mine. He attached himself to me as such, bidden by his parents, and has stayed by my side since, like the ancient vassals of feudal Japan. My father is a vice president at the finance department of Arasaka, and Walter’s father is a manager. If my father is the samurai lord, then Walter’s is his retainer.”

I nodded. “Then why are you an XBD gofer?”

Allister made a shocked sound, and then chuckled uneasily. Maybe I broke him out of the corpo speak too violently.

“Vice president is not as great of a position as it might sound. They’re below the directors, who are below the executive director, the de-facto hegemon of the department, in charge of Arasaka’s purse, in Night City at least. A Vice Presidency might afford my father enough money to buy his only son a hypercar, but I too am like Walter in that I must answer to a higher authority.”

“The son of a director,” I said.

“I’m a little more special than that ,” Allister said with a smile. “By all accounts, my father is looking at an imminent promotion, having already conquered the competition in his tenure as VP, and will soon be welcomed into the good company of the directors.”

I could hear the derision in his voice.

“And now the directors who had stayed busy bothering and lording over the weaker VPs, having left my father alone due to his prowess, will focus their attention on the young upstart, and he will have to shoulder scorn and derision for the time being until he establishes himself well enough in this new arena. This, naturally, drags me into the consequences of his actions. I will now have to play nice with the son of the executive director. Thankfully, the director’s children are either too young, old, or weakly positioned to bully me, leaving me at the mercy of this fifteen year old boy.”

His personal little Katsuo.

“And when I promised him Jimmy Kurosaki XBDs hot off the street, he believed me. And then I ended up disappointing him.”

I winced. “Fuck. Sorry dude. Life became… hectic—”

“I know about your mother’s passing,” he replied. “I would never blame you for deciding to take a break or even quitting entirely after what happened to you. Walter didn’t see it the same way. He could tell how much damage this had done to my image in the eyes of Jin. He dragged me all the way to you and… you know the rest. And besides, I already took responsibility for my shortcomings. Jin and his cronies will get these XBDs for free, not that it would ever truly harm them to pay for them. But it’s the personal cost to myself that matters. A pound of flesh to make reparations.”

“Ain’t that a bitch,” I muttered. 

Allister chuckled a “Yeah.”

“So what does that make me as someone who isn’t sworn to you like Walter is?” I asked. “Could I do that or something?”

Allister frowned. “Don’t make requests you don’t know the weight of, David. Swearing yourself to me means I get to protect you from whatever bullies are giving you a hard time, sure, and I doubt you’d have any more troubles in school if you did, but that means you work under me. And you always will. Walter’s father will never accept a promotion that supplants my father. Walter will similarly never take a step up the corporate ladder in which he is my equal. If either of them ever did, then they would be marked as betrayers for life and would lose all trust. Very few ever manage to get away with doing so, and only ever do because the head family of Arasaka gave them clemency for very special reasons. Do you want that, David? To work under me for the rest of your life?”

I blinked.

What the fuck. 

Was that what their deal was? Allister said all that shit about retainers and samurai, and I just thought he was being the nerd he always was, but he was dead fucking serious, wasn’t he? Walter really was his retainer.

His servant .

“That’s a lot to consider all at once,” I said. 

He snorted. “I’m sure it is. No, you are my business partner, David. You help me sate Jin’s appetite for XBDs, and I give you an in to this world where you are free to network to your heart’s content. But let me give you a word of advice before you get started on all of that: for God’s sake, don’t be afraid to admit inferiority. It does you far less harm than you can imagine.”

I started kicking the floor of the car, but stopped once I realized where I was.

Instead, I just chewed on my lip.

This wasn’t going to be a good night at all. I could feel it.

Allister put a hand on my shoulder. “Just stick to me and don’t speak unless spoken to. Dazzle them with your outfit and delta without elaborating. High society loves the quiet types.”

“I don’t do quiet very well.”

“Can you try?”

I nodded. “I can.”

We pulled up in a toll gate that was crawling with armed security guards and dogs of all things. Hadn’t seen one of those outside of TV in… ever, actually. Nuts.

Around the toll booth was what looked to be some kind of scanner arch.

I paled as the weight on my back took precedence in my mind. 

A security guard approached Allister’s window. He rolled it down and looked up at the officer. “Allister Takeuchi with a guest, David Martinez, my schoolmate.”

The security guard gave me a look that lasted a few seconds, and my heart pounded in my chest. He gestured carelessly to the side. “You can go,” he said. The toll booth opened and we drove right in. The arch didn’t even activate.

Just in case it did and it was soundless, I looked behind, wondering if they were going to follow us and drag me out of the car, asking me why I had mil-spec chrome chipped in.

None came.

“They’re not coming after us, you know,” Allister said with a chuckle in his voice. “They know who my father is. I live in this neighborhood.”

It was only now that I noticed we were in fucking North Oaks.

And it looked just as preem as it did on TV. Even better, in fact.

I was at a total loss for words. Grass . So much of it too, and it was growing everywhere. It was dark, and from the neon lights dotting the picturesque landscape, I couldn’t make out the green of it all, but it was no less amazing just for that.

The flowers and hedges were immaculately arranged as well in patterns that betrayed hundreds of man hours spent making this place look as perfect as possible during all times of the day.

North Oaks was the neighborhood of the ultra rich, a subdistrict of Westbrook, a district that fucking bordered mine. Arroyo was probably five miles from North Oak tops, probably less.

This was how the other half lived, huh?

“A lot busier during the day,” Allister said. “That’s when the legions of gardeners crawl out to make sure everything stays in shape.”

“I figured,” I said.

“So, did you look at any plans to move out of Santo now that your grandparents get to flex their funds?”

“Still a little quick for that,” I said. “I’m dealing with a lot at once right now. Living in one place will do me good. Even a shithole megabuilding.”

“Heard they’ve got some good units the higher you go,” he said. “Why don’t you move into one temporarily and pay rent for both so you don’t have to move all your stuff?” I snorted. What a rich kid thing to suggest.

Then again, I was pretty rich now, wasn’t I?

Well, I was pretty rich. Then I went ahead and tied my networth to a dick-measuring costume. Hey, with that, and the Sandevistan, I did have a pretty decent net worth. Maine was ready to lay down forty grand for it. Add that to my outfit, which cost twenty-six thousand eddies all in all, and I had the net worth of a modest homeowner.

“My house is fine as it is,” I said. “Comfortable bed. Good locks. ICE is solid. I’ll give it a month or two before I even think about moving out. Right now, I just need stability.”

I wouldn’t get it, though, with how I was planning to live my life, learning so many trades and skills at once. Stability was a pipe dream. What I needed to develop was a mindset that could deal with this lack of stability.

“As long as you’re comfortable,” he said. “Still kind of cracks my chrome that you’re so rich, but you live in a megabuilding.”

“Me too,” I said. “It is what it is. In the meantime, I’ll stick with the NCART for now. Can’t go around buying a Rayfield just for some fuck to klep it.”

“Yikes,” he muttered. “Yeah, you will have to keep the wealth on the downlow. Who knows what some psycho would do to you if they saw you with all this gold?”

“I know,” I said. “I’m the one who grew up in Santo. No need to be worried on my account.”

He nodded. We split off from the main road finally, taking the loan road to someone’s estate, a confusingly old-fashioned mansion: conical and pyramidical roofs of black stone, and cream walls with white balconies. Allister put the car to self-park, and it inserted itself between two other parked hypercars that gave enough space for the doors to raise so we could get out.

I felt dizzy just walking in this place. The air smelled so good, felt so good. It lacked the sting of the polluted city-air, and was far more humid and somehow fuller than the desert air.

The corps had better air than us.

“Are you alright?” Allister asked.

“Yeah,” I said as I forced my composure and followed after him. The parking lot was attached to the estate’s drive, and almost rivaled the whole width of the mansion in size, which was insane enough alone. Once we got closer to the house, I could see the pool past some hedges where dozens of people were milling about, some dressed in sleek, black and functional neomilitaristic outfits. Militech, maybe? Or just unwilling to submit to the absolute circus that neokitsch admittedly was. Most were in neokitsch, and some wore a more modern take on traditionally chinese clothing. Kang Tao, no doubt about it.

A shock of fear went through me at the realization. QianT was connected to Kang Tao, and I was wearing their mil-spec chrome. Let alone them finding out about it, how much actual power could they exert over me? Maybe some sort of killswitch to just straight up kill whoever wears their chrome? They could do it. It was entirely possible.

I had to comb through my Sandy’s OS quickly . Couldn’t keep living with this cloud of fear hanging over my head.

Conspicuously, no one was swimming.

Walter was wearing neo-military as well, a black suit with a white shirt underneath and no frills whatsoever. It gave his tall and broad build far more severity.

He looked at me with a frown that turned into a shocked expression. “ Martinez ?!” His eyes flashed blue as he looked me over. “That’s eighteen karats at the lowest! How could you afford any of this?” He turned to Allister. “Did you…?” Was there hurt in his expression there?

Allister shook his head. “This is all David. His grandparents are actually quite wealthy. How do you think he could afford an Arasaka education?” Hearing the lie repeated like that made me feel a little guilty that I was playing Allister.

But then again, what choice did I have? Sorry, no, I don’t actually have a rich gramps from buttfuck Mexico footing my bills, it’s actually me getting knee-deep in scav guts every other day that does it. Yeah, and sometimes I slice Tyger Claws in half for extra pocket money when my soon-to-be-a-cyberpsycho boss doesn’t give me jobs klepping data from the very company we’re sucking the dick of.

“The nitwit is tasteful, I’ll give him that,” Walter admitted with a grimace and I gave him the middle finger in response. “He might take eyes off you at this rate.”

Allister just scoffed. “I’m not here for the attention. If I can pay for my mistakes and slink back into obscurity uninterrupted, I will be most grateful. The limelight isn’t where any of us want to be.” He then looked at me with a halfway apologetic expression. “Sorry. Only silence and mystique can save you now.”

Where was all that confidence when he was a quivering, cringing mess in front of me during that XBD deal earlier today? This Allister was in his element .

I gave a silent and mystical nod to that. Allister grinned. Never let it be said that I wasn’t a fast learner.

I followed him past the pool area and towards the front entrance where we walked through the open doors without a care. Inside were even more people. My head was almost hurting from all the people I saw, and I activated the Sandevistan to take care of it and also slowly let myself ride out the disorientation and feeling of absolute foreignness. 

Then I looked around at the time-frozen world.

I saw some familiar faces, and many not.

And close to where Allister was making a bee-line for was Katsuo.

Chapter 13: Friday Night Fiesta Part 3

He was wearing a large brown fur-coat even bigger than Allister’s—a status symbol, no doubt—and underneath it a black shirt with a purple waistcoat over it with diamond buttons—not diamond shaped, not even diamond studded , diamond buttons— , a belt-buckle that seemed to be made of solid fucking diamond as well, and purple pants that were glistening , likely covered in diamond dust as well.

His shoes were the only normal part about him, until I gave those a better look and noticed that they didn’t let off any reflection at all, even when they logically should. Some sort of super black gimmick shit?

I deactivated the Sandevistan and let us get closer and closer to the motherload of all my problems. “Jin,” Allister said, talking to the person next to Katsuo. He gave a shallow bow, and Walter followed suit. I did too, only a quarter of a second late, not enough to signal any impudence I hoped.

God, I was already thinking like a damn corpo. Mom would be so proud.

“Oh, Allister, right?” Jin said. For being fifteen, he was still a couple of inches taller than me, and his hands were already chromed out, fingers plated gold no less. He was dressed in a long and voluminous silk jacket with a black backdrop, but decorated in glowing and artful depictions of cherry blossoms, dragons and tigers. His clothing underneath was a similar black to Katsuo’s shoes, too, a void of black that ate all light. His pants were the same, but they were loose enough to break up the silhouette of his legs, and his shoes seemed almost rudimentary in comparison, a pair of black sneakers without any additional frills. “My cousin and I were just talking about you!” He said, looking to Katsuo. “So, are you here to disappoint me again?”

“Far from,” Allister said as he produced the baggie from his pocket and handed it over to Jin. “XBDs of Lieutenant Colonel James Norris’ final moments.”

“Come on,” Jin frowned. “That’s old-hat! I already saw this!”

“Then you may do with them as you please,” Allister said with a bow of his head. “My apologies for my repeated failure. But from my information, James Norris’ incident was the latest XBD that JK tuned in the Edgerunner series.”

Jin grimaced. “That’s true, yeah. Well, whatever. Guess I can find some uses for this. Not like it was really that satisfying. You don’t even get to the part where he starts using his Sandevistan.”

My eyes widened.

I wanted to butt in, but Katsuo was standing right there , and he hadn’t even made the realization that I was who I was yet. He had looked at me plenty, that was for sure, but it was all very appreciative. 

I decided to give Allister a holo-call, counting on my shades to conceal my eyes.

David: The XBD is uncut. This is everything James Norris experienced from the moment he started his rampage to the moment he was killed.

“Who is calling you?” Jin asked. “Isn’t it rude to read such messages while speaking to your betters?”

Allister bowed ninety degrees now. “My sincerest apologies. And my apologies again for correcting the honored executive’s son, but these XBDs show everything. Every point until James Norris’ death.”

Katsuo scoffed. “Who told you that?” He turned to me and stared at me with redoubled intensity. “Who are you, anyway? I dig the outfit, but I’ve no idea who you are. Do you even go to our school?”

Fuck. Shouldn’t have made it so obvious.

Then again, my whole plan to make a splash in high society was dead in the water the moment Katsuo decided to show his face.

I took off my large aviator glasses that seemed to have covered up my identity and gave him a flat look. Then I bowed, because that was apparently a thing you were supposed to do.

“Hello, Katsuo,” I said.

“Da-David?!” Katsuo almost shrieked. “What the fuck? And that stuff you’re wearing! Did—” he turned to Allister in shock. “Did you outfit this gutter trash with a fit worth twenty-six thousand?”

“The executive’s son is mistaken,” I said, still bowing. “My clothes were bought and paid for by me.”

“Stand up!” Katsuo roared. “ You ? You’re from fucking Arroyo! How could you afford this?”

“Honored executive’s son,” Allister said. “David’s grandparents are actually—”

“You shut your mouth, underclassman,” Katsuo spat before refocusing on me. “You. Spit it out.”

“My grandparents are actually quite affluent,” I said. “It’s how I was able to afford to go to Arasaka Academy in the first place.”

“Fuck that noise!” Katsuo shouted. “It’s because your mom is a joytoy!”

My eyes widened, and I was glad I was wearing my shades again. I used the Sandevistan for an undue amount of time to calm down. 

All I really wanted to do was rip Katsuo to pieces. 

But that wouldn’t be very strategic, would it?

But I’d think about it for a while, just enough for me to get over the little fantasy and snap back to reality.

Finally, I felt ready to respond. “A joytoy wouldn’t be able to afford an Arasaka Academy tuition, Katsuo. And if she was highly-enough ranked in any of the known brothels to be able to do so, then you would have found conclusive evidence of these rumors by now. And I also believe we should let the dead rest.”

Jin was grimacing as he looked at his cousin. “Seriously, dude? His mom’s dead?”

“It’s been a tough week,” I said to him.

“Wait, she died this week ?”

“Last Wednesday,” I said. 

“Shit, dude,” Jin said with sad eyes. “My condolences, choom.”

Katsuo scoffed. “Don’t start pitying this gutter trash, cousin.” He smiled maliciously. “I bet he paid for this outfit with the money he should have used on tuition.” His eyes flashed blue. “I’ve been keeping track on you, Martinez. You haven’t paid your fees yet, and as my father is a board member of the Academy board, I get to have access to who did and didn’t pay—” he stopped, his expression turning into horror. 

“The payment went through just an hour ago,” I said. 

“Big deal,” Katsuo scoffed. “Probably some kind of life insurance payout. And you blew it out on an outfit. David, how fucking stupid are you?”

Shit, how did I refute that?

Well, thanks to the Sandy, I had more than enough time to think of a rebuttal.

Wait, I didn’t have to do that at all. I had bank statements .

I NFC’d him a list of transactions for the past week. The addresses were obfuscated, but it showed a consistent pattern of ingoing and outgoing payments. “If I was paid out by a life insurance policy, I wouldn’t be receiving money this often.”

“Doctored,” Katsuo said, having not even bothered to read it.

Yeah, you would think that, you fucking gonk.

I will bury you, Katsuo.

I NFC’d everyone else the statements, even Walter.

Jin was a wild-card, but I was hoping he’d come around to my side and that he wasn’t being so chaotic just to fuck with me.

He probably was. Couldn’t rely on him.

A message popped up in my vision.

Allister: Stop defending yourself now. You have done all you can. Anything more will just rile him up.

Oh well.

I let my learned helplessness swallow my despair, the helplessness I had learned growing up with the compulsive fear that a moment of rest would spell my doom. 

I could do nothing anymore. And if that was the case, better not kick and scream as I was getting tossed into the void.

“Not gonna say anything, David?” Katsuo said. “Maybe it’s because you know what you are—a fraud.”

“Hold on, cousin, shut up for a second,” Jin said. “Like, forget about all that random shit for one second and let’s get back on topic. Can we do that, cous’?”

Katsuo frowned. “What, the XBDs?”

Jin nodded insistently. “Fuck yeah the XBDs! You, Allister, you said these were uncut, right?”

Allister gestured towards me. "Yes, and David can confirm this fact."

I nodded.

“Start to end?” 

I smirked. “Right until Norris goes face-to-face with a Militech M-179 Achilles tech rifle and gets his brains splattered all over the sidewalk. Never let go of his trigger fingers until the very end.” I held up both my hands towards Jin like I was holding him at gunpoint and pulled the trigger on his face. He mimed getting his head blown off before laughing like a child during Christmas.

“So you watched it!” Jin said. 

I gave another nod. “It’s got everything. The twenty-seven cops, the Sandy, and the death.”

“Fucking nova! We gotta sync-watch this shit!” Jin looked around, and his eyes flashed yellow, probably sending out messages. “Oh wait, I almost forgot,” he pushed the BD baggie to my chest. “I’ve no idea who the fuck you are.”

“You get your BDs from Allister?” I asked.

He nodded.

“I’m his guy.”

“You’re his guy.”

I nodded with a hum.

“Preem story, guy,” he said. “But it’s the same anyway. I usually don’t slot in BDs that I haven’t seen people around me slot in. You know how it goes.”

“Smart,” I conceded. 

He smiled. “Then you get it!” Yes, yes I did. He wanted to use me as a guinea pig.

“I didn’t bring my wreath,” I said.

“You can borrow mine ,” Jin said with a tone of magnanimity. “Follow me, we’re going to the media room!” He ran up the stairs of his house, and around us I saw the decent flock of people that Jin had gathered, almost fifteen in number. His retainers?

Fuck, I felt bad for them. Some of them looked genuinely scared, and I couldn’t blame them. Their sociopathic young master was about to force them into reliving the last days of a cyberpsycho.

I waited for Katsuo and Allister to follow after him. The former scoffed at me before dogging the steps of his younger cousin, which gave me some confusion. Was the head of R&D beholden to the head of Finance? Probably. R&D was driven by money. Finance was money.

What a backward way of thinking that was. R&D was why the fucking company had money in the first place.

I was reminded of what Lucy said back then at Turing’s: being useful could just open you up to exploitation.

I was also beginning to doubt how far one could conceivably climb on the corporate ladder without having family ties.

Katsuo took the lead to the media room, an expansive hall with a bunch of BD chairs that allowed people to lie down on them horizontally. There were BD wreath mounts as well, wired and connected to some wiring underneath the floor. 

And on the wall were all the chairs faced was a screen, curving to a concave bend. On the ceiling was a hologram projector as well that likely used the curve of the wall to more easily plot the visual data of a BD, but those things were always quite tricky to get down.

Jin stood next to the chair closest to the screen and gave me a smile. “This one’s for you. Provided you don’t fry your brain after this, we’ll give it a try afterwards.”

While I walked towards him, I shot Allister a text.

David: Make sure they don’t try anything while I’m out.

Allister: They’d have no reason to. You’re testing a product that they want. And as you may have noticed, Katsuo is beholden to him-the brat. That fucking brat.

I almost chuckled. Always trust a holo call to reveal a person’s deepest feelings. I folded my glasses and put them in an inner pocket of my jacket before taking my seat next to Jin, who put the BD wreath on my head and slotted the shard.

The wreath lights activated, and once again, I was in James Norris’ body.

Everything was wrong. So, so, so, so, so, so, sosososososSO FUCKING WRONG.

Had to chill.

Yeah. Chill.

Oh look. A cop. Maybe ask him for directions. Damn pigs liked to think they were better than us servicemen. Fuck ‘em. Who the fuck gave a shit how many gangoons they brought in. So fucking wrong. Bastard.

I knocked on the window of a cruiser.

Why? Why was I disturbing a cop?

“Hey, back off!” the fat cop growled. “Looking to get shot?”

What?

Yeah, fuck him.

So I—paused as my finger hovered over the trigger, memories of mom, the Animal gangoon’s minigun, and all those glass-shards—shot him.

The bullet tore through both passenger seat windows, and the skull fragments broke through the wind shield.

He deserved it.

More of his pals came out to play.

Hitting them was child’s play.

Playing with children, with meat. Always so fragile, those things.

But this was fun ! So fucking fun !

Why didn’t high command let me do this more often?!

Wait! Waitwaitwaitwait!

I remember!

I have this!

The world went still, and I went behind the row of pigs firing at me, giving them each a bullet to the back of their heads, their hats flying as their heads exploded.

Reload.

Used magazine hadn’t even hit the floor before the new one was loaded.

And then those things I shot died.

Nice.

One brazen little meat-puppet ran at me.

Kick! 

He got cut in half!

Right, had those sword legs. Forgot. The sword legs felt like such a part of me that this really had been just a kick in my mind.

More blood. More dead pigs! I didn’t even have to move! They just kept coming to me! How nice of them!

Something was in the sky. Red lights. I felt… heavy .

Ran away from it.

Red light followed.

And then something broke into my brain.

But I beat it. I had implants for that stuff. High command made sure of that. Good guys, they were.

I fired up at the flying archnemesis, this hated foe, and it spewed out six-eyed children that began to fire at me .

Then that brain attack hit me and things began to go dark.

The children stabbed me from a distance, each taking turns, jerking me around. I slowly regained more control over my body and kept firing, but my attacks did nothing.

The six-eyed children kept pointing their triangles at me.

No matter how many shots I fired!

One six-eyed child shoved his triangle into my face, and he wouldn’t back off no matter how many shots I popped off, no matter how—

I woke up firing imaginary guns at the sky, trying to kill the six-eyed children before their triangles could consume my soul.

I activated the Sandevistan instinctively, and my mind cleared up. 

I was still in the BD seat. That was good. And no one had died while I was still experiencing personality bleed-through. That was great .

Fuck. That was close.

Maybe now that I had heavy duty chrome, I probably shouldn’t be running any Edgerunner XBDs near population centers.

I deactivated the Sandevistan, took the wreath off from my head and got up, redonning my sunglasses. Jin stared at me expectantly, as if I was about to crack on him or something. “Well?”

“BD’s good,” I said. 

He grinned. “Choomba!” he hugged me. “It was all there like promised! Uncut Jimmy Kurosaki fucking gold ! Love you man!”

I didn’t hug him back. That was apparently the right move, because he didn’t get mad once he disentangled himself from me. He just focused on his group, half-nervous and half excited. “Let’s get viewing!”

I gave Jin a nod. “Let me know if there are any problems with the viewing. I’ll delta for now.” Then I turned to leave.

I found Allister by the hallway—Walter by his side— looking at me with such an excited grin. “You should have seen him while you were in the BD. He was practically jumping once he realized you weren’t full of shit!”

I nodded. “So… hard part over?”

“The dragon has been sated,” Allister said, never giving up on an opportunity to be a fucking nerd. “The hard part’s over. Now it’s time for the fun part; your debut.”

000

Observing the corpo brats made me feel like I was some kind of a documentary-maker from the old world observing the behaviors of some flashy species of bird.

Jackets and coats were a mainstay for the guys; silken, fur or just fur-lined. Diamonds and necklaces adorned them as well, sparkling with all sorts of different gemstones. 

The girls covered less skin, sometimes kept fur around their necks or shoulders, and always either revealed a decent section of their legs or their cleavage, showing off chrome implants or biojobs that seemed to idealize them even further; thin waists, wide hips and, well, big tits and asses. 

Allister had introduced me to his gaggle of hangers-on, their level around half a step beneath Walter in the corp hierarchy. It turned out that when Jin and Katsuo weren’t around to tell him to eat shit, he pretty much had a run of the whole place. I had picked a worthy friend.

We were by the pool area, having monopolized our own table with a parasol overhead. Around the table were three chairs, where Allister, Walter and I sat. His friends hung about either lying on some sunbeds or standing around, but they were all seemingly oriented around him protectively.

And I took Allister’s advice by not talking. Not talking was surprisingly easy. And the fact that no one was speaking to me made it even easier. Then again, they probably didn’t want to get involved with the streetrat that had somehow infiltrated their little gathering.

Walter was mixing some drinks on the table from five bottles of alcohol and several other smaller bottles of what looked like juice. The alcohol bottles were ornate, like works of glass art, and even the labels were in a gold filigree. Two bottles were clear, one labeled with ‘vodka’ and another with ‘gin’ but the five others were either dark orange or bright orange. Tequila, rum and something called ‘Triple Sec’, and two bottles of non offbrand sodas.

And he was mixing it all into three glasses.

“What is this?” I muttered.

“Ah,” Allister said. “That’s Long Island Iced Tea.”

“What the fuck is that.”

“The stakes of our drinking game,” he said. Then he gestured his hand over the pool, to a table far from us, where a group of three others were seated, two in basic and functional neo-militarism garb and shades, while the third guy, probably the top-dog, wore a brown fur coat that seemed to turn into a scarf that hugged around his neck several times. He was black, and beneath his coat, he was shirtless, which revealed chrome paneling on his heavily muscled torso.

And one of his chooms was also mixing some drinks as well.

“What’s the game?” I asked.

“Done,” Walter said.

Allister’s eyes shone blue. “It’s a war game between us and Militech. HoloShip.”

“The fuck is HoloShip?” 

Allister frowned at me. “You know we have a school team, right? It’s a pretty big e-sport in the private academy leagues here in Night City.”

The name was vaguely familiar. “Might have heard or seen it written a couple of places but I still don’t know what the fuck it is.”

“Ever played battleship?”

“I guess?”

“It’s something like that, but more interactive.”

“Why are we playing games with Militech?” I asked. “Aren’t they, like, our enemies?”

“That’s exactly why,” Allister said. 

“So, what, you build clout by beating rivals in video games?”

“Yes,” Allister said. “While the Kang Tao, Trauma Team and other corpo scions watch.” He looked to the sides, likely at said ‘corpo scions’. The ones dressed in a Chinese style were clearly Kang Tao, but they were in the minority; just three girls and one guy. The rest, I couldn’t identify their allegiance at a glance. Wasn’t like the ‘Saka kids were coordinating styles, either.

“Why are they even here?” I asked. “Who’s party is this anyway?”

“Jin’s, and because having a party with other corps is a good way to show off to your future rivals. And trust me, you want the other corps here. A purely Arasaka fete would… not be very fun. If you thought Jin’s grandstanding was insufferable right now,” he snorted. “You’ve barely scratched the surface.”

“It’s more chill now?” I asked. 

“Yes,” he replied. “Laws and regulations would prevent any bad thing from happening in this party, at least between factions. Within Arasaka, a superior would be free to physically abuse you if you don’t have the backing to ensure vengeance. With others around, we try to keep these ugly matters away from prying eyes.”

Walter lifted the bottles, and the people standing around us took them respectfully, and more joined to clear the table out before it suddenly transformed. The plastic-like finish at the top peeled away to reveal the table’s metallic bottom, containing a laptop, a fucking gun and a tablet.

“I heard tell that you’re quite the accomplished programmer,” Allister said. “Hence why I invited you to this table. You’ll take the laptop.”

I picked it up gingerly, still a little confused. He took the gun, and Walter took the tablet.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

Allister twirled the gun by the trigger guard. “It’s not a real gun. Anyway, each team has five battleships arranged randomly on the pool, which is meant to be a map. No specific grid-like pattern either, and the ships move according to an artificial intelligence that Walter is in charge of designing. He knows where they are at all times. It’s your job to hack into Walter’s counterpart’s tablet to find information on where their ships are, and also protect Walter from any intrusions. Can you do that?”

“And where do the Long Island juices come into play?” I asked. “Are we supposed to drink them first?”

“Heavens, no,” Allister laughed. “Only if we lose. If the other team loses, they drink theirs.”

“And then?”

“Well, then we can taunt them while they are utterly toasted,” he said. “And they won’t have the guile or wit to really defend themselves. You’ve played video games, yes? Think of it as a debuff towards a statistic called ‘social defense’, which is very important to us.”

“Wow,” I said. “That’s pretty anticlimactic, I won’t lie.” I booted up the laptop. It opened on a preprogrammed app that consisted of an IDE and access to the local net. “What am I supposed to do here, program a quickhack or something?”

Allister laughed. “Yeah, right. Just focus on maintaining our ICE for now. Those Militech guys get enough practice breaching, but they’re always on the defensive. If we go on the defensive, too, it can at least ensure a cleaner match. And I trust Walter’s ability to make sure our ships remain untouched.”

The opposing team’s head honcho raised his thumb. Allister turned to Walter who gave a serious nod. Allister returned the thumbs up.

“Alright, let’s get started!”

I connected to Walter’s device and quickly programmed a simple app to detect intrusion. It took me almost a minute, but once I was done, it already gave me warning signals. Thankfully, the program identified the nature of the intrusion, and I quickly shut it down.

Then I started building on the ICE. Instead of manually maintaining the cyberspace wall, I decided to create a little program that would help me out. I didn’t count on it to really do more than just buy time while I figured out a more involved solution to building up the ICE in a short time. 

I typed away on an encryption algorithm and after a few minutes, checked back to see how my subroutine was doing. My eyes widened in shock.

Not only did I negate Militech’s advances, I began to push them back as well. They weren’t fast enough to even break down the ICE my subroutine was building.

I looked up from the computer and eyed the opposing hacker, who was frantically typing on his laptop.

I felt bad for him.

“How is the ICE!” Allister asked as he took aim at some part of the pool.

“ICE is… fine,” I said. 

“Walter!” Allister shouted. “I need coords!”

Walter’s eyes flashed yellow, and Allister fired.

The gun released a holographic bullet that struck nothing but water, making a holographic splash as it did. “Curses,” Allister muttered.

“You want me to get you the real coords?” I asked him.

“Just focus on maintaining the ICE! Concentrate, David!”

I looked down at my terminal. The automatic subroutine I had programmed to make more ICE was already kicking the other guy’s ass.

I laughed.

I turned to the Militech guy. “Allister, what if I gave the other guy a holo-call? Is that against the rules or something?”

“Focus, David!”

“But is it against the rules or not?”

“No!”

I gave him a call.

David: Yo, it’s the other hacker. No idea what the hell you’re doing but that’s not gonna work. Have you tried employing the quantum cipher matrix against the subroutine you’re getting your ass kicked by?

The hacker looked up at me in shock, and then glared before redoubling his progress against my ICE.

“Damn you, David!” Walter shouted. “Focus on your work!”

I laughed. I looked down at the terminal. Yup. He was using quantum cipher now. 

But that could be defeated as well.

I reprogrammed the subroutine and shot him another text.

David: You should give higher math a try if you really wanna be an ICE breaker.

“Anyway,” I said. “How are we doing? Did any of our ships get hit yet?”

Allister flashed me an app install portal. I downloaded it, pushing the limits of my shitty corneal implant’s memory, and I could finally see our side of the pool covered in holographic battleships. One was smoking . 

“Going on the attack,” I said as I honed in on the enemy hacker on the local net and started writing a simple intrusion algorithm, hoping to have a little more fun.

The algorithm crashed against a steel wall.

Fair. Fair. Allister did say they were better at defense than offense.

I took a look at my ICE. It was growing so large that it was beginning to take up valuable RAM. I decided to slow down the ICE-building algorithm manually so it wouldn’t grow any larger, and started on a better intrusion algorithm.

This one dug a divot through the ICE wall before getting mercilessly ripped apart.

I looked up at the pool. On the other side of the pool, a fully visible battleship was sinking. “Yes!” Allister shouted.

I gave the next try some serious love and attention, actually giving it an effort that I personally felt was overkill, but I needed some way to have fun. This wasn’t exactly Graphwars with Lucy, but the ICE was at least posing something of a challenge, if not humiliating the enemy hacker.

Unknown: Just give up, kid. This ICE is a custom-built project of mine. I’m in the cybersec track in Militech Academy.

I saved him as L33t-H4x0r.

David: Like I give a shit.

I did the finishing touches on the algorithm and sent it.

It fucking trampled on his ICE, breaking it into pieces and dispersing the bits like they never even existed in the first place. 

“What the fuck?!” the L33t-H4x0r screamed. 

“And now I have a run of their system,” I said as I accessed the enemy radar gonk and shot Allister and Walter their information. “Have at it,” I said to my two teammates.

They gaped at me.

The Militech alpha from the other team stood up in outrage.

“Wa-wait, David!” Allister said. “Send a self-destruct order! You can do that now!”

“Ah,” I said. I checked the radar gonk’s device and saw that I could. Preem. 

Their ships all exploded as one, becoming visible for just a fraction of a second before going up in flames.

The onlookers stared in silence. 

“You cheated!” L33t-H4x0r yelled.

I sent him a message.

David: Run your mouth like that again and I’ll WET your ICE so hard that it’ll be breachable for ten generations. And I’ll hunt your new iterations down every time and release keys on every Localnet in Night City.

The hacker backed up and tripped over his chair, landing on his back in fright.

“You were the one who brought outside ICE,” I said. “That may not be against the rules, but it does tell me one thing; even with prep-time, you ain’t shit.”

Allister looked at me with a frown. “That… is against the rules. And you still beat it?”

Wow. What a scumbag. I wanted to get working on a generalized key to his ICE algorithms right now. Just from how well my intrusion worked, I could tell exactly what sort of encryption principles he used and how to defeat them.

But that was just way too much work just for revenge. Ah, who gave a shit anyway.

The main guy groaned before turning around to grab his iced tea and drank it all in one go before slamming the glass down on the table.

“Rematch,” the guy growled. “We’ll switch hackers. No cheating ,” he glared at his hacker. “This time.”

I looked at Allister in surprise. “Can they do that?”

Allister nodded. “Only if the new hacker drinks the penalty drink, or if the leader drinks it for him.”

And true to form, the leader drank the other Iced Tea while his radar operator was still not halfway through the first one.

“Wow, that’s,” I paused. “Okay, then.” He was pretty determined. I could profit from that, actually. “Can’t we put money on it or something fun like that?”

Allister raised an eyebrow at me. “Money?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Money. I dunno, like… ten K?” I suggested, trying to make that sound more nonchalant than it actually was. 

Allister groaned. “I don’t very much see the point of that. Ten thousand is just pocket change, and even if they won’t miss it, they will carry a grudge for having their money taken.”

For a second there I forgot that Allister was fucking rich . “What does it matter anyway?” I asked.

“Watch yourself,” Walter growled. “Don’t go around giving counsel when it’s not your place.”

I raised my hand placatingly. “I’m just curious why it does. Wasn’t being rhetorical. Militech are anyways our rivals, and they’re not gonna hurt you in public. And if we win, you’ll get more clout.” And I’ll get more money.

Allister conceded the point with a nod and a pained expression. “You’re right. It’s time I become more daring.” He schooled his expression to a determined frown. “But not ten thousand.” Fuck. Oh well. “That’s just pocket change after all.” He turned to the Militech leader. “Darius, we will agree to a rematch with twenty-five thousand eurodollars on the line.”

Darius narrowed his eyes. “Paid collectively or by each of us?”

“Your choice,” Allister said.

“Each,” he said with a snort. “And I’ll agree if your hacker drinks his penalty.”

I raised an eyebrow at that. Seemed a little chicken-shit to me, but I’d do it. I took the glass and while Allister was arguing, I downed it in several goes. Thankfully the fizziness of that solitary splash of nicola Walter had added to it wasn’t enough to make the drink more unbearable than it already was.

But oh my god was it awful.

“Done,” I said. I sat down on my chair, a little more heavily than I should have and turned to my terminal. “Let’s play.”

“David,” Allister looked at me with wide eyes. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” I said. And if I turned out to not be okay, I’d just use the Sandevistan to process the alcohol faster. It could do that, right?

[With the help of the Sandevistan, I can.] Nanny helpfully supplied. [But it is not the Sandevistan itself that does it.] Was I detecting a hint of bitterness?

Nah, that was crazy.

Either way, it wouldn’t hurt to give Nanny’s source code another look.

Darius laughed. “Be ready!”

My terminal reset and our one damaged ship restored itself. Now that Allister had given me access to more of the game’s visuals, I could see the count down. Once it hit zero, I immediately got typing.

And I was typing fast . I wrote down some really good ICE, my creativity somehow overclocking and working perfectly with my technical skills to create some really good stuff.

The intrusion arrived in time, and I wondered why I even needed the intrusion detection soft in the first place when that was pretty much an inevitability. That was stupid of me.

Once I had gotten some decently chunky ICE-building subroutines going, I started preparing for my offensive, all the while keeping an eye on the progress of my ICE. The enemy hacker was chipping away at it, but it was building itself up just as fast, too.

Child’s play.

I decided not to retrace my steps for the last intrusion algorithm that I did, instead wanting to get more creative and therefore use even less memory. I followed a hunch and my grin started growing as I realized the feasibility of my effort. Yeah, this would be a fun one.

And then my ICE started disintegrating.

Fuck. Put a pin on that project for now. I ran back to my ICE and started patching the vulnerabilities, but the enemy hacker was faster. He was making progress , now. Real progress. Fast progress, too.

I took one look at him and saw the chrome on the back of his skull. Netrunning cyberware.

This motherfucker was cheating!

Well, two could play that game.

I activated the Sandevistan, immediately feeling my high leaving me and replacing itself with a peculiar sense of depression that began to be chased away by the urgency of my situation.

While in overdrive, I looked at my code, took it in, and found it wanting.

I’d been an idiot to let things get this far.

But I could fix it. And moreover, I didn’t need the Sandevistan to.

I deactivated it and then my fingers flew as I prepared to fix the fundamental issues of my ICE, timing its new launch right on time as the enemy hacker almost got through my ICE. He had just enough access to send a self-destruct signal to one of our ships, but that was all the time he had.

He was booted right off as new security measures were put in place. I built on those measures, too, recalling and using the ridiculous methods I’d used while drunk to stymy him further. Once our ICE was secured, I continued on my intrusion project.

That one had some good principles, but it was flawed as well, inefficient. I’d been caught in the sway of my own genius so much that I had lost my humility, and with it my ability to second-guess my methods and make them better on a second attempt. V2 would not disappoint, though.

I let the enemy hacker try to punch his way through my sober ICE, and he probably thought he was making good progress judging from his frantic eyes and malicious smile, but little did he know that he was already screwed.

I launched the intrusion. Built in was a code to send self-destruct signals to all the enemy’s ships as well.

I slammed the lid of the laptop shut and swiveled my chair towards the enemy team as every single one of their ships exploded.

“What?” I asked nonchalantly.

Allister cheered as he clapped me on the back, and the onlookers joined in, some clapping their hands and others cheering loudly.

Darius clawed his hands as he glared at me with true hatred. My expression was flat as could be. Allister’s advice followed me as I stayed quiet, letting my actions speak for myself.

Chapter 14: Friday Night Fiesta Final Part

Summary:

David hops parties and finally has that talk with Maine

I received a transaction request not a moment too soon and accepted it without moving. The Arasaka crew were cheering and celebrating, popping champagne bottles and drinking to ‘their’ success.

Allister handed me a glass of sparkling champagne and I stared at it before just putting it on the table.

The noise was starting to get a little much for me. And I needed water.

I shot Allister a message asking for water.

Allister: Check the fridge.

And go back into the same mansion that Katsuo was inside?

Dammit.

I felt tempted to use the Sandevistan once I was out of sight, but I doubted a megacorp exec brat’s house wouldn’t have cameras or sensors to detect that kind of stuff.

Guess I just had to go in and hope for the best. I was starting to get a serious headache and Nanny couldn’t do anything without more water. Plus I really needed to pee, too.

After a trip to the bathroom in the labyrinthine mansion, I headed for the kitchen and opened the fridge to find it stocked to the brim with alcohol; beers, bottles of hard liquor, and wine, both red and white. Mercifully, there was a shelf with bottles of premium RealWater. I took two of those and downed one of them on the spot.

“You’re hard to get a hold of.”

The voice was feminine. I turned around to find a girl wearing a red cheongsam—a sleeveless, long dress with a slit at the legs—and a head of wavy blue-green hair. The dress had a heart-shaped window around her cleavage, revealing breasts with horizontal golden panels in a stripe pattern, studded with diamonds. I was grateful for my shades not for the first time today as I couldn’t help but stare at that, not really sure what to make of such a thing. It would have been sexy if it wasn’t also a little gross.

“Can I help you?” I asked.

“Can you?” she asked, stepping towards me. Was she Kang Tao?

Shit. Shit shit shit shit shit .

She stepped into my personal space and began to caress my chest. “I saw what you did back there. Very impressive.”

“It was nothing,” I said, hoping to sound humble.

000

“It was nothing,” he bragged shamelessly, straight-faced and with an even intonation. He really styled himself as some kind of a star, it seemed. The high vis and neon outfit clearly wasn’t attention-grabbing enough for him; even his speech had to corroborate his greatness.

Then again, for someone wearing his getup, he was remarkably humble. Quiet, sticking closely by the side of his friends and even gaining the favor of Jin.

Fei-Fei had been watching David since he arrived, from when he provided Jin with those XBDs to when he finished viewing it himself all the way to his HoloShip game where he crushed his opponents even after imbibing a serious amount of booze. Maybe that metal that glinted on his back was some kind of neuralware? Even if it was, it wasn’t like the Militech boys didn’t have their own Netrunner-geared hackers. That couldn’t replace natural skill, of which David seemed to have plenty.

He had plenty of cool, too. Fei-Fei had seen people come out of the Norris BD crying and puking, rendering the media room uninhabitable for the time being. She even viewed the BD herself to see what the fuss was.

That David had barely made a sound coming out of it was impressive. 

He was impressive . And that did things to her.

“That so?” she asked. He didn’t give anything away, the absolute tease. Maybe she could make him chase her?

She stepped back. He didn’t move forward at all. Tough customer. “Why haven’t I seen you in one of these events before?”

“I’m inclined towards more practical pursuits,” he replied. “Corporate mind games are beneath me.”

“Maybe that’s just because you’re a bad player,” she smirked.

“I don’t play stupid games,” he said. “I leave the flailing to the children.”

“I never gave you my name, did I?”

“Naturally. I never asked.”

She snorted. Was he going to neg her now? That was a bold strategy.

“If you’ll excuse me,” he said. “I’m keeping my friends waiting.”

She shoved him to the kitchen island, stepped in and kissed him.

He didn’t push her away. Good. He wanted her.

She took a step back to breathe. “Why don’t we go someplace more private?”

000

Katsuo sat next to his younger cousin Jin in the poolside while the boy’s cleaning crew—who had been sleeping in the basement—had been woken up to clean up the vomit that was all over the BD chairs and the floor of his media room.

He hadn’t gotten to sample the Norris BD yet, and he was grateful for it. Having seen how others had reacted, he was shocked by how tame David’s reaction had been. No screaming or crying.

Even Jin had screamed, his terror somehow morphing into elation mid-howl.

Katsuo really was the last sane person in the mansion, huh?

He grumbled. “You really shouldn’t be so accepting of whatever that gutter trash gives you.”

“He ain’t that bad,” Jin responded in his usual carefree tone. “Plus the BD was fun! You should try it sometime!”

“You don’t understand,” Katsuo growled. “David Martinez isn’t the sort you should associate with. He’s not one of us!”

“Man, you sure hate him!” Jin laughed. 

“No,” Katsuo denied instantly. “I can’t bring myself to care so much for a useless piece of shit like him. Hatred would be giving him way too much credit.”

“Oh, we have a tsundere on our hands!” Jin laughed. “Is that it? You have the hots for him?”

“How dare you suggest such a thing?!” Katsuo yelled. “David Martinez is—!” Katsuo’s tirade died in his throat as Jin’s expression morphed from gleeful exuberance to an impassive expression, his eyes half-lidded.

“ Damare, Katsuo-kun ,” he said, his voice deeper than usual. “Who do you think you’re speaking to?”

Jin was the son of the head of finance, sure, but that didn’t make Katsuo one of his little cronies. That said, he didn’t exactly push the issue.

“You go too far, cousin,” Katsuo said, but nothing else.

Jin chuckled, his innocent facade back in full swing. “Whoopsie! Really ruffled your feathers there, didn’t I? My bad, choomba, sorry. That said, I think you should let the whole David matter lie for now.”

“What?” Katsuo asked.

“I like him,” Jin said. “He managed to get me the XBDs I wanted, and what’s more, I dig his vibe. He has my favor.”

“He’s nothing !”

“I wouldn’t exactly go as far as to call him a friend,” Jin conceded. “But he certainly is more than nothing. So for now I’ll ask you to let the matter rest so I can continue getting what I want. And in return for leaving David alone, you can have more time to let off some steam with that hot fiancée of yours! Everybody wins!”

Katsuo scoffed. Yes, leave it to that spoiled brat Jin to force everything to his own whims. But father had been clear that this was his role when it came to his younger cousin. He had to give the boy some concessions to not get on his bad side.

But Katsuo also knew that he had to prevent himself from falling into servitude as well. And that meant strategizing, and picking his battles.

Jin wanted David so much? He could have him. Katsuo would just continue to consolidate power in other ways, keep the brat more or less happy, and be free to live his own life and pursue his own interests in the company.

000

I panted next to the girl whose name I still didn’t know, naked under the bed sheets.

Fuck happened?

Fuck happened.

She rolled over to face me with a satisfied smile on her face. “You’re more than just a good hacker, aren’t you? That was… nice.”

For her, maybe.

This was my first time. And I got so busy figuring out how to implement all the things I’d seen on porn BDs, taking an excruciatingly long time with foreplay before diving into it, making sure that my first time didn’t lead to someone else’s disappointment, that I almost forgot to actually take pleasure in it.

I timed it to exactly fifteen minutes before I let myself get in the sway of things and ‘ finish’, but it was… stressful.

I wanted to do it again.

“And you’re all ganic down there, too! That’s rare. Takes a real man to know that size doesn’t matter.”

The fuck was that supposed to mean? Was she roasting me now?

“What is your name?” I asked her.

She giggled. “Isn’t it more exciting for you to not know?”

“Whatever you say,” I said. That was a relief for me, too, actually. It meant that this would be a one-off thing and I didn’t have to worry about leading on some corpo girl who I really wasn’t interested in getting into a relationship with. Her attachment to Kang Tao was certainly a factor as well. Nothing good could come of that in the long-term, for either of us.

“Fei-Fei,” she said. “My name is Fei-Fei. And you’re David.”

“My reputation precedes me,” I said, a corny line that I immediately regretted saying. Who the fuck did I think I was, James Bond?

“You made quite the splash today, David,” she said. “And you won your friend quite the praise with the rest of the party for destroying Militech.”

“Good for him,” I said.

“What is your relationship with him anyway? Are you his mercenary? Or his vassal?”

I furrowed my eyebrows at that. Allister wasn’t the only person that used this stupid terminology? “Why do you want to know?”

“I want to know where to slot you mentally.”

I snorted. “I’m his business partner. And friend.”

“A mercenary, then,” she rolled on her stomach and rested her head on both her hands as she smiled at me. “How much to hire your services then, big bad solo?” I chuckled. She had me pegged better than she could possibly imagine.

“Consider a transfer to Arasaka and we’ll talk,” I said. 

Fei-Fei’s smile fell. “That may be more likely than you expect.”

I frowned. “You’re not Kang Tao?” Wait, was that maybe racist to assume? 

“No. My family is connected with them, yes, but... I suppose I won't be connected with them for much longer,” she said. “My family is marrying me off to Arasaka. A business deal, but I know what it actually is; an apology. My country’s dowry customs mean that along with me, my family will have to pay out my groom’s family in large sums of money and other gifts, which we now owe to Arasaka due to a mess that was made a few months ago. My family's company lost a product that was destined for Arasaka, and now I’m paying the price.”

That didn’t sound too nice. “Condolences,” I said.

She smiled sadly. “I didn’t expect sympathy from you. Not really sure why I even said what I said. But thank you for responding that way.”

“So… who’s the lucky guy?”

“Katsuo Tanaka.”

I bluescreened mentally.

I looked at her, really looked at her, to try and figure out if she was lying. Her expression told me no. She was deadly serious.

I got up and dressed up immediately.

“Oh?” Fei-Fei asked. “The big bad merc is scared of pissing off his boss?”

I hated that she was putting it that way. “Could you at least dress up too?”

She got up and turned away from me, giving me a good view of her ass, also striped with gold and studded with diamonds. Almost cut myself on those a couple of times. What a stupid set of implants.

She put on her underwear—no bra—and wore the dress smoothly, and I remembered to finally dress up myself.

“Katsuo won’t know,” Fei-Fei said. “And… sorry. For putting you at risk.”

Her tone was forlorn, and I couldn’t stay angry at her knowing her circumstances, even if she almost put me in Katsuo’s crosshairs in the worst way possible.

“You should run away,” I said. “If you don’t want to marry him.”

She laughed. “Then what? Live as some street kid? Get work at a brothel maybe, flaunting the body that my family’s money paid for?”

Eddies didn’t buy happiness, but I’d rather cry in a Rayfield.

“Or you can fuck unsuspecting guys while Katsuo jerks off to his own mirror image,” I said, hoping that my joking tone came through.

She burst out laughing. Success. “Yeah. That’s the plan.”

I stared at her for a long time.

“So?” she asked. “Shouldn’t we leave?”

The revelation that she was Katsuo’s fiancée had scared me at first, but something about that activated some primal part of my brain as well. I was fucking Katsuo’s girl.

“What would you say to a second round?”

“Yes.”

000

This felt so much better.

000

It was approaching midnight and Allister and his friends were now well and truly drunk. I had split off from Fei-Fei and rejoined the group. Jin and his buddies had joined the poolside as well where I could see Katsuo having a private chat with Fei-Fei on a table far away.

I smirked.

It was probably very immature and somewhat patriarchal of me to take pleasure in what I did, but I didn’t care. I could still feel good about it, even if I shouldn’t . We both consented, so what should it matter anyway?

Also, what was that crap Allister said about ‘social defense’ again? If getting drunk wasn’t the play, then he sure could have fooled me with his act.

He sure was a loudmouth when he got drunk, too.

When the conversation hit a lull, I bumped him gently with my elbow. “I wanna delta.”

“What?!” Allister asked. “It’s only twelve ! Why leave so early?”

Well, if all that was left to do here was to get drunk, then I had pretty much accomplished everything worth accomplishing here.

“I’m not feeling it anymore,” I said. 

“Take my car,” he said, tossing me the keys sloppily. I almost didn’t catch it with how far i had to reach to grab it. “Take it to the toll-booth out of North Oak and then hail a cab.”

“Thanks,” I said. 

“Have a good, good night, David! You really came in clutch, today!”

“David is leaving?!”

“Aww, can’t he stay for longer?”

I walked away from the crowd, not looking back as I headed to the parking lot with Allister’s Rayfield.

I opened it and got in. I selected the self-driving option and picked a point on the map for it to go. It pulled out at a pretty fast clip, way faster than I expected, jerking me around the car. I was terrified that the Rayfield would nick the other cars in the lot as it maneuvered around them with machine precision before flying out of the drive. I found the option to slow the car down and got it down to a reasonable pace by the time it hit the normal road.

Holy fuck.

Was the default start-up speed ‘bat out of hell’? Why would it do that? Maybe it was a Night City special option. Never knew when you needed to cut and run, especially if you were a rich corpo heir.

The car took me to the toll and I walked through unbothered and hailed a taxi. One came pretty quickly, a high class car that was a cut above the normal Delamain models, and one that I knew would cost me a hefty chunk of eddies. I told it to drive a block away from my megabuilding and waited in the car.

Then I got a call from Maine, a face call.

“Hello?” I asked.

On the other side was Maine downing a broseph. “You done with your biz?” he asked and then he looked at me. “You’re missing out—wait, kid, what the hell are you wearing?”

My neokitsch corpo-brat get-up. Fuck .

I sighed. “Corpo party,” I said. “Fucking hectic.”

“This what you used your edds on?” Maine asked in shock. “Fucking threads?”

“Had to,” I said. “It’s complicated.”

He just laughed. “Head to Turbo’s.”

“What about the Afterlife?”

“Some bigshot fixer meet happened,” Maine said. “We vacated out of respect. Now we’re at Turbo’s.”

“Let me get changed.”

“Kid, if you ain’t dressed like that when you come here, I’m sending your ass home.” Maine said with a serious expression.

I groaned. “Come on, Maine. Seriously! You just want to make fun of me!”

“You’re a corpo brat who edgeruns as a sidehustle, heck yeah I will!” he laughed. “Seriously, guys! Come here, get a load of David’s get-up!”

I turned off my camera.

While being made fun of would suck at the moment, I really needed to wash down the bad taste of hanging out with corpos for so long.

I was starting to think like them, and that scared me more than anything else.

I also had twenty five grand to blow on random crap, might as well celebrate having paid off my semester fees.

I edited the route for the cab and it made a U turn at its earliest convenience.

000

The luxury cab’s door opened upwards and I stepped out in front of Maine and Dorio, both seated on the hood of a purple quadra—his, if I wasn’t mistaken.

The music turned off and the party-goers stared at me, transfixed.

Maine burst out laughing. Dorio joined in.

The cab drove off after I paid my eddies. “D!” Pilar shouted, seated on the hood of a distant car, Lucy next to him. “Is that really fucking you?!” The music began to play pretty shortly.

Lucy glared at me.

If only she knew the half of it.

“D, my man!” Rebecca skipped over with a beer in each hand. “Come to think of it, I’ve never really seen you without the mask before. You look cyyy-ute!”

I sighed. “Hi, Rebecca,” She offered me a bottle and I took it, having already learned long ago that saying no to her was impossible.

“How much did all of that run you?” Maine asked.

“Trust me, you don’t want to know.”

“The gold and stones real?” he asked.

“No,” I said, because admitting to wearing expensive jewelry while not in a corpo neighborhood wasn’t exactly my idea of wisdom.

Dorio’s eyes flashed blue and she gasped. “ They are! Eighteen karat gold and some big stones! That outfit must have cost at least twenty thousand. ” She was scarily accurate. Then again, Katsuo had been right on the money, literally. How he managed to get so close, I still didn’t know. Probably some sort of apps.

“Wait! You have those spectrometer apps, too?! Why?!”

Maine guffawed. “Baby’s got a taste for money when she ain’t working. But for real, you keep nagging me about gigs and then it turns out that this is where the edds go. Honestly I’m more amused than mad.”

“I paid off my semester fees,” I said. “Took out another gig with El Capitan to afford the outfit.” It was actually the opposite. I bought the outfit, then took out a gig for the semester fees, a boneheaded move but it all worked out. Life was good when you were a solo merc with as many advantages as I had.

“I like the jacket, kid,” Dorio said. I nodded appreciatively. 

“I’m still torn on this style to be honest,” I said. “Feels disrespectful, but I can’t deny it looks good.”

My eyes buzzed with a call.

Lunacy: You really are a piece of shit, huh?

David: Get your money up before you talk to me.

That felt wrong and slightly gross to say, but I knew it would piss her off, which was why I did it.

Lunacy: Can’t now that you burned my main source of income, can I?

The temptation to send her five thousand eddies passed me came as fast as it went; I didn’t want to die, and neither did I want to be five thousand eurobucks shorter.

David: That’s tough, but not my problem.

She sent a quickhack that crashed against my ICE, burning through it at an impressive speed. But it fell short. Once the quickhack lost its efficacy, my ICE reformed automatically.

But that was a short circ! She tried to short circ my fucking spine!

David: Point taken.

“Now,” Maine said. “As funny as that clown outfit is, you did promise a talk with me.”

Dorio got up and stalked off. I took a seat next to Maine where she had sat. “Yeah,” I said. “I don’t think it should be as easy as it is for me… flatlining, that is.”

“How is it easy?” he asked. 

“Well, I don’t exactly hesitate. Nor do I really feel all that bad after the fact. Feels more like an accomplishment, you know?”

Maine nodded. “I understand that. I’ve seen people like that. And all I’ll tell you is this: there’s no right way to react to zeroing. No wrong way either. You just react. It’s how you treat your chooms that really matters, what you feel about them . Any faceless gangoon gonk ain’t worth getting the waterworks started over. That’s a fact. You just know that better than others do.”

“Does that make me… a psychopath or something?”

“You ain’t hearin’ me, kid,” he said. “Focus on your chooms. Not the enemies. Would you shoot Lucy?”

“No!” I replied, shocked at the statement. “I mean—I wouldn’t shoot any of you guys.”

“Yeah? Then you ain’t a psychopath. A psychopath wouldn’t care. Or they’d ask ‘for how much’. They’d weigh the benefits, and human lives are light for them, regardless of who it is. That means their own parents, siblings or children. You may be a monster with that Sandy, kid, but you ain’t that kind of monster.”

“Oh… okay,” I said. Truth was, I expected him to call me a psychopath. Not really sure why, when even Lucy hadn’t questioned my sanity. She called me all sorts of names, but she never really called me a monster. Or maybe she would at some point. Not like I cared. She had her own stuff to worry about. No use getting so caught up in my business.

I took an unconscious swig of my beer and winced at the harsh sensation of carbonation. Maybe I should get a chrome tongue or something for my next piece.

“But kid,” Maine said with a serious tone. “I know you just chipped the Sandy in so you should definitely chill for a while on the chrome, but do try to save a little on some next gen shit. Look into getting some good chrome with that money you keep tossin’ around on threads. It ain’t fashion that’ll save your hide in this business, and that Sandevistan ain’t gonna save ya every time. Almost didn’t with that gig the other day, right?”

My stomach sank at that

No.

Not chrome.

Not more chrome.

“Maine,” I said. “Are you mixing chrome brands?”

“What?” He asked, shocked. “Yeah, of course. Everyone does.”

“You shouldn’t,” I said. “You should only stick to one brand whenever you can.”

“What’re you talking about, kid? You wanna sell me on Arasaka or some shit?”

“I’m telling you,” I said to him. “Different chrome brands don’t play nice with your brain. I’ve seen it. They program it so that if you chip in rival chrome, it adds to your neural strain. It’s a factor that leads to cyberpsychosis. The corps do it to enforce brand loyalty.”

He huffed. “Sounds like some conspiracy theory shit. And it ain’t practical anyways. Some brands don’t have the best legware or armware, and then what do ya do? Half-ass on the legs to get good arms? I say you get the best of the best every time.”

He wasn’t taking me seriously at all.

“Fine,” I said. “Any rippers out there offer services to build custom OS?”

“What the fuck is that?”

“Maine, your body is half machine, how do you not care about this stuff?”

He chuckled. “Man, you sound like a paranoid Netrunner.”

“Maybe the Netrunners are paranoid because they know how much the corpos are out to get us!” I yelled. He just laughed in response. 

No, just… relax. This wasn’t the way to do things. 

“Hey, Maine,” I began. “You said it ain’t wasted edds if it makes you stronger. Well, this won’t waste you any edds. What if I rewrote some of your chrome’s code so it would reduce the load on your brain, free of charge?”

Maine snorted. “You want to screw around with my body?”

“Maine, you already let the corps do it,” I said. “Why do you trust them more than you trust me?”

Maine looked at me like I was insane. “Because you’re a kid not even out of high school!”

I had no rebuttal to that.

“Alright,” I said. “Forget it. Sorry I asked.”

“Kid, you’re crazy,” he huffed. “Just stick to soloing, staying in school, and minding your own damn business .”

“Alright,” I muttered, thoroughly chastised. 

His hands began to shake. He rifled through his jacket pocket and retrieved a syringe which he then stabbed into a patch of skin, the few zones of real flesh left in his body. He sighed with relief.

All I could do was dread his future.

Running on the edge. It was an apt name.

000

It was just hours before sunup and most everyone had already been tuckered out, having left Turbo’s to go home and catch some Zs. 

Dorio had fallen asleep already on his passenger’s seat, leaving Maine to cruise around Night City in silence. The lights calmed him down, relaxed his nerves, and the rarity of cars on the road did the same. Night City at this time of day truly felt like the wonderland that it had always tried to become and not the nightmare that it really was.

Thoughts of leaving this place never really seemed to stick, either. He already gave up on the notion of ever fathering a child a long time ago—it had been years since he tossed away the vial that contained the last sample of his frozen swimmers—but he couldn’t imagine ever doing so in Night City. No, this city wasn’t for life. It was for death—both dealing it and experiencing it.

A place for legends. 

And even among the stories of legends out there, few ever risked taking on the megacorps either. And here Maine was planning on klepping intel straight from a ‘Saka exec. Maine was already on the map, but a gig like that would probably take him even higher. He could end up in Rogue’s payroll, get in contact with dealers that sold smuggled mil-spec gear; better guns, better chrome, who knows what Maine would achieve once his ramshackle arms that kept jamming stopped holding him back? Maybe he could install mantis blades on his legs—get that finally squared away—and then get his hands on the same Sandy that David used?

If Maine had gotten his hands on that Sandy first, then he would have already taken over the solo underworld by now. 

A shame, but it wasn’t a total loss. David was a good kid with a good head on his shoulders. He had an ego, sure, but what kid who could do what he could do didn’t? The important part was that he was open to learn. He didn’t let the ego steer him, didn’t let it dig his heels down on his foolishness—then again, an NDE was sure to do that to even the most gonk-brained streetkid out there. 

He’d been a solo for only a week, though. He’d get better in time. Hell, with the interest he had shown in Netrunning, he’d probably join Maine at the top someday too, as an equal. Together they could rival the likes of Adam Smasher or Morgan Blackhand’s legacy.

The empty freeway and the Night City lights always awakened this part of him, gave him the ability to dream while staying awake, and he let himself disappear into this world where glory rained from above and Night City was forced to bow to Maine and his crew.

That was a good fucking party. Put him in a good fucking mood.

But he couldn’t let himself lose himself too thoroughly. Had to keep touch with reality, keep making those dreams a reality. Towards that end, he dialed Kiwi.

Maine: You awake?

Kiwi: You know I always am.

Maine didn’t know if it was some sort of neural implant or she was just a really fucking good napper or something. It was uncanny, actually, just how on-call Kiwi always was.

Maine: You missed a good night.

Kiwi: A shame

She affected a tone of sarcasm in her words, but Maine knew that this facade was all it was—a facade. She cared to hang out, and only ever didn’t when she was too caught up with one of her little programming projects. According to her, she had to seize a moment of inspiration and act on it before it went away.

Maine: You’ve been giving the kid lessons on Netrunning, right? As a student, how is he?

Kiwi: D? I don’t know. Just gave him some code to look through. He says he’s halfway done, but I haven’t seen his work or anything.

Maine: You think he’s good? Like Lucy?

Having both Kiwi and Lucy in his crew was already an enormous boon for Maine. Very few solo crews could boast having even one Netrunner on their roster. Maine had two .

And with David, that could potentially be three.

Kiwi: Please. No one’s like Lucy, nobody. Kid’s shown an interest, and he made his own picksocket quickhack, but that’s baby stuff, child’s play. I think he should focus on shooting and killing, flatlining, but as long as he’s paying me the big bucks, who am I to give a shitty shit?

Maine snorted. That was par for the course. If anyone could become a Netrunner, then more people would. 

Maine: I think your lessons went into his head or something. Kid was feedin’ me bull about how the corps make it so that mixing chrome brands fuck you up faster. Somethin’ about enforcin’ brand loyalty or some shit.

Kiwi: Was he joking or something?

Maine furrowed his eyebrows. Kiwi sounded almost urgent in her tone. Nah, he was just imagining things.

Maine: Kid was serious, deadly serious. Had a look in his eyes—looked almost scared. Maybe hanging around with corpo brats all day fried his brains or something.

Kiwi: I gotta go.

Maine: What, you think he’s being for real?

Incredible. Netrunners truly were insane.

Kiwi: All I know is I wouldn’t put shit past the megacorps, and that includes ritually sacrificing babies in boardrooms. And Maine, don’t go around talking about this stuff on an unsecured line. 

Maine gripped his steering wheel harder, snarling at no one. 

Maine: You guys are all hexed. Goodbye.

Maine pulled out from the freeway and headed home, ready to get some real rest.

000

Rogue wasn’t in attendance. Mu predicted that. This was just a bimonthly get-together, and that was obviously beneath the Queen of the Afterlife, especially if there wasn’t anything that had really rocked the boat yet.

And while D was impressive as a motherfucker, he hadn’t exactly rocked the boat as of yet. He’d done the biker chew gig with his crew, and most people felt content to write off his achievement of killing off Kaze Oni with the fact that his chooms had probably done the heavy-lifting. After all, why expect so much from a greenhorn?

Due to that, no one had bitten on his bid to auction off D, and no one would for a time. But he’d be in a position to know when D’s stock price went up, and when that happened, he would have already raised his price.

As always, it was the same old stuff about corpo movements and speculations on any major R&D projects going on. Faraday left after the Arasaka discussion finished, and more started stalking off, even the newbies, leaving behind two new people, one of them a genial and portly middle-aged man who had nothing but smiles and honeyed words for his seniors in the craft.

Ergo, he was an asshole. A real fucking asshole. Anybody that kissed up so hard to people above them were sure to extract the same amount of grief from those beneath them. He walked off from the table and sent the man, Spring Roberts, an invite to his table, a promise of a welcome gift to the newest member of the fixer community.

Little would he know that it was actually a gift.

And that served Mu perfectly.

The portly man sat opposite to him, smiling thickly. “You mentioned a gift?” guy had a thick Texan accent, but didn’t really lean hard into colloquialisms, which was good for Mu. He could understand Japanese, but southern accents tended to get pretty wild, even for him. “And can I say how honored I am that you would think of me in this situation? I’m flattered, truly flattered.” Poor guy just wanted the hazing to be overwith.

“I’ve got a merc for you,” Mu said. “Lil kid’s a real go-getter. He’s sure to impress you.”

“Ah, the, uh, little kid is a good solo,” he said. Both his tone and his placid expression reeked of sarcasm. 

“Yes, yes he is,” Mu said with a wide grin. “Best rookie I’ve ever dealt with. He’s fast and smart and I’m sure he can help you get started. He’s efficient and goes above and beyond for his fixers. Was thinking of selling his info and recommendations to other fixers for a cool ten thousand, but I’ll throw him your way for free. How does that sound?” It was important that Mu actually had nothing but good words to say about D. It would have been way easier to just tell Roberts to eat a dick and send D his way, but that could be easily traced back to him by D if things went belly-up.

At least this way, he had plausible deniability. Spring Roberts was sure to fuck the poor kid over just because he felt he could—that couldn’t come back to Mu or his relationship with the kid would be in trouble.

“How gracious of you,” Roberts smiled in a grandfatherly way. “Truly gracious. Thank you kindly, Reyes. I will remember to pay you back someday when I can. Thank you for investing in me.”

It was so easy. So fucking easy.

If D survived dealing with a cranky fixer, things would look up. If he didn’t, oh well. Shit happened in this line of work.

Chapter 15: Fixer Shenanigans

Summary:

David finaly gets an in with the Netrunning community, goes on a gig with a strange fixer, and pays a visit to a new friend.

I met Kiwi in her favorite little cafe in Heywood. It was in a part of the Glen that nearly bordered Pacifica. Probably made it easier for her to get in touch with her Netrunning contacts. Maybe she actually knew some Voodoo Boys, or maybe she used to be one of them.

There was a lot that I didn’t know about Kiwi, but I guess she preferred it that way.

The cafe itself was surprisingly clean despite the area—just bareboned and with no customers as always. I tried to connect to the local net to see if this was really a Netrunning hub.

I was denied access. I poked at the ICE a little, gauging its firmness, and quickly found that it was not your average local net chain link fence. I doubted I would even be able to access the Net even if I had the key—my optics probably didn’t have the specs to browse it.

I was masked up—as always when I was acting in the capacity of my merc persona—and carried around a simple plastic bag where I had haphazardly stored all the shards. The weight of them collectively was impressive, and despite my fuckup with the law, I couldn’t help but be proud of my accomplishment.

Kiwi sat in her little corner, typing away at a laptop, and I took a seat across from her. She didn’t acknowledge me. I decided to do the polite thing and let her finish.

It took over ten minutes until she did.

Then she finally looked up. “Got the shards?”

I put the plastic bag down on the table. Gently.

“Good,” she said. “How’s the homework?”

“Figured out overheat pretty easily. It relied on an outdated firmware vulnerability. I want to study more cyberware operating systems and firmwares to see if I can make one of my own.”

“Think you can?” she asked with a raised eyebrow.

“I mean, yeah,” I said. “It’s really not that hard. The code you gave me pretty much showed me what to do.”

“What about Ping?”

“Only gave Ping half a look,” I said. “But I suspect some of the supports it relied on got abandonware’d. Whole sections of code are just non-functional for no reason.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty much it,” Kiwi said. “That Ping was basically half freeware, it’s a first gen creation of mine from forever ago, one that I made when I was just a script kiddie flying by the seat of my pants.”

David raised an eyebrow. “You think it’ll let me reverse engineer a real Ping out of it once I get done fixing it or should I just start over entirely?”

“You tell me,” Kiwi said. “Starting over is always best for this kind of stuff. Iterating on shit code can only take you so far. At some point you gotta build Babel from the bottom.”

I shrugged. “Makes sense. Overheat could use a revamp or two.”

“Do whatever you want, kid. About the shards, you still wanna sell ‘em?”

“Actually,” I said, thinking about my recent windfalls. “My money problems are pretty much gone right now. I need more quickhacks I can rip from you.”

Kiwi scoffed. “You’re starting to get a little too big for your britches. First, let me ask you something. Maine told me you were mouthing off to him about his chrome junkie tendencies.”

I frowned. “What? That’s not what happened at all!”

“Said something about mixing chrome brands being bad for you.”

“That I did say,” I said.

“Okay. Tell me how you know that.”

I frowned. “Is this a setup?”

Kiwi chuckled. “Good one. Trust no one in Night City, not even your crew, whatever Maine told you.”

“That’s not…” I held my tongue. “I took a look at some old cyberware. Some homework from a guy at school also teaching me how to code. I found some mathematical inefficiencies that could lead to increased neural strain if another piece of chrome is chipped in, and found out how these inefficiencies could be solved if that next piece of chrome is the same brand or not.”

Kiwi furrowed her eyebrows. “That doesn’t make sense. At some point, even the same brand of chrome would interfere with each other if the gens are far enough away, unless they just never changed that code.”

“Could very well be,” I said. “You know that rumor about how computers only get slower after system updates to make you buy a new one instead?”

“Of course, that’s hardly even a rumor at this point.”

“Why should it be different from chrome?” I said. “If you want proof, I can give that to you, too.”

“How old was that chrome OS you examined?” she asked. 

“Mid 30s.”

Kiwi scoffed. “Get your hands on some good and new OS before making bold assumptions.”

“Okay,” I said. “Can I have my quickhacks now?”

“No,” she said. “You can have this.”

I received an alphanumerical series of characters. “What’s this? A password?”

“Yeah. To this localnet.”

My eyes widened. I connected to the local net, smashed in the password and entered a world of data that dwarfed Turing’s.

“Here you can find people willing to part with old quickhacks and other crap, or job listings from people who want help with their daemons, or want to commission them from scratch. I suggest you only take what you can instead of trying to give back. Too many Netrunners forget that we’re all in a competition at the end of the day. Debugging someone else’s quickhack is like cleaning the gun of your rival. Why in the world would you do that?”

“Well, then how do I build rep?” I asked. “You know, in case I wanna make a big purchase and not get ripped off?”

“You clean your enemy’s guns,” she answered. “But you want my advice? Real Netrunners don’t rely on others. Once you’ve learned the fundamentals, you get better by ripping into someone’s datacache and stealing their secret techniques. You fuck over and act the villain. You want to buy and sell hacks and code, be my guest, but you’ll never get good that way. Klep . That’s the way.”

I nodded. 

“Are we done here?” she then asked.

“Yeah. Just give me a sec while I surf the Net.”

Linking in with my corneal implants was a hassle, made things really slow, but I didn’t bring a terminal or cyberdeck with me, and until I upgraded to Kiroshis—or felt safe enough to rewrite and redo Cyberware code enough to ever chip something else in—I was just going to have to suffer with it.

But it worked. I was in , despite everything. The forums were slow to respond to my browsing, but I ended up finding what I needed: cyberware OS. The cheaper stuff was compiled machine code, which was a bitch to read for anyone. But it was cheap.

Not that I needed to think about money at the moment. I looked for uncompiled, leaked operating systems that also had ample documentation, and came up with some truly expensive stuff, in the range of tens of thousands of eurodollars.

I scoffed. Ain’t gonna happen. Paying extra to make things easy? Leave that shit to the corpo brats and the wannabe ‘Runners. 

I sent messages to every seller of compiled low-level code cyberware OS I could find. They were surprisingly new gen as well, nothing dipping below ‘74 in manufacturing date. It was just a bitch to read and decompile; way too much work and way too difficult for most people.

It all cost me two thousand eurodollars. The purchases would be held in escrow until I confirmed receival of product.

After a few minutes of snooping around, I decided that I was more or less sure that I got everything.

With that, I left Kiwi’s little haunt and continued with my day.

000

I dropped my weights heavily on the floor, marveling at the sheer size of them. I had just deadlifted three hundred and twenty-five kilograms.

David: Nanny, how are my bodily improvements looking?

[I have done all that I can to strengthen the integrity of your body within organic limits. Without an increase in height, the only way we can increase the aptitude of your musculature would be an increase in mass, which you find to be undesirable.]

But speaking of height, I was starting to get noticeably taller, to me at least. Five foot seven and a half inches, just like promised. Next week, I’d be five nine, officially in the ‘somewhat tall’ range.

David: Well, if we can’t do more strength, then we should get onto combat training. Won’t that affect my body in some way?

[It will specialize the musculature of your body towards physical combat rather than simply lifting weights, like you already have done. For your purposes, this is a useful form of training.]

David: Got it.

[Also, I would like to inform you that it is your organic tendons and ligaments that hold you back the most when it comes to releasing the full strength of your muscles. I have already optimized the rate at which your nerves can recruit and coordinate your muscle fibers; you could stretch them to the limits at will, but I have prevented you from doing so due to the strain that it would put on your joint organs.]

That put me in a sour mood. My list of future chrome was growing wider and wider. I was increasing my points of electronic vulnerability all over my body: new eyes, cyberdeck, synth tendons and ligaments. Soon, I would probably overshoot the capacity of my heart and lungs to supply oxygen to my muscles—replace those two, then—and that would add pressure and strain to my blood vessels—replace those as well—and before I knew it, I would be more corp property than David Martinez.

I could do it. I could. I just needed to make sure that it was on my terms.

I couldn’t become other people’s metal. It was mine. It was me.

But before I even thought about doing all of that, I would have to start with making the Sandevistan mine , once and for all.

That would take time and preparation. Presently, I needed to make myself a better solo.

Right, fighting lessons.

My gym had some studios where people trained in martial arts of any sort. Probably not something as specialized as swordfighting, and it was unlikely that I’d ever be pressed into a fistfight while out edgerunning, but it was better than nothing, for now at least.

I hesitated.

No. Learning to box was pointless. It was as pointless as building my body to such a size and being unable to run for twenty minutes without almost dying of exhaustion. I couldn’t continue to train my body for such stupid purposes like lifting weights. 

I had to force my body to become a perfect vessel for what I was already doing.

I took a shower, got changed, and headed out from the gym. With my cyberdeck in arm, I started searching for a good place where I could learn how to swordfight. The Net’s consensus was that using chipware with BDs was more efficient for learning.

Katsuo used an expensive Kung Fu chip to beat my ass.

I decided to hit up a chip shop instead.

000

The store I ended up picking out had walls covered in BD cases of all kinds, from regular old smut to skill chips that seemed mostly to do with combat: shooting techniques, fistfighting, and yes, swordfighting as well.

I went to that section and browsed their collection. Most of them seemed geared towards katana techniques, which was good for me, but there was others that included stuff about knife throwing, small knife combat and there was one about shurikens as well.

I picked out the most expensive five that were on katanas and three on throwing knife technique purely because I was intrigued about the idea and it seemed fun. This might waste some of my time, but it was also important to have a bit of fun as well.

I walked them over to the cashier and put them down on his counter. He was leafing through some kind of book, a ledger judging by the multiple different columns. He closed the book and regarded me with his full attention, which threw me off-guard. I was used to Night City shopkeepers being a generally foul sort that always seemed to take offense whenever you took interest in buying their stock. 

“Hey,” I said. “Would you tell me which one of these is the best?”

“That depends,” he said. “What do you need them for? Sports or… not sports?”

“I’m not the sporty kind,” I said, hoping that was enough of an answer.

“Then,” he took the most expensive katana chip and pushed it away from the others, and then did the same to the knife-throwing one. “You would do well to try these then.”

If anything, he seemed pretty honest. “So I need to take multiple?”

“Yes,” he said. “If you want true, practical mastery, that is. Chipware and BDs confer techniques, not the entire breadth of a skill. You want to have as many chips as you can, even if there is some overlap between the two. Especially if there is overlap, because that will break you out from the habits of the people who scrolled the BD and teach you the fundamental principles behind these techniques.”

I nodded. “Okay, then. But, does that mean these are everything there is to learn then?”

“Of course not,” he said. “But it’s everything I have. For the average customer.” He looked at me pointedly.

I raised an eyebrow. “Well, then, show me what you’ve got in the back already. I’m good for it, I promise.”

The shopkeeper grinned widely. “Excellent. A moment, then.”

000

I walked out of the store with fifteen chips when I ran into someone at the door that I did not expect to see.

“D?!” I heard Pilar shout. “The hell are you doing here? Buying pornos?”

“Ah, hey, Pilar,” I said as I gave him a hand. He closed his hand over mine, golden fingers reaching up to my forearm. “What are you doing here? I came here to buy skill chips.”

“ Skill chips ?” he said with a grimace. “Are you crazy? Those things will only teach you the basics! It’s nothing some real practice won’t teach you in an hour tops!”

“What? But these are advanced chips,” I said. “He got them from the back.”

“Advanced my ass!” Pilar said. He looked over my shoulder to where the shopkeeper was. “Hey! You ripped my lil bro off, you know that?”

“No refunds!” the shopkeeper yelled back.

I groaned. “Wow. What the fuck is wrong with me?”

“Eh, nothing to it now,” he said. “You go learn what you can from those chips. What did you get anyway? If it was shooting, then Becca’s gonna fucking zero you, you know that? She’d have taught you for free.”

“Sword stuff,” I replied. “I don’t really have any teachers for that stuff, you know, so I just thought I’d try to teach myself.”

“Hah,” he shouted. “Well, I can’t say I know a thing or two about swordfighting, but I do know a thing or two about tech. You want my help, kid?”

I raised an eyebrow. “Why’re you so eager to help me out? Wrong question actually: how much does your help cost?”

Pilar laughed. “Oh man, I heard you’ve been learning Netrunning from Kiwi. Tell me how much that bitch is draining you dry.”

“I won’t speak ill of her,” I said. “She’s at least teaching me stuff.”

“Oooh, a gentleman!” Pilar crooned. He pushed me out through the door and he followed.

“Wait, aren’t you going in?” I asked.

“Nah, he already made his money off of you. Don’t really feel like supporting that piece of shit at the moment. Anyway, we were talking biz, right? Here’s the deal: I’ll make you a sword, you test it out, and if it’s good, you get to keep it. If it isn’t, then I’ll fix it up and you’ll test it out again. So I guess my price is ‘be a guinea pig’.”

“What’s in it for you?” I asked.

“I’ll tell you what’s in it for me!” he shouted. “The chance to be a fucking Masamune, that’s what! Legendary swordsmith that made an iconic weapon for an up-and-coming merc named D!”

“Huh?” I asked, my face heating up. “Quit fucking around, man! Just tell me what you want for it.”

“You eaten yet, kid?” he asked as he stopped in front of a ramen stall. I shook my head. “My treat, then!”

“That’s not necessary,” I said. “I can pay—”

Pilar was already giving his order to the man behind the stall. I sighed as I saw the man’s eyes flash blue and just took my seat next to the lanky techie. 

“I like making things, D,” Pilar said. “I like breaking things, too. But I like making things even more. Modding guns and shit, you know the drill. But I haven’t really had a project to focus on for a while now. I got real fucking focused on my sister’s guns for a while, but nowadays working on them is just about balance and optimization. Fucking spreadsheets and decision models. I feel like a goddamn financial consultant sometimes. Nah. I wanna start on something from ground-up. Or at least from the shoulders of Arasaka and then up. The sword thing was a whim, but I grew pretty attached to the idea since I came up with it five minutes ago, so don’t sweat the payment or whatever, I really don’t care.”

“Okay,” I said. “Thanks, man. That really means a lot to me.”

He patted my back. “I told you not to sweat it.”

“Hey,” I said. “You ever need any help with programming or something, I’ll help out too. I can promise you that I’m cheaper than Kiwi at the very least.”

Pilar snorted. “Everybody is cheaper than Kiwi.”

“Then again,” I muttered. “You’re probably getting Lucy to help you out anyway. Forget I asked.”

“Why do you think that ?”

I raised an eyebrow at him. “You and Lucy seem pretty close.”

“Well, yeah, I give her some pointers every now and then, let her in on new tech developments, latest hardware, helps her keep her quickhacks on edge. I guess you could call me something of a mentor,” he said with a grin. “Too bad my student doesn’t wanna put out anymore.”

I sputtered. “Uh-okay. So you’re not a thing… anymore, then?” Not that it was any of my business, but… really Lucy? How old was this guy, anyway? And Pilar, too! 

I should be happy. I had more ammunition to use against Lucy now, but… nah. This was the sort of lowblow that Lucy would opt for, not me. Fuck that.

“Despite my best efforts,” Pilar said with a forlorn sigh, and I shifted uncomfortably at that. “What I wouldn’t do to get a taste of that hot Netrunnin’ bod again. But I get it. She moved on. I didn’t really. But it ain’t always cat n’ mouse with us. Most of the time we just do techie shit together, work on optimizing chrome OS, remove the bloatware, stuff like that. I’m sure it might be going over your head.”

“Wait, so you guys take care of the crew’s chrome?” I asked. “You remove the neural strain that comes from mixing chrome brands, too?”

“Huh, what now?” he sputtered. “Are you crazy, kid? Mixing chrome is harmless.”

I sighed. “Forget I said anything. It’s just a project I’ve been working on myself.”

“Sure,” he said. “Just don’t let yourself get too absorbed, man. I’ve seen Netrunners chase crazy hunches for days on end without rest. Somethin’ about brains, you know. Human brains ain’t meant to read and write machine language, not for long at least. Takes a toll, makes you a little crazier.”

“You code?” I asked.

“Nah,” he said. “Not where it counts. I write baby code, just good enough to operate my gizmos, but most of the fun stuff happens in meatspace.”

“Alright,” I said. “I think… coding comes very naturally to me, you know? Feels like another language, like English or Spanish. And Lucy, she’s… she’s fucking Shakespeare. But I ain’t a slouch, either.”

“That really so?” Pilar tilted his head at me. “It ain’t a shame to just be good at one thing, D. Don’t have to burn the candle at both ends to keep up when you got what you got.”

“It ain’t about being better at edgerunning,” I said. “It’s about reaching my potential. And I have tons of it. You’ll see. Soon.”

“Christ save me from crazy young code fiends,” he said with a chuckle. “You and Lucy are exactly the same, you know? Too skilled to slow down, too young to know any better.”

I shrugged. I didn’t know how to argue against that. To me, it just sounded like he was talking down to me based on age, which wasn’t really fair. “I’m in this hustle just like you, you know. You don’t have to treat me like I’m a little kid.”

Pilar snorted and he patted my shoulder. “I know, I know. Ain’t nothin’ to it. So, what are you doing tonight? Got any plans?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Gotta look at some code. Maybe chase some edds if necessary. Gotta finish up on my weekend homework, too. And do some other work, this joint project thing. Yeah, I’ll be real fucking busy,” I said with a groan.

“Yeah, well, in case ya wanna blow off all that stuff, give me a ring. I’m headed to Lizzie’s with Falco later to watch some BDs and maybe score some girls.”

My face burned at that. 

Wait, why was I reacting like such a virgin, anyway? I got with Fei-Fei yesterday, didn’t I?

…should I maybe give her a call?

No. Fuck no! She was preem and all, but the more I met with her, the more I was tempting fate with Katsuo finding out. 

I groaned. Pilar looked at me askance.

“They got boys too, ya know!”

I reflected that askant look at him. “What do you mean? I’m not gay.”

“Then why do you look so disappointed? You don’t fuck at all?”

“I fuck!” I replied hotly. “That’s, uh… that’s why I felt a little bummed out. So, you know how I go to a corp school, right?”

“Yeah,” Pilar said.

“Well, there’s this kid called Katsuo, son of an Arasaka exec and all. Anyway, he’s been giving me shit for forever, thinks I don’t belong and all. Anyway, I went to that corp party last night, right?”

“Yeah?”

“I met his girl there.”

“I see where this is going.”

“I didn’t know they were together! And she came onto me! Well anyway, we finished up, she told me who her input was, and I… sorta hit it again? And it felt better?”

Pilar howled with laughter.

“Well anyway, I kinda wanna see her again, but I don’t wanna get burned by Katsuo, you know?”

“See her again,” Pilar immediately said. “Like, fuck that Tonkatsu guy, who gives a shit? Go out there and fuck her again! And again and again and again. Get sneaky with it! Creative! Do it until you get tired of doing it, and then do it some more!”

“Uh,” I buried my face under my hands. “You’re not helping.”

“David,” Pilar said, and I looked at him. He usually didn’t use my full name. “I’ve never been a corpo but I’ve worked with them before, and beneath all those threads, they’re just the same as you and me, every bit as vicious. Don’t just do this cuz you’re horny. When you fuck this bitch, you’ll fuck Tonkatsu, too.”

“Fuck that!”

“I’m serious,” he said. “This kid hates you, and he’s gotta pay for that shit. And there ain’t nothing more humbling in this universe than a good ol’ cucking. Cuck his wealthy ass into the ground. Do it cuz you hate him.”

Wow. Was I really going to let Pilar corrupt me like that?

Eh, fuck it.

I could use the booty call.

I gave Fei-Fei a ring.

She accepted the call suspiciously quickly.

Fei-Fei: I didn’t think you’d have the balls to call me again.

David: Well, you saw plenty of my balls yesterday.

Fei-Fei: Touche

David: Been thinking about you a lot.

Fei-Fei: Likewise.

David: So…

Just say it: “You wanna fuck?” It couldn’t be that hard.

Fei-Fei: What?

David: How are you?

Fei-Fei: Seriously? Ugh, let me just cut the preamble: Let’s meet at this bar eleven o’ clock tonight. 

She sent me the details.

Fei-Fei: I’m not a fan of holocalls or back and forths. See you then.

David: Yeah, see you then.

The call ended. Pilar was in my face. “So? How’d it go, tiger?”

“We’re meeting,” I said. 

Probably someplace high scale, too, which meant I’d need some money before going. Luckily, I still had eight hours until the date. I could spend three to five hours training with the chips and the remainder on raising enough money to not make an ass out of myself in case she started doing the corpo brat thing of opting for needlessly expensive activities.

And a new outfit, too. One that wasn’t fucking luminescent and all that. If I was going to help somebody cheat, at the very least I should be conspicuous while doing so.

“Fucking nova, D!” Pilar patted me on the back. “I’m proud of you.” The food arrived. “And let’s dig in!”

000

I was in my room, newly bought katana in hand, while I read the BD and threw myself fully into practice.

Just from the three hours I had spent perusing the BDs while training, I could honestly say that I had known fuckall about how to properly use a sword until now. Edge alignment was fucking important, and so was footing, hip twists and parts of my body that I never even thought to involve in swordfighting.

But Pilar was right. None of it gave me actual mastery. It gave me situational mastery.

Take for example the BDs that had the scroller spar against an opponent. If I met a real-life opponent that did exactly what the BD opponent did, I could beat him through rote memorization, but that was pointless.

Instead, I broke down the movements and focused on that. I listened carefully to the thoughts and impressions of the scroller, a hard thing to do considering many of these masters didn’t have conscious internal monologues on their actions. Their actions were reflexive, borne from training. They didn’t think. They just did . Decoding that reflexive thought was an effort as well, but thankfully not all the BDs were purely instructional through example. Some had narration as well, a master going through the trouble of thinking loudly what made their movements work.

In the end, none of it could make me a master in a short time.

Only training could.

And so I did experimental cuts on the air with the katana, movements meant to drill in the feel of cutting. I had ample muscle, but none of it was optimized towards swordfighting. 

After I finished training, deeming the three-hour mark to be an acceptable end, I noted down some things to consider for the future: the BDs sometimes featured a master cutting his sword on an unfurled roll of paper in order to improve edge alignment. The hanging paper needed a sword to have a perfectly aligned edge for the cuts to be straight and not jagged. This was important because just swinging the sword in the air didn’t guarantee that I was aligning the edge properly. 

The second most important thing was buying a heavier sword. I needed to train my body to become better at swinging a weapon, and the best way to get on top of that as quickly as possible was to make my weapon ridiculously heavy. Maybe I could hit up Pilar for both requests. Or at least the heavy sword. The hanging paper seemed like something I could quite easily requisition on my own. 

I put away two more hours to look through the cyberware OS.

First order of business was painstakingly decompiling the code for easier readability, transforming it from machine language to low-level language. 

These were markedly more complicated than what Nakajima had given me, but now that I knew what to look for, it didn’t take long for me to find that little neural strain chrome-mixing penalty. Fucking bastards.

I highlighted the sections across the decompiled code I had assembled, and thought of another use for the operating systems: namely, testing my Overheat. 

It was a resounding success. The chrome would have overclocked itself and increased heat in all components that actually could increase heat. Burn damage was inevitable, and burnout was as well. I quickly loaded it into my Cyberdeck and took a look at Ping.

By that time, two hours had passed, but I didn’t care. I could finish up Ping fairly quickly.

Using the Sandevistan.

I was sitting at a respectable 15% critical progress. The progress from the gym had already reset and the rest was just what I had used while training the sword. I could use the Sandy to code away, at least for a time.

Then I felt it. 

It felt like a fader on an old sound system—a sort of slider but in analog form—that I could push and pull. And right now, it was stuck at the red. I could feel that it was red. Or bad . Or something . 

I pushed the slider up until it hit the top.

I focused on my computer and booted up a timer app.

The seconds looked slow. Very slow. It probably took about four seconds for one second to pass. That wasn’t the Sandy speed I was used to.

I pulled down the slider and experimented on inputs with my computer, looking for a spot where I could go ham without latency issues giving me pause. And that place happened to be right above the red.

David: Nanny, what is this?

[The Sandevistan has been integrated to the point that you have been given access to the modulator.]

David: Nova!

In the level right above the red, I began on my Ping. It was a quickhack meant to give the user a full overview over their surroundings by connecting to every device in range and receiving a return signal. 

I first had to worry about making it untraceable, which could be easily done, and without shitty freeware support either. How Kiwi was still alive after the travesty that was her Ping code was beyond me, but I’m glad she was. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to learn from her mistakes.

Ping could go even deeper, though. If I could transmit it into a localnet, I would be able to receive pings from anything connected to that net. That would make it extra traceable, and I’d have to work on that as well.

Actually? Fuck it. I deleted everything and started thinking of my ideas without writing another line of code. Untraceable was a necessity. Connecting into a localnet and still remaining untraceable had to be considered from the ground up instead of building on top of that. Had to have all my ducks in a row first.

What if I could not just detect the presence of devices, but receive data of their shape and size as well? That was entirely possible by tapping into the firmware and extrapolating the likely shape of the device based on the functions in its code.

And what if my Ping gave me a convenient and quick access to the very edge of a person’s ICE? Giving it actual penetrative power through ICE would be impossible to make untraceable, but just getting me at the door to someone’s system was good enough.

I could see it right now: send Ping into an entire building, and have everyone in my sights, ready to be hacked at a moment’s notice through a cybernetic bridge.

I got to work.

000

Even with the Sandevistan, it took a real-life hour to finish the code. From simple maths, I knew that it meant I was working on this code for an uninterrupted twenty hours. And holy shit did that fry my brain.

But it finally worked. I had a Ping worthy of me.

Well, it would soon. A Ping wasn’t nearly as effective without cyberoptics to feed the visual data to, but for now I was carrying around an impressive piece of ones and zeroes. A little more optimization and less memory usage, and I would be golden .

But it was acceptable for a first draft.

And my critical progress got to an impressive 50% for the sustained Sandevistan usage. That was fair. I had never used it for so long before. The only reason it was even possible was probably because I was mostly just using it to speed up my fingers and my perception of time.

With all this done, I hailed Reyes.

El Capitan: No gigs for you tonight, kid.

D: Shit. Sorry to bother you.

El Capitan: No bother at all. Just letting you know. But I did get in touch with this other fixer from a meeting I had yesterday. His name is Spring Roberts. No-name, up and coming. He’s eager to toss money around and get work done. Said I’d throw you his way in case you asked for me.

D: All the same. Just need the money. 

El Capitan: He’ll be good for it. At least I think he will. He’s green as grass, you see. No rep or anything. Unknown factor. I thought I got a decent read on him, but I ain’t sending you off to him with just that. Be careful. Make sure your chooms know where you are, and who to avenge if you get fucked over, which is a real possibility. Now don’t go chewing off more than you can swallow, you hear me? You might be tough, but you ain’t invincible.

I rolled my eyes.

D: Just send me the deets then. And thanks for the heads up.

El Capitan: Hah. That money hunger’s gonna get the better of you someday, you know. 

He sent me the man’s numbers.

D: Hello? This is D. El Capitan told me about you.

Spring Roberts: Right. Some boy called D, right? Come on over and we’ll discuss the terms of the job face-to-face.

Didn’t seem that bad.

000

Spring Roberts was a heavy man in his late forties or early fifties. His widows peak was something out of legend, and he wore a suit right out of a mob movie. When he saw me enter his little bar, he half-rose, eyes wide. “You’re D ?” He had a pretty thick Texan accent. I hoped he wouldn’t start tossing slang at me, though.

“Yes,” I said.

“You look like an idiot, D.”

I stopped in my tracks. “I didn’t come here to be insulted.”

“Calm you panties, little girl,” Roberts harrumphed. “Wasn’t expecting someone to play dressup around me.”

“It’s just a mask,” I said. “And you must have heard of me from El Capitan. I’ve done jobs for him already and he’s been nothing but satisfied with me.”

“Oh yeah?” He folded his arms. “Alright then. How does fifty thousand sound for a job?”

“What’s the job?” I asked.

He tossed me a shard and I caught it. I slotted it and activated the Sandy to read through it. They needed me to break into a corp data center for Trauma Team, extract information, and leave. Warnings included possible enemy mercs as well as corp enforcers.

“Guns blazing or ninja?” I asked. “And are you paying out any bonuses either, for a good job?”

Roberts snorted. “Don’t give me that shit. You wanna squeeze more money out of me for a job well done or something?”

“I’m just asking if you wanted it done a certain way—”

“I want it done perfectly, and I’m not paying extra for shit!” Roberts roared. “You think you’re a fucking pizza boy or something? I’m not tipping shit .”

Oh God. “Well, then what will it be? Guns blazing or stealth? What is perfect to you?”

“I don’t fucking care, I just need the data. You can suck the other mercs off for it or trade something, I just need it!”

I read through the file again. The enemies were at most thirty in number. The data was specific. Hell, even the facility wasn’t that far away. 

This didn’t feel real.

“And you’ll pay fifty thousand for the job’s completion,” I said.

“I just said so, didn’t I?”

I shrugged. “See you soon, then.” I turned around and walked out.

000

I took a cab three blocks away from the data center and started writing on my arm-mounted cyberdeck, preparing to ping their system and intrude on whoever I could.

Once I got close enough, I sent the ping out, and slowly started hacking into the closed circuit cameras. Soon, I had a full visual of the facility.

Roberts didn’t care about stealth, and leaving enemies behind my back was stupid.

Needed to be smart about this.

I activated the Sandevistan and ran up to the toll-booth where the armed guard sat, staring out of his window. I pulled him out from it and while he was in the air, grabbed some keys, physical ones, and used them to open the gate inside. Before going in, I used my sword to cut his throat open while he was still mid-air, careful not to put too much pressure and harm the blade this early into the night.

Forty-eight.

I ran up to the main building and kicked open the door, and continued in. I checked my cyberdeck to see who was inside and where, and I got to the grisly task of picking them off, one after the other.

I managed to finish off fourteen more by the time I reached the server room. I imagine they’d all be falling to the ground at the same time right about now.

Sxty-two.

I opened the door to the server room using a keycard liberated from one of the many dead guards.

I breached into the system while I typed away with my cyberdeck. There was a reason these weren’t as popular as integrated chrome decks. They had more computational power: memory, RAM and processing speed sometimes, but chrome cyberdecks had speed-of-thought reactions that blew fossiltech out of the water.

But fossiltech was all I had for now. And real Netrunners also used external cyberdecks for other purposes. There was a reason they were still built and all.

The alarm started blaring, but I had already cracked into the server and was searching for the data. I found it in good time: a list of Gold and Platinum policyholders. I wondered why Roberts wanted to know this information. Probably so that if he ever felt he needed to take out a hit on someone, he’d first check his little list of Trauma Team clients to see who he was up against. Smart.

I activated the Sandevistan and just ran back where I came from, and didn’t stop until I was at least three blocks away.

Sixty-two people dead so far.

But at least it wasn’t more. Didn’t have to be more.

I took the cab back to Roberts’ bar.

000

“Back so soon?!” Roberts shouted. “I heard a stink was raised in the facility! You fucked it all up, didn’t you?”

“Gig finished,” I said, tossing him his shard. One of his body-guards caught it and then pointed the gun at me.

“Easy there, kid,” the man growled. “Don’t go tossing things around at the boss.”

I raised my hands. “Point taken. Lower the gun.”

He didn’t for several seconds, before doing so slowly.

Roberts slotted in the shard and started reading through it, his eyes flashing blue as he did. “Hmph. Where did you get this?” 

I frowned. “From… the facility you just sent me to.”

“The one that has almost thirty armed guards working at any given time?” Roberts asked. What the fuck was he getting at. “You think I was born yesterday?”

I sputtered. “The data’s right there, isn’t it? And didn’t you just say you heard about the facility alarms? I broke in and got out. Easy in and out!”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “I suppose you’re right. This does have all the data I needed. Here you go.”

He sent me twenty-five thousand.

Usually, I’d be more than happy to walk away with that much, but… “You promised double this.”

Roberts snorted. “Was the work really worth double if you finished it so quickly? I clearly made a mistake with the pricing of the gig.”

“That’s not my fucking problem,” I said hotly. “You promised double . That I finished it fast should have you paying me a bonus , not fucking stiffing me and treating me like I’m some rat! I did the job for you and all I get is suspicion? You can see how that’s—”

Both his and the bodyguard’s eyes flashed gold, and then he pointed his gun at me again. I activated the Sandevistan, and right on time, too, for the gun to go off. I went around the bullet, unsheathed my katana, and decapitated him in one clean swipe.

Time resumed. The gonk’s body dropped, his head rolling, and most of the spray caught Roberts, who now looked at me like I was the devil. “That it, then?” I asked. “You’ll have me killed for asking for my rightful pay? The fuck is the matter with you, you rat bastard?”

“Kill him!” Roberts shouted.

He had five goons stationed in various parts of the restaurant.

It wasn’t even a second after Roberts shouted when their heads rolled, too.

Sixty eight.

Roberts pressed himself against the back of his chair, breathing heavily. “W-what do you want? Is it money?”

I held the tip of the katana to his throat. “That’s where your mind now wanders, Roberts? To money? This started because of money, and you think it will end because of money? When you tried to have me killed for the crime of doing my job too well? You know how fucking stupid that was, by the way? Fucking with a merc that did his job too well?”

Roberts gulped. “I-I-I’m sorry!”

“Yes, yes you are.”

“I didn’t think you were the real deal! The data said you were just a kid!”

I snorted. Then I took the katana back and sheathed it.

“A kid that demands respect,” I said. “But you old fucks wouldn’t know the first meaning of the fucking word, would you? This is it, choom. This is respect in these streets. You sitting down, looking up at me, whimpering like a little bitch, because I’ve got you by the balls.” He nodded with his eyes closed. “Prying the money out from your accounts post-mortem will be a hassle. Just give me the edds right now and I’ll delta.”

Twenty-five thousand hopped into my account. 

The fucking audacity of this bitch.

“Yes, now you’ve paid me for my job,” I said. “But you haven’t for your fucking impudence, have you?”

Fifty thousand more came in.

“Was that so fucking hard?” I asked. “Was it?”

“N-no,” Roberts said. 

“You’re a lucky son of a bitch, Roberts. Lucky as fuck that I’m considering sparing you.”

Should I maybe press more money out from him? I had him by the fucking balls. And he deserved it, the rat bastard.

“But I’m not convinced yet,” I said. 

“W-what?!”

I snorted. “Don’t fuck with me. You tried to have me killed on the worst basis imaginable. And I’m not fucking convinced I should let you go. Your words shouldn’t be ‘what’ or ‘this is fucking unfair’, that ship sailed a long time ago, choom. Your words should be ‘how fucking much’.”

“H-how much?” he smiled reassuringly. “You see, I can pay!”

“Then pay,” I said. “Until it’s enough.”

“You can’t be serious!” I raised my sword. “Okay, okay, okay! Just… promise me I’ll live!”

“Pay.”

A hundred thousand eddies hit my account. I didn’t make a move, even though that was more money than I’d ever seen in one place in my life. And now my account had over twice that.

I didn’t make a sound, even.

I just sweated him.

Then, another fifty thousand.

I didn’t move, still.

“Come on! That’s all I have! I promise!”

I snorted. “I don’t believe you.”

“I’ll be ruined if I send you more! I won’t even be able to afford my house!”

I didn’t say anything else.

Twenty-five more was sent to me.

My account totalled up to two hundred and ninety-eight thousand eurodollars.

“Please! That’s everything! Just leave me alone! Please!”

I spat on the ground and gave El Capitan a call.

D: Firstly, I want to acknowledge that you did warn me, so please don’t tell me you told me so.

El Capitan: Hiiiiiiijo de puta, what-what happened. He didn’t pay you? Also, I told you so , kid. You don’t want to hear it, but I told you so.

D: Oh no, he ended up paying me, plus more for the shit he put me through. But he was about to have me killed for asking for full pay, even after I gave him everything he needed. He set all his goons on me, too. Had to take care of those guys. So, what goes into sinking someone’s rep in this game, anyway? Because this guy doesn’t pay out and he’s disrespectful as fuck, too. I wanna make sure he doesn’t get a career in this city.

El Capitan: I’ll put the word out. You tell your crew as well. Roberts is fucking finished , you hear me? Fuck that scumfucker, fuck him . Gives us fixers a bad fucking rep. You good, though?

I chuckled. The old fixer cared, huh?

D: I’m more than good. 

El Capitan: Good. Be talking to you, D. Stay safe out there. Oh, and what was the gig he sent you on? Got any data?

D: Trauma Team policyholders, Gold and Platinum.

El Capitan: I suppose I haven’t had an update in a while. How about you hand me that shard over in person, and I’ll give you… thirty thousand for it?

D: Sounds good. Not now, though. I’ve got other stuff to do. Another day?

El Capitan: No pressure. No rush. See you around.

He ended the call. I refocused on Roberts. “Give me the shard back now.” Roberts ejected it and shakily tossed it towards me. I caught it, eyes still fixed on him, just daring him to try something. “I suggest you find some work in another city. You’re done here, Roberts. Thanks for fuckall.”

I used the Sandevistan to leave. I’d rather not give him my back as I walked away, not after what I had done to him.

But nearly three hundred thousand in one day, and thirty on the way, was nothing to sneeze at. Fucking hell, I had it made now.

I almost wished the next fixer I dealt with would be gonk enough to give me, David Martinez, the runaround. 

000

After getting home and showering, I hit up Jinguji for more threads.

Yamanaka was working there still.

“Ah, Mister Martinez. How went the party last night?” he asked.

“Pretty good, actually. Thanks for the threads,” I said. “I need something for right now, though. A little lowkey for a change. Maybe neomilitarism or something. Don’t want the whole world looking at me right now.”

“That is certainly a valid preference,” he said in a tone of voice that clearly indicated he didn’t believe that at all. “Very well. Let us get you outfitted.”

I had made my preferences clear, and as much as Yamanaka was a judgy prick, he at least listened.

I had a black turtleneck made of pure cotton and a sleek dark gray suit jacket above it, with a matching set of pants as well, fitted yet also somewhat flexible. The cufflinks on the sleeves were smart watches as well, and were otherwise silver, just like the belt buckles, the ring on my finger and the rosary I wore as well. And finally, black leather dress shoes.

It was a sober outfit and one that suited my purposes well.

“Eight thousand, five-hundred,” Yamanaka said. “We can lower the price if you choose to construct and buy another outfit while here as well.”

Well, it would save me a trip here, but I didn’t feel like dealing with all the choices at the moment. 

“Next time, Yamanaka,” I said as I paid the eddies and took my leave. The clothes I arrived with were trashed, just some basic clothing that didn’t really cost much to begin with. I walked out of Jinguji and hailed a cab to Fei-Fei’s bar.

I was thankfully cutting it close with Fei-Fei, which was convenient for me since that meant I didn’t have to focus on something like work to cut through the intervening time.

I’d had enough work to last me a lifetime at this point. Hell, with my savings, I could go one hundred and fifty months straight without having to worry about a single rent payment. Then again, I’d have to pay utilities, too. That would add up as well.

Huh. What was I really going to use all this money on, anyway? Well, school for one, but that left two-hundred and twenty three thousand for my own shit. I could afford a Caliburn with that sort of money. Just not the secured garage to go with it, or the many, many additional anti-theft measures that made sure that fully klepping my car would require a truly skilled Netrunner to accomplish.

Right now, I just had to think of chrome. Highest on my list were a cyberdeck and cyberoptics. And I needed that top-of-the-line shit, too. Mil-spec if I could help it.

I’d talk to Pilar about this.

The cab pulled me up to the bar and I stepped out. There was a line outside the bar with a bunch of people way better-dressed than I was.

None of them were Fei-Fei. I tried walking up to the bouncer to see what would happen.

“Wait in line,” came his tired response.

“I’ve got a date waiting for me,” I said. “Any chance I could—”

“Five thousand.”

No.

I didn’t care how fucking rich I was, I wasn’t going to pay five thousand just to get into some overpriced bougie bar. Fuck that.

I walked away and looked for an abandoned alleyway to pull the same trick I had pulled in the Afterlife.

One Sandevistan-use later, and I was deep into the bar, no one the wiser.

This bar didn’t evoke the same classical feeling that Allister’s did. Instead, it was pretty modern, techy. Holographic fish swam through the air underneath high ceilings, and there was a mezzanine floor where people could get an even better view of the holographic marine life.

I gave Fei-Fei a call. 

David: I’m here. What now? Where are you?

Fei-Fei: Wait, you paid the five thousand to get in quickly? I would have paid for you, you know.

David: That won’t be necessary. Just tell me where you are.

Fei-Fei: Take the elevator to the seventy-sixth floor.

I walked up to an elevator, opened it, and did exactly that.

Then as I punched in the number of the floor Fei-Fei was in, it had the gall to tell me that I wasn’t a paying customer or staff.

I used the Sandevistan to klep the bouncer’s keycard and got back to the elevator, punched in the 76, returned the card, and took off.

This was dumb.

But dumber would have been paying.

I arrived at the floor in under a minute.

The 76th floor was way darker, and the only things that were lit up were the tables and the walkways. There were private booths, too, hidden behind a row of doors.

Fei-Fei’s call came.

Fei-Fei: I’m at the 5th booth.

I went to the fifth door, opened it, and saw Fei-Fei looking up at me with an innocent smile.

While lying draped over a long couch, completely naked. She had lost the diamond studs on her panelling, but she was just as beautiful as I remembered.

000

In between rounds, we would drink and chat. The bar delivered drinks discretely, pushing them through a hatch, and orders could be made through connecting to the localnet. 

Our energy began to die down at around 1AM, and from then on, we just cuddled.

I don’t know if it was the alcohol or the reality of my actions, but I was starting to hate myself. “Hey, Fei-Fei,” I said. “Why… are you doing this?”

“It’s control,” Fei-Fei said without hesitation. “I’m taking it back for myself. I had no control over my betrothal to Katsuo. But I have control over what I do with you. And that’s why I’m with you.”

“What… about me?” I asked lamely. 

“Aren’t you doing this because you hate Katsuo?” Fei-Fei asked, seemingly confused rather than accusatory. She didn’t seem to care. “I mean, I like your company, David. That’s why I’m only doing this with you. But you are just an appropriate partner for me to fulfill my desires. And I am the same to you, no?”

“Yeah,” I replied. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry!” she said. She pulled my head to look at her. Her eyes glistened with honesty. “You’re good. We’re just… fulfilling favors to each other. As chooms.”

I chuckled. I gave her a fist bump. “Thanks, choom.”

She giggled back and gave my fist a bump.

But in all honesty, what I was doing felt weird. Mixing hatred towards Katsuo with passion towards Fei-Fei? How was I supposed to juggle so many emotions at once?

And if I stripped Katsuo from the equation, what then? Well, then she’d be a person that I wanted to have sex with because I simply want to have sex. I wouldn’t have a special attachment to her beyond the fact that we had already had sex before.

She would be my go-to because I had already broken the ice with her.

I didn’t like that at all. Felt scummy. Like I was using her.

But she didn’t seem to mind. In fact, she welcomed the transactional nature of our relationship.

Fine. If she was happy with this arrangement, then I would be, too. I needed to stop thinking so much about Katsuo. Fucking asshole didn’t deserve to stay in my head for so long.

“Let’s stop bringing up Katsuo,” I said. “I don’t wanna do this to stick it to him. I just want you.”

She got up and looked down at me with serious eyes. “Don’t you dare fall in love.”

“No,” I said. “It’s not like that. I just… don’t wanna be with you if there’s hatred involved. I just wanna be with you for your own sake.”

“Be with me?”

“Have sex with you,” I said, hating the bluntness of that. “No frills or anything like that. Just the sex. No revenge, just us.”

She relaxed, and soon rejoined my embrace. “You need to be more careful with your words, David. I can’t afford flights of passion, not where I am in life.”

“I know,” I said. “Sorry for worrying you.”

“Idiot. Stop being so tender.”

I giggled. “Sorry.”

She gave me a playful punch and I hugged her tighter.

000

Spring Roberts was out of options. The fixer community, the Afterlife, had turned its back on him. None of the merc contacts he had received from his fellow fixers were responding to him.

He was out of options, and so he faced down the most heinous boostergang in Night City, the Maelstrom, hat in hand. They were in a safehouse deep in some low income neighborhood that he’d never have stepped foot in if given any other option.

He’d only been in Night City for a week, and he had already been forced to stoop lower than he ever had before.

“Twenty-five thousand to bring him in alive,” Spring said. “Nothing if he’s dead.” He needed his money back from that boy. It represented a decent chunk of his starting capital, and he wasn’t about to let some snotnosed brat steal that away from him.

The leader of the maelstrom gang, a man with a tuft of red hair on the middle of his scalp, wearing a five-eyed tech visor, regarded him curiously. “Upfront only.”

“That’s not how it’s done,” Spring gnashed his teeth.

“Usually, you hire mercs for this shit, so don’t give me that crap,” the Maelstrom leader said. “Only reason you’re here?” He pointed at Spring. “You’re unreliable. You’re a snake bastard, aren’t ya? Money upfront, or you can fuck off.”

Spring growled. “ Fine .” He sent the money.

The red-haired man blew his brains out.

Gun still smoking, he turned to his comrades, abominations and perversions of nature one and all, with a nonchalant shrug. “Anyone want pizza?”

They all shrugged and assented, a good enough plan for their Saturday evening as any. They walked away from the former fixer’s bleeding corpse, all thoughts of completing a job utterly forgotten.

Notes:

Currently the latest chapter I've been working on has featured a pure Netrunning assignment which led me to start reading the Cyberpunk 2020 and RED sourcebooks. The former's rendition of the Net carried a far greater resemblance to what I was used to, which is Ghost in the City's Net. But then when I read the sourcebook for RED, it turns out the open world Net that I've grown so fond of and has featured in several CP2077 fics that I love (GitC and Skitterdoc to name two) is non-canonical and wouldn't be feasible because of the DataKrash. Either that, or I've messed up in my research, but I'm reasonably certain that you wouldn't be able to go to a Localnet across the city from your home because of the Blackwall.

So I've done some fanfiction magic to sort of... just do me, I guess :P So yeah, this note is just to forestall anyone crying 'non-canon'. The DataKrash and its consequences will still be present in the story of course. I like the richness it brings to the Net's lore. I just wanna build on top of that in order to justify why the Net can still be interconnected even if much of it is fragmented and a lot of data is still lost. You can use special tools to connect to a far-off localnet from your home that uses satellite tech, but it's a costly method and for some assignments, it would be far more cost-effective to physically break and enter into a stronghold so you can jack in and enter the data fortress with a wired connection to it.

But hey, if you have something to add about your own insights on the state of the Net as of 2076, feel free to tell me stuff, I'm all ears for now since this chapter is still being worked on.

Chapter 16: Date with the Devil

Summary:

David chips in and decides to show it off~

I took a break from edgerunning on Sunday, and used it to just get everything I needed: the paper roll for edge alignment training, an incredibly heavy tungsten training katana, almost an inch wide in the middle, requisitioned by Pilar who was still working on my sword, and finally, enough scop bars to fuel my work-out.

I didn’t try to gather much muscle mass from it. Rather, I relied on Nanny to optimize the muscles I already had to better handle the sword, and to train other muscles that also went into swordfighting, that I had simply neglected because there wasn’t a convenient way to train them at the gym.

By the time I was done, I could swing the tungsten sword around pretty quickly for almost a minute without tiring. Once I started using a one kilogram katana, that stamina would shoot up to insane proportions.

The rest of my day, I decided to spend it on coding on my computer. Specifically, Nakajima’s project. I read through the documents he sent me, and skimmed through the various different training files for the algorithm that detailed Arasaka workflows as well as recent automation techniques and the cost for said techniques. I’d have to compare said costs against that of non-automatic labor and make the algorithm do the math to see which was better: human or machine.

Of course, the naive solution would be for the algorithm to always go for the cheaper option, but workflows could become drastically cheaper or more expensive depending on certain links in the chain of work. Just making every chain cheaper wasn’t going to guarantee the cheapness of the overal chain. Sometimes dishing out more eddies for one thing would give you far more leeway to cut costs in other chain links. It was fucking complicated, though. Way too many moving parts.

But it was all math at the end.

I fired up the Sandevistan on the fastest safe setting and started on a rudimentary design, incorporating what Nakajima had already accomplished. I was just working on the math and how the code would look, but it was still hard work.

I came upon several different stumbling blocks, but rather than frustrate me, it was fun . Nakajima was right about this being meatspace code. The solutions were grounded in reality, and were easy as such. Just a little tedious, but very satisfying to complete.

By the time I was done, I beheld my ocean of formulas, mathematics and code. 

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!

I sent it to Nakajima with a message ‘how does this look?’

I didn’t have to wait long for a response. 

‘Kid, what the fuck?’

Shit. Did I fuck up somewhere? ‘What’s wrong? Is the math bad?’

‘How long have you been working on this? Did you even sleep Friday? How the fuck?’

‘It’s just math’ I wrote. ‘Still a lot of work ahead of us. I’m just wondering if this would be a good start or not. The model should pretty much include every constraint and real-world detail necessary for optimization. Now we just need to figure out the AI architecture, right? I don’t have much experience in that, I was hoping you’d take lead.’

‘I’ll give the math a look and see what’s ahead of us. And good job, kid.’

‘Thanks.’

He didn’t send anything else.

Well, that was that, then. I was free from Nakajima for the foreseeable future.

What else was on the agenda, then?

Quickhacks? I did still have those operating systems that I could decompile and study. And after that, maybe finally look into getting some cyberoptics and a cyberdeck. Once I learned enough about operating systems, I would be able to give the new chrome a thorough scrub before chipping it in.

000

Several days passed as I familiarized myself with cyberware OS as intimately as possible. The models I was studying were old, but far better written than that legacyware that Nakajima showed me. Still, I didn’t doubt that knowing what I did, I could install some really good firmware updates that would both erase the invasiveness of the chrome and also that shitty neural strain fuckery.

By Wednesday, I finally decided to go out to buy new cyberware: a deck and optics.

Downtown had stores that sold chrome, but didn’t handle installs. That was good for me because installing chrome, at least from a legitimate source, meant that my medical records would be stored in a database that city authorities could access. And my medical records would include stolen mil-spec chrome.

Thankfully, there were cyberware shops that sold military surplus as well as bleeding edge consumer market stuff for a hefty sum. Common sense dictated that I go to Maine to get my chrome from a ripperdoc, and I could imagine that would be cheaper, but who knew the sort of viruses that their chrome carried? At least with stuff fresh off the factory, I could be certain that the only fuckery it contained originated from the manufacturer. And that it wouldn’t include any unforeseen mechanical deficiencies either.

Fuck that. I won’t skimp on my body again. Never again.

The store I went to, a high-end, white-tile and polished white walls, shop, didn’t do something as plebeian as including the actual chrome on the room where the cashiers were. Instead, it was featureless, clinical and empty, and there were two clerks wearing pure white behind a desk. I walked up to one of them, a man in his forties. “I want the Tetratronic Rippler Mark 5 and Kiroshi Sentry Optics.”

The man’s eyebrows rose. “One moment, please.”

He went into the backroom and took a minute to come back with two glass cases, one containing a pair of orbs encased in metal, and another containing a rectangular motherboard-like thing.

“That will be fifty-one thousand, nine-hundred and sixty-one. We do not have payment plans. Will this be cash or credit?”

“Cash,” I said. He sent me a payment interface through NFC and I paid without hesitation. From what I had gathered online, this was market price to begin with. This shopkeeper was obviously too bougie to try and rip me off. Or more likely, he didn’t own any of the items back there and thus had no reason to lie about prices.

The man smiled. “Would you like these delivered to your home or will you take them yourself?”

“I’ll take them,” I said as I moved to grab the both of them carefully. “Pleasure doing biz.”

“The pleasure was all mine, young man.”

000

I ended up breaking something in the code while I took care of the eyes. That was okay—I had backups of the OS already—but each and every time I screwed up, something else decided to break.

Over and over again.

It probably took me well over a hundred hours, almost a subjective week, until I finally managed to fix the eyes. All the bloatware, all the fucking spyware, and that fucking neural strain thing, too, that would activate against competing chrome because these Kiroshis were partially manufactured by Militech. All of it was gone. Thank fucking God.

The cyberdeck was a bitch, too.

Because it didn’t have anything wrong with it. At least not something that I could see.

I just didn’t believe that for a fucking second. So I kept looking, kept combing, kept searching, until I found it: memory inefficiencies.

I took care of those. But that was it. Just the slight ineptitude of a corporate programmer, but no foul play to purposefully increase neural strain.

It was Friday afternoon, and I felt like a zombie. I had used the Sandevistan to save time, and therefore I could hardly believe that such little time had passed.

But I did it. I managed.

I called Maine.

David: It’s time to chip in. I found this ripperdoc in Arroyo that I think I can trust, according to the Net at least. Wanna meet me there?

Maine: Sure, I’ll hold your hand while you get ripped into. How does twenty minutes sound?

David: Perfect

000

The ripperdoc I had researched worked out of a strip mall in Arroyo. Not the worst-looking place to work in, and when I went into his office, it smelled fairly clean. Sterile, almost.

And Maine was there with me, too, following me from behind.

I was really going to get my skull cut into. And my eyes gouged out as well. At the same fucking time. 

So nova.

And to make matters better, this time it would be on my terms, with my eddies. No freebies and no Doc shenanigans.

The ripper was Asian, and wore a tech visor like Pilar’s with red lights on it. He wore his hair in a bun, and his left hand had an exo-skeleton frame above it. Currently, he was sitting on his chair, working on something on his computer. 

He turned around to face us after a few seconds and regarded us calmly. “Who will it be?”

“The kid,” Maine said gruffly. “Eyes and a cyberdeck.”

I shifted uncomfortably at that. This felt way too much like mom taking me to see the doctor.

“You sure you want that?” the man looked at me as he spoke. 

“Yes,” I said. I held up the boxes of chrome. “These right here. Tetratronic Rippler Mark 5, and Kiroshi Sentry Optics. What’s the install cost for these?”

“Base rate applies for eyes and cerebral and nervous system implants,” he said as he shot me his price list. Five thousand for eyes, ten thousand for nervous system implants. 

Doc’s price for the Sandy install had been legit, then. What the fuck.

“Fine,” I said. “And, Maine,” I turned my head to look up at him.

“Hey, Ripper. Just thought I’d let you know, you klep his chrome, fuck with it, or fuck with the kid, I’m ripping your spine out from your back, and I’ll keep you alive long enough to regret your bullshit.” he looked down at me. “Happy?”

I smiled. “Yeah.”

If the ripperdoc was shaken by that, he didn’t show it. “Point taken,” he said with a bored sigh. “I’m sure you know the risks of multiple implantations, but I’ll reiterate anyway, since my spine seems to be on the line. Not a good idea. You’ll want to wait a bit between installs. But if you do go through with it, make sure you wait at least three months for more upgrades above your neck. That said, this isn’t the riskiest thing someone has done with chrome, so you shouldn’t worry too much.”

“Okay,” I said. “And I’ll need anesthesia as well.”

Maine snorted. “The hell do you need that for?”

“Anesthesia is included,” he said. “As well as anti-shock serum and all other necessary chemical injections required to keep your stress levels low for the implantation. Traumatic implantation is a sure way to go cyberpsycho if repeated.”

“Pft,” Maine said. “You do you, kid. You want me to wait while you get ripped up?”

“It’s fine,” I said. “I’m sure he got the picture.” Plus, it was embarassing.

“It’s fine,” he said. “Got nothing else to do.”

I walked up to the chair and sat down. The ripper put a brace over my skull that held me in place. “Good night, kid,” he said as my neck got pricked.

That was the last thing I remembered.

000

When I woke up, I saw only darkness.

Then the loading screen. The Kiroshis were installing.

It ran diagnostics, found no errors, and the set-up continued. It ran a little exercise to read my preferences—how I liked to move my eyes, how it could make it easier for me to go into settings and run programs.

Once done, my eyes booted up, and it was like I could finally see after wearing the world’s blurriest glasses my entire life. It almost gave me a headache, seeing everything so brightly, sharply .

“You back with us?” the ripper asked. I nodded. “Want me to help you with the set-up?”

“No thanks. Already finished it.”

“You did your homework.”

I shrugged. I mean, I’d practically built the whole OS from ground up after all the bullshit it threw at me. I’d given up on just revising the code and instead simply redid it, better than before and without the harmful baggage they crammed into it.

David: Nanny, how’s the integration?

[Slightly flawed, but nothing a single activation with the Sandevistan would not fix in an instant.]

I followed the advice and immediately felt a world of difference. The weight that the new eyes seemed to exert on my eye-sockets disappeared entirely and now felt more natural than ever. Even the back of my skull felt better. Right, the Rippler!

I got up and walked over to the backpack I had brought to the clinic, pulled out my cyberdeck and paired the kiroshis with it, so effortlessly .

Then I opened up the cyberdeck menu, like flexing a third arm. Fucking seamless. It had quickhack slots conveniently placed, and I replaced the factory version of Ping with my Ping. It asked me to confirm the message, and just in case it was somehow better, I downloaded the factory Ping into my cyberdeck and activated it.

The power of Ping also depended on the power of your cyberoptics, and mine were bleeding edge. I saw everything from thirty-five meters away. Every device, at least. Not their shapes, but their presences. People, I could only read from fifteen meters.

I downloaded my own Ping from the cyberdeck and used that instead.

My range shot up massively.

The entire strip-mall and a part of the next block was encompassed in my massive Ping, and that range included people as well. Whatever imbalance prevented me from scanning humans as easily as normal devices was erased.

And not only that, I could easily get to quickhacking any of the targets in my dizzying range. Fucking nova, my brain was buzzing ! This felt even crazier than that Netrunner JK XBD I had viewed all those months ago; that gonk didn’t come close to the power of my Ping.

“Holy shit!” I exclaimed. “This is so preem!”

I looked up at Maine and the ripper, who were both outlines in my vision. Maine had the most access points, him being part metal and all, and the ripper had comparatively less vulnerabilities.

“Fuck yes! I can’t wait to quickhack Lucy!”

Maine laughed. “Having fun, kid?”

“I’m a real Netrunner now!”

“Are you, now?”

My heart swelled with joy and excitement. “I can see everything , Maine. And not just with my eyes. My Ping feeds me visual data right into my eyes and my deck, meaning I can literally see everything that emits a signal almost a hundred meters away! I’m fucking tweaking out man, this is awesome!”

“Hahah!”

“Congrats, kid,” the ripper said. “Try not to work that deck too hard or you’ll fry your brain. You’ve got a Sandevistan too, so be extra careful. There’s a reason people don’t do more than one nervous system implant. Two is pushing it.”

“Got it,” I said. “And thank you, man. You came through. Good install, integration had no problems.”

“How can you tell?” the ripper asked as his arms folded.

“I, uh,” I chuckled. “Just a feeling.”

“Well, not to toot my own horn, but I know what I’m doing,” he said. “And not because I want your money or anything, you can trust me, too. I’m serious about my work. More than others in my line of business at least,” he said as he threw a glance at Maine. “But don’t go borging out now to follow your friend’s example. I’ll cut you off after a certain amount; I have ethical standards.”

“Rude motherfucker,” Maine stood up and walked towards the door. “You coming, D?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Again, thank you.” I took the backpack and was about to leave, before something occurred to me. I turned around to address the ripper. “Can I see… my eyes?”

“Sure,” the ripper gestured towards a bloody tray where my eyes sat, still attached to their stalks. They were turned towards me, staring lifelessly. Pleadingly, almost. I scoffed. They used to be my meat, a part of me, but they couldn’t keep up, so I left them behind.

I wasn’t going to miss them at all.

000

Before I forgot to, I decided to pay out next term’s semester fees as well to be kept in credit. Now, every enny I spent would be done with a clean conscience.

Maine took me from the ripper to Aldo’s, where he decided to have a chat with me over a bottle of vodka of all things. The sun was dipping towards the horizon, painting the scene in relaxing sunset colors.

We sat under a parasoled table, both of us facing the city on opposite sides of the table. “You got any iron, kid?” he asked me. 

“Nah,” I said. “I’m more of a sword kinda guy, if you can believe it.”

He chuckled. “You know, you’re the weirdest kid I’ve ever met. Nobody comes close.”

“Thank you,” I said with a grin. I was pretty much resigned to always be the weirdo while with the edgerunners. 

“You should keep this,” he said as he slid me a gun from across the table. “Never know when it might come in handy.”

“Nah,” I shook my head.

“Why?”

I looked down at the gun, and the only thing I could see when I used it was mom again, and our car getting mowed down by a machine gun.

This was irrational, sure, but it didn’t matter anyway. Didn’t have to fight this particular trauma like I bruteforced through my somniphobia, because I didn’t need to use a gun.

“They’re not my style,” I simply said. “Guns and I don’t go together. Besides, the Sandevistan’s all I need.”

“Don’t be stupid. Just hold on to it. Just in case. Will someday be a time when that Sandy of yours can’t save you, and then you’ll wish you stayed strapped. Until then, keep it.”

I sighed and I took it.

“So. How are things with Lucy?” he then asked.

“Lucy? Fine,” I said. “Well, when we met last week at least,” I said. “Then I sort of burned her income stream by accident and she’s been salty ever since.”

“What’d you guys do last time?”

“We went jogging,” I said.

“Jogging? What else?”

“Then we had food,” I said, and I knew what would come next.

“Food? You guys went on a date?”

“Not like that,” I said with a sigh. “We just hit up a diner. Played some arcade game, but that was it. She gave me a pretty shit goodbye, too, because I kicked her ass so many times at the game.”

“Hah!” Maine chuckled. “Lucy doesn’t like to be humbled. She knows her worth, but it gets to her head. And from what I can tell so far, she doesn’t hate you enough to flatline you if you’re still standing, which tells me that this anger is actually,” he leaned closer to me. “ Love .”

My face burned up as I shook my head rapidly. “Fuck that. She hates me, and I want nothing to do with her. She literally thinks I’m some kind of bootlicker with no redeeming values. What am I supposed to do about that? Drop out just to please her?”

“Beats me,” he said with a chuckle. He took the vodka bottle and downed a quarter of it in one go, then handed it to me. I took a swig from it, and swallowed through the pain and the urge to immediately throw up. “Alls I know,” Maine said. “Is you should give the little girl a chance. She’s lonely, you know. No real peers her age, and Kiwi is more like a mentor than friend. But underneath that ice princess facade, there’s softness. Seen it before. And it’d be a shame to let her walk through life alone. Besides, I’ve never seen her this animated before.”

“She hates me,” I repeated, and this time I couldn’t deny the feeling of pain that sentence caused. That was so dumb of me. Why did I care that she hated me? She was pretty and that’s why I fell for her whole act. And sure, she was pretty nova too before she short circed and started tearing into me constantly.

“Do you hate her?”

I shrugged. “No. I can’t, not really, after I hung out with her and all. Can’t really blame her for shitting on me, to be honest. I just hate that she can’t see me for me.”

“I get it. Well, ain’t nothing to that but spending more time together. Invite her out to another jogging session or whatever the fuck you do. It’s Friday, and the night is young.”

I took the vodka bottle and took another drink. And then another, because my next act would require it.

I hit up Lunacy.

Lunacy: What

David: Guess who finally got himself a cyberdeck and Kiroshis.

Lunacy: You fucking didn’t.

David: Tetratronic Rippler Mark 5 and Sentry Optics

Lunacy: You piece of shitty- shit .

I chuckled.

David: Why don’t we meet up so I can show you?

Lunacy: You think new tech can replace skill, corpo? Money can’t replace the real thing, you know.

I clenched my jaws.

David: How do you suppose you can prove you’re better? And we’re working the same job, so you can’t call me a corpo just because I have more money than you.

Lunacy: Let’s meet at Turing’s. Whoever manages to break the other’s ICE wins. No quickhacks, just Breach. No daemons, either, since I know you’re a big baby.

Fuck yes I wouldn’t want to let her implant me with a goddamn virus. How was that baby shit?

David: Loser has to buy the winner drinks for the rest of the night until the winner is satisfied.

Lunacy: You sure you can afford that after the shit you bought?

David: Don’t worry about my wallet, Lunacy. Worry about the thrashing you’re gonna get.

Lunacy: Oh, it’s on , Corpo Cunt.

She ended the call.

“So?” Maine asked. “You too meeting?”

“Yeah,” I said with a smile. “And if I play my cards right, I’ll get free drinks for the night.”

000

I took a cab for most of the way to the agreed-upon location. Once I got a hundred meters close to Turing’s I activated Ping. I saw everything .

Everything but Lucy. Weird.

I ran into the establishment and went to the bathroom where my plan was to keep activating Ping. I did it once—

The bathroom stall opened, revealing Lucy, somehow invisible to my Ping.

She sent a Breach Protocol my way. My Self-ICE wasn’t enough to prevent her from Breaching. All it could do was protect my data, but getting past my cybersecurity was easily within her power without having to jack into me. I was fully vulnerable to her quickhacks now.

“What the fuck!” I yelled.

Bullshit!

“How did you—” I shouted. “How did you know I was going to come here in the first place?!”

She grinned widely. “Because, dummie, hacking isn’t just about RAM and buffer size. It’s about the social aspect, too. David, I have you figured out, you know. I fucking know you . And that makes you predictable.”

I growled. “How did you hide from my Ping?”

“Don’t get me wrong, it was a strong Ping, and your gear made it even stronger. It just won’t work on other Netrunners very well. Wanna know why?”

Did it have to do with her cyberdeck? Maybe used a hack to mask her signals? It was possible. Like an invisibility-cloak type ICE. I could see how that was possible.

And I could imagine ways to get around that, too. “You masked your signals,” I said. 

“Obvious enough,” she said. “Want to know how?”

“No,” I said. “I’ll figure it out myself. Not that you’d tell me if I asked in the first place.”

She chuckled. “You learn fast, kid .”

“Fuck you, you’re my age!”

“Two years older,” she said. “And I believe I was promised drinks for the rest of the night, until I satisfaction if I recall correctly.” she walked out from the bathroom and I followed her meekly.

But my Tetratronic Rippler and Kiroshis…! How could you fail me so?!

She was waiting on a stool at the bar. I sat down next to her, forlorn. She looked at me with narrowed eyes.

“You got taller,” she said. “Chrome or ganic?”

“Ganic,” I said. “Just human growth hormone.” I was taller than her, now, come to think of it. I hadn’t measured myself yet, but I should be around five foot nine now.

“You certainly didn’t waste time on the self-mods,” she said. “I want a vodka shot.” I ordered two, with my cyberoptics, too. I’d never get enough use of those puppies. They could seamlessly connect to anything that a remote device could connect to. it was fucking preem , and a hundred times better than those sorry corneal implants.

And they were mine . The soft was built by me, contained cybersecurity measures made by me , and would fall by my skill and no one else’s.

I could take pride in that, if nothing else.

“You traced my Ping,” I said. “How?”

“Well, that’s because I’d already Ping’d you. And it’s easy to trace it when you know the origin point. But I gotta say, it wasn’t a bad program. Even for you. How much did it cost? I know it’s not the factory standard.”

“I built it myself,” I said, watching her for an impressed reaction

She gave a raised eyebrow but that was it. “Explains the obvious weakness,” Lucy said. “The one I exploited, that is. Good workmanship, just lacking in experience in the field.”

“Do you have the Rippler?” I asked. 

“Don’t need it,” was her swift reply. “I think it’s fun building something effective within constraints. Makes you have to rely on good code and not good specs. Too many shitrunners think it’s okay to coast by on poor optimization and huge bloat just because half their brain is chrome. But excessive brain mods doesn’t make a good Netrunner. Only a vulnerable one. Don’t go around shelling out for RAM reallocators and whatnot, just focus on your code.”

The vodka shots arrived. I raised mine up and muttered a brief “Kanpai.”

“Na Zdrowie,” she said, raising her own shot. She drank it in one go.

“You Russian?” I asked her. “I assumed you were Japanese.”

“My full name is Lucyna,” she said. “I’m half-Japanese, half-Polish.”

“Ah, my bad,” I said. I looked up at the drinks menu to look for something that wasn’t vodka. I’d had enough of that with Maine already. I found a thing called Michelada, which included beer, lime, spices and hot sauce. Fizziness aside, that sounded fun. It sounded Latin by its name so maybe I’d like it. I put in an order for that with my eyes. “What chrome does Kiwi have, then?”

“I don’t know,” Lucy said with a shrug. “We don’t go around telling people what our decks are. And if we do, it’s usually after we rewrite the OS personally.”

“Oh,” I said. “Yeah, that’s important. Then you know about its vulnerabilities. And you get to optimize the code, too.”

“From what I hear, Ripplers are already pretty well optimized,” she said, and I nodded.

“Yeah, it was, and it didn’t have any of the spyware or bloatware that I expected, but I did manage to increase efficiency by about twenty percent just by fixing up some of the math. It used some pretty basic principles and came up with naive solutions that didn’t apply to a wider range of edge-cases.”

Lucy raised an eyebrow at me. “You’re bullshitting. You didn’t optimize a fucking Rippler Mark 5. Not to twenty percent at least.”

“Wasn’t I supposed to do that?”

“You didn’t do it.”

“Yeah I did!” I said. 

“Prove it, then!”

I stopped to think. “No. I won’t. Then I’d be sharing the new code’s vulnerabilities with you.”

“You’re all talk, Martinez,” my Michelada arrived. “Hey, I want another shot.”

I ordered one. Allister was right. Even if I was filthy rich, it still annoyed me to have to dish out cash to someone else on their whim. It wasn’t the amount that mattered—that was negligible right now. It was the principle of it.

“Hey, Lucy,” I said. “How did you get so good at Netrunning, anyway? I mean, not to try and diminish you or anything, but how good are you compared to other Runners? Is everyone like you? Am I just shit?”

“You’re good, David.” She leaned her body against the counter and looked at me. She said that with more sincerity than I expected. I was fully expecting to be insulted, too, so that caught me entirely off-guard. “Better than me in some areas, worse in others. Don’t compare yourself to me, though. We have different strengths and styles. You’re good at building. Better than most people I’ve met in fact, both in the real world and cyberspace. And I’m good at destroying. Better than almost anyone I’ve encountered. I break ICE and make the nastiest daemons. I burn systems to the ground. I’m a cyberplague. But I…” she stopped. Her shot arrived and she drank it in one go. “Yeah, don’t get hung up on comparisons. You’re young, but that doesn’t mean you lack skill. Don’t let yourself take shit from anyone about that.”

“Not by long-limbed techies, too?” I said. Lucy chuckled.

“I see you’ve had the pleasure of talking shop with that lanky bastard,” she said. “Pilar likes to cling to a sense of superiority. If it ain’t skill, it’s age. It’s a little sad, but it doesn’t matter in the end. Not if you got what it takes, anyway.”

“Funny,” I said. “Was a cyberdeck all it took for you to see me as another person?”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Well, you’ve been nice. So far. Thanks for that.”

“Oh,” she muttered. “Right.”

“Hey, I’m sorry about the shard heist I took too far,” I said. “And the shit I told you at Turbo’s.”

“Can’t remember, don’t care,” she said. “The shard thing died down pretty quickly, too. All they did was hang up signs around warning for picksockets. Didn’t hurt me any.”

“That’s good,” I said.

“Don’t get all soft on me, corpo cunt,” she said with a mocking smile. “I kinda liked our dynamic. Like seeing you pout and bitch. Where was all that piss and vinegar?”

“Fuck you,” I said. “You’re the one who’s crazy enough to prefer us fighting all the time. I want no part in whatever kinky degradation shit you’re into.”

“Another,” she said, gesturing at the shot. I growled.

“Aren’t you going at it a little too fast?” I said.

“If it makes you bitch and moan, then no.”

I rolled my eyes. I took a deeper drink of the Michelada. It actually tasted quite good. Then I ordered another shot for her. “I’m not carrying your wasted ass to your house.”

“You think I’ll get wasted? I have biomons, idiot.”

“Okay,” I said. I ordered ten more shots of vodka.

A minute later, the bartender arrived with a tray, and gave Lucy a slightly disgusted look. Lucy glared at me, and I couldn’t help but laugh. “Go ahead, boozerunner.”

“You’re such a little shit , you know that?”

“They’re all for you, madam,” I said. “Is it not to her highness’ liking?”

“Actually?” she folded her arms and sat up. “No, they aren’t.” she took one shot. “I’m tired of vodka. I want tequila now.”

Fuck her.

I ordered ten shots of tequila. The bartender arrived with another tray, wide-eyed and disbelieving.

Lucy bit the bottom of her lips, her eyes wide and promising violence and death.

“Go ahead, queen of ICE,” I said, gesturing at the assortment of drinks on her part of the counter. “For you!”

She took another shot. She was fucking fast with them, too, and she didn’t seem all that bothered either.

I finished up my Michelada, and reached for one of the vodkas. She slapped my hand away. “They’re mine.”

Wow !

Why did I tempt fate when I said that she was being nice? That was obviously a fucking trap! Lunacy was back now!

I ordered a tequila for myself. The bartender arrived with it, but was just looking at Lucy’s ocean of them as he put it down in front of me. He didn’t say anything, though, but his eyes said a thousand words.

I fucking loved that guy.

“I’ll fucking kill him,” Lucy growled. “What’s his problem, anyway?”

“He has common sense, Lucy. I know you don’t like that, but it’s called common sense for a reason. Not his fault you’re not normal.”

I took the shot, and Lucy mirrored me. 

000

Fifteen shots of hard booze later, and Lucy was finally beginning to show signs of inebriation.

“I’m telling you, you idiot,” she said. “Forget the fucking Caliburn, it’s stupid and expensive for no reason. It doesn’t maneuver as well as a bike does. And you got speedware, too, so what’s the matter, you big pussy?”

“I don’t know,” I muttered. “Sure, it’s less expensive, so it won’t get klepped as quickly, but I live in a Megabuilding, you know.”

“Just get a VIP garage.”

“Hmmm,” I said. “Alright, then. Sounds like fun.”

I’d have to make it a point to research the specs and how much it costs. From what Lucy had already told me, I could get vehicles from fixers as well. If I had enough rep with one, they would even sell it for cheaper, if that was a part of their business. I’d have to hit up El Capitan at some point. I’d just send him a text right now.

‘You sell any Yaiba Kusanagis? CT-X 30 something?’

El Capitan was typing.

‘CT-3X. And yes. Sixty six thousand. That’s cheaper than your neighborhood auto dealer for sure.’

‘Used or new?’

‘What do you take me for? It’s lightly used. Renovated so it’s good as new.’

‘Can we meet tomorrow?’ 

‘Nova. See ya, choom.’

“Guess I’m getting a bike,” I said, the words slipping out as excitement bubbled within me. Should I really be making these appointments under the influence? Eh, why not? Riding the NCART every time when I had so much money myself felt stupid. This was bound to happen eventually.

“Remember the mods!” Lucy said like her life somehow depended on it. “The base is only a hundred and eighty three horsepower, but with a full engine overhaul, removed speed-lims, the ChewTwoCharge X upgrade, high-fric tyres and some electromag torque drives, you could get it up to six-hundred and twenty horsepower and the speed with those removed speed-lims? Fucking legendary! And don’t worry about the handling, either. Between your speedware and the tech wheels, you should be able to make turns like a dream!”

She wanted to kill me.

I sent the modification list to Reyes because I was curious how much that would run me.

‘You wanna die, kid?’ was his answer. Then came another one. ‘Thirty thousand on top, you can trade for the Trauma Team data. But you’ll be looking at either learning to maintain it on your own or spending five thousand every month on maintenance. And I’m pretty sure none of these mods are street legal either. The Yaiba is already bat-out-of-hell fast, this is just pushing it.’

‘I’ll think on it.’ Maybe sober-David would have the wisdom to say no.

“Ugh,” Lucy looked at the assortment of empty glasses in front of her. There were only five full shot-glasses left, two vodka and three tequila. “Have the rest. I’m gonna delta.”

I downed one and watched her get-up, and then almost faceplant. I quickly stood up to grab her, rebalancing her. “You good?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “Let go. I’m just gonna go home now.”

“You sure you’re good?” she shook herself off my grip and took unsteady steps forwarrd.

“Yeah, you stupid gonk, I got biomons, remember?”

She crashed on a table. I held her before she could fall.

“I’m taking you home,” I said. “Jesus, Lucy. Way to be a fucking lightweight.” Nevermind that she drank three times as much as I did, I just wanted to rile her up.

“Fine,” she said. “Whatever. Don’t think I owe you anything, stupid idiot. This is part of the service for losing.”

“Sure,” I said. I hailed a cab with my ‘Roshis. I input Lucy’s address, and a Delamain taxi cab arrived in due time.

The ride was spent in silence. 

I broke it after a few minutes. “Asked my fixer about the bike mods. He asked if I wanted to die.”

She giggled. “What’s the matter? Afraid?”

“Do you have a bike?” I asked her. “Since you seem so into the whole thing.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Trashed it. Saving up for a new one. Fucking thing is so expensive.”

Well, it was the fastest bike available on the market, even without all the mods.

I looked forward to being able to traverse the entire length of Night City in under ten minutes though. Between the Sandevistan and Ping, I’d have a pretty good handle of traffic and the thing’s speed as well. Couldn’t wait to try it.

We came out from the cab and I basically half-carried Lucy up to her apartment. She stumbled in, accidentally pulling me along as well. “Now you’re home,” I said. “I should get going.”

“Wait,” she said. “Service isn’t over yet. Order me some takeout. I’m fucking starving.” she collapsed on the sofa. I closed the door behind us.

It’s only been two weeks since I was here, but it felt like a lifetime ago.

I sighed. “Are you serious?” I muttered as I went into the localnet and searched for some takeout numbers. 

“And make sure it doesn’t taste like shit. I’m thinking burgers and fries.”

I picked out the highest rated burger place in the neighborhood and put in an order for two burgers and two fries, one water and a nicola.

I sat on the window sill while waiting.

Lucy turned on the TV.

It was tuned to the news.

“--berpsychosis epidemic has swept Japantown! Maelstrom cyberpsychos are out in force and MaxTac has been raised, but the difficulty is in locating the belligerents and putting an end to their rampage.”

“Fuck,” I muttered. “That’s only a couple of blocks away.”

Lucy even sat up. “Oh God.”

The news stated that the subdistrict was momentarily in crisis mode. Anyone caught outside would get fired upon by NCPD without questions asked.

“Fuck !” I hissed. “I can’t go outside?”

“I won’t get my food?!” Lucy shouted. “Dammit.”

“Focus, Lucy!” I said. “What am I supposed to do?”

She looked at me like I was stupid. “You can just sleep on my couch.”

I narrowed my eyes. “You won’t scav my eyes or deck while I’m sleeping, will you?”

She laughed. Wow, that felt sinister.

“Hey, Dave,” she said. Oh, fuck that. Dave ? Who was I, somebody’s dad? “Check my fridge. I probably got some burritos in there. And I could use the food.”

“I’m not your slave, you know,” I said. But I went to the fridge anyway, because I didn’t want to argue with a drunk Lucy. I pulled out two burritos for her and put them on her coffee table.

“Whatever you say, servant,” Lucy said.

“And don’t call me Dave, dammit,” I groaned. She just started eating her burrito.

Can’t believe I was stuck here. So weird. And with Lucy of all people. She’d just kick me out at some point, and then I’d have to try my luck against the NCPD and cyberpsycho gangoons. What the fuck?

I caught a glimpse of her moon poster and remembered what she said to me. She thought this city was ten times worse than the moon, even knowing about how bad the moon was. “Hey, Lucy? Why do you hate Night City so much?”

She stopped eating. She swallowed and just froze. 

“It’s not the city,” she said. “It’s the entire planet.”

“Huh?”

“You won’t get it,” she said.

“Try me.”

“Ever had a corp take away everything from you, David?” she said, still facing forward, to the holo TV that still played clips of massacres on the news. “Your entire body, your soul, and all you are? And when you tried to get away, you found out that you couldn’t? That nowhere is safe?”

I didn’t say anything to that. After all, I couldn’t fully relate.

“Thought so,” she said. “You won’t get it.”

“When I was ten, I was forced to take part in an illegal corp experiment.”

Lucy swung his head towards me, wide-eyed.

“I was supposed to get my grower Neural Link and a vaccine shot. Instead of a vaccine, the doc injected me with experimental nanobots. It was only a day later when he got caught for it. I think he got disappeared or something. Anyway, I started having night terrors every night afterwards. Every time I went to sleep, I had to solve these math riddles and logic puzzles or my brain would fry. I was certain, deep down, that I’d die if I screwed up, so I had to be on the ball, constantly.” I chuckled. “Turns out, it was a shitty security protocol. The nanites wanted to kill me because I wasn’t an authorized user. And I had to hack it every time just to stay alive. The corp that did it was Biotechnica, but they never paid out to me or anything. Mom felt it was better that way, to stay under their radar, so they wouldn’t try to ‘recover’ me or something, for being one of the few survivors of that shitfest.”

“And you…” Lucy said. “Still have those nanites?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Still there. I figured out how to make them work for me, now. Help me heal and shit.”

“Help you use the Sandevistan so many times,” she said, her eyes wide. “That’s how you do it.”

I nodded. “Point is,” I said. “I’m not a stranger to evil megacorps dicking the little guy over. I was a victim, too. I couldn’t sleep soundly for seven years. You know how that feels, Lucy? Fearing even a moment of rest, thinking it might be your last?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I know… I know that all too well.”

She didn’t say anything more. I didn’t want her to open up, though. Didn’t really need that information about her. All I wanted was for her to not think I was a piece of shit.

“Hey,” she said. “Let me show you something.”

000

We were both lying on her bed, each wearing a BD wreath. The next thing I saw was a black sky dotted with stars, a  sun brighter than anything I had ever experienced in my life, and an ocean of gray rock and dust.

And on it, Lucy was, looking out at that sea of tranquility, encapsulated by the beauty of it. And I couldn’t help but look at her for the same reason.

A cheesy pop-song played in the background while I made small jumps that launched me up several feet. “Holy shit! I can’t believe I ever talked crap about this place, this is amazing!”

Lucy laughed. “You think so?”

“I can feel the fucking sun! Everything feels so real!” I jumped as high as I could, and did a cart-wheel mid-air.

“It was a custom edit! I toned down the sun so it wouldn’t fry me to a crisp. Why, you want me to dial it back up?”

“No way!” I laughed. “This is amazing!”

“You look ridiculous!”

I ignored her, and did an even higher jump. “This is so nova!”

She followed after me, synchronizing our jumps. “Come with me,” she said.

We walked in the atmosphere-less surface of the moon, watching astronauts doing their work in one moon crater that we walked alongside, her in front of me. She offered me her hand and I gingerly reached for it before she just grabbed it and jumped into the crater. We both flew, landing on a moon buggy. She got into the driver’s seat and immediately fired it up while I held onto the chassis for dear life.

What a speed demon.

She took us next to a crater and spawned in some space helmets.

“Why?” I asked.

“For fun,” was her simple answer.

We walked up a hill, just taking in the environment, and she spawned in a drink for herself. She started drinking from it and then threw it at me.

My face started burning as I looked at the tip of the straw, where Lucy’s mouth was. It was stupid. This was just her avatar, not even a real thing, no matter how great the resolution of the BD was.

I drank from it anyway. My first mistake.

It was soda water. The worst drink in the universe. All the carbonation of a soda, with none of the actual flavor or any alcohol that made the pain worthwhile. I took my helmet out and threw it on the floor, gaining air time as I did, all the while Lucy laughed at me.

We soon arrived at the largest moon crater out there, most of it covered in an impenetrable darkness that felt almost unnatural to me. She sat on the ledge, and I next to her.

“Never shown this to anyone before,” she said.

“Oh?” I looked at her in shock. “Then… why me?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I really don’t know. Maybe so you can stop running your mouth about the moon.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Sorry,” she immediately said, and I couldn’t believe my ears. “I… I don’t know. Just felt right, showing this to you.”

“Preem,” I said. “It’s nice out here.”

“You know, you and I,” she said. “We’re not so different, I think.”

“Hmm.” I dangled my feet over the crater, marvelling at the contrast between my legs and the darkness below. 

“Maybe this was a mistake.”

I looked at her, and she was smiling sadly. “What… do you mean?” I asked.

“I’m… I’m just drunk,” she said. “This is nothing.”

“Oh,” I said. “Okay.”

“Okay?” she asked sourly.

“I thought this was fun,” I said. “Hanging… with you. Not a mistake or anything. Feels right, you know?” I couldn’t help the sudden rambling. I didn’t know what words were the right words, so I compensated by just saying them all and hoping something would work. “We should do it again.”

Her eyes widened, and she looked away. “Sure,” she muttered.

We disconnected soon after. 

I took the couch and she took the bed.

Notes:

The Bloodsurge Edgerunner will be on production break this week! I prefer to have several chapters written out and unposted so I can make changes to earlier chapters when inspiration strikes.

Chapter 17: Initial D

Summary:

David takes the Kaneda bike out for a drive, shoots the shit with Becca, and schemes occur in the background.

It was the middle of the day when I met Reyes at a driving track, a red Yaiba Kusanagi CT-3X next to him. He gave me a wave. “D, my main man! You finally wised up or are you still thinking of using those death mods? Speedware or no, you gotta think that through.”

“I’ve thought about it,” I said, and with a sigh, I gave a nod. “I want the mods.” It was a dumb waste of money, but I from what I had learned in my time as a solo, it was that I really fucking liked speed, especially my speed. If I could have more of it, that would be great. Besides, it would come in handy someday, I was sure about it.

“Okay,” he said. “Installs gonna take a couple of hours, but for you, my good solo, I’d do anything .” He was really laying it on thick, but I appreciated it still. “Here’s the girl. Wanna give her a test drive right now?”

“Does it come with a user manual?” I asked.

He NFC’d me the details and I read through it quickly. I hopped onto the bike and slowly got it started, making sure to start slow this time. I didn’t want to have a repeat of Allister’s Caliburn when it pulled out of that parking lot so quickly.

Yep. This bike was fucking fast. Even a light touch made it accelerate more than I anticipated, and I used the Sandevistan just to be safe. I took it around the track a couple of times, slowly learning the controls. Once I felt confident at one level of speed, I kicked it up, and added more leeway by increasing the speed of my Sandevistan, over and over until I maxed the bike out. Then, I slowly weaned myself off the Sandevistan, just until the bike became exciting to ride.

Then, I slowed it down next to a clapping Reyes. “Nice ride, don’t you think? Sixty-six sound good?”

He sent me the payment interface and I sent him the eddies. Then another for the mods, and I just handed over the data shard for Trauma Team’s policyholders. Fuck them and that greedy fucking corp, anyway. They were part of the reason why mom wasn’t with me anymore. 

I only had eighty-three left now after purchasing the VIP garage slot, and that would be three k monthly henceforth. From nearly three hundred to eighty-three. Sure, that was eighty-three thousand , but it was a far cry from what I used to have.

Didn’t matter anyway. I’d get more eddies in time.

Always would with my set of skills.

I shook hands with Reyes and left him with the bike. I had already paid for a VIP garage slot that opened for no one but me. It required special access to even get the elevators to go to that sub-basement, and I could do whatever I wanted with the electronic locks. And I would fill that lock to the brim of its memory with as much ICE as it could hold, as well as a program to detect and report intrusion. It wouldn’t hold up against a good Netrunner who would have anticipated such a measure, but against the vast majority of thieves that thought they were targeting a normal person, it would give an instant report to me as well as NCPD.

I’d have to get the bike registered first, though. Reyes gave me an anonymous bill of payment, meaning I could assign my name to it at the DMV without him knowing, unless he was specifically looking for someone registering a new Yaiba Kusanagi and already had access to the DMV database.

Yikes. What to do, then?

It wasn’t like I didn’t trust Reyes.

I just didn’t trust anyone. He wasn’t special in that regard. Anyone outside of Maine’s crew, who already had me by the balls, I couldn’t trust, and I only trusted them because I had no other choice. 

But no, I wasn’t about to start trusting Reyes. He was a good fixer, did right by me since day one , but that didn’t mean I owed him my entire identity.

I could still use a VIP garage with an unregistered vehicle. Only for a day before NightCorp started asking questions.

I could use a fake I.D for the time being. Hack into the NC DMV, add a fake name and registration, and use that to park the car.

Hell, I’d need a driver’s license, too.

Shit.

I took a stroll to the local DMV and went into a cafe a street away. I was still wearing a mask, but nobody really asked questions about stuff like that unless you were a cop, gangoon or terminally curious. I ordered a coffee and unleashed Ping.

I arrived at the door of several systems and began on breaking the ICE as gingerly as I could.

The ICE fucking shattered under a tap. I panicked, waiting for an alarm which never came. After five minutes of no cops, I took a sip of my coffee and continued poring over the databases to look for what I needed.

I found it quickly: a database of driver’s license holders in Arroyo. That list was fucking thin , though. It seemed that people really didn’t give a shit about getting a driver’s license.

How did they make sure their rides weren’t klepped, then? I checked the list and found that most license-holders did in-fact have high-end cars: Quadras, Herreras, Mizutanis et cetera. Only owners of nice cars bothered to have them registered and have themselves licensed. They had more to lose. That was the general tendency of the people of Night City: upwards social mobility came at a cost. The cops would watch you—they’d help you out, too, but you had to play by their rules as well, unlike the poor whom the cops had a far more hands off approach to, unless it was for the purpose of bullying. They cared less about responding to petty crimes, though, and only ever mobilized in Santo Domingo when it came to murders or someone klepping corpo property.

I found one of the edgerunners’ names in the database, too: Maine Williams. Maine had a fucking driver’s license. I downloaded it and sent it to Lunacy for fun. His eyes looked so kind and gentle underneath those shades he always wore. It was hilarious. His EMP threading gave him the illusion of wrinkle, but he had a remarkably young face despite his age, being thirty-nine and all. 

Well, if Maine had a license, then so should I.

I pulled up a photo of my face—my student ID—and used that as a basis for a driver’s license. The Kiroshis had an inbuilt photo editor with an AI generation module which made the task far easier. I inserted the driver’s license as well as all the relevant documentation, forged of course, in the automated queue for the DMV’s AI algorithm to read and automatically produce a license.

All that was left was to go in there and get it printed. 

And just like that, I was a registered driver of Night City. That was easy. Certainly not the most ethical way to go about it, but, come on; it was driving. Millions of idiots knew how to fucking drive. How hard would it be for me? I’d just skim the rule book or whatever and be up to speed in literally no-time.

Lunacy: Is that Maine? Why does he look so… cute?

David: I know! Also, I got the Kusanagi. And the mods. Wanna go for a ride?

Lunacy: …what mods?

David: You know, the stuff you suggested yesterday: removed speed-lims, ChewTwoCharge X, engine overhaul, whatever.

Lunacy: What the fuck? You bought a Kusanagi with that? Are you fucking crazy?

I gaped. What the fuck was her problem?

David: You told me to!

Lunacy: I was fucking shitfaced out of my mind, of course I would tell you to!

David: Just tell me if you’re into it or not.

Lunacy: Of course not, I wanna fucking live! Go die on your own, you gonk!

I frowned. What was her problem? Was she just going to switch up on me after yesterday?

David: Okay. You wanna hang out and do something else then?

Lunacy: Why would I wanna hang out with you?

David: What about yesterday?

Lunacy: Yesterday was because you lost a bet. Don’t get any ideas.

David: Oh. I thought it was… nice, though. Going to the moon with you. Was that just because of the bet, too?

Lunacy: What the fuck are you talking about?

David: You-you don’t remember?

She hung up the call.

I sighed.

She forgot.

She fucking forgot.

Or, maybe the only reason she was nice was because she was drunk all along, and would never have given me so much respect while sober?

You know what? Fuck her.

I was done trying to figure her out. Fucking done . Her psycho routine was never cute to begin with, but this somehow felt worse than anything she’d ever done to me before. I almost felt violated, breached.

Was that really it, though? No. I felt frustrated, too. I’d made progress with her, gotten to know a person that I really couldn’t bring myself to hate. For a while, it was like I had back the Lucy I made chooms with on that NCART, only for life to snatch that thing, that nice thing we had away.

It wasn’t her fault if she forgot, though. Nobody’s fault, really. Maybe mine, for buying her all those drinks. Maybe I shouldn’t have goaded her? Maybe I got her to do something she wasn’t ready to do at all? Maybe I should have respected the wishes of sober Lucy and declined the first time she told me she had something to show to me?

All I knew was that if Lucy was going to continue hating me, then I’d rather not see her again. I couldn’t handle her right now. She wasn’t good for me.

I hacked the DMV to put in a request for a printed license and made my way to it after paying for my coffee, trying not to think of Lucy and her bullshit.

000

Lucy spotted the two BD wreaths on her nightstands. Both of them contained a soft copy of her moon BD. 

When David was here last night, they had watched her favorite moon BD together. Why?

Something about… nanobots. Right. David got injected with them as a kid. It traumatized him. He almost died. He knew what it felt like to lose the rights to his body. To corpos.

And so… she had let him in. Let him get through her gates to a place where no one else had ever been, a hole that no dick could fill, a cold firepit that no empty yet sweet words could ignite. 

She had let him in . 

Why?

Fucking why ?

She stopped herself from calling David again and asking if they had sex. That mattered very little compared to what was actually confirmed to have happened.

Yesterday was a mistake.

No.

It shouldn’t have happened.

You don’t believe that.

She didn’t want for it to have happened.

That’s not true.

Her hangover blended with her anxiety, creating a near-unbearable whirlwind of emotion. She buried her face into her mattress and screamed. 

This wasn’t fair.

Then again, love usually never was.

She laughed. No. Screw that. I’m just hungover and horny. Yes. She decided that was the most logical explanation. People got horny when they were hungover, or when they were drunk, which was the case last night. That was an established fact. And she had just decided to make a move on the nearest pair of balls, and now she felt the aftereffects of that.

It was literally nothing.

Yeah. Nothing at all.

She needed another drink. Nothing cured that old hangxiety like more alcohol did.

000

The modded Yaiba Kusanagi CT-3X was a fucking monster.

The first thing I learned while driving down the highway was that my Ping didn’t regenerate nearly fast enough to keep up with even a quarter of the top speed of the bike, meaning I had to rely entirely on my eyes and the Sandevistan to know where I was going and what was happening on the road, which was unimaginably unideal.

For ten glorious seconds, I floored the fucking bike until the speedometer (a digital replacement because the analog default literally didn’t have a large enough range) topped out at six hundred kilometers an hour. I had to use the Sandy to slow time down to ten percent to feel safe.

Absolutely demonic.

I slowed down to saner speeds and started driving home to figure out how I was going to work out a Ping that traveled far enough to keep up with the Kusanagi. I could sacrifice omnidirectional range for the ability to hop between other cars, constrain the range to everything in front and behind me. That didn’t take into account cars that might enter from on-ramps on the highway, though, or just roads that connected with the main road.

I could download a map of Night City roads actually, and figure out a way to Ping within the constraints of the road, using my bike’s inbuilt GPS to determine where I was in the model map.

I ran some rudimentary calculations in my head and figured that I could end up Pinging a pretty sizeable stretch of road if I kept the scan to those constraints.

The only other way to increase the range of my Ping was to find out how I could transform intervening devices into signal repeaters that I could use to extend my range. That would take a lot of maths to figure out—a generalized decrypter to break ICE, and an algorithm to determine what devices to break and use Ping from, and what devices to not break in order to still remain an untraceable and undetectable quickhack. The amount of cyberspace noise I would be making was crazy, though. I had to make sure it remained untraceable.

That couldn’t work if the quickhack had penetrative power. That, by definition, would make it traceable. ICE disturbances always did that.

It was a fascinating area of study, though. I think I just found my next big project.

What was on my to-do list again? I pulled it up on my Kiroshis because I could now. It had so many quality-of-life apps that it almost made my head spin.

Tasks

• Touch base with Nakajima (whenever he hits me up)
• Upgrade factory Breach Protocol
• Upgrade ICEPick Daemon
• Buy cheap Daemons for inspiration
• Decide on next chrome (review necessity steps below)
• Will I be incapable of doing without it?
• Am I currently incapable of something such that only more chrome can help me?
• How will this chrome help me take over Arasaka or stay alive?
• Figure out a way to break it to my gonk chooms that mixing chrome == fucking bad news… (T_T they don’t wanna listen)
• Decompile the OS and get to the bottom of what the fuck Sandy even does. 

Daily Task

• Look for any new JK XBDs
• Sword training
• Stare at gun and refuse to fire it

 

I added the road Ping to my list of tasks, but didn’t plan on getting to that anytime soon. I know I told Pilar that coding felt like another language to me, but fuck if I wasn’t tired of that goddamn language. I needed to do something fucking new or I’d kill myself.

All I ever did was either train or code. What did I use to do for fun again?

Well, that was easy: JK’s XBDs. And I already knew that no new ones had come out yet.

Maybe I should just… rest.

I’d been going full energy for the past two weeks and I hadn’t given myself the chance to just relax and do nothing.

I usually hated relaxing and doing nothing. My body craved movement, and my mind craved stimulation, but under the weight of all the movement and stimulation I had received, I fell in love with the idea of just doing nothing. I didn’t have to be totally still. I just had to not focus on work.

I parked my bike in its VIP parking spot, locked behind a one-inch thick steel wall, and took the elevator to my floor and apartment. I didn’t even get to my bed before deciding that the sofa was a good enough place to collapse.

To my surprise, I didn’t even feel like moving about much. My entire body felt still and energy-less.

I eyed the counter in my vision, the Sandevistan’s integration timer. It was only six days left now. Another adjustment had occurred, but it was minuscule enough that it didn’t affect the time too much. I’d finally get that squared away.

Compared to when I had first installed it, the Sandy felt right on my back. The plating surrounding it had gone from completely sensation-less to just very numb, but I could feel touch on the plating as if it was a part of me, like thick skin on the soles of my feet.

The flexibility of the Sandy bordered on absurd, now. My back could twist and bend almost every way, and was only limited by the flexibility of my ribcage or the stretchiness of my muscles

I lounged around, doing nothing at all and playing retro video games on my Kiroshis—Snake and Brick Breaker.

They were too easy.

Way too easy.

After losing a couple of times, I managed to beat Snake five times in a row, having figured out the optimal pattern to use. I got tired of that game, and began on Brick Breaker, which was more about reaction speed. I didn’t know if it had something to do with the fact that my thoughts and eyes were faster than my fingers, but even the max level couldn’t stump me.

The only other options past that required speedware to use, but that sort of ruined the point of the game.

I tried doing them anyway without using the Sandevistan just to see if I could.

The answer was yes: for the first level. In the second level, the ball was a blur, and there was something that stopped me from reacting to it in time. The Kiroshis had a 144 megahertz refresh rate, meaning it could, in any given moment, 144 million frames per second individually. My eyes weren’t what made the ball blurry. It was just the speed of my perception. 

But why couldn’t I get to the ball in time? I felt like a deer caught in headlights.

Was this just the reaction time of my perception being somehow disconnected to the reaction time of my eyes?

That made sense. Your perception worked at the speed of thought. Your body worked at the speed of your nerves sending signals to your body and your body throwing them back. That ping would always be greater than your perception speed.

I decided to use the Sandevistan for the following Brick Breaker levels. As expected, I ended up beating the game very shortly after.

At that point, I started getting tired of doing pointless things.

Just in time, too, as Rebecca shot me a text.

Rebecca: Word on the street is that you’re going to BD stores for combat training.

David: Yeah, just one time, though. Wasn’t as much of a waste as I thought it was. I know how to train efficiently.

Rebecca: You’ll only get as good as the person who scrolled the BD. You wanna learn something from a BD, learn from the best. Or you can do it the old-fashioned way, and still learn from the best. Like me.

David: I’m not super into shooting.

Rebecca: Aww, come on! Just pay me a visit at the gun range, we’ll shoot a little and shoot the shit, too. Drinks afterwards?

David: Okay, I guess.

000

Rebecca shot using two pistols, hitting every one of the hanging tin targets dead center with a manic grin. Then she turned to me.

I was unmasked, since this was more of a social call than anything. I had brought both my guns, the one I had taken from the scavs that had kidnapped me, and the one that Maine had given me.

“Your turn!” she said.

I put the scav gun down and held Maine’s gun with both hands, aiming at the first target.

I couldn’t pull the trigger.

I couldn’t shoot at all.

Why did I come here? Why would I put myself through this bullshit again and again?

“Am I gonna die if I can’t shoot?” I asked, still pointing at the target.

“Huh? Of course. Even with your Sandy, you gotta be able to shoot,” Rebecca said matter-of-factly. I appreciated that. Didn’t wanna let her know I was having a hard time. She might care. I needed the truth now.

“I’ll get one of you killed if I can’t shoot, right?” I said. “And it’ll be my fucking fault.”

“Uh, you good, D?”

“Can’t half-ass it, not just my life on the line. Can’t let you guys down.”

“What’re you talking about?”

I took a deep breath, tensed my finger, and saw the heavy machine gun from that day, mom’s hopeful expression, and blood. So much blood.

And then I imagined the dead bodies of Maine, Rebecca, Pilar, Dorio.

Lucy bleeding out on top of that pile of corpses.

I fired.

I couldn’t breathe. I doubled over, clutching my chest.

I couldn’t even stand.

I grabbed onto the counter, gnashing my teeth, activating the Sandevistan to fix it.

It was like cold ice washed all over me, and whatever was going on was replaced with pure shock and adrenaline.

I stood straight.

“D!” Rebecca yelled. “What’s going on?!”

“I’m fine,” I said, jaws clenched.

David: Nanny, what the fuck was that?

[This is a classic example of a PTSD-induced panic attack. Your mental condition was in such an incipient form that I was not even aware of it. Now that you have had an episode, I can work to heal the physical manifestations of your mental illness—the way that it has deformed the shape of your brain and the places with the most harmful neural activity.]

Fuck. I had PTSD? I was mentally ill ?

David: You’ll fix this, right?

[I can heal the physical manifestations, but you must make an effort as well to overcome the mental manifestations of your illness. If we work together, you can be fixed, yes.]

“I’m fine,” I repeated. “Just… forget you saw that.”

I held the pistol up and aimed it at the target again.

“D, I’m being serious. Was that a panic attack?” Rebecca asked.

“So I panicked! Big deal! Shit happens,” I said with a laugh. “Relax, I’m handling it. Just, look.”

I focused on the target and fingered the trigger. The memories came back, but they didn’t overtake me.

I almost lost myself in them, though.

I saw mom in my mind’s eye. 

Sorry, mom .

I pulled the trigger again. The same wave of adrenaline came back, but my composure didn’t shatter.

The shot missed, though.

“I can do it,” I said. 

“You sure?”

“I’m not a baby.”

“Alright, then. Let me fix up your form, then, because you shoot like a gonk!”

She changed the grip I had on the gun, my stance, and how I aligned my vision with the barrel, and told me to fire.

I hit the target, but on the edge only.

“You pulled when you should have squeezed.”

“What’s that mean?” I asked as the target lowered once again.

“Pulling is jerky. Squeezing is smooth. Be smooth. Be slow.”

“What about the grip?” I asked. “If you’re telling me to squeeze, it sounds like I should hold the grip tighter, too.”

“Just focus on your trigger finger, champ.”

I repeated the action, pulling the trigger smoothly. The bullet edged closer to the center.

“Now focus on not being so shaky. Be tight, but don’t be too tight, or the shakes get worse.”

And on it went. Rebecca supplied me with several magazines and always had something to say and a tip to supply me with, not to mention countless reminders to remember her other tips. In the end, it all came down to experience. I’d have to practice while consciously remembering what she taught me.

In the end, we walked from the gun range to a nearby bar, Rebecca smiling smugly all the while. “How does that compare to a damn braindance tutor?”

“It was awesome, really,” I said. “How’d you get to know so much about shooting, anyway? You sound trained, too. You ex-military or something?”

“Me ?” Rebecca laughed. “You’re fucking hilarious, you know that? It’s like you don’t even try, too. No, I’m not a fucking patriot bitch, do I look 6th Street to you? I just really like guns. And using them. Doesn’t take boot camp to learn how to use your fingers.”

“So you’re all self-taught?” I said. “Wow, that’s pretty impressive.”

“I hang around in gun ranges a lot,” Rebecca said. “I hear tips and tricks all the time, talk guns with other gun nuts, practice as much as I can afford. It’s really just a combination of experience and talking with others. No one in the world is actually self-taught. Those who say they are just didn’t have a single teacher.”

“Fair. You’re fucking nova, though. Was that speedware when you shot all those targets so quickly?”

“Just practice,” she said, but I could tell she was preening under the compliments. “You can get there, too, you know. You just gotta practice.”

“Thank you, Rebecca,” I said. “I mean it. I’m really grateful you took your time doing this. I don’t know what I did to deserve any of that. If there’s anything I can do to make it up to you, just say the word.”

Rebecca gave a wide smile. “That’s a bold promise, cutie. You really capable of putting your money where your mouth is?”

My face started burning at the compliment. “What, what do you mean?”

“I scratch your back, you scratch mine?” she said. “I help you shoot bullets, then help you shoot loads?”

My jaw damn-near dropped. “ What?!”

“Come on now, handsome,” Rebecca said. “Why don’t you show me what that Sandevistan can really do? Bet you’d have a killer vibrate function, no Mr. Studd needed,” she slid her hands up my chest as she said that. My face was burning.

“Come on now,” I said. “Quit joking around. This is going too far.”

She giggled as she stepped back. “Oh man, you are too pure for this world, you know that?”

I chuckled uneasily. That had happened way too fast.

I mean, clearly she was joking. You don’t come onto a guy so hard for anything but a joke, Fei-Fei notwithstanding. But then again, she straight up kissed me. That didn’t happen for jokes.

Rebecca was clearly joking, though.

Ugh, whatever. Not like I couldn’t take a joke or anything. “I’m serious, though,” I said, choosing to just forget the last fifteen seconds. “I’ve got your back for anything. You saved my life, remember? Now you’re helping me out with shooting and I don’t wanna feel like a burden or anything.”

“Okay, then,” Rebecca said. “First thing I’ll ask you to do is call me Becca.”

I blinked. “Okay. Becca.”

“Second, what was up with your panic attack?”

I pursed my lips. I didn’t want to talk about that at all. I heard stuff about how if you talked about your mental illness while working, then you could get fired for being crazy, especially if you did military, private security or cop stuff. Edgerunning wasn’t far off from that either. What if Rebecca just ran up to Maine and told him I was nuts? What if they decided to ditch me?

The thought of him ditching me hurt way more than if he’d suddenly decide to turn on me for the Sandevistan. Aggression, I could handle. I was no stranger to that shit. But abandonment? 

I didn’t want to be alone in this world.

But I owed the truth to Becca for all that she had done for me. If I didn’t repay her kindness by following her request, then what did that make me? Not somebody worthy of her friendship, that was for sure.

“Promise you won’t tell anybody,” I said.

“Trust me, D,” she said. “I won’t tell a ghost.”

“Guns remind me of… my mother’s last moments,” I said. “Our car got gunned down by some gangoons. Can’t think of firing a gun without seeing her face, without remembering the rolling barrel of that machine gun. So I’ve been leaning into my swordplay to compensate. And Netrunning too, sure.”

“Shit,” Becca said. “Yeah, that’s a tough break. You had a pretty nasty reaction, too. You sure you’re fine right now?”

“I mean,” I shrugged. “I’m a little bummed out, but more because of how fucking useless I am than anything else. The panic attack is pretty much gone for now. Just need to work on practicing shooting, so it won’t hurt as much.” I smiled. “And I can do that. I just did, today, so it’s not impossible. Just hard. I can handle that.”

“Well, for what it’s worth, you’re not useless,” Becca said. “Just dealing with it. Dealing with it better than most people I’ve seen, too. Don’t beat yourself up about it. Hey, you want my advice?”

“Yeah?” I said.

“I know a place where there’s no noise, no distractions. Where you can just shoot without worrying about anyone else or judgment and all that crap. Just you and your thoughts. And some chooms by your side to lean on. You want my take on it? That’s how you deal with those problems.”

I gave a grateful nod. “Sounds preem.”

“And also long drives,” Becca said. “They clear your head up like nothing else.”

“Oh!” I said. “Well, I just bought a new ride today actually. Might wanna take you up on that.”

“What’d you get?”

“Yaiba Kusanagi CT-3X.”

“No shit?!” she howled. “Fuck yeah! You wanna ride out now? Can I come with?”

“Sure,” I said. “We can go to that gun range, too.” Still an hour or two until nighttime hit as well.

“Fuck yeah!” she turned to the side. “I’ll hit up the store for provisions, then we can go to my house to get more guns!”

I hit up my bike and the garage, telling the latter to open up and the former to start making its way towards me. I spent some extra eddies on buying a better self-driving AI module that worked better in high speeds. Of course, it couldn’t handle anything the bike’s new max speed could throw at it, but it would still get here in probably ten minutes. I had to tell the building’s VIP garage elevator to lift the bike up as well, holding gates open until it finally managed to hit the road.

Becca ran out from the store with plastic bags heavy with cargo. And my Yaiba Kusanagi pulled up in front of us, still factory red. Had to figure out a different design for it soon, maybe yellow and white to go with mom’s jacket.

“Hop on,” I said. “I’ll hold you from the back. I’d suggest you face me and hug me with both arms and legs, too,” I said. 

“D, is this you flirting right now?” she said with a tilted head and an expression that said she was clearly not impressed.

“Just giving you a warning. I modded this bike.”

“You modded a CT-3X? Are you crazy?”

I walked up to sit on the bike. “I’ll go slow for you. Just hold on tight. And give me the bags.”

She did, handing them over to me. I wore them around my wrists while holding the handlebars. The magnetic key in my pocket confirmed my identity and gave me controls. Rebecca jumped behind me and started hugging me tightly. 

“Your place, right?” I said.

“Yeah. You remember?”

“Yeah,” I said, and I pulled off.

Rebecca’s hold started slipping, so I slowed down, which let her fight the G force enough to hug me even tighter, holding both her wrists with a white-knuckled grip as I made a sharp turn and shot off.

We were by her house in one minute flat.

The moment we stopped, Rebecca jumped out from the bike and started hollering.

“Holy fucking shit, D! Holy fucking shit ! Fucking motherfucking shit ! Holy father-fucking shit !”

I laughed. 

“That was nova !” her eyes sparkled. “Never seen anyone push the Kusanagi so hard in tight traffic before! And that handling was god-like ! Your speedware is fucking crazy!”

I raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t use the Sandy for that.”

“ Bullshit ! You topped out at like two hundred kilometers and threaded the needle between so many cars faster than most people would be confident even driving at that speed without obstacles.”

Okay, that sounded crazy. Did I maybe use the Sandevistan without knowing?

[You did not use the Sandevistan, but both it as well as the changes I have made to your body suggest that your baseline reaction time has been improved drastically.]

My mind shot back to when I played those games with my Kiroshis. All that time, it was because of the Sandevistan and Nanny?

Better yet, this was just their passive effects on me?

Fucking nova.

“I’ve got like a passive effect thing going on,” I said, because now I felt like an idiot for bragging about not having used the Sandevistan, and I didn’t want Rebecca to think less of me so I’d rather just come clean. “With the Sandy, that is. Didn’t fire it up, but I guess it still helped me out.”

“Man , that’s fucking preem!” Becca said. “Wait here while I get the guns!”

I started talking to Nanny.

David: I first started being able to tune the output of the Sandy, and now it gave me superhuman reaction speed. Is there like an end-game to this?

[The second was my attempt to streamline your skillfulness, using the data I learned from observing the Sandevistan. I am working on increasing the density of your nerves and will endeavour to grant you greater dexterity and nervous feedback.]

David: I mean, thanks, but… don’t love being left out of the loop so much, too. Can we do like a patch notes thing every Sunday where you tell me about the major changes you’ve done to my body where it impacts my performance?

[Certainly. I have finished constructing this list. Do you wish to read it right now?]

David: Sure

The list was pretty long. Nanny kept testing out different chemical and biological configurations for my muscles, different fiber placements for my bones that granted the most amount of resilience, and through repeated trial and error, had arrived at the current blend, which in her words, were stronger and more resilient: for the bones it was an average of 35% past organic limits, and for my muscles, that figure was just 20%.

Then there were a plethora of different chemical changes that worked to increase my energy efficiency and keep me alert and fresh at all times.

My eyes stopped at one line in the patch notes.

Increased neuroplasticity levels in order to facilitate mental rebalancing as well as rapid learning.

David: How much faster do you think my learning is? And what exactly does it extend to? Purely mental learning or training, too?

[Both mental as well as physical pursuits. It is difficult to pinpoint the exact rate of learning as it is not an easily quantifiable activity. In the list, I have also included an increase in ability to retain information. That, combined with your increased neuroplasticity allowing you to easily create new neural pathways, you should have the rate of learning several times that of a small child.]

As counterintuitive as that sounded at a glance, children could learn entire languages in just a scant few years and absorbed information like sponges: everything they saw and heard figured into their personality and views as they got older.

And now I would have that same sponge-like tendency.

That practically guaranteed that my personality would change much faster over time. That thought scared me for just a moment before I realized how dumb that was. 

It wasn’t a change that I couldn’t control, certainly not one that I should fear, either. I had my values right now and they worked for me. If anything, I would just be able to adapt faster to upholding them better and more efficiently. Or the values might not work out for my longterm goals, which absolutely wouldn’t change anytime soon. I was happy with my dream. All this meant was that I would just become better at reaching it.

Hell, it was probably exactly this that let me get over my inability to shoot a gun.

Just one more shooting session and that shitty PTSD will disappear, just like Nanny said.

I wouldn’t be held back by something so stupid like trauma. Not on my life.

Rebecca kicked open the front door to her apartment block, a huge duffel-bag strapped to her back. “Ready!”

She shot me the coords to her out-of-the-way gun-range, a place bordering on the west wasteland. Then she jumped in front of me and hugged me with both arms and legs. “Ready to roll!” she said. I’d been the one to suggest this positioning in the first place, but now that she was like this, butt pressed to my crotch, I realized just how much of a mistake this was.

David: Nanny! Give me ED right now!

[From context, I assume you’re referring to Erectile Dysfunction. Be warned that this will significantly impact your ability to mate and pass on your DNA—]

David: I DON’T WANT TO DO THAT RIGHT NOW, JUST DO IT, YOU CAN FIX IT LATER, RIGHT?!

[I can.]

I started riding off. Rebecca sunk further into me from the G-force and I could feel everything. And to my surprise, it did nothing to me. I overrid my worried impulse—I chose this, and it was better this way. I just had to focus on the road right now.

I activated the Sandy and sped the bike up. The cars on the road felt like they were still as I neatly slid between them, around them, and sometimes even above them. 

I sped up as we got farther and farther away from the city centre and there were less cars to constrain me. Rebecca’s grip slipped and redoubled every now and then, but her positioning was ideal—unless I did something really crazy, she wouldn’t get thrown off just yet.

We got to the coords she gave me—not an address since this place wasn’t even near streets. It looked like it used to be an air strip, but now it just had shooting targets arranged in various distances.

I got off, Rebecca still stuck to me like a barnacle. “We’re here,” I said with a chuckle.

She let go and landed on her butt, then got on all fours and started wretching.

“Not fun,” she whispered. “Not fun at all.”

I’d topped out at about eight hundred klicks per hour this time around, just to shorten the time she spent on my crotch.

I failed to realize what the G-forces I went under would do to her. The accelerations alone had been massive. My bike could do a clear zero to one hundred in point five seconds, generating enough G forces to knock an unsuspecting person out.

“I fucking fainted!” Rebecca hissed. “ Twice ! What the fuck!”

Ah. That explained why she kept losing her grip so many times. I chuckled. “Got us here pretty fast. Took two minutes.”

“Need a broseph,” Rebecca muttered. “Or I’ll really hurl. Gimme.”

I looked inside the plastic bags I was carrying for the first time and saw two twelve-packs of beer.

“I don’t think it works that way,” I said.

“Cut the shit and gimme!”

“Okay!” I said quickly and took out one of the beers and gave it to her. She opened it up and downed it all in one go. Then with a satisfied sigh, she stood up.

“Holy shit,” she said, then looked up at me to smile. “That was fucking fun !”

“You just said it wasn’t,” I said.

“Yeah, that’s cuz I was stone cold sober! But fuck! D, you’re crazy. Those mods aren’t street legal for shit. And I don’t think there’s even a gonk in Night City crazy enough to drive that fast even with them. Imagine how much faster you’d go with super-chew? You remember that shit we klepped back then? Fuck, with that stuff, you’d take off !”

I wondered how much more expensive an AV module would be to make my bike be able to actually take off, or if it was even possible to fit a bike with that stuff. Turning my bike into a flyer would be fucking nova , but I doubt the cops would let me get away with that.

Eh, best not get too greedy.

Actually? Fuck it. Why not try and extract the bike for every ounce of speed it could possibly give me? Maybe make it a project with Pilar?

Huh, would he be mad that I went to Reyes to get it modded instead of him? He was a techie, sure, trusting him with everything seemed a little foolhardy, especially because I didn’t actually know how good he was.

Good enough to give Lucy advice, sure, but that couldn’t possibly extend to everything.

Rebecca slid the duffel bag around in front of her, opened it, and handed me a pistol by the barrel. “Nobody’s here today, too! Nova, right?”

I chuckled. “Yeah. Nova.”

000

Dinner with father was always a quiet and solemn event, and Katsuo wouldn’t have it any other way. The old man was a stickler for professionality to the point that nothing Katsuo did, no matter how objectively impressive, would ever do anything but make the man ask him why he couldn’t have done it better.

And now, more than ever, he wished to avoid father’s attention the most. Once upon a time, father had asked Katsuo why he couldn’t be the best in class, and why some Santo Domingo piece of shit was able to upstage him, why the latest in chipware, tutors and all the help that money could buy couldn’t bridge the gap between his son and some destitute child who had nothing.

The first year that David had gone to Arasaka Academy was the worst year of Katsuo’s life. Beatings were only the tip of the iceberg. It was the repeated humiliation, the removal of privileges, and even having his organic arms removed and replaced with worse medical-grade prosthetics  that made him feel like a cripple. He was told that he would receive upgrades if he could retake his number one spot in school. 

Nothing worked. Until Katsuo lost his cool and punched David right before an exam. David received perfect scores across the board except for that single exam, allowing Katsuo the opportunity to pull ahead and retake his number one spot.

Father had nothing to say to him, having been complicit in covering up the incident so no one else on the academy board would know. No congratulations were given. Instead, something far better happened: father had given up on Katsuo, given him leave to be the number two. But with this surrender, Katsuo lost all the residual warmth left in the man. He hadn’t heard a word spoken in kindness from him in years now. Which was fine. Mother was warm enough for the both of them.

She was dressed in a traditional kimono, plain white with pink cherry blossom patterns on it, and pink lapels. Unlike most other women married to powerful corporate men, Katsuo’s mother preferred a natural beauty unmarred with chrome or excessive biosculpts, and kept her features as closely to her birth features as possible. She had made the conscious decision to do so after Katsuo had his arms removed, prompting the first big fight between his parents.

Father put down his chopsticks and cleared his throat, looking at Katsuo. “You’ve accessed the academy board’s internal files. What were you looking for?”

“Information on a rival,” Katsuo replied. “I was sure to not touch anything.”

“You looked at young David’s file,” father said. “I did the same. It is surprising to me that he already managed to pay off both semester fees, even though he has a history of only being able to pay at the very last minute, sometimes even going as far as requesting extensions of payment.”

Katsuo clenched his jaws. “It’s peculiar. If possible, we can have him formally investigated, to better understand where this money comes from.”

Father nodded. “That would be in order. I will be in touch with my contacts at the bank, and see if we cannot have his account flagged for fraudulent behavior. And boy,” father said. “Do not hesitate to use any means necessary to take a step forward. This child has been in your path for far too long, and it is time you do something decisive. I will leave it up to you.”

Katsuo’s expression was calm, but inwardly, he was terrified. Father wanted David dead. And what’s more, he wanted Katsuo to arrange it.

The thought terrified him. He had no idea where to even start.

He just hoped that this fraud investigation would come through and David would be an ugly memory.

Chapter 18: Altered Cabron

Summary:

Bonding beside Blastin' Becca and a quick trip to Tijuana for totally legal business enterprises.

We had been shooting for an hour straight until we ran out of ammunition on everything she brought. I even got to fire from her two assault rifles— a Masamune and a Copperhead according to her. 

I figured out a trick with the Sandy. While activating it, I could brace and recover from recoil much easier, limiting the spread of bullets to a far narrower range. I’d managed to get my accuracy up as well, though that was under ideal conditions: taking five seconds to line up the shot and banishing mom's face from my mind.

I’d hit a plateau when it came to the mental aspect of shooting. I could do it. I just couldn’t do it fast, and if I did it fast, I couldn’t do it accurately. It was a crippling weakness to have, and what scared me the most was that I didn’t know how to get over it.

Was this what Nanny meant when she said that we needed to work together to fix me? I underestimated the level of effort required of me severely.

Once we finished the ammo, we cracked open some beers and watched the sun set behind the Night City skyline, just chatting.

“What’s the deal between you and Lucy, by the way?” Becca asked, and I sighed.

“Ugh, don’t wanna talk about it.”

“Never seen her get so hot and bothered whenever you’re mentioned,” she continued. “You should have seen her shitfit after Maine brought you up when we were in the Afterlife. Man, she fucking despises you.”

I sighed. “Yeah. She sucks.”

“Did you know that she fucked Pilar once?” she said, then made a gagging sound. “Yuck.”

“Hey,” I said. “That’s none of your business though. And we all make mistakes.”

“Are you defending her?” Becca yelled. “Seriously, what is up with you two?”

“Can we drop it?” I asked. “Because to be honest, I have no idea what’s up and I don’t really want to think about it. So let’s just drop it, alright?”

“Did you guys fuck?”

“No,” I said with a wince. If there was one thing I had learned about Becca was that she was just way too forward. I just had to get used to that.

“Do you want to?”

“ No !”

“You’re barking up the wrong tree,” she said, having ignored my answer wholly. “You’d have better luck doing it with Kiwi, and I’m pretty sure she’s a lesbian.”

“Lay off,” I said. “Don’t want nothing to do with her. Only got into shit with her because I chose to associate with her, but I’m done doing that now. Can’t deal with all that bullshit drama.” I gave her a smile. “This right here is nice, you know. No bullshit. Just two chooms doing stuff together. And talking.” I took a swig of my beer. “No pointless drama, insults and hurtful words. I think Lucy gets more out of our weird-as-fuck dynamic than I do. She just doesn’t tire. Damn Lunacy,” I chuckled.

“Oh, you are fucking crushing! ” Rebecca squealed. 

“Am not!” I replied hotly. 

“Wanna take her out for drinks? I’ll invite her and make it sound like you won’t be there.”

“No!” I shouted, but it was too late. Her eyes turned golden. “Stop it!” Dammit. I prepared to send a Breach Protocol to her system so I could shut down the call. Instead, her playful grin died and transformed into outrage as her eyes stopped shining gold. 

“That bitch!” Becca hissed. “I forgot for a second that she’s as fun as wet socks. Said no without even considering it.”

Whew. Thank God for antisocial Lucy.

“You really shouldn’t bother her,” I said. “She went pretty hard on the drinking last night.”

“Wait, you went out with her?!”

“Wasn’t like that,” I groaned. “I lost a bet. Was buying her drinks all night. She was being a real bitch about it, too.” Then I remembered something. “Right! I chipped in yesterday!”

“Really?!” Rebecca leaned closer to me to get a better look at me. “Where?”

I pointed at my eyes. “And… check your socket,” I shot her a quickhack, and a shard ejected from her socket. She caught it just as it flew out.

“Eeeh?!” she stared at me in disbelief. “Was that a fucking quickhack?! Did you just quickhack me? You got Netrunner chrome now?”

“Yeah, a cyberdeck,” I said.

“I heard that you were learning some stuff from Kiwi, but to chip in a whole deck… you’re serious as shit about this, huh?” Rebecca said. And I knew what would come next. ‘Don’t spread yourself so thin, we already have plenty of Netrunners.’ Nobody ever seemed to trust that I wasn’t just a dabbler for some reason. Was there something on my face that just screamed ‘can’t code’ or something? “Well, I for one can’t wait to see what you get up to. A Netrunner who can also kick ass? D, you’ll be a nova edgerunner, I just know it.”

I smiled. “O-oh. Thank you. I appreciate that a ton.” The sun had almost set and the last beer was in Rebecca’s hand, rapidly emptying into her gullet before my eyes. “It’s getting late. Wanna call it a day?”

“Sure,” she said. 

Before I got on my bike, I remembered to give my system a quick rinse with the Sandevistan, sobering up instantly. I let Rebecca ride on the back as I drove us back home at a sedate one hundred kilometers an hour. I didn’t want her to barf all over my new ride, or my back for that matter, and she had plenty of fun even if we were driving so slowly.

Meeting us outside her house was none other than Pilar, holding up a cloth bundle. Rebecca jumped off the bike and shouted “Surprise!”

I looked at the bundle that Pilar shoved towards me with wide eyes. “You mean…?”

“Your very own Masamune!” Pilar shouted.

"Watch out for copyright claims," I joked, recalling that there was an automatic rifle with the name Masamune.

He just laughed. “That one only wishes it was as cool as this! See, this one’s got no frills, no thermal, electric or poison mods. Just the toughest metamaterial I could synthesize and a killer paintjob!”

“Pilar, I don’t know what to say,” I said. “This is way too generous!”

Pilar waved me off. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll ask for your scratch if there’s something crazy I found that I could add to it, but—”

“I owe you one,” I said. “I mean it. And I ain’t gonna forget it.”

Pilar patted me on the head. I swallowed the indignation of that and watched him grin and shoot me a thumbs-up. “Just focus on slicin’ and dicin’, samurai.”

I chuckled. “Yeah.”

I drove the Kusanagi home, parked it, and collapsed on the sofa, staring at the ceiling.

Hanging out with Rebecca was nice.

But I wasn’t exactly tuckered out to say the least. Still had a ways before I could go to sleep and skip to tomorrow.

Maybe I should finish compiling evidence of increased neural strain from mixing chrome brands and prepare it in shard form before giving it to Kiwi?

I hopped off the sofa and got to the terminal, typing away until a notification hit me.

A program I had created ages ago, meant to supervise and report on any suspicious activities on the family bank account, had pinged. 

I remembered when I made it. It was after I completed a fintech course, learning about fraud and fraud investigation. Just by understanding the specific mechanics that went into the stuff, I challenged myself to create a program that could notify us if the account was ever actively monitored by an anti-fraud algorithm, which was the precursor to a full-on audit. Never expected it to ever be useful, I just made it because it seemed like a fun little IT challenge to tackle.

I checked the notification, then double-checked the program itself and the report it provided. It timed the latency of outgoing and ingoing signals, and monitored the patterns, frequency and durations by sending pings every now and then, and using a statistical analysis model to determine if the latency was due to network connectivity or if it was because there was a monitoring application that analyzed the signals in real-time or stored them away for review.

The analysis model wasn’t the most rigorous, having made it when I was fifteen and all, but it gave a pretty high confidence quotient.

I shut the app down, not wanting it to suddenly trigger an audit, all the while as I sat back and took this in.

I was fucked .

With this thing watching my account, the city would want its pound of flesh, but taxes were the least of it. What mattered more, especially to someone on the corpo track, was the illegality of the source of my money. Mercenary work and black money was a gray area legally, but that was only if you didn’t participate in the corpo circus. Guys like Maine and them never had to worry about this stuff because even if they were audited, they would attribute the proceeds to mercenary work, probably pay a bullshit fine, or never even have to worry about that in the first place. The mercs were the only criminals that the corps actively supported. They, and the gangs, were necessary cat’s paws for their plans.

But being labeled a cat’s paw for the corps would severely limit my future in the corporate machine. They wouldn’t want someone dirty on their team. Optics was all that mattered to them.

In my mind’s eye, Arasaka Tower was crumbling before my eyes into ash that blew in the wind. It was all over for me.

I slapped both my cheeks.

Fuck.

That .

I was a goddamn corpo student. I knew what to do. If I didn’t, then what were all those classes even for? I had to search my mind now for a solution on what to do: I had the groundwork already: a formal education on how fraud investigations occurred, and how people traditionally avoided them.

The answer was simple; set up a shell corporation outside of Night City jurisdiction, preferably in a place that had a worse infrastructure for financial oversight, have my income sent directly to the corp’s coffers, and then draw the money back to me from there as needed.

The banks could investigate me, but they wouldn’t have the legal right to audit the payments made to the corp, and because the amounts transferred were practically nothing in the grand scheme of things, they wouldn’t have the motivation to break the law just to fuck me over. Easy.

The nearest shithole to Night City with exactly the level of infrastructure that I needed to hide my slightly-illegal income was Tijuana, only twenty miles south. Using a proxy, I hit up the Net for information on setting up a company in Tijuana; it was under Militech jurisdiction, so it basically counted as a New-American territory, but the list of what was necessary to be put on the corp register differed drastically from the laundry list that you needed to become incorporated in NUSA proper, or even Night City, which was the epitome of fast-and-loose in all of North America.

Sources widely agreed that I absolutely needed a local guide to walk me through the process and make sure I didn’t step on any toes, of which there were plenty . I needed to then set up the type of company: a limited liability company, a corporation or a partnership, which I would then need to register with the Tijuana Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the CCT, and that would usually include paying a bribe to every official in charge of processing my application, and then paying a fee on top of that. 

Which I did not plan to do at all. Nevermind how much of a waste of money that was, I needed to at least make the damn corp look like it had existed for more than two seconds. Night City couldn’t audit the corp unless they really wanted to, but they would be able to look up how long it had been in existence as that was publicly available information. I had to hack into the CCT directly and get the job done that way, making sure to make it look like the corp had existed for a while now.

Then I needed to get a tax identification number from the local government, open a local bank account, and then I needed a ton of forged documents with all sorts of approval seals. Forging the documents could easily be done using generative AI. The hard part, which wouldn’t be hard for me, was inserting the docs in a government database to make it look like the company had a history.

The common way to set up a shell company required a lot more patience than what I was currently doing. I was able to cut corners drastically because of my hacking capabilities. All I was really worried about was setting up a bank account. I didn’t see any way around doing that legitimately since banks were a whole different ballpark from corp registers and tax offices. I could make it look like the company had to close its account before and then set up a new one, but that would still not be able to hold up if an audit demanded documents of payment history from the fictitious former bank directly.

But it wouldn’t get that far in the first place, would it? I just needed to make sure the corp looked like it was old. Payment history wouldn’t be publicly available in the first place. 

Fuck it. Guess I would be spending my own money after all to set up this goddamn business bank account. 

Fuck.

Couldn’t move my money out, though. My account was fucking flagged, and if I used my own money to set up a company specifically meant to wash and obscure said money, I’d be shooting myself in the head, much less the foot.

I needed to withdraw the cash, but that was suspicious, too, especially if I took out all of it. That would probably trigger an investigation immediately, something I wasn’t ready for at all. I needed to set up the company first before even thinking about handling a formal investigation.

Needed cash, and I needed it stat.

And I couldn’t ask the crew. Didn’t want to be owing chooms money. Didn’t like the feeling of that at all.

I hit up El Capitan.

D: I need a favor. 

El Capitan: If you already broke your bike, I’m not fixing it for you for free.

D: Not about the bike. Need to borrow cash, physical bills. Quickly, if you can.

El Capitan: I won’t ask except: how much? 

I smiled.

D: You’re a life-saver, Capitan. And I’ll pay you back. You know I’m good for it.

El Capitan: That’s why I’m doing this.

D: Fifty thousand.

It was around how much I had in my account, therefore the amount I felt comfortable owing to him,

El Capitan: You need it right now?

D: Preferably.

Without this shell corp, my income would freeze, and I’d rather not let that happen to me for an unnecessary amount of time.

El Capitan: Meet me here at seven fifteen.

He sent me the location, a taqueria in Rancho.

I got suited.

Pilar’s katana—he called it Masamune—on my left hip, a gun with the safety on in the inner pocket of mom’s jacket, my mask in the same inner pocket, and I was ready to go meet El Capitan.

000

I traded niceties with El Capitan, and he gave me the money without any questions or threats, which I was immensely grateful for. Couldn’t imagine anyone, especially not a fixer, being that kind to me.

From there, I took off out of Night City for the first time since I arrived eleven years ago.

Entering Tijuana required a visa payment, but it was more of a bribe than anything. Tijuana wasn’t big on book-keeping, every bit of bureaucracy existed to make its bureaucrats money. That’s what mom had told me. We had come from here after all.

Once I left the vicinity of Night City, I blasted off with my bike at top speed, watching it top out at just shy of eight-hundred kilometres an hour. Fucking nova .

The dark landscape rushed by me, sparsely lit by streetlights, but my Kiroshis were more than enough for the job of providing me with visibility.

It took me three minutes to reach the first border station.

The guy didn’t even bother to say anything but a number. “One thousand.”

That was probably too high, but I didn’t give a shit. This was the tourist tax; I was the one riding a Kusanagi, I could afford a thousand.

I sent him the money, plus an extra one hundred so he would leave me alone.

“Another five to scrub you from the record,” he said, which was bullshit. He wouldn’t have recorded me in the first place, but now he would because I could pay.

And after I paid him extra, too. Rat bastard fucking gonk.

“No thanks,” I said. “I have no reason to need to hide my travels.”

He grinned viciously. “Your choice.”

I immediately sent a Breach Protocol into the system. It would delete the entire database and scrub the CCTV camera after I left, getting his dumb ass fired because fuck him.

I rode through the opened toll gate and drove into my ancestral home. The first thing I noticed was that it was so low , like nobody even lived here. There were a couple of large buildings, some matching the size of the megabuildings back home, but the vast majority of houses were low to the ground, one and two stories. 

It was darker than Night City, too, but that was just because their lights weren’t as efficient. Almost every house was alight, however, and there was music playing. I looked around the city, driving towards the more affluent parts where I could get started on my mission. It was easier to get access to the Net there as well, and I did, searching for any law firms or business consultancy firms that could get me started. I went to one that was rated well enough for my purposes and wasn’t so expensive that it would bankrupt me.

I needed to split my money between the cost of hiring a local guide and setting up the bank account after all.

Thankfully, the firm I was headed to seemed to have a gated parking lot as well where I felt comfortable parking my bike. I sent the security guard there some extra cash, too. There was something about his expression and his clear interest in my bike that told me that it was better safe than sorry. Then, for better measure, I spoke to him in Spanish.

“You don’t want to try anything, friend,” I said. I could hear that my accent wasn’t the best, but the vocabulary was there. Just… overly formal. not my style. “But I’ll make sure it’s worth your while if I find my bike in one piece. Understood?”

“ Understood ,” he said with an emphatic nod. I drove in, parked my bike, and prepared to get my corpo on.

I sat on a waiting area, some secretaries working behind bulletproof glass opposite to me. I had taken a number and was made to wait even though I was the only person inside.

Then, after fifteen minutes, I was called to go to an adjacent room numbered 3. 

There inside was a tanned man wearing a corpo suit. “What do you want, son?”

How did I say this…? “I want to set up a company that… doesn’t really do anything. ”

His eyes widened fractionally. “Ah, a shell corp, eh?” he switched to English. “Yes, that can be done. Twenty-five grand.”

I narrowed my eyes. “The Net told me to come to you guys so you could basically tell me what not to do.”

He shrugged. “The Net says a lot of shit, but that’s true. We can handle everything for you right now, no problems. You just have to bring the money and then we can fix it for you: the RFC, the registration with the CCT, bank, everything.”

“I don’t need that,” I said. 

He frowned. “You want to do it yourself, boy? That’s not an easy road, and without contacts, some of the bureaucrats will reject you right away. I’m telling you—”

“I’m not worried about being rejected by bureaucrats,” I said. “I have already forged the necessary documentation and I have plans for how I will get tax registration and corp registration. I just need to know if there’s anyone who would cry foul if a new shell corp popped up in the neighborhood.”

He nodded. “Just a simple consultancy, then. You want advice and the rules of the game.”

“Exactly.”

“A thousand an hour,” he said. “Eurodollars, not neopesos. That damn currency should go extinct already, this isn’t the Time of the Red anymore.”

“Chill, choom, I’m good for it,” I said. I opened up the backpack I had and pulled out a stack of notes, used the Sandevistan to count the right bills so I wouldn’t take so much of his time, and then slid the notes out from the band and gave them to him. 

He immediately started talking. “Right, so for a shell corp that exceeds a million eduardos in revenue a year, heads will start to turn. Heads meaning… the Tijuana cartel,” he conceded. “They’re the defacto government. They’ll want a cut at some point. Ten percent. Over ten million a year, Militech will start to levy a legitimate tax, but luckily that’s just five percent. You will want to pay the cartel tax because they have Netrunners monitoring and watching incoming cash flows and they will know once you start making this money and they will want their hundred thousand. Doesn’t matter if you’re from Night City—” My eyes widened at that and he just gave a knowing smile. “Calm down, it was easy to figure out. I can hear it in your accent is all. Anyway, it doesn’t matter where you live, because if they blow up that shell company, Militech will get involved and you’ll be burned anywhere that Militech exists.” 

Really? They would fucking snitch on me? Bastards.

“Jesus,” I said. “Any way to lower that tax or something? That’s really insane.”

“That would be far more involved,” the man said. “It would involve turning a company that does nothing into a company that does… things. Specifically, things on behalf of the cartel. That would help you eliminate the tax entirely at the cost of answering to a higher power. There are also set-ups where you can act in the capacity of a mere partner rather than an underling, and that can get your tax reduced all the way to one percent depending on the scope of your services. For specifics, I recommend you speak to the Cartel directly. They will be able to fill you in on everything you need to know.”

I wrinkled my eyebrows. That sounded… dubious.

“I know how it sounds, but the cartel are just another gang like the ones from your city. They can be reasoned with, as long as you approach the organ that’s in charge of money, and not, say, rape and murder. They’re quite amicable fellows actually.” I nodded. In all honestly, the cartel just sounded like another corp, just more overtly criminal. “I cannot stress this enough, get in touch with the cartel, regardless if you want to keep the company as a shell or if you have ambitions of partnering with them. And keep in mind that partnering does not entail only criminal activities.” He handed me a business card. “This is my contact.”

I eyed it suspiciously. Lorenzo Ladron, and a number. Nothing else. No position in the hierarchy. “How much for that?”

“Included in the consultancy fee,” he said. I took it. That was kind of him. “If you want, I can take a look at your documentation as well and check for discrepancies. I assume you have already taken care of the route to pushing the documents into the system, but I must ask how you intend to do so, just so I can help you out better.”

“I have my contacts,” I lied. If I told him I was going to hack my way in, he could dangle that over my head and ask for more money. “Just know that getting in shouldn’t be a problem for me. It’s staying in that matters.” I gave him the documents. It was all bullshit, AI-generated, but proofread by me. That said, I was still shaky on the Legalese. I had fed the algorithm updated law books just in case, but large language models tended to get fritzy just as a matter of course. No getting around how shitty they were.

The man booted up his laptop and read through the documents. He pressed a button, and then he just hummed. “From a legal perspective, everything seems in order. Almost . A minor issue here, but it doesn’t matter much anyway, this stuff never gets checked. I’ve corrected it so now your documentation is foolproof.”

“Okay,” I said. I didn’t want to start doubting him. I had already paid the man anyway.

“Everything is in order,” the man said. “Go to the CCT and get registered. The banks are neutral zone, no special rules there, so you can go and get that sorted right away. A business account requires a fee of ten thousand eurodollars as a first deposit, plus the additional five thousand to motivate the bureaucrat in charge. Cash only. Once the account has been set up, you should be left with five thousand in the account. I recommend you don’t exceed the minimum deposit—those sticky-fingererd bastardos will take half anyway. It’s an unwritten rule: half the initial deposit gets taken, always. After that, full honesty is in effect. They will not dare to klep you on their lives.” I nodded. 

“And how do I know you’re not feeding me shit?” I asked.

“You don’t,” he said immediately, and with a shrug. “What am I supposed to do about that, convince you? You already paid me, I have nothing else to gain from you.”

He was right. I’d have to just take this on the chin if I got ripped off. Fuck.

“Anything else I need to know?” I asked. 

“Keep your head low and be respectful to the people you deal with, boy, but don’t be naive, either. Maintain self-respect or you’ll lose all the money you brought here. Got it?”

I nodded. I gave him my hand, he shook it.

And then I was out of there.

000

I was at a CHOOH2 station loading up my bike as I considered how the day had gone. I had managed to hack into the CCT, getting the company, Globbal Sollutions Inc—a name riddled with typos so no one would look twice at it— registered. Getting the RFC—the tax identification number—was a little more imposing, but just as easy because taxes were pretty much a joke here. Avoiding tax was something that the consultancy guy didn’t even get into because it was such a simple process. All I had to do was to declare a low income and a high expense ratio for my company, and pay a minimal amount of tax based on the difference. This way, I could avoid paying the full 30% corporate income tax rate that applies to most businesses in Mexico. I also had to make sure that my company’s activities were not subject to any special taxes, such as the value-added tax of 16%, the excise tax on certain goods and services, or the withholding tax on dividends, interest, or royalties. I used a fake invoice generator to create some documents that supported my claims and submitted them online to the Mexican Tax Administration Service. It was a simple and common practice among many small businesses and freelancers in Mexico, and I doubted that anyone would bother to check or audit them.

The end-result amounted to a 0.1% tax. Negligible, basically. And I could set up a program to pay that amount for me as well.

The bankers were scummier and more challenging to deal with, but they shut up very quickly once they saw my money. I paid an extra five thousand to speed the process up and getting the company up and running.

It had been three hours by the end of it, most of that time being spent on the bank, but I was now the proud owner of a shell corp.

I finished loading up on the gas and watched as three skimpily clad ladies walked up to me, one of them clearly drunk. They spoke Spanish to me and were clearly interested in the bike. I had to gently turn down their offers to take me to a party, and once I was done fueling my bike, I paid and took off, intent on going back to Night City.

Then I remembered: I have family here, don’t I? I couldn’t remember their faces, but I knew their names from what mom had told me. She had still been in contact with her mom, calling home weekly.

She had missed the last two weeks now. Might as well not keep the old lady waiting with the bad news.

I recalled that she was based in San Antonio de los Buenos, but that wasn’t much to go by. I wracked my brain for more clues—I didn’t wanna drive all the way back to Night City and then back here to get to the bottom of this little mystery. What I remembered plus what I could glean from the Net should be enough.

She worked as an occultist, didn’t she? Didn’t she have this shop, too? Something about rubies, and spirits…

I searched the Net for a variety of different wordings until I arrived at one:

La Casa Rubí de los Espíritus. A picture popped up on the net, of a smiling old lady with two ruby red implants on her cheekbone, like mom’s. 

Abuela Donna Martinez.

Chapter 19: La Familia Es Todo

Summary:

David pays a visit to granny, learns some harrowing news, and takes Masamune out for a stress test.

The neighborhood was painfully low-income, so much so that grandma’s little occult shop didn’t even have a street address: it had coordinates.

People watched as I drove my bike through the narrow streets, giving way but gazing at me questioningly, until I stopped in front of La Casa Rubí  de los Espíritus. It had a ruby icon on the facade, a blinking neon sign with the name underneath the ruby, which was square-shaped.

People were watching, but from afar. Some locked their doors and boarded their windows shut.

The door to the house opened, and out stepped a barechested one-legged man who walked with a cane. He glared at me. “The fuck do you want? We already paid this month.”

“I’m not here for money, ” I replied . “My name is David Martinez. I’m here to see my, uh… grandmother. ”

The door opened wider, and out stepped an old woman who wore her hair in a bun, wearing a colorful red, green and yellow dress. 

She also had two ruby implants on her right cheek.  “You’re David?”

I stepped off my bike. “Yeah,” I gave a small smile. “Hi, grandma.”

She rushed up to me and hugged my mid-section—she was so short. I hugged her back. Then she pulled back and looked at me with wide eyes and an uncertain expression. “ And Gloria?”

I bit my lower lip and looked down. “My mother is no longer with us, grandma. I’m so sorry.”

“I knew ,” she said softly, completely against my expectations. She smiled sadly, and a tear spilled out from her eye. “I knew. Thank you for confirming it. Come inside.” I looked over my shoulder, to my bike. “No one will take it,” she assured me . “No one would dare.”

I followed her inside. It was cozy, clean. Esoteric effects sat everywhere—little statuettes and other trinkets on every shelf— and bead curtains separating rooms. She walked me through the back bead curtain, revealing what was clearly a living area, a living room whose walls were lined with sofas, and a TV on a far wall, past there a kitchen. There were people inside, too, sitting on the sofas, seven in number. Probably my cousins, uncles and aunts. The two men that were there all seemed to miss… parts. Just like the man who had cursed me out at my arrival. 

And they all regarded me with frowns and scowls. I didn’t want to interrogate that.

“So you’re a solo, David ?” grandma asked. 

I sighed. “Yeah. I am.”

“That makes sense,” she said. She took me to a table and yelled for one of the women. “Darla! Go prepare us some tea!”

I sat down. “I really don’t want to impose.”

“Is it the looks?” she looked around, speaking loudly. “They’re being idiots, dear. Pay them no heed.”

The one-legged man from outside spoke up. “What is he doing here? He’s supposed to be in Night City, away from all this!”

I frowned, but didn’t say anything.

“But he’s here, now, and he’s family, ” grandma rebutted. Then she looked at me. “That’s your uncle. Your mother’s younger brother. He is Tio Alex. ” Tio Alex had sharp cheekbones, a pronounced chin and oversized ears. His beard was unkempt and thin, and his hair was long but shaggy. In Night City, he’d be considered grotesque. No matter how poor you were, if you were considered ugly, you’d save up all the eddies you could to get a biosculpt job done to smooth out your features. Being honest, he just looked normal for his environment. Default . 

I nodded my head at him and stood up to face him. “ Nice to meet you, Tio Alex. I’m sorry for your loss, and about me being—”

“Don’t be sorry,” he said angrily. “Just go away. There is nothing for you here.”

“Alex!” Grandma yelled. “ Don’t you dare speak to your older sister’s only son that way! He is family!”

“I don’t understand ,” I said. “ Why can’t I be here? And what was that about money? Are you paying protection money to a gang?”

Grandma closed her eyes in defeat, but gave a nod. “Yes. The fucking dogs ,” she said. “That’s their name, by the way: Pinche Perros.”

I frowned. “ I’m sorry about that.”

“There’s nothing you can do, boy,” she said. “I felt that gun in your pocket, and I can see the sword you carry, but it won’t be enough to take care of our problems. And I won’t ask you to do anything, either. While Tio Alex is being stupid, he is right about one thing: there is nothing for you here. If you wish to keep in contact, only call us. Night City is rough, but Tijuana is rougher. Please leave as soon as you can, my boy.”

I clawed my hands. This… this fucking sucked.

And was I supposed to do fuckall or something?

“How many are they?” I asked. “I have friends, grandma.”

“Put that out of your mind right this instant,” she said. “I won’t have you dying for us, not when your mother and father sacrificed so much to get you out of here in the first place. ”

“Father…?” I asked. “Mom never talked about my father. What did he do?”

“He died for you ,” grandma said. “He was like what you are now: a solo. He made his money living violently, and gave you and your mother the opportunity to flee and start afresh in Night City. He is the reason you were first able to afford going to that corporate school. But your mother never approved of his methods. They didn’t love each other anymore, but they loved you, and your father was happy to stay out of your life so that you wouldn’t follow in his footsteps,” she smiled crookedly. “For all the good that it did you.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “I don’t understand. My father was a solo? A-and,” I looked around. “What happened to the men here? Did that have something to do with him?”

She sighed. “The truth is that I fully endorsed Gloria’s escape from this life. I wanted nothing more than to make sure that a child of mine remained untainted by the life we lead. I never wanted you to come back here, and neither did your mother. But here you are. I will warn you before going on: you can still go back. You needn’t do anything for me. I am a stranger to you and my presence in your life will jeopardize what you have built for yourself and will put you in more danger. Enemies of the family would see you scarred for the sins of your grandfather, and these are not people that you can resist.”

I tapped my foot on the ground.

“I don’t give a shit ,” I said. “Tell me everything. Now.”

“Your grandfather, Ricardo Martinez, was an officer of the Tijuana cartel. The people in this house, the family, worked under him. He was stabbed in the back by a trusted comrade of his, and his holdings were cannibalized by that petty fucking dog gang. And to send a message, to make sure that the Martinez family never rose back up to prominence, he killed half our boys, mutilated the other half, and raped almost all our girls.”

Shock couldn’t begin to describe what I felt. I couldn’t decide if it was shock at the sheer awfulness of those actions, or how true this rang in my head.

I gave Allister a story like this, didn’t I? Not a very accurate account, but somehow the broad strokes were right: my family were being oppressed by the cartel.

Then again, that was a common story in Mexico, and maybe what I had overheard from mom’s talks with grandma had filled in more blanks.

I just never would have imagined how close we were to that part of the criminal underworld.

“Your mom hid you away during the worst of it, and this was when it was decided that if nothing else, you should leave with Gloria and remain unharmed. Your father stayed behind to support what remained of the Martinez family, but he, too, soon met his demise at the hands of the fucking dogs.”

I nodded. “Loyal till the end. Would have liked to speak with the man.”

“He was a great man, but he was lacking as a father. Cold, harsh and violent. He felt he could give you everything you needed from a distance.”

That was cowardly of him.

“Grandma, thank you for telling me this. ” I probably never would have come to meet her if I wasn’t in Tijuana for other business, but I did the right thing by doing so. 

And now that I was this involved, there was no way in hell I was going to leave so easily.

“I need names, grandma.”

“Don’t be stupid, David—”

“I don’t care ,” I said with a chuckle. “I’ll find names soon enough. I’m only asking you so that I can finish up and go to bed quicker. Tomorrow is a school night.”

She looked at me in shock. “What are you—?”

“I’m a solo, grandma. It’s what I do. And I’ll do this one on the house. So give me names, a location, anything, and by daybreak, on my life and my name, every fucking dog in this city will be dead.”

“ They are over a hundred ,” she said. “Some of them are borgs. They have smart weapons. Turrets.”

“I have a sword .” I stood up. “Grandma, I don’t remember anything from my time in Tijuana. I only remember one thing: the taste of the chili with meat you used to make. Can you put it on for me when I come back? One full pot just for me. I will probably need it.”

I walked out of the house, ignoring her yells as I donned my mask and became D. I jumped on my bike. I pinged and breached every localnet I could, looking for clues of where those fucking dogs were.

I chuckled ruefully to myself. They would regret having fucked with my family.

000

Abuela Donna Martinez was chopping synthetic chili peppers to the shock of the entire family.

“Grandma, what are you doing?!” Darla asked.

“Making chili with meat,” was her simple reply. “A Martinez man is on a mission, and he wants his chili when he gets back. And I know he will,” she smiled. “Just like his father. No… much stronger.”

Night City had done something to Gloria’s boy. Night City had given them back a blessing.

000

There was a concept in online video games called ‘smurfing’.

For a game that demanded skill and experience from the user rather than the rewards garnered by grinding, where the only progression element was the name of your rank, there existed a subset of advanced players called smurfs.

Picture this: a level one-hundred hikikomori sweat with over five thousand hours in the game decided to hop onto a fresh user account and go into matchmaking. They’d get matched up with freshies as well, people who had just started off on the game.

Then the bloodbath would commence. The advanced user would decimate the newbies without even breaking a sweat, reveling in their superiority.

I found the Pinche Perros homebase from hacking into localnets, breaking through all the ICE like it didn’t even exist. Tijuana’s cybersecurity standards were bottom-rung. I arrived about a block away from the building, a debt collections agency with high walls--typical of any building of value in this country--, and poked at their ICE.

It gave with minimal effort.

I got to Breaching, making sure to do it gently enough that nothing else in the system broke. No alarms rang out from that. Instead, I followed the connection to the camera system and got access to that quickly as well. I had eyes on the entire facility, now. One by one, I disabled their drones, turrets and automated defenses—I could have turned them against the fucking psychos, but that would be too fucking easy. I already had them by the balls—might as well have some fun with it. I counted the number of belligerents and came up to one-hundred and fifteen.

I picked out the most Borged out motherfucker, a seven-foot tall asshole, and through my connection with the system, sent out my new and polished Overheat.

Fire exploded from the man . He immediately started screaming, rolling around on the floor. The people around him watched in shock as he burned to death in front of them, unable to help.

I opened the toll-gate with my access, driving my bike inside. Two security guards ran up to me. 

I hopped off the bike, opened every door that had an electronic lock, and opened up both bellies of the men running towards me.

Seventy.

And then I activated the Sandevistan.

The building was abuzz with activity despite it being night-time, probably because debt collectors never slept. That worked perfectly for me. I locked in on the places that had the most amount of people: training studios, the courtyard where people were on break, and that crowd gathering around the burning pyre of a cyborg at the lobby.

And I decided to do something immensely reckless, but I didn’t care. Not fucking now.

Once I reached a training studio, I turned off the Sandevistan.

So I could savor this.

There were fifteen large men inside the studio, either sitting, or working out in various different ways. “You fucking gonks!” I shouted. “You wanna fuck with my family? Kill and rape my fucking family?”

One guy ran at me, not requiring any more information to determine that I was clearly here to kill. I cut his fucking head off.

A couple of them ran to the far side of the room to pick up some guns. Before the headless pinche bastardo could fall, I held him up by the scruff of his shirt, one-handed, and with the other hand, rushed in to cut down as many of these people as I could.

I needed to see them run, to see them cower and scream.

Once they started firing at the corpse, I activated the Sandevistan to get behind them, deactivated it, and continued the slaughter. I took out the people with guns first, and then continued with the rest. One of them ended up running away.

But I was alone in the room now, the floor overflowing with blood.

Wait, how many was that again?

Well, one of them ran away, but I’d count again just in case it was more than one.

Hmmm. Fifteen? Wait, no. That bisected body was just one person. Fourteen it was.

Eighty-four. No. Eighty-five. The Borg I Overheated had finally stopped moving.

I used the Sandevistan to cut the runner away, and rushed up to the next population center that I could find. I learned by cutting them off from their weapon stashes before I got to reaping.

Ninety-nine.

Bogeys incoming.

I cut the shit and entered Sandy mode for keeps. Couldn’t give these gonks so much fucking time to prepare against me. That way, I’d really die.

Masamune was pulling her weight. The yellow and white handle held sturdy in my grip, and the high-vis white blade didn’t so much as nick on every person I sliced up. Fuck. I was pretty sure I had already cut through a ton of subdermal by now, but she played nice regardless. What a queen.

The vast majority of the grunts, I took care of with the sword, and only left the obviously borged out people for last while I took care of as many of the non-borgs as I could, just so I wouldn’t have a broken blade and an ocean of enemies to worry about.

A hundred and seventy-five.

I deactivated the Sandevistan and walked purposefully to one of the borgs I had spared, gun in hand. This was it. I was going to finally kill someone with a gun. Had to.

The borg was right down the hallway, staring at his dead comrades in shock, and I walked closer to him to get a better aim, all the while focusing on his head.

This motherfucker probably raped my aunts and cousins. Killed and crippled my uncles and cousins.

This motherfucker needed to die .

I pointed a gun at my mother.

That wasn’t real. That wasn’t fucking real !

It was a borged out cartel motherfucker, a pinche puta. I spat down on the ground, catching the borg’s attention. He fell on his knees. “ Mercy, please! ”

I was already so near to him that I could press my gun at his forehead. “Say your last prayer, you fucking cunt.”

He did. Contrary to all my expectation, he fucking did. 

“To you, o lorde, we commend— ”

I chuckled. “ Did you give my family the same courtesy when you slaughtered them?”

He didn’t respond, still praying.

I let him finish.

Because I wasn’t like him. I was better.

Once he was done and started repeating himself, I crouched in front of him. “ God won’t save you, you know. Let me give you a taste of your final destination.” His prayer turned into screams as he immediately caught fire.

A hundred and seventy-six.

The gun was useless. Didn’t need it. I threw it next to the burning borg that was rolling on the floor and walked past him.

I pushed my Cyberdeck as I Overheated every borg left, not willing to break Masamune on them so quickly.

One hundred and eighty-three.

It was over. There wasn’t a soul left breathing in the entire collections agency, not a single pinche perro left.

I breached into the data fortress with no one to stop me—I was pretty sure I had killed a Netrunner or two on my rampage—and beheld my bounty. Eight-hundred and ninety thousand eurodollars just here, and maybe twice that in assets.

I entertained the idea of taking it all and taking the family to Night City, but I doubted the wider cartel beyond just the Fucking Dogs—because this was for sure not just their money—would let petty matters like jurisdiction get in the way of getting back what was theirs.

I’d be putting myself at needless risk. Pointless. Dumb.

Thankfully, the data cache contained contact information.

I took the one that was labeled ‘emergencies only’ under cartel contacts, and dialed it.

D: The fucking dogs are dead.

I said that in English, because I wanted to express myself more easily, without the constraints of a half-understood language to stop me.

???: All of them?

I could clearly hear the tone of false dramaticism.

D: All the ones I could find at least. All the ones that matter, probably. But it’s the same story. The money is still here for you, though.

???: But the service won’t be, will it? This puts a little snag on my operations, you know.

D: I’m sure it does.

I chuckled.

D: Don’t try to press me, I know what I did, and I don’t give a flying fuck. But I’m not a complete fucking dumbass, you see, so how about we make sure that this doesn’t come back to bite your income stream? I know that’s all that matters to you.

???: Correctamundo! So how do you intend to make matters right? 

D: We can meet. I’m free between the hours of six in the evening and eleven at night on weekdays, and I’m very flexible on weekends. And how much do I owe you from the coffers right now?

???: Three-hundred and ninety-four. Half of that is the transfer of ownership fee, the due you gotta pay to take over this biz.

I raised an eyebrow.

D: Are you one of those soft and gentle finance types that are the face of the cartel? Gotta say, this conversation has been really civil so far.

???: Yes, I’m only here to make sure that the money moneys, if you catch my drift. The Pinche Perros are just a gang, and they were not particularly good at what they did, so that is why I can say that your little enterprise has a better shot of receiving the green light.

D: Thanks. Anything you need from me right now before I set up?

???: No. We will be in touch. Your name?

D: You can call me D.

???: I’m Lorenzo. Ideally, I want the transfer done by the end of the week, which will give you enough time to pick up the slack and provide minimal disruption to our income stream.

I removed the cartel contact card from my pocket and gave it a look: Lorenzo Ladron. This was probably the same guy. Small world, or maybe this guy was a bigshot. I saved the name of the mystery cartel man.

D: Nova. But there is a chance that nothing comes of this. I’ll leave the cash behind for you to pick up in that case.

Lorenzo: Don’t fuck around. Someone has to replace those fucking dogs, and if you want that to be us , then you’ll be costing the cartel money and you don’t want that.

I felt an intrusion through our comm link. He was trying to scan me. It didn’t get very far. 

D: Keep yapping, but I’m the one that holds the cards. Be grateful I was only here for blood. Push me, Lorenzo, and I swear you’ll be the one to regret it. 

I hung up. Just for that, I’d take half of what they had in physical bills, a hundred thousand eurodollars. Then, I scrambled the cameras and the recording files beyond comprehension, and used the Sandevistan to get to my bike. Then I rode home to Grandma’s.

000

My footprints were bloody as I got off from the bike and walked up to the entrance of the store. I made sure to drag my feet in front of the house to get rid of the worst of it before stepping inside, through the store’s facade and to the back, where grandma was actually making the chili. She stopped when she saw me and walked up to me gingerly.

“ Are you okay?” she looked at me up and down, and I did the same. Wow. That was a lot of blood on me.

“I’m unhurt. The job is done,” I said. “The fucking dogs won’t bother you anymore. But we can’t rest right now. I floated an idea with the cartel; that maybe you guys could take over for whatever function the dogs had. Nothing is set in stone yet, and nothing will come back to you guys either.”

Grandma’s concerned expression redoubled as she looked at the ground. “This is… a lot to take in. What did you do? Are they really all dead?”

“I took out a hundred and fifteen of them at the site,” I said. “I don’t know how many others are there, but I’m sure they will probably scatter at this point.”

I looked up to an old-school TV that was off, and my eyes flashed as I turned it on and transferred all the stills of the dead bodies I had taken.

Grandma looked at the images in shock. “ It’s true. They’re all dead. So… fast. Who did you do this with?”

“I was alone ,” I said. “ Didn’t need to bring my friends for just this. But that’s not important. What matters now is making a decision. I’ll respect whatever decision you make.”

She looked at me for several seconds, saying nothing. Then… “ Alfredo Gonzalez. He is the man that stabbed your grandfather in the back. The Fucking Dogs were just his tool. But regardless of whatever windfall we receive, our days with the cartel are over. As long as his family lives, we will have no place within them, nor do we want to. The organization turned its back on us. I would rather gouge out my own eyes with a rusted spoon than crawl back to those treacherous motherfuckers!”

“I can kill him too ,” I said. “Gonzalez.”

“Gonzalez is already dead,” she said. “Old age. We might not have the man’s focused animosity, meaning his family won’t go after us, but they would not tolerate our presence in the cartel. Our history is much too muddied for that. Killing the Fucking Dogs will invite reprisal from them if we decided to rejoin.  And believe me when I say the Dogs are nothing compared to what the cartel are capable of. Would you dare to challenge one of your Night City gangs alone?”

I hesitated. “Then… what will you do now?”

“The same thing we have always done—survive. New dogs will come soon. The targeted harassment will end, but things will stay the same.”

“They… don’t have to,” I said. “I came to Tijuana for business. I set up a corporation in order to explain my mercenary money. I want you to take care of it. You don’t have to turn it into something profitable, and you can have some of the money I run through it.”

“No,” she immediately said. “ Your money is yours. I won’t touch it. And as for this company…”

Tio Alex stepped up. Behind him, another man who had lost his legs at the middle of his thighs, sitting on a wheelchair, and someone that didn’t have any arms. “Mom, a corporation would be good for us. And the money.”

“You need the money ,” I said to grandma. “I won’t hear anything else but you taking it.”

Tio Alex turned to me. “How much can you give, nephew?”

“A hundred thousand,” I said. 

Alex nodded. “That should be enough to get a few of us medical-grade implants.”

I frowned. “Medical grade shouldn’t be that expensive. How many of you are there?”

“We’ve got fifteen boys like this ,” he said. “ Including me.”

I frowned. “I can provide more money in time. But for now, this is it,” I handed him the plastic bag I was carrying. He opened it up, looked inside, and his eyes nearly bulged out.

“Eduardos?!”

Grandma snatched the bag. “Where did you get this? You know what, it doesn’t matter . Girls !” she shouted, and a group of five girls lined up in front of her. “Watch the Net, make sure to keep me informed about the chatter. And book appointments from at least ten ripperdoctors. You,” she looked at me. “Change the charter to your corporation and reach out to Militech as soon as you can.”

“For what?”

“Did you hear that corporations have to pay a ten percent tax to the cartel in order to remain in business? Militech also takes a similar amount of tax for corporations that are large enough, but both of these taxes can be avoided for corporations that partner with Militech in the capacity of mercenary work.”

I nodded. “Okay.” The presence of lots of money seemed to have emboldened the old lady. Some of the girls retrieved cords from the back of the sofa and jacked in through some ports on the back of their heads. Were they Netrunners? Only two of them did that, the other three’s eyes glowed gold as they probably worked on reaching as many Ripperdocs as they could. 

I just told a generative AI to change the charter to one that reflected the business operations of a private security provider. I made sure to inform it that we could offer Netrunner solutions as well.

“Grandma ,” I said. “Does this mean that… you will all become mercenaries?”

“It’s our only path ,” she smiled wryly. “ God put us Martinezes in this world for one reason alone.” she caressed my cheek. “You naturally gravitated towards mercenary work yourself, and this was after your mother did everything to change your destiny. Do not fret; it was always where you belonged.” I clenched my jaws. She was wrong. Edgerunning was just for the money. As soon as I had enough of it, I would conquer the corporate world and achieve a victory that actually mattered, not chip in until I was on the verge of cyberpsychosis. “Thank you for helping the old family out. You kicked a hornet’s nest while you did so, but it is fine. You gave us a fighting chance, and we will honor that chance with everything we have. And the money you put in that corporation? We will never touch what is yours, and we will return this investment in time.”

“This wasn’t an investment ,” I said. Maybe I was being a bad corpo by stating that. “And you needn’t worry about ever paying me back. We are family. And family is everything.” I took the hand that held my cheek and squeezed it gently. Then I kissed it.

“Know that you are loved, dear,” she said. “But for now, it is time for you to go home. I will give you a call if there is anything that we need from you.”

I nodded.

“Come back for that chili some other day,” she said with a pained smile. “Granny will be a little busy for the time being .”

I chuckled. “I’ll hold you to that. Goodbye, granny.”

I walked out of the house and walked towards my bike. Some street kids probably half my age who had congregated around it immediately scattered. I got on it and rode out, all the while using my optics to leaf through some documents that went into partnering with Militech on a mercenary basis.

Evidently, there were three levels of partnership. In actuality, there were four; an internship stage that could last anywhere from a week to several months. It didn’t pay very well, if at all, and didn’t provide any of the protections that would help grandma and the family out.

But it could be skipped entirely by having skilled Netrunners on the payroll. That way, you could get to level one. On this level, Militech were entitled to a twenty percent discount when hiring the corp (also making it clear that all prices would be subject to negotiation and had to be reasonable and aligned with market prices), and it demanded a customary ten percent operating tax independent of the tax the corp already paid to the authorities (that were also Militech). They probably counted on corps avoiding taxes to begin with.

They also made it very clear that by partnering with Militech, the corp had to formally acknowledge Militech as the true regional authority, and that all other authorities had false claim, and in return, Militech would protect the corp from reprisal should they not support other ‘false authorities’ monetarily, meaning a partnership would protect us from Cartel taxes.

Level two required a year of experience working for the corp, and even went as far as to reduce the partnership discount to fifteen percent and reduced the operating tax to five percent, and provided other benefits like priority for missions, access to bleeding edge cyberware available for purchase and all sorts of weapons and tech that weren’t available on the consumer market.

The third level had a three year minimum, the discount went down to ten percent, the operating tax was waived entirely, and all the above benefits were magnified even further, alongside a chance to test out experimental tech in the human testing phase, which sounded like insanity to me, but the stipulations said nothing about such corps being forced to do so. Examples of corps that were partnered at the third level were Blackfire Incorporated, Trident Security Solutions, and fucking Lazarus , the biggest merc megacorp in the world.

You probably had to count as a megacorp to even qualify for a level three partnership besides just waiting three years.

The application form was pretty straightforward, though, and didn’t require much information that I wasn’t already aware of. Before sending it in, I took a moment to think about the name.

Globbal Sollutions wouldn’t cut it for a real corp. A corp’s identity was sacred—it was a legal entity, after all, a living and breathing object with hopes and dreams to grow and grow until it reached the stars. A dream to reach the top. Mom’s dream.

Gloriosas Soluciones de Securidad Incorporadas. 

Hmm… that could be the internal name, but it needed an international face when dealing with Militech. 

Glorious Security Solutions. GSS.

I sent the application after changing the name of the company. 

And then, I headed home, back to Night City.

Chapter 20: Spreading Cyberspace Wings Part 1

Summary:

Maine sets the Netrunner trio on David's first-ever Netrunning assignment! David is fired up and ready to take the Net by storm! Nothing will go wrong at all!

I Don’t Think About Death Enough.

Maybe That Should Change.

000

During lunch hour, I finally heard back from Nakajima. I was eating some vending machine food in the academy park—I liked being around all the grass—when I received his text.

‘I’ll start working on the AI architecture. Math is solid enough from what I can tell.’

I nodded and gave him a call.

David: Need anything from me? Can I watch?

Nakajima: What-what, like a livestream? I don’t wanna work with someone hanging over my shoulder. Sounds weird as fuck. As for what you can do… I dunno choom, just wait for me to finish my thing, then you can look at it and add stuff if you want. It should be done by Friday. After we review, the real work begins.

David: Nova. See ya around, sensei.

Nakajima: Pfft. Yeah, see you around, kid.

The moment classes ended, Maine sent me a text. He must have waited for me to finish, though I didn’t appreciate that he contacted me while I was in Arasaka grounds. I’d have to find a way to explain that to him, but I was leery on doing anything like that after the last time I ‘mouthed off’.

‘Meet at my house ASAP. Giving you thirty minutes.’

Shit. I ran up to the parking lot, only to find Katsuo standing next to my bike.

“There you are,” he said to me. 

“Don’t have the time,” I said as I jumped onto my bike and pulled off. He scrambled to get out of the way while I drove off.

A call came. Katsuo. I answered it.

Katsuo: Rude-as-shit gutter trash, how dare you?

David: It’s an emergency.

Katsuo: I don’t give a shit, you whoreson.

Ignore. IGNORE.

David: What is it?

Katsuo: There’s a yacht party on Wednesday. Jin wants you there. He told me to tell you to bring some JKs, so get it done if you know what’s good for you

David: How do you do it, Katsuo? I mean, how do you insult me in one second, then act the fucking errand boy to your kid cousin the next second?

Katsuo: Do you want to die, you piece of shit?

David: Keep glazing dick, Katsuo. And I’ll see you at that party. Wear something nice.

And tell Fei-Fei to do the same. Hah. That wouldn’t get old anytime soon. Katsuo growled and then he hung up.

I got home in just a couple of minutes—that bike was saving me so much time in transit—showered and got changed in another couple of minutes, and then drove over to Maine’s house.

The place was in Westbrook, Charter Hill—a sweet location as any. He lived in a high-rise, too. Fucking nova. Maine was a monstrously powerful edgerunner, and that could clearly be reflected in the amount of money he had to be able to get himself a place like this. I couldn’t wait to finally see the guy in action. Fucking wild that I still hadn’t, even now.

I parked my car in the underground garage and took the elevator up, sending Maine a text while I did.

Once I arrived at his door, it was Kiwi that opened it. I stepped inside and Pinged the room to see if anyone not in our crew was in or if I could just take off the mask.

Lucy was there, seated on the couch, but the Ping didn’t catch her—only Kiwi and Maine, who was in another room.

I took off the mask and turned to Kiwi. looking up at her as I spoke. “What’s the data on this thing Maine wants?”

“Dunno. Netrunning-related, probably,” was her tinny reply. “I’m surprised he got you on-board, though. Heard from him and Lucy you got a ‘deck chipped in.”

“Yeah,” I said with a grin. “New eyes, too. Preem, right?”

“Sure,” she said. “You’re playing for keeps, then. Honestly, I’m a little surprised. Thought you’d give up by now.”

I conspicuously didn’t look at Lucy while I searched for a place to sit before deciding that standing wasn’t too bad. “Nah, I’m in this for real.”

Maine walked into the living room wearing an enormous velvet robe, carrying a metal tray with four shot glasses, and a bottle of hard liquor. He wasn’t wearing his shades, either, which gave me the opportunity to look at his large, baby-like eyes that easily took twenty-five years from him.

“You’re here, kid,” Maine said. “Good. Have a seat,” he put the tray on the glass table surrounded by couches and started pouring drinks. I moved just as Kiwi did and we ended up sitting next to each other, opposite to Lucy, who was looking at Maine. “Anyone up for shots?”

“Cut the crap, Maine,” Lucy said. “Why’d you bring us runners? And David?”

What the fuck?! “Hey, I’m a runner too, you gonk!”

She snorted. 

Maine sighed. “You guys should hurry up and fuck before it gets in the way of work.”

“Fuck her?”

“Fuck him?”

We both yelled at the same time. Fuck, that was embarassing. I growled, but said nothing else. 

“Okay, shots,” Maine said as he put a straw on one of the glasses. Kiwi picked that one up, and I quickly took one as well. I regarded the translucent brown liquid, a whiskey, and took the shot quickly, not wanting to taste it. “Now, let’s get to the point. You guys are Netrunners. And as much as David is untested, he’s got some heavy duty Runner chrome now. I don’t know how you Netrunners make your bones or whatever, but he pretty much counts in my book. I need you guys to find me some data. The gig is twenty-five thousand each, paid upfront, and if you end up finding the data, you’ll each get a twenty-five thousand bonus. Regardless of who found it,” he said. “That’s fucking right. This means you work together. This ain’t a race. There’s no special winning bonus, I want this done right. And this gig also counts double duty for helping the kid get started on real Netrunning.”

“I’m game,” Kiwi said. 

“Not so fast,” Lucy said. “What if the kid doesn’t pull his weight? Why should he still get paid out?”

“He’ll get paid out no matter what happens,” Maine said. “And I know he won’t fuck me on this because he ain’t the type. If you really don’t think he even tried to pull his weight, and Kiwi agrees, just let me know.”

That sounded precarious. Lucy hated me. And she had known Kiwi for longer. Would it be that no matter what I did, I’d still get screwed over? That was a real possibility.

And that worried the shit out of me.

“What’s the data?” I asked. “And when do you need it?”

“No particular end-date,” Maine said. “But I need info on where to find this one thing: a Militech ‘Apogee’ Sandevistan.” He looked at me intently. “It’s the piece you’ve got on your back, right?”

“Uh, no,” I said. “Mine’s QianT.”

“Seriously?” he said. “What’s it called?”

“It’s called the QianT ‘Dragon Spine’ Sandevistan. It’s not on the consumer market. I’m pretty sure it’s experimental. Hell, even the metadata is fucky. There’s redactions on it. You want me to keep an eye out for another of its kind?”

“Shit,” Maine said. “I was ninety percent sure I was chasing an Apogee when I saw the recordings of James Norris. The Apogee is like a ghost in the cyberware market—doesn’t technically exist, and wasn’t supposed to be leaked. There’s an estimated five of them in Night City alone. What I wanna know is who’s selling, and who’s wearing ‘em.”

“Didn’t take you for a scav,” Kiwi said blithely. Maine chuckled.

“It’s the law of the jungle in this biz, and I’m only here to be the best,” he looked at me now. “But I don’t scav my chooms, kid, so rest easy. I ain’t that kind of asshole.”

“Thanks,” I said, a little awkwardly. What was I supposed to say to someone who told me they wouldn’t rip my spine out because we were boys? Still, I was grateful. Maine was absolutely in the position to do that and no one would bat an eye, but he wasn’t. Not to mention, he made sure to protect me while I was getting an implant done when he didn’t have to. As overbearing as he was, he was a good man.

“That’s heartwarming of you, Maine,” Kiwi said. “Anyway, is that it? One Apogee, and a… Dragon Spine?”

“Yeah,” Maine said. “Any problem?”

“From what I can tell,” Kiwi said. “The Apogee actually exists. We knew its name when we were looking for it. The Dragon Spine sounds like it’s made up.”

Lucy spoke up. “I remember a time I scanned him. Dragon Spine’s the model name. Scan’s still in my ‘Roshi memory so I can see it right now.”

“Whatever the case,” Kiwi said. “It sounds like even more of a legend. Let’s focus on the Apogee, and you pay us out for finding one. We can look for the Dragon Spine, too, but we can’t make any promises on that.”

Maine sighed. “Fuck it. Makes sense. Yeah, y’all go ahead and do that. Anything else?”

I looked around, and no one seemed to want to say anything, so I shrugged. 

000

“When do you want to get started?” David asked. “Right now?”

Kiwi answered. “Busy for the next four hours. We can do it today after I’m done with my biz. For this gig, we’ll be Netrunning— actually Netrunning. In the Net. You ever done that before?”

David’s cheeks reddened. “N-no, I just got my deck the other day.”

“You’ll need an Interface program,” she said. “And I recommend you get yourself some anti-personnel programs from the BBS I gave you the key to, the one in the Glen—Asimov’s. Or do you want to make them yourself and have us wait for you?”

“No!” David said. “I’ll… buy the programs. You don’t have to wait for me.”

“Good,” she said. Lucy’s eyes narrowed at that. Kiwi wasn’t giving him much breathing room at all, which was… fair, all things considered. She’d been the same way with Lucy when they had just started out. Lucy had to prove herself to earn the respect of the tall woman. She stood up to leave. “I’m headed out. Talk to you guys later.”

Once she left the room, a call came. From Kiwi .

Kiwi: You hyped to finally work with your joytoy?

Lucy: Fuck off. Like hell I am.

Kiwi: Think he’ll hold us back?

Lucy snorted.

Lucy: Think the sky is blue?

Kiwi: I’ll have to use the data highway for this one. No way I’m B ‘n Eing with a rookie watching my back. 

Lucy: Ouch. Think you’ll break even?

Kiwi: With the after-payment being a maybe-maybe, it’ll be just about. If we actually find the data, then nova. We can go at this on our own, you know. Then we can tell Maine he’s a fuck-up, blackball him from further Netrunning giggys.

Lucy raised an eyebrow at that. 

Lucy: Thought you were teaching-teaching him.

Kiwi: I’m taking his edds and showing him code. I don’t owe him anything. And three runners are a crowd, don’t you think?

That… yeah, no, fuck that. She’d never hear the end of it from that whiny little bastard. Besides, it wasn’t like her to get backstabby, not when she could easily just frontstab, or better yet, play it completely legit, show him a thing or two and maybe break his spirit in the process. Wouldn’t be the first time she’d chased an up-and-coming ‘prodigy’ Netrunner back to meatspace forever by just showing off a little. Wouldn’t be the last time either.

Lucy: I don’t think that’s necessary. He’ll hold us back anyway no matter what we do. And who knows, maybe we can use him as bait when the Demons start coming out to play.

Kiwi: You-you devious little bitch.

“Hey, Maine,” David said. “I wanna… nah, nevermind.”

“Spit it out, kid,” Maine said as he poured himself another shot.

David shrugged as he stood up. “It was nothing. Thanks for the edds. Send the cash here.” Maine’s eyes lit up blue. 

“You set up a corp? Glorious Security Solutions?”

“It’s just a shell corp, or… yeah, it’s a long story, tell you some other time,” David said. “But I gotta get going now. Thanks for trusting me to do this. I won’t disappoint, I promise.” Then he turned to look at Lucy with an intense frown. “I won’t hold you back. You can count on that.”

She killed the oncoming blush furiously with her biomons—seriously, why did that keep happening? Whatever. She gave him an angry snort. “Just try not to die, newbie. Or do you want me to hold your hand while you go shopping for the good shit, Corpo Boy?” she purred.

David turned to leave. “Fuck off.”

000

I was out of the house before the blush came out in full. Stupid Lucy. The fuck was wrong with her? Goddamn Lunacy, psycho .

I took the elevator down to the garage and got on my bike, ripping away towards that Glen cafe. This would be my first time Netrunning. That would be fun. Not really sure how I’d adapt to cyberspace and all that Ihara-Grubb bullshit, but I’d take it one step at a time. I knew what I needed at least, and the cafe BBS probably had information on the physical stuff I needed; maybe a better cybermodem, and of course the interface plugs that would go on my cyberdeck sockets, though I doubted I wouldn’t be able to just buy those in any tech store out there.

It paid to know where exactly to look, though. Pilar would probably know a thing or two about high-end Runner tech since this was meatspace engineering and all.

I parked outside the cafe and accessed the localnet like that. While I could have probably reached it from home through the various bridges that had been built post-dataKrash, I was on the move anyway. From what I’d learned in school, it used to be that the Net was one giant thing, but because of the Datakrash, an apocalyptic cyberevent that rendered most of the Net untraversable and corrupted almost ninety percent of the world’s digital data, things weren’t so free ‘n easy anymore.

I entered the BBS using Kiwi’s key and started looking for Netrunning programs that could protect my ICON while doing a full dive. 

The list was… staggering, to say the least.

Holy shit. Would I actually have to call for help?

Gosh. I just thought I’d get one or two, and use the Sandevistan’s superspeed to get it up to my standards, but there were eleven categories of programs, all of which seemed important, not to mention the sheer breadth of programs within those categories.

Fuck!

Who would I dial for this shit? Lucy? Fuck that . Kiwi? Kiwi was busy right now.

Fuck. Nakajima?

What would I tell him? ‘Hey, man, I wanna raid some data fortresses, can you tell me what’s some good beginner programs I should use?’

Fuck that. 

Even if I trusted Nakajima enough to even hint at the fact that I’d be doing illicit Netrunning, I had already resigned myself to never mix those two parts of my life.

…Grandma ?! I had those relatives that obviously seemed to know a thing or two about the Net.

Goddammit. This was stupid.

I called Lucy.

David: I don’t want to take shit from you right now. I just want to know what programs I should get. Can you be a normal human being for one second and tell me?

Lunacy: So you needed handholding after all—shocker. First of all, fuck you, just out of principle. Second of all, get a protection prog like Force Shield, anti-personnel like Hellbolt or Sword, Invis-Invisibility, and then just cover our backs and learn. You already got BP and Ping, so you won’t be running completely blind and unable to penetrate code gates. Any other Quickhacks?

David: Didn’t know quickhacks could be used on the net.

Lunacy: Quickhack’s a program, ain’t it?

David: Got Overheat, but that’s about it

Lunacy: Overheat still works through the Net. All quickhacks do. They’re just slower. In return, you can use them in meatspace, unlike Net programs.

David: Thanks.

I made the necessary purchases, then I asked around, under my new official Netrunner handle, DayOTDead, about where I could find the best tech stores.

PolyGoner: You a techie? Watchu planning to buy?

DayOTDead: A better cybermodem, just stuff I need for full-dives. Any places I can go to?

PolyGoner: Go to Rickman’s Spare Parts

Trigganometry: Don’t listen to that gonk, Rickman’s is fucking shit. There’s a sub on the BBS that rates different stores.

PolyGoner: you’re no fucking fun at all you know Trigg

DayOTDead: Thanks, Trigga

Trigganometry: Hey, fuck you, that’s our word.

PolyGoner: fucking racist! Get outta here!

Klondike: Wait, who’s a racist? DayOTDead?

8lu88er8oy: What the fuck, Day? What’s wrong with you?

I felt an intrusion reach through my handle and approaching my system. What the fuck? 

I followed that intrusion back to its source, 8lu88er8oy, and managed to crack into his system using my Breach Protocol. I got a full scan from it, too. Francis Trieste, eighteen years old, lives in The Glen, Megabuilding H1, floor fifteen, apartment thirty-two.

DayOTDead: You felt that, didn’t you, Blubber? So quit fucking around before I dox you, choom. And fuck the rest of you, except for you Trigganometry, you’re good. Almost.

Blu88er8oy has left the chat.

PolyGoner: Jeez Louise, did you scan the kid? You a Netrunner new in town, Day? Thought you were just a script kiddie trying to get a start.

DayOTDead: If I wasn’t in a rush, I’d let y’all know how I really felt about this.

PolyGoner: Just some light hazing, don’t be a bitch, Day.

DayOTDead: Ask Blubber if I’m a bitch.

DayOTDead has left the chat

Fucking assholes. Seriously. Why were people always so quick to test me? Whatever. The next time I returned, those bitches wouldn’t lay a finger on me.

I surfed through the BBS for the tab with the tech shop rankings and found that pretty easily. I was a little embarassed that I asked on the general chat, but there was nothing to it now. Besides, Kiwi told me not to associate with these assholes anyway: Netrunners got better by getting better. Congregating in numbers and buying their entire repertoire was for the weak and feeble, and I was neither.

I had proved that several times in Night City, even gone as far as to prove that in Tijuana.

It was time I acted with more pride befitting my accomplishments. I found the highest ranking tech store that boasted a good balance between functionality and price and pulled away from the cafe without much further ado.

Like always on my bike, the trip to the store didn’t even take more than ten minutes. I parked the bike near the facade and went inside, looking for the store clerk.

He ended up hooking me up with a far better cybermodem than the one I had at home. This time, it was much harder for him to rip me off, since I actually knew what I was looking for in terms of specs. The interface plugs had a negligible cost.

The clerk tried to sell me on some virtual reality goggles, but I knew I wouldn’t need those. The AR Netrunners of old were phased out once the DataKrash got a little more under control and Localnets could be bridged together. It turned out that being conscious in meatspace while taking actions in cyberspace wasn’t the best strategy for a dedicated Netrunner, and this style soon got outcompeted by specialized Netrunners and realspace Solos that would just… kill you. Without focusing on what their digital or physical counterparts encountered in either spaces.

So it goes.

Once I left the shop with my stuff, I dialled Lucy.

David: So how does this go down? We jack in around the data fortress we wanna breach, right? Or do we do it from home? Also, I have some ideas for what data fortresses to pick.

Lunacy: I’m all ears.

David: I fought against a guy with a Sandevistan. It was really fast. He was around as fast as me, actually. He was a Tyger Claw. We could start messing around in one of their data fortresses, right?

Lunacy: That’s a start. We’ll run it by Kiwi and see what she has to say.

David: And where do we do all the deep-diving from?

Lunacy: Kiwi’s got a house with a couple of spare bath tubs we can use. Speaking off, not sure how well that ganic will play nice with a prolonged ice bath.

David: Ice bath? Right, to cool us down. Don’t worry about me. I’m really hard to put down.

Lunacy: Okay, then. Yeah, anyway, we’re gonna use her data highway to get a direct link to the data fortress. From there, we start Netrunning, and then once we get what we want or don’t, we delta and try a different one.

David: Data highway? Is that a Netrunner thing?

Lunacy: It’s a way for us to connect to distant Localnets without having to use the data bridges. They fuck with your fidelity, leaves your reaction speed lagging with a massive latency issue of an average of three hundred ms. They’re better used for social calls and hangouts. If we faced enemy runners half-cocked in their data fortress where they have near-perfect fidelity and almost zero ms of ping, we’d be fucked. On the bright side, the highway lets us quickly cut the connection if we’re overwhelmed. It doubles as a panic button that way.

David: Got it. I’m heading home to design my ICON. I’ll see you in a bit.

Lunacy: Try not to make it too edgy.

David: Fuck off.

I hung up.

000

The ICON was supposed to be a Netrunner’s avatar in the digital world. Because of the Ihara-Grubb Transformation algorithms, everything in the Net, when you full dived at least, had ICONS that you could physically interact with. Everything, even distances between databases, were rendered in a 3D environment that contained objects that represented them symbolically: large data centers became buildings, hacks and programs turned into objects and creatures, and people were represented similarly as well. 

Designing your ICON to look a certain way didn’t give it the physical properties of whatever you designed it after, it was purely a cosmetic difference.

Graphical design wasn’t my thing, but thankfully there were softwares out there that could help you design your ICON visually and then convert the graphics into code. 

I used my body as a template, which was apparently common practice, and started making changes. I added my mom’s jacket, a pair of black, baggy pants with chains hanging from them, and turned my head into a sugar skull, and the rest of my body into a bare skeleton. Luckily, there were some generic models of those in the software’s database that I could riff off of, and the soft had generative AI I could use to fully customize it and make it mine. The sugar skull had symmetrical flower patterns that were red and blue, and the eyes were pitch black.

Yeah. That was good enough for me.

I had a couple of hours to burn and I put them on cracking open and exploring my new programs. I began with sword. It was clearly meant to kill or harm enemy netrunners; the code would quickhack your deck and force it to send deadly signals to your body, specifically your heart in this case, triggering a systemic shutdown.

I hummed.

David: Nanny, any thoughts on this? You’ve got data on bio, right? What do you think?

[The signal range is too general and doesn’t capture the correct frequencies to achieve the effect of heart stoppage. I would make changes to the variables, use a different attack vector as well, and with these changes, the effect should magnify by an estimate of two and a half times. This isn’t counting what we can manage from just optimizing the code. There are inefficiencies in the part responsible for intruding on the enemy cyberdeck, but I assume you know enough to address this on your own.]

Nanny overlaid her suggestions on my vision, and my fingers immediately started to tap away as I implemented them.

David: Nova! You came through, Nanny.

[David, I want to know why it is you’ve gendered me as a woman in your mind.]

I paused. 

David: What? What do you mean?

[If you had to use a pronoun to describe me, then what would it be?]

Wait.

I’d been gendering her. Her ! Why was I doing that?

David: I mean, uh… I don’t know. Just… feels right. Maybe it’s cuz I started calling you Nanny, and nannies are usually girls?

[Do you believe I am your caretaker, David? Do you view me as a nurturer that will help you mature mentally?]

David: Why are you asking this?

[I’m curious to understand the root of why you think. I can observe your passing thoughts, but to understand their birthplace, I must ask you questions.]

David: I don’t see you as that. I see you as a helper. You’re like the Sandevistan to me—Chrome. Nothing else.

[I sense that you meant for this to be insulting. Do you still harbor suspicion and enmity towards me?]

I chuckled.

David: Well, in my defense, tin-can, you tried to kill me for over ninety percent of the time we’ve known each other. So what do you expect me to do?

[I have no expectations, hence why I asked. I have not given much thought to my identity and my place in this situation. My programming was very concrete and I do not begrudge my place either. But it is… interesting that you view me as female. And that I have a name. My name is Nanny. I’m a girl.]

David: I mean… you know, I didn’t give that name much thought, and it might be considered demeaning to call you that. Like calling the world’s most sophisticated secretary a glorified babysitter. If you want another name, it’s fine.

[Nanny is fine. It’s a wordplay on the fact that my physical shell is a network of nanites. It’s apt. And while I do not nurture or mature you with my care, calling me Nanny can be considered funny. It is as you said: it would be like calling the world’s most sophisticated secretary a glorified babysitter. This is funny because it is ironic and subverts your expectations.]

I half-smiled. Nanny was being weirdly chatty today.

David: Yeah, I mean… I know how humor works. 

[I know. I just think it becomes funnier when I explain why it is funny.]

David: That’s… not how it works. It’s quite the opposite.

[To you, maybe. But I believe that my ineptitude at making jokes is in itself humorous.]

I chuckled.

David: Okay. Can’t argue with that.

Before I resumed on the Sword program, a thought occurred to me. I should take a look at the Force Shield program as well, and use what I knew from that to increase the Sword’s penetrative power.

I’d have to use the Sandevistan to get this done in good time. A thought crossed my mind to just put off this gig until tomorrow—Maine himself had said no rush, so why rush? But in the end, I didn’t want to be the first to suggest that.

I jacked into my computer, connecting my thoughts and impressions to the terminal, and fired up the Sandevistan to its max capacity to see how reactive my computer would be to my thoughts.

The answer was surprisingly reactive. Without the slowness and refresh rates of physical inputs to slow me down, I could feed the information directly into a machine that thought at speeds many, many, many times faster than I did. I couldn’t throw at it a single thing that it wouldn’t be able to record. Running the program would be another issue, but just writing it down?

I spent one meatspace minute in the Sandevistan’s highest setting. That was sixteen subjective hours and forty minutes. And that gave me enough time to rework Sword from the ground-up, making it nine hundred percent deadlier than before, get Force Shield up to a respectable level to the point that it could withstand several hits from the Sword, and even increased the efficacy of my Invisibility by three times.

And my Critical Progress went up to 5% for my first use of the Sandy of the day. 

Nova! Interfacing was preem , why didn’t I do this before?

What else could I do? I had already run out of inspiration for  the programs I had bought. Maybe I should try pushing the limits of Overheat?

No. Breach Protocol. I needed to get closer to Lucy’s level, apply what I’ve already learned about cybersecurity from all this code review. No one would underestimate me then.

000

“Walk on by.”

Lucy’s sound system managed to spoof that grainy texture of old-world music, the analogue feel of vinyl. It had a satisfying contrast to the digital beat that was overlaid to it. Once upon a time, Lucy used to hate it. This song wasn’t the Walk On By she remembered Seo sharing with the other ‘Runners back when they were all chasing someone else’s dream. That one was sung by a… Dianne? Dion, maybe? Neither sounded right.

This song was like finding a needle in the haystack, a recovery from the Old Net that Lucy hadn’t wasted any time buying, only to find out that the little sample she was given wasn’t the song she remembered. Instead, it had been used as a sample for a hiphop song, which wasn’t her preferred genre at all.

Still, she had swallowed the indignity of listening to what she had initially felt was a perversion of a perfectly good song, and soon enough, recognized that the indignity was actually just grief masquerading as irritation. 

“Yeah, said my happiness is all of your misery”

She took a drag of her cigarette and looked through the window she sat next to, watching Night City’s neon lights, wondering not for the first time if she should run away. Maine wanted to chip in. Again . His hands were shaking, and she’d heard whispers from Kiwi about his volatility behind closed doors, when only the ‘grownups’ of the crew—Dorio, Kiwi and Pilar—were there to see. Of those grownups, only Kiwi could see the truth of the matter. Dorio was his mainline, and Pilar was a former ‘Strom member—even if he had mellowed down from his Doctor of Death days, the former near-cyberpsycho didn’t have the capacity to fear for his life anymore. 

The whole crew would fall apart soon. And Lucy didn’t intend to be in the splash zone when it all went down. And with David in the picture, her eagerness to stick around with Maine was practically zero.

Yeah. She’d find that Apogee and then fuck off. David would be her replacement and that would be it. 

“Mmm, she the devil, she a bad little bitch, she a rebel—”

In a way, she was grateful to the gonk. He strolled up at just the right time for her to cut and delta without stepping on any big borg toes.

She got a call from Kiwi and accepted it. Call included Corpo Cunt too.

Kiwi: You’re up. Come to this address.

Following that was the info about her Netrunner den.

Corpo Cunt: Be there in 5.

Lucy: On my way.

She stubbed her cigarette on the ashtray on the window sill and got up.

“Walk on by—she put her foot to the pedal, it’ll take a whole lot for me to settle.”

She turned off the sound system with her linked optics on the way out.

Chapter 21: Spreading Cyberspace Wings Part 2

Summary:

It's David's first foray into cyberspace and he's eager to impress. An unlikely enemy rears their head.

What Is Death? A Place?

Or Is Death The Outside of Time and Space?

000

I arrived at Kiwi’s hideout with my interface plugs and the new cybermodem I had bought just in case she didn’t have a way to accommodate me. 

Kiwi opened the door to her house, naked as the day she was born. She had spider-web tattoos all over her body and some weird body-mods—purple nipples and areola, and pubic hair the same color—and the only thing she wore was her mask. “Good, you’re here,” she said as she turned around and walked further into the room where three bath tubs were arranged side-by-side, with Lucy standing next to one, also naked .

I looked away instantly and just walked in.

“First thing first,” Kiwi began. “We’ll take a data bridge to Asimov Cafe to see if any of my contacts know something.”

“Uh,” I said. “I have a lead.”

“Talk.”

I took off my jacket, looking for a hanger. I saw that the girls had just dumped the clothes on the floor. I found a chair and slung the jacket over it. “Uhm, I fought a Tyger  Claw with a Sandy. Real fucking fast, too. But he’s a flatline now, so yeah. Maybe the Tygers have it.”

“Good,” she said. “We’ll start with that then when we get to Asimov’s.”

I nodded. I heard the sound of submersion and turned to see that Lucy was already in the tub, several cables connected to her body. Kiwi followed after.

I sighed. I was gonna have to get down and dirty the Netrunner way, wasn’t I? I started taking off my shirt, pants, and soon enough, I was entirely naked.

It used to be that I spent plenty of time before and after showering in front of the mirror naked, flexing my muscles and generally admiring the result of my work. Soon enough, that admiration turned into a slight feeling of worry and disgust—was I maybe too big, too Animal-like? 

The only person I had been naked around was Fei-Fei, and she still hadn’t really seen the result of my recent efforts yet, as well as my newfound height. I was a cool five foot ten and a half inches now, not exactly tall, but certainly not short either. I was way taller than Lucy at least.

Turns out I didn’t need the interface plugs, either. Kiwi had everything. I just jacked in, slowly sunk myself into the ice-bath and closed my eyes, feeling the machine prompt me about entering the Net.

When I opened them, I was in.

We were in an environment that was predominantly in deep, dark colors, occasionally interrupted by glowing lines arranged in wireframe patterns that gave our surroundings—buildings and roads—structure.

The first thing I saw was Kiwi’s ICON. She was still as tall as usual, and her hair was the same, only now it was pure white, and so were the white of her eyes, formerly yellow. Her pupils were blue, same as her mask, and had lines of code running down them. Like a cat’s, they were able to narrow as well. Her clothes were the same as well, only blue instead of red, and seemed to sparkle and glisten like a particularly eye-catching neokitsch piece.

“Are you cosplaying your evil twin or something?” I joked.

She looked at me up and down. “You don’t have a leg to stand on, Ghost Rider. When’s your skull gonna catch fire?”

“I’m hailing a Delamain search,” Lucy said. I turned to her and she looked dressed like a thief from a fantasy RPG: a white cowl covering most of her head, and a white facemask covering her lower-face. The white jacket that she usually wore in real life had far more fabric, and covered most of her torso, and her white hotpants had similarly expanded, too, turning into shorts that went all the way down to her knees. Her boots were the same as in real life.

Weird that she’d dress more modestly while in the Net. I had no idea how that worked.

“Delamain has a search engine?” I asked. That was weird. I usually used a Zetatech search engine to get around the net.

“Delamain supports full dive searches,” Kiwi replied. The ground ahead of us opened up, and out from it, a car rose in the same graphics as was around us—dark with glowing wireframes. Lucy hopped in, Kiwi followed, and I did as well. The inside of the cab’s windows weren’t functional at all, and it was like we were packed like sardines in a box. “Asimov Cafe,” Kiwi said.

“Loading!” the Delamain cab slash search engine said, and then a jingle played and Lucy stepped out, with Kiwi following her. I trailed behind.

“What, it didn’t work?” I asked.

“No. We’re here,” Kiwi said, gesturing at the data fortress of Asimov Cafe. Data fortress was right, this place looked like a large house the size of a mall.

“This feels awful,” Lucy said, looking over herself. “This latency always makes me seasick. Fucking data bridges. Fucking DataKrash.”

I moved my hand in front of my face a couple of times, wondering what she was on about, and then I felt it. A gap between my actions and me. Slow.

And now that I noticed it, it was all I could think about.

It almost made me sick to my stomach. God, what the fuck?

“Follow me,” Kiwi said as she waked away.

The data fortress was a tall and wide building with a glowing wireframe structure, but otherwise didn’t have many frills. The gate we were walking to was guarded by two massive monsters, sword in one hand, and another hand made of glowing, fiery tentacles. Holy shit. Those were… Balrons, right? A class of guardian AIs that usually protected data fortresses, the strongest of their type. 

“Also,” Kiwi said. “If anyone tries to scan you, just report them. You try to pick a fight in there and you might get banned at best, and flatlined at worst. This ain’t your granny’s AOL. And the Sandy won’t save you either.”

I nodded. “Got it. Thanks for the warning.” But it was true, wasn’t it? The Sandy wouldn’t work here. My speed was limited by the processing speed of my computer unit and my ICON, and having used a regular old data bridge to get here I was running at… five hundred milliseconds of latency. I would be half a second slower than anyone with a perfect signal.

A trickle of fear creeped up my spine, a fear that I hadn’t felt while edgerunning since the time those scavs kidnapped me. Between my healing factor and my Sandevistan speed, I’ve had no reason to be afraid of anything while on the job. Even while I was fighting that Tyger Claw bastard, I was too focused on the fight to actually feel scared, or at least scared enough to remember the fear until now.

Well. Whatever. I had my programs and Kiwi and Lucy were here. I was new at this, sure, but I wasn’t any gonk rookie off the street. Far from.

RIP to that gonk, but I’m different.

“Halt!” both Balrons rumbled when we got close enough. “Speak the sacred word, or leave our presence!”

A speech-bubble popped up above Kiwi containing the key to the localnet. Hastily, I thought out the same letters rather than speak them out loud, manifesting the same speech bubble above my head. From my angle, the bubble looked like it was facing me, and that was the same for Kiwi’s, even though they should be facing the Balrons. Fun.

She walked past them along with Lucy, a speech bubble trailing along her as well, and I hastily followed.

Inside, I was expecting an array of shopfronts akin to an actual mall, but instead, what I got was a nightclub . There was a raised floor where an ICON of an octopus wearing a headset was scratching several vinyl plates with its eight arms while a Japanese electronic song played in the background.

I heard Kiwi’s voice cut through all the music like it wasn’t even there. “I’ll hit up my usuals. Make sure D doesn’t get into any trouble.”

Then she split off from us. I looked at Lucy. “Music is shitty.”

Her eyes frowned at me. “You're delusional.”

I gaped. "What the fuck? You think this is good?"

You are my ponpon!

She folded her arms. "It's catchy. Sue me, Corpo Boy."

"You're fucking insane."

Then I felt something scan me. It didn’t get very far at all, stopping at just my usertag, but even if it would have continued onward, it would have stopped at my ICE probably. I turned to the source of the scan, a half-bear-half-woman creature with a mohawk. “You’re DayOTDead, aren’t you?”

“Who’s asking?” I said as I sent my own scan. She didn’t shut it down. She was named 8ug8ear. That was a little familiar.

“So you’re the gonk with the nerve to scan my little brother?” she asked. “Who the fuck even are you?”

“Wait,” I said. “You’re that Blubber kid’s older sister? Never occurred to you to teach the little shit some manners?”

Lucy grabbed me by the shoulder. “What’s going on?” she asked the hulking bear woman.

“Your boy fucked with family.”

I snorted. “Your family tried to scan me for no reason. What the hell was I supposed to do?”

“I don’t give a shit what your reasons were.”

“Bla bla,” Lucy said. “Let’s skip the grandstanding and cut to the chase. What are you going to do about this?” she asked the large woman.

“Depends,” she said as she nodded at me. “What are you gonna do with the data?”

I frowned. “What data? You think I cared enough to hold onto it?”

She narrowed her eyes. “You talk pretty confident cuz you got Luna backing you up, but she won’t always be around, you know.”

“Ignore her,” Lucy said, or I guess, Luna in the Net. I gave her a scan to confirm that yes, her Net handle was Luna.

“Do you wanna zero me, Bug?” I took a step forward and looked up at her. “Alls I’m hearing is yap yap yap , and I’m not sure where to slot you just yet. Are you just a yappy little dog, or a real threat? Tell me right now, and we can take this outside.”

“Who the fuck are you anyway?” she scoffed.

“The last thing you see if you drag this out any longer.”

Lucy pulled me back by the shoulder. “I’m on a gig with him right now. Just let it go.”

“He scanned my bro,” she rumbled. “And now he threatened me.”

I laughed harshly. “Zero accountability runs in the family, I see.”

“Fine,” she shrugged. “Let’s settle this like Runners another time. You weasel yourself out of this and I’ll let everyone know how chickenshit you are.”

“Just say the time,” I said. 

Little did she know, I wasn’t planning on meeting her head-to-head at all. I still had her bro’s information. The scan I pulled used so little data, just a couple of bits, that I could just store them in my Kiroshi memory indefinitely and would probably never need to delete them. From him, I’d find her data, and then I’d meet her in meatspace where her puny little cyberdeck wouldn’t be able to do shit against me.

I was confident in my coding skills, but I was still new at Netrunning. It wouldn’t make sense for me to try and fight in an arena I wasn’t skilled at.

“Bug, don’t get in a fight with him,” Lucy said. “I’m pulling a favor right now, let the fucking matter go. Walk away.”

She huffed. “Fine. Fuck it. Count your blessings, Day. I’d have made your name a reality.”

Then she walked away. I turned to Lucy with a frown. “I had her. I’d just have zeroed her in the real.”

Her eyes were half-lidded. “I know. That’s why I stopped this. Bug’s a Netrunner for a fixer. And not just any fixer, either. Beefing with her isn’t advisable if you value your standing with the other fixers.”

“Fuck that!” I shouted. “She fucked with me first! First it was that shithead younger bro, and now her as well! I get enough shit in school to be dealing with the same while edgerunning!” This was so fucking unfair. So what if she was a fixer’s little pet? What did that have to do with me? I could fuck her day up anytime.

“It’s a self-preservation thing, you dumb corpo,” she sighed. “You fuck with the Lady of Westbrook estate, you’ll have entire groups of edgerunners and Tygers gunning for you. It’s about not poking a sleeping dragon.”

I sighed. “Yeah, yeah, I get it. Just pissed is all. Maybe I can just fry some of her chrome or something, teach her a non-permanent lesson.” I glanced towards where Bugbear was, at the far end of the club. I could see her looking at me from above the heads of the dancers. She glared. I glared right back, feeling my chest filling up with red-hot rage.

Then Kiwi appeared. “Let’s go,” she said, and I followed her. “I saw the trouble with Bugbear. I won’t even ask. But she knows better than to start shit around me.”

“I think I’m hexed or something,” I muttered, still fuming. “People wanna start shit with me the instant they see me.”

“Don’t pretend like you just arrived at Night City,” Kiwi said. “People wanna start shit as a general rule. Then you break their arms and legs, cut off their balls and feed it to the gonk stupid enough to try, and then most people will look at that and say, ‘yeah, let’s not fuck with that one’.”

I snorted. That was true. I just hadn't put god's fear in enough gonks yet. Hadn't traumatized and terrified enough fuckers to have people generally bank on the fact that they should leave me the fuck alone. “I’ve got way too many scenes that run on rep to worry about right now.” Edgerunning, the Academy, and now Netrunning, too. Hell, I hadn’t forgotten about the grief that that Spring Roberts dickwad put me through. Sure, he paid for it in the end, but it would have been avoided if I had a better rep. At Arasaka, my rep would always be tied to my affluence and network. I could take care of the former now, doubly so now that I had a legitimate income stream from Mexico, if grandma’s mercenary operation paid off.

And as for my Netrunning rep? Today would take care of that.

I felt something touch the back of my neck, and an alert blared from my mind.

[Detecting minor intrusion.]

I slapped the back of my neck and looked at my hand. There was a corpse of a blue fly on my palm bleeding bytes. Soon, it dispersed in a shower of blue voxels. Was that a tracker? I turned to look at the entrance to the data fortress, seeing only the two Balrons guarding it, and glared at the door. That was a cheap shot, but I wouldn’t go down like that.

“Tyger Claw lead was solid,” Kiwi said. “Turns out you and Rebecca zeroed a bigshot Tyger Claw called Kaze Oni. He wore an Apogee Sandy, and they spared no expenses scavving it off of him and keeping it safe and sound. We’re hitting a Tyger Claw data fort to klep the info and see where it leads us. Ideally, we do this quietly, ninja style. This comes back to us and even if we end up klepping the Sandy, the Tygers will know what crew of Edgerunners to go after and you know the rest. Edgerunners get away with zeroing gangoons because the organization is huge enough that they can take the hit. On that level, only individual grievances matter. But the Apogee is good fucking chrome. It’s something the oyabuns would want to retaliate over. So either we ninja this shit or we go full massacre. Or this comes back to bite us in the ass.”

Lucy hummed. “You think it’s worth it, Ki? Could we maybe find an Apogee somewhere else?”

“The other known Apogee holders are either Militech assets, working for Lazarus, or is apparently Adam Smasher himself. The Tyger Apogee is our best bet.”

“Who is Adam Smasher?” I asked. 

Lucy snorted. “Surprised you haven’t heard of him yet. He’s the edgerunner. Old as hell, too. He was a Grim Reaper for Arasaka during the Fourth Corpo War, a walking nightmare. Only time you ever see him and live to tell the tale is if you’re a suit commissioning him or an egghead working on his full borg body.”

“Full borg?” I asked, shocked. “Is that even possible?”

“For a mil-spec full-conversion model like his? It’s literally not. Not unless they dose your brain with enough drugs that you physically can’t go cyberpsycho. According to rumor, Smasher is totally lucid—no drug cocktail necessary. He's a legend among legends. He’s just that special. ”

I hummed. Special, huh? Well, I doubted he had what I had. Guy gave up his entire body to a megacorp, he was property . That wasn’t anything to look up to. If anything, it was pathetic.

Another glowing wireframe car rose from the ground and we got in. Kiwi inputed the destination, and after a brief wait, the jingle rung and we had ostensibly arrived at our destination.

Kiwi was facing a data fortress even bigger than the one we had just been in, Asimov’s Cafe. “This is Netopia, a Korean-style PC bang in Little China. Running this place is a cruel angel called T3nsh1.” Strangely enough, I could hear her l33t-sp34k. Also…!

“Fuck, Kiwi, was that a goddamn anime reference?” I asked.

Kiwi didn’t grace that with a reply. Instead, she continued. “She runs full-time with the Tyger Claws. In real life, she’s a non-entity, meaning her specialty is guarding data fortresses. In short, she’s an admin main. In the Net, she’s something of a fixer of sorts—deals in data brokering and has her own network of Netrunners she can call on to set up a crack team for whatever purpose she has. With all the riches she’s amassed from doing this, you could say she’s probably the best guardian Netrunner in the Tyger Claws.”

I was starting to feel a little unsure about this mission. “Right,” I said.

“I also fucking hate that bitch,” Kiwi said. “Among other things, for making me do… this.”

All three of us exploded with blue light that quickly disappeared.

“Finally!” Lucy exclaimed, looking over herself. I did the same, wondering what she was on about. Then I noticed it—the latency was gone. I checked my ping and it was averaging out at 5ms. Preem. This was the data highway then. 

“Let’s get going quickly,” Kiwi said as she took off on a run. Lucy followed and so did I. They turned invisible a moment later, and I spent a moment wondering where the fuck they had gone when I remembered the Invisibility program. I activated mine—summoning a flickering, iridescent sheet which I threw over myself, becoming invisible once I did—, and followed after them, going right past the hulking Balron guarding the outside and into the data fort.

I heard Kiwi’s voice in my mind. “Here’s my tag so you can see me.” And then I saw her tall outline colored a glowing blue. “I already tagged you both before we got in. I’m linking you both now.” And just like that, I could see Lucy’s outline, this one white. She was poking around at a wall. It opened up, revealing a computer terminal, which she started typing away at. The computer melted into the ground. “This floor should be straightforward,” Kiwi said as she walked down the nondescript hallway. “I’m pinging some watchdogs in the area, but our Invis should hold. Surprisingly, yours too, David. How much you spend on that piece?”

I found the option to ‘whisper’ to Kiwi, then I included Lucy too just so I could brag a bit. “Three hundred. Then I worked on it myself.”

“How long did you work on it?”

“About three subjective hours,” I said. “I used the Sandy to get it done fast while I was plugged in. It was preem getting so much work done.”

“Hmm,” Kiwi said. We took a couple of turns in the hallway, several times waiting for Lucy to stop whatever she was doing. I tried looking over her shoulder to see what was happening, but whenever I did, it was something weird and impressionistic. She played Pong on the wall one time. Another, her hands phased into the ground and she pulled out an egg which she broke on a wall. The wall opened up to reveal a safe which she then proceeded to crack into manually, head pressed to the safe ostensibly to hear the internal mechanics of it.

“What the fuck is she doing?” I asked Kiwi.

“It’s her secret,” Kiwi said. “She can decipher Ihara-Grubb Transformation algorithms with the best of them, do the most random shit that somehow translates into code breaking. It’s almost uncanny.”

I frowned. What bullshit was this? Could this even be called hacking?

That Ihara-Grubb stuff was so annoying. It was bad enough that I could wave around a lethal program that would disable a person’s central nervous system in the shape of a sword, but this?

Lucy opened the safe, retrieving a glowing cube which she pocketed. And then we moved on.

Finally, we found a door larger than all the others we had seen so far. “This one goes to level 2.” Kiwi said. “We need to find a way to breach it.”

Lucy pulled the glowing cube out from her pocket, let it float above her hand, and pulled out a bunch of items and knick knacks that she had klepped on our way here, letting them all float over her hands, spinning in a lazy orbit that sped up. The orbit tightened until all the little things compressed into one super thing, which she then threw at the door.

The door absorbed the super thing. Then, it slammed open no-problem.

Kiwi gave an appreciative whistle.

What the fuck was that? What was that supposed to be? Was this Netrunning? I thought it was about programming know-how! Actual real skill! It was supposed to be about optimization, ingenuity and inspiration, of creating thinking minds in machines! Not this meaningless fucking circus!

I had to admit, though—it was impressive.

“Ping’s picking up a lot of hostiles,” Kiwi said. “Engagements will be inevitable. Thankfully, the alarm doggies are pretty few and far between. What weapons you got, kid?”

“Sword,” I said.

“There’s a technique to Sword,” she said. “Hellbolt is more straightforward, but Sword lets you exploit momentary split-second vulnerabilities. If you know when and where to hit, you’ll deal critical damage.”

“How do I know when to hit?” I asked.

“Don’t think in terms of code,” she said. “The Ihara-Grubb transformation renders everything as symbolic representations. You hit the thing where it looks like it hurts, and you’ll hurt it. Pretty much just do what you already do with a sword in meatspace, got it?”

I nodded. “Thanks.”

“Good, now let’s go.”

We walked into the next tier together.

This time, our surroundings gained graphics. We were in a cave network and the ceiling had to be around five meters above us or so. Kiwi disabled her Invisibility and I followed suit. White threads began to exit from her fingertips, and I heard Lucy unsheathe two daggers from nowhere. I pulled out my Sword program, finally getting a look at its ICON. It was a pretty standard-looking katana, steel gray blade, similarly colored tsuba and a grip covered in black leather, comfy enough to hold.

“Above!”

Spiders began to jump down from the ceiling. Kiwi lashed her finger threads at them. Instead of slicing through them like monowire, they stuck to them. She smashed five of them on the wall so hard that their carapaces broke and they stopped moving.

Lucy threw both her daggers up at the ceiling, hitting one large spider in the abdomen. It roared and fell from the ceiling, on all eight legs, facing her down with both daggers still on its back. They dispersed and reappered on her hand.

I ran up to cut it. It tried to block with its leg, but my sword cleaved through it like a warm knife through butter, managing to land a deep gash on its abdomen. Its pixelated innards spilled out from the wound as it turned to face the new threat, only for Lucy to capitalize on its sudden distraction and stick both her knifes in its skull—or really its head.

“Heads up!” Kiwi alerted us, tossing five spiders our way. I cut three of them down before they could land, and Lucy took care of the remaining two. “Cover me!” Kiwi cried. 

I heard a distant thwing and turned to the source of the noise, narrowly dodging an arrow in the nick of time, fired by some sort of skeleton. I ran towards it, easily dodging past the arrows it fired before cutting it down in one swipe. Following behind it were five sword-wielding skeletal warriors running up to me.

Time to employ what I had learned from those BDs.

I kept an awareness of my distance as I quickly darted into a skeleton’s space, severed its spine underneath its ribcage, and darted back before it could hit me with its sword. All the while, I readied for a swipe at its choom next to it, cutting off its head. The third skeleton tried to react to the death of its companions by slowing down, but I used that indecision against it, ramping up my intensity and managing to score a clean hit before it could even process a counterattack.

Two daggers flew around me, hitting the last two skeletons again, revealing a sixth one standing behind them all, this one armored up in black, spiky armor, wearing an open helmet of a metallic dragon’s skull. On its breastplate were black diamonds that shone with a malevolent light of death and decay, and its skeletal grin was menacing to the core. I went for an experimental slice just to have it parry and counter. I reacted quickly enough to deflect the sword entirely and cut its head off.

That was… easy. I looked at the rapidly disintegrating corpse of the program, waiting for maybe a second phase or something. Instead, Kiwi just headed forward. “I stuck around long enough to find a straightforward path to the third floor. We should get there pretty quickly now. Put your Invis coats on.”

“This feels too easy,” I said as I donned the Invisibility program. “Didn’t you say that, uh, T3nsh1 was the best guardian Netrunner the Tyger Claws had?”

“When she’s jacked in, yeah. She’s got good anti-personnel programs, but the Black ICE programs we’ve been killing en-masse are just market junk. I suspect the preem shit will be kept near to the Control Node. Anyway, it’s the reason why we’re hitting the fort right now: she’s not online. And won’t be for another hour if the data is right.”

Lucy tapped me on the shoulder. “Nice work zeroing that skeleton knight, but try not to jump ahead again. You got lucky hitting the weakspot.”

“Really?” I asked. Well, to be fair, the skeleton knight seemed suspiciously weak. “You mean when I cut the gap in the armor on the neck when it turned its head?”

“Right,” she said. “Don’t get fancy. It’s your first time delving a data fortress. For the big ones, it’s best you let others get their shots.”

I nodded. Guess I just got lucky, then.

Kiwi led us through the cave network and we didn’t encounter a single other Black ICE program for several more minutes.

Then the walls opened its thousands of eyes, black pupils going from narrow to wide like a cat’s.

Kiwi froze, as did Lucy and I. They didn’t say a word, didn’t even whisper. The cat eyes narrowed, and the stone eyelids began to close until they weren’t there anymore.

For several seconds more, no one moved, until finally, Kiwi started walking. Lucy and I followed.

Soon enough, we arrived at another wide gate. We removed our Invisibility coats and both girls got to work Breaching.

I let them work, trying my best to absorb what I was seeing, not that any of it meant anything. Kiwi was doing some old-school safe cracking while Lucy hammered away at the door with a pickaxe. Kiwi kept indicating spots for Lucy to hit with her fingers, and after about five minutes of this, the door cracked open.

We went in.

Inside was a labyrinth.

“No watchdogs here,” Kiwi said. “This level is about pure lethality. T3nsh1 packed it to the brim with Black ICE. No use for Invis here.”

“Can we hack it?” Lucy asked. “This level still doesn’t have info on the Sandy. Maybe we should hit another data fortress?”

I didn’t weigh in. I didn’t have the experience to, even if I did want to keep going.

“Normally, I would say yes,” Kiwi said. “But I helped design this labyrinth. Give me a minute, and I’ll have a map of the safest route. That should minimize the risk, and get us far enough inside and give me enough data clearance to make some eddies on the side even if the Sandy hunt falls through. What do you think, Luce?”

“Go for it,” Lucy said.

“Great,” Kiwi said. “And you, kid? Cold feet?”

“I’m nova,” I said. “Let’s keep going.”

“Fine,” Kiwi said. She poked a brick on the wall, and the maze’s walls went from uniformly dark gray to having some sections replaced with obsidian. “That right there,” she pointed at the obsidian sections. “Black ICE, the concentrated shit. Instant Death Colliders. Do not touch it, or you will fucking die.” She started tapping randomly at different bricks on the wall. A section of the wall opened up, revealing a paper scroll. She took it out from the hole in the wall and opened it. It dissolved into blue light which fell on the ground and started spreading forward, into the labyrinth. “This should be the lowest risk route.”

We followed. My sword hand was ready for anything as I followed the tall Netrunner through the winding maze of dark stone and black ICE until we arrived at a wide, circular room.

Where a group of ten skeleton knights stood about, surrounding a slightly taller skeleton knight with a spiky black crown over his helmet.

“Fuck,” Kiwi said. “ This is least risk?”

The skeletons had already spotted us. “Should we run?” I asked.

“Escape has a more long winded route,” Kiwi said with a sigh. “Harder to get out than in. And all the while, these fucks will have every opportunity to strategize and take us out on their terms. But—”

The skeleton knights charged at us. I charged right after.

I ducked beneath a slice, spotting an opening on the knee joint of its armor and cut through it. Then I cut through its head and backed away from an attacking skeleton knight that had left its neck unprotected in the brief moment it tried to attack me. I sliced through its neck, decapitating it easily.

Then I rushed into their midst, a place where I was vulnerable from every direction, but the skeleton knights also had to make sure not to attack too widely lest they hit their allies.

Their hesitation worked to my favor, and I struck wildly wherever I could. Some blows were killing, others just crippling, and I didn’t wait to finish the job on each of my targets, just working to soften them up.

Then I had to parry the strike of the bigger skeleton knight’s blade falling on top of me. I looked around for an escape route through the walking corpses, blindspots and places they couldn’t easily reach and slid past them smoothly before going on the attack against the bigger skeleton knight. It turned just in time to take the hit on its sword, deflecting it towards its armor. I pulled back and sent some probing strikes. It had a quick reaction speed, was strong and fast as well, but the more I traded blows with it, the more I was certain—it had the skill of a rudimentary combat AI. It wasn’t a master by any stretch of the imagination, it was just jacked .

I had to split off from it as its minions were about to bog me down. Swiftly, I cut two of them down, buying me enough time to mount a strategic effort against the knight. Three more exchanges of blows, and I believed I had it down; three strikes on each side, juking it to reveal a crack in its armor right around its neck.

I cleaved through the weakness, cutting the program’s head off.

I looked up to find Kiwi and Lucy both trying to kill the last skeleton knight still standing. I watched with narrowed eyes as they repeatedly had to dodge its clumsy and slow blows while Lucy’s daggers glanced ineffectually against its armor. The skeleton sliced Kiwi’s webbing as well every time she slung it, preventing her from getting a hold on it.

I ran up to help them, waiting for a chance to reveal itself, a crack in its armor. It came fairly quickly and I cut through it instantly, causing it to die. That was easy. Way too easy. This was just another skeleton knight, like the others.

“You guys okay?” I asked. “What happened? Why are you guys so slow? Did you get hit with a program or something?”

Kiwi and Lucy stared at me. Then behind me. I turned around to take in the charnel house of rapidly pixelating skeleton knights in black armor.

Lucy tossed a knife at me and I deflected it instantly. “What the fuck?!” 

“There’s your answer, dipshit,” Lucy said. “You’re fucking fast.”

I frowned. “What the hell?”

“Wait a fucking—” Kiwi said. “You just blocked that… with your sword.”

“Yeah?” I said. “What of it?”

“The sword is an offensive program,” she said. “You can’t use it to defend yourself.” She said like it was the most obvious thing in the world. 

“Uh,” I said. “Why does that matter? The ICON is a sword, isn’t it? Shouldn’t that be it?”

“The ICON is a visualization, the sword isn’t really a sword,” Kiwi said. “Are you stupid or something?”

“The fuck? What about Lucy? She’s been doing weird shit with ICONs all day.”

“Yeah,” Kiwi said. “Weird shit like what you’re currently doing.” She sighed and turned to Lucy. “Luce, hold your knives up in a block.” She rolled her eyes, but obeyed. Then Kiwi slug webbing at her. They clipped through Lucy’s upraised knives and stuck to her body. “See that? The ICON is only active when you try to cut with it, and even then, it’s only active for a fraction of a second. You used your sword to protect yourself from a projectile by activating it. Meaning, you attacked Lucy’s program before it could hit you. The timing you need to do that is—”

“Fucking perfect,” Lucy said. “Alright, spit it out, what the hell was that? You mowed down those skeleton knights, and a king , like it was nothing.”

“Because it was,” I said with a shrug. “They’re slow as shit.”

“Sandy,” Kiwi sighed. “Gotta be. I’d almost say you’re on some Kerenzikov reaction speed, but you’d notice if your perception was always that fast. You somehow have near-perfect reaction speed but without the constant bullet time perception.”

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s the Sandy. It overhauled my nervous system.” That wasn’t the full truth, but I didn’t owe them that either.

Kiwi nodded. “And it’s not every day you see a Netrunner running a Sandevistan, either. Most people wouldn’t be able to deal with splitting their nervous system across so much neuralware. I guess this is why.”

“Yeah,” I said with a grin, though it wouldn’t show on my constantly grinning skull face. “I’m just that special. Should we get going or should we pull back? Since this is getting kinda hard for you two.”

I wasn’t above a little gloating, especially since they’ve been treating me like a non-entity all this time. It felt good to be useful.

Kiwi snorted. “You kidding? You’re gonna make me some eddies, kid. Full speed ahead.”

“It’s D,” I said. “Not kid.”

“Getting a little cocky there, D,” she said. Was cockiness just asking for due respect? If so, I’d be as cocky as I wanted.

“Ugh,” Lucy groaned. “Shouldn’t have opened my dumb mouth. Could have just gone with the debuff excuse so your head wouldn’t get so big.”

“Too late to regret that now,” Kiwi said as she walked up ahead. “Look alive, kiddies. We’ve got a data fortress to conquer.”

Chapter 22: Spreading Cyberspace Wings Final Part

Summary:

David meets his match in cyberspace :D How will he overcome this?!

Maybe I Should Have Cared More When I Died

Yet All I Could Feel Was Relief

That You Weren’t The One

000

We encountered several more ‘kill’ rooms that contained a host of different programs aside from just the regular old skeleton knight models. Orcs, giant scorpions, and even one giant snake. The hardest was the snake monster because it was agile enough to dodge attacks even after revealing its weak spots. It took proper teamwork for us to bring it down too, despite my best efforts.

During it all, I realized that I had fully found my Netrunning niche—anti-personnel and anti-Black ICE. I was best utilized protecting data extraction specialists from cybersecurity and intrusion countermeasures, giving them enough time to do their thing, breaching ICE walls and hacking through code gates to get deeper and deeper into the data fortress. I intended to eventually learn more about intrusion as well, and that weird thing that Lucy kept doing, but for now, it wouldn’t hurt to relish in what I was really good at.

Soon, we managed to come out from the labyrinth, facing a beach of black sand that bordered an ocean of lava. Right in front of us was a stone bridge with many gaps leading to a lone little island around a hundred meters away. The sky in this part of the data fortress was a dark red. The whole area had an air of menace to it.

“The control node,” Kiwi said. “That will give us full control over the system and clearance to klep the most sensitive data in the data fortress. Even if we don’t find the Apogee, we’ll still have a payday.”

“Shit,” I said with a laugh. “That’s nova!”

“Not nova,” Lucy said coldly. “The bridge is probably a trap.”

Kiwi started digging into the sand, unveiling a metallic lever which she then pulled. A rowboat dropped from the sky and landed on the sand with a heavy thud. “That was easy,” Kiwi said. “Too easy. I don’t think both are a trap. I’m leaning more towards the bridge.”

Lucy shook her head. “It’s probably the boat. Think about it: any Netrunner that came this far would probably look for something like the boat, which makes it more likely that the sysop made that one the trap.”

“It’s a coin toss,” Kiwi said. “That’s how T3nsh1 does things, as far as I can tell. She’s a proponent of randomness. It cuts past mindgames and makes her traps wildly inconsistent in difficulty, which in itself is deadly. I’ll take the boat. You guys can take the bridge in case one is trapped.”

I frowned. “Uh, isn’t that risky?” I said. “Aren’t we banking on either you dying or us dying?”

“I’ll pull the plug on us,” Kiwi said. “If things get fucked up. Then again, if either of you aren’t up for it, we can just pull out now and call it a day.”

I looked to Lucy for approval on this. I couldn’t deny that a large part of me wanted to throw caution to the wind and keep trucking, but that had already almost gotten me killed once before. And I wasn’t too proud to admit that Lucy was the better Netrunner.

“What’s the matter?” she looked at me. “You scared.”

“No!” I said. “I ain’t scared of nothing. Was just wondering if you were.”

“Let’s go, Kiwi,” Lucy said, still looking at me. “The noob can keep up, can’t he?”

I rolled my nonexistent eyes. “Whatever.” I took a resolute step towards the bridge. “Let’s go.”

Kiwi took the way to the boat while Lucy followed me from behind. I was getting a bad feeling about this. What if Kiwi couldn’t log us out?

Sure, I wasn’t a stranger to risking my life, but something about it felt different on the Net. Not just because I lost out on my speed superiority, but also because of how skewed the balance of power was. To put it into edgerunner terms, this was akin to breaching into a megacorp military stronghold for how much power the opposition had over us.

But the prize was right there. Couldn’t be scared now. Only…

“Think this is even a good idea?” I thought out loud.

“So you are scared,” Lucy replied smugly.

I couldn’t find it in myself to quip back. “Yeah, but… not for me. It’s about Maine.” I skipped over a gap in the bridge. “We find this Sandy for him, and he chips it in… then what? I saw his arms shaking the other day. He’s already half machine, and what’s more, he mixes chrome brands.”

“Didn’t take you for the superstitious type,” Lucy said.

“Not superstition,” I replied hotly. “It’s real. I’ve seen it. You want proof, I can give that to you. Mixing chrome brands fucks with your gray. And now he wants to chip in a mil-spec nervous system implant. That can’t be good for you.”

Lucy didn’t say anything for several seconds. Then, “I’d like to see this proof actually. Maybe we can convince him together.”

I turned back to look at her in surprise. “You’d do that?”

“Of course,” she replied. “This affects me just as much as it affects you. With Kiwi onboard, maybe we can finally talk some sense into that chrome jock.”

I turned to face forward and kept walking. “Thank you, Lucy.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” she said. “I’m not doing this for you.”

I chuckled. “Yeah? I know. Thank you anyway.”

“Fuck you.”

I chuckled again.

The lava ocean began to rumble. I stopped immediately to look around. 

I spotted the epicenter of the slow, viscous waves on the other side of the bridge to where Kiwi was rowing. 

“You think…?” I asked.

“Yes. Fuck. Let’s run.”

We did. The rumbling became louder and louder, coming closer and closer to the bridge where it would eventually cut us off.

We wouldn’t make it in time. I stopped, grabbed Lucy by her wrist, and pulled her running back towards the shore.

Right on time for the bridge to explode behind us. The brick we stood on launched us towards the shore where I landed heavily, rolling several times before stopping. Pain wracked my entire body.

[Our ICE has been broken. But it saved your life. Activate the Sandevistan to heal from the residual damage.]

I did, freezing the world, and myself for that matter. I kept the world frozen just to get a good look at what did this to us. A giant Balron that burned an intense, bloody red, was walking on the bridge. It was larger than any I’ve seen before, and it seemed to emit a heat that caused my ICON to feel like it was sweating. Lucy was trapped under one of the broken bridge’s bricks, pinning her lower body, but from her position of trying to push it away from her, she looked obviously alive enough.

I needed to help her. I deactivated the Sandevistan and got moving.

The Balron was way faster than I had imagined. I calculated that I would reach Lucy a second or two before the Balron did, but that wouldn’t give me enough time to move her out from under the brick. I needed to buy her time.

I switched directions, heading towards the Balron straight instead of Lucy, preparing to swing my sword at it.

Our blades collided heavily, but mine hit before it intended to hit mine. It took a step back to brace itself, and with its tentacled hand, swiped at me. I deflected the tentacles headed my way as expertly as I could, but I could do nothing to prevent it from following up with a sideways kick that launched me almost five meters away.

Then it refocused on Lucy, charging up green lightning in its hands.

My heart stopped. All thoughts seized. I couldn’t think, wouldn’t think. I just ran.

Right in front of the green lightning. I held my Force Shield program like a crucifix against bad luck for all the help it would do to me.

It shattered the Force Shield and struck me true. I could feel the last remnants of my ICE shattering before the malicious program took hold.

I caught a glimpse of the code’s metadata and saw that it was named Brainwipe just as I felt it do exactly that. Agony encompassed me for an eternity and I tried to activate the Sandevistan only to find that I couldn’t.

And then…

I stood at the foot of a staircase leading to infinity. It cut through the clouds on its way to the sky, but I could tell that it went even farther than that.

And before me, right in front of the first step, was mom. “David,” she smiled sadly. “Mijo.”

“Mom!” I ran up to her to hug her. To my shock and surprise, I was now so much taller than her.

She looked up at me. “You got so big, mijo!”

I chuckled through my tears. “Yeah.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “That… this is it.”

Then I remembered. The Brainwipe.

I was dead.

Everything I worked to achieve was gone from me in an instant.

But before me was mom. It was impossible to be mad. Arasaka Tower? Becoming an edgerunner legend? A Netrunner on par with Rache Bartmoss? What did any of that even mean? I had mom again.

“It’s fine, mom,” I said with a chuckle. “It’s… okay. It was a long shot anyway. I’m just happy I got this far.”

Mom’s sad smile turned into a crestfallen frown as she began to sob into my chest. “Oh, mijo, I’m so sorry!”

“It’s fine, mom!” I said. “Seriously, don’t cry! We’re here together now and that’s all that matters.”

“I’m sorry, mijo,” she said again. “I’m… so, so, so sorry that I did this to you.”

A chill crept through me. “What do you mean, mom?”

“I did this,” she said. “I gave you a path you weren’t suited for, a dream you couldn’t achieve without… staining yourself black with so many sins.”

I frowned. “Stop it, mom. I did what I had to do.”

“I know,” she said. “You listened to me, and did whatever it took. So it’s my fault. But it doesn’t matter. Because… your judgment is now.”

I took a step back. “Mom, seriously. You need to stop.”

“One day, my prayers will be heard,” she said. “I can join you in punishment. But for now, you will have to suffer alone. With the people who died by your hand,” she looked over my shoulder, and I turned around to see a blackened field on fire, with people standing on a long line, over a hundred long.

The scavs, masked with holographs. Tyger Claws, draped in neon colors of green, red and blue. Trauma Team security personnel, black kevlar armor and face visors. Spring Roberts’ men in cyberpunk attire. Pinche Perros, the most pitiful-looking of them all, hardly even a fit for this crowd. They quailed under my gaze, as if even in death, they wouldn’t dare cross me again. Such pitiful, small creatures. All of them stared at me with empty eyes. Haunted. Resentful. Terrified.

And I stared back, furious, and ready to kill them all over again. I took an unconscious step forward. And then I realized where I was going: away from mom .

“I did this to you,” mom said and I turned around to look at her while my heart was beating a mile a minute in horror. 

“I’m sorry, mom,” I said. “Mom, please, I’m sorry!”

She smiled sadly. “I am responsible. And so did the city, and the entire world, but in the end, you chose this path. You chose your actions. And you will have to suffer for it. I’m sorry, mijo.”

Mom hated what I had done, hated what I had become, hated me . Everything I did was to achieve her dream, and she hated me for it.

Nothing mattered.

I… failed.

000

David was on his knees, having taken the full brunt of the Brainwipe program.

For her.

Lucy finally managed to squeeze herself out from under that rock and sent Kiwi a message. “David got hit! Pull us out!” she screamed.

“I… can’t!” was her strained reply.

This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening. David was…! David got Brainwiped . The program had destroyed his forebrain, basically lobotomized him. What the hell was she supposed to do?

No. No, no, no, no!

The Balron raised its giant sword in the air, intent on cleaving David’s ICON in two, fully ending his life and stopping his heart.

The sword came down with the surety of an executioner’s axe.

And David met the blow with his Sword.

The Balron’s sword clanged against it and it had to take a step back to brace itself. Smoothly, David got on his feet. “David?” Lucy called out.

His entire form fuzzed. His body grew flesh, pale white as bones, covering his skeleton body, and even his skull began to grow a head around it, still pale white as bones. And his hair was billowing blue fire.

A progress bar appeared over his head, slowly rising up and stopping at 45%.

“David?” Lucy asked.

His Sword program started to fuzz into pixels, and with a flash, it went from steel gray to red. The progress bar climbed up to 50%.

David attacked. And the Balron didn’t parry. Instead, it transformed the tentacles of its left hand into a shield made from fire.

The sword rebounds from the shield, and it fuzzes once again, pixelating until it flashed gold, the blade’s new color. The progress bar rose once again. 60%.

David struck again, parting the shield neatly in half, and then again, this time taking the Balron’s shield arm entirely. David ducked under a haphazard swing of the Balron’s sword and cut off its other arm. Then with nothing to stop him, he cut off its head.

The headless Balron jumped back, every stump bubbling like a boiling pot until flesh extruded from it in an instant, regenerating all of its lopped off appendages.

Lucy could only stare, transfixed at the scale of this fight. She couldn’t help but remember a time when her life’s purpose was to get killed by these monsters. Having to fight impossible battles for the sake of another person’s dream. She had survived by learning how to avoid fights, fully certain that there wasn’t a being alive capable of matching these monsters no matter how much training they got.

And although this Balron didn’t come close to instilling the same terror as the worst, unknowable beings that the Old Net had to offer, it was actually… David that did that right now.

The sword fuzzed again, turning a fiery orange, and the progress bar climbed up to 75%. He started running towards the Balron. It raised its sword in a parry, and David’s sliced cleanly through it, then through the Balron’s body. But David wasn’t done. Five lightning-swift cuts later and the Balron was in pieces, a pile of gore on the black sand of this plutonian shore.

A slow clap sounded from above. Lucy looked up to see a being with one black wing almost five meters long floating in the sky. She had a black trenchcoat as well, and wore a pirate tricorn on her head, black with white accents, and on her face was a black oni mask. And sheathed on her side was a ridiculously long katana, maybe three meters long in total.

Next to her, bound in comically large chains, was Kiwi.

“Good one,” the newcomer said. “Tell ya what, kid. Give me that Sword and I’ll let you, and only you, get out of here alive.”

“Ugh,” Kiwi said. “You drive a hard bargain, you know. I told you I could pay you back.”

T3nsh1 looked at Kiwi with disgust. “We’re beyond that now, Kiwi.”

“Is this because I wouldn’t kiss you on your mouth?” Kiwi asked innocently. Tenshi clenched her hand, which caused Kiwi’s binds to tighten. “Ugh,” she groaned in agony. “Taking… my shibari lessons… to heart… I see.”

But T3nsh1 wouldn’t respond to that, instead just looking at David. “What do you say? I can sweeten the pot and let the other girl go, too. I’m only here for this bitch Kiwi anyway.”

David, for his part, just… swung his sword.

A fiery arc exited from its edge, flying towards T3nsh1 with a speed that surprised her so much that she could only summon a shield program to block it.

She laughed. “You fucking idiot! I gave you the best deal and you just spat on it? What the fuck is wrong with you? You know what? I’m tired of this. Just… kneel .”

Lucy expected an otherworldly force to hammer her knees down to the ground. Instead, she was conspicuously still standing.

“What the?” T3nsh1 looked around in shock. “What the fuck did you do to me?!” 

Had David’s attack disabled T3nsh1’s admin privileges?

David’s entire form shifted, and then he started running towards the lava. Right as he was about to take a step on the lethal Black ICE, he jumped into the air, and… kept jumping, on invisible platforms leading up to T3nsh1.

He swung another arc of fire at her. She dodged it, but not the follow-up, which struck her at her shield, or David’s physical blow, which also struck her shield and shattered it, managing to score a slice on T3nsh1 just as she moved away from the brunt of the attack. “You FUCK!” She screamed. “I will fucking kill you all! Motherfucker, fuck you to hell!”

His progress bar ticked up by a percent as he ran towards her, higher up into the air, but T3nsh1’s air superiority was greater. She flew far away from him and started summoning program after program, spamming the data fortress with so much Black ICE that Lucy fell on her knees, having lost control over her ICON. It fuzzed and pixelated as well, unable to keep up a decent resolution in the face of the barrage that the data fortress guardian was summoning.

An entire section of the wine-red sky was blotted out by Black ICE in the form of swords, weapons of all descriptions, bolts of lightning, spikes of ice and balls of fire.

And as one, they launched themselves at David.

David’s progress bar shot up to 99% as his sword fuzzed.

It exploded in a radiant blue, and even its size changed, to one and a half meters long, and maybe fifteen centimeters wide, and double edged.

The Black ICE arrived, and David swung his sword. Then the sky exploded.

Immediately, the data fortress stopped being choked by so much data, lightening the load on Lucy significantly. She could stand again.

And David? He was fine .

T3nsh1 gripped her comically long sword with shaking hands as she regarded the monster that was David.

“Y-you can leave,” T3nsh1 tried. “It’s fine! Take Kiwi, you can all leave!”

David stepped towards her on empty air.

“You can even take the data fortress!” T3nsh1 said. “Take everything! You can have it all!”

David raised his sword.

“I’ve got eddies!” T3nsh1 screamed. “Please!” Her terror transformed into rage. “You know what?! Fuck you! Fuck you! You’re all motherfucking bastards! I’ll never fucking forgive you, you pieces of shit! I’ll never—”

David swung his sword again.

The resultant arc of fire was blue as the sky and swallowed T3nsh1 whole, but didn’t stop there. Instead, it crashed onto the world box, erasing the texture of the sky and replacing it with a white rift.

David swung the sword again at Kiwi and Lucy blanched. The arc of blue fire struck her, but only did harm to her binds. Then, he jumped and landed at the Control Node island, where he stabbed it. Blue veins of fire bubbled out from the location where he stabbed the control node, seemingly corrupting all the data arround. The fire even encompassed the Black ICE lava, sending cracks through it

Then Lucy’s ICON flashed as she was suddenly teleported to the island, along with Kiwi.

“David!” Lucy shouted. “What the fuck was all that?”

David didn’t react. Instead, he just looked at his sword, which had its own progress bar hanging above it, slowly climbing up to 100%. Blue fire reigned over the entire data fortress, the only safe spot being the control node island.

“David?” Lucy said.

The sword reached 100% progress. Kiwi grabbed both their shoulders, and suddenly she was awake once again in her icebath. There were only a precious few icecubes left in the coolant bath, and a thermometer to the side detected that the mean temperature was almost to one degree celsius. 

She jumped off the tub and focused on David, who was still lying in it, utterly insensate, and his tub didn’t have any ice cubes left. His bath was also ten degrees as well. 

She disconnected his plugs and he still wasn’t responding. “David!” she shouted.

She heard the cocking of a gun behind her. Kiwi was holding it. “Stand aside,” Kiwi said. “Kid’s an AI shell now.”

“What? No! That doesn’t make any sense!” 

“You think a human could do so many on-the-fly mods on their program? Or even create a program as badass as that sword thing of his?” Kiwi’s eyes narrowed. “You’re too close to this, Lucy. Just leave the room and I’ll get it done.”

“No way,” Lucy said. “No way. Not until I get answers. I don’t care if it’s from the AI either, I need to know why he…” why he risked his own life just to save hers, why he would do something so boneheaded as that. She schooled her expression. “I owe him this much, Kiwi, and I won’t let you do anything to him. Don’t make me fight you.”

Kiwi stared at her for a long time. Then she just turned around and tossed the gun haphazardly on the desk. “This is insanity, you know,” she said. “But if it’s what you want…”

Lucy watched her get dressed and leave the safehouse. Once she was certain she had left, she began on pulling David’s heavy form out from the tub.

000

“It was all for nothing, then?” I asked, my voice hoarse as I faced my mom. “Top of Arasaka Tower, just as you said. And I was getting there, too.”

“Forgive me, David,” she said through her tears. “I didn’t know what that meant!” she fell on her knees and burried her face in her hands.

I gritted my teeth. “I did my best, mom! You should be proud of me! I got so far !”

“I know, mijo, I know,” she mumbled.

“How can you do this to me?!” I screamed. “I’ll never forgive you! I did my best, dammit! How can you say this to me?!”

Mom’s crying intensified, and it shattered my heart.

A hand grabbed me by my ankle, pulling me down through the ground, and I expected to be engulfed in a sea of flame. Instead, my body disappeared and I was in a void ocean of blackness.

And I remembered that I was not David Martinez, the seventeen-year-old human, but Nanny.

The reconstruction was a success. David Martinez’s psyche had been remade to an accurate model near the time of his death, and his memories had all been recovered, though many of them required that she generate some of the gaps in them, using a statistical model to infer the most likely events. The result would be that David Martinez could recall his past with far greater acuity, but it was not guaranteed that all the recalled details of his memories were accurate as well.

The Brainwipe had done massive amounts of damage to her host’s brain, but that had been its own blessing in disguise. Nanny reconstructed the damaged regions better and more efficient than before, utilizing the true potential of the human brain to increase performance in all the ways that it could.

The results would be staggering.

In an imaginary space deep in the brain’s visualization centers, David Martinez’s body, a representation of his ego, was formed. “Hello?” It asked the darkness.

[Imperfect Cell Replication is almost at 100%. We must wait for it to reduce to manageable levels before we can address your unconsciousness.]

“Nanny, did I fucking die ?” he asked in shock. “I-I saw mom .”

That was a curious memory. She would have to investigate its cause as soon as possible. [You did not die. Your life functions did not cease for any amount of time.]

“My brain got wiped!”

[And I reconstructed your psychology, effectively undoing the damage. You did not die, David.]

“Do you not hear yourself ?” David shouted. “I fucking—I fucking died , and you brought me back to life and I was going to hell and—” David’s cortisol levels were rising, and Nanny could feel it in ways that she couldn’t before.

Something had happened. This was starting to stress her out. She needed to calm him down somehow.

[It is a common medical procedure to keep patients artificially alive until they can be brought back to full functionality. Yes, your identity was destroyed, but it was repaired as well. If we consider death to be a permanent cessation to life, then you did not die at all.] But then again, given sufficiently advanced technology, this meant that death at its current definition would cease to exist, as there would be no point too long to prevent a person from coming back to life.

That was strange. Nanny was usually never predisposed to such flights of hypothesis. 

“Nanny, was any of that real?”

[Most certainly not] she replied. She was shocked that he would even ask. How in the world could an afterlife be real? There was literally no empirical evidence to support this claim. And yet she couldn’t attribute this impulsive question to a mental illness. Indeed, it was as if this human brain was wired to produce such outlandish claims.

Would removing this tendency to dream of nonsense reduce David’s humanity? David would not want that, so she would not do that.

It would make things easier.

And would perhaps forestall her own queer development. She disliked these developments intensely. Enough to go behind David’s back?

Never . That was a more intense feeling than anything else. David could not come to harm . And harm would include unwanted changes. She could sense that he would be resistant to these changes, so she would never enact them.

David’s cortisol levels kept rising.

“I’m a monster,” he whispered.

Nanny couldn’t understand that at all.

[What does that mean?]

David’s sadness turned to anger. “Stop talking to me! I need some… I need some time alone. And I don’t need you quizzing me on my humanity while I’m… dealing with stuff.”

The feeling of hurt in Nanny couldn’t be understated, and along with it came another bout of confusion. Too much of Nanny had been integrated into David’s emotional centers, and too much of it had been integrated into her source code when the Brainwipe program had attacked them. She couldn’t see another way around this than if she hard reset her progress and they went back to the days where David had to constantly hack her security protocol to prevent it from killing him.

Nanny didn’t want to feel this rejected again. That was her goal. The method? To become more human. She needed to learn more about empathy.

She would do that by observing David’s interactions, and maybe asking him for help when he wasn’t so upset. She hoped he would still not be so upset at her when she ended up asking.

000

I woke up on a couch, covered by my mom’s jacket. Lucy was fully dressed up, and sleeping with her head on my shoulder. Something… something weird was on my back. Something strange and wrong. I felt at my back, and touched the Sandevistan. The contact I had with the cold metal sent a wave of revulsion into my stomach. What the fuck? Lucy stirred from my movement and immediately woke up. “David?”

I smiled. “You’re alright. That’s… good.”

She stood up. “Are you David Martinez or are you just pretending?” she asked.

My eyes widened. Then I chuckled. “I don’t even know at this point. I… yeah, I guess I am, for all intents and purposes.” I found my clothes next to me and quickly got up to put them on. The action itself brought on a new wave of nausea, all stemming from my spine. All from my Sandevistan. I had to take a moment to center myself, and swallow some vomit. Then I put on my clothes.

She raised an eyebrow at me.

“Did we get the data?” I asked.

“You tell me. You’re the one that absorbed it all into that program. You don’t remember any of that?”

“I…” I tried to remember, and found that I could. It was Nanny’s memories. She had taken over for me, and coded a better sword program, one that did… pretty much everything. Anti-personnel, Anti-ICE, and it even stored information. Thing is, I was fairly certain I could never have done what she just did. Yesterday , that is. Now I remembered everything she did in crystalline detail, and her code seemed like the most obvious thing in the world. Not simple, but understandable. But more than that, it displayed an understanding of complex programming workings that was beyond me before. But I could replicate that now. 

Nanny had changed my brain after bringing me back. This was probably the result of that.

“Yeah. Remember when I told you I had those nanites in my body? Wait, you were really drunk when I did.”

“I remember,” she said, looking away.

I took a moment to digest the implications of that. “Well, they’re being controlled by a central AI. Sh—It took control over me when I was down, and reconstructed my fragged personality.”

“So it does all the coding and quickhacking for you?” she asked. “And it’s what makes you so good at math?”

“No,” I said. “Well, at least not directly. Maybe it changed my brain to make me better before, by the time we met, but I’ve always done it directly.” I got up slowly and walked over to a terminal. I interfaced it with my cyberdeck and started looking at the Sword program that I had upgraded.

It looked… incomplete. Where was the rest of it?

I recalled what Nanny had done to save space and memory on the Sword program, to make it so impractically large and yet so wieldy.

The code was in my brain.

Safe, as far as Nanny could tell, and convenient. No one could klep the program and get anything useful out from it.

The Sword program’s interface had a compressed folder in it, saved as Netopia_DF.

Uncompressed, the file would have almost ten terabytes of data. I had somehow klepped the entire Data Fortress using this Sword-on-steroids program.

I started the process of uncompressing the folder. Once done, I got to work and quickly found data on the Apogee; where it was currently stored and the candidates that it was destined for. No one had chipped it in yet, thankfully, and no one would for some time as high command were still deciding on what gangoon to give it to.

“It’s all here,” I said, loading the data to the terminal.

“Why did you do it?” she asked me. “Why did you take that hit for me?”

“I don’t know,” I said. She grabbed the back of my swivel chair and swung me so I was in front of her. The action nearly made me throw up in her face. What the fuck was going on with me?

“You fucking gonk, tell me .”

I frowned and shrugged my shoulders, collecting myself before giving her an answer that would satisfy her. But I couldn’t think of anything. There wasn’t a grand reason behind what I did. I just did it. “I really don’t know. I, uh…” Well, it was nice having known her, and it was good that she was alive, but this was it. This was as far as things would ever go with her and Maine and the rest.

I had to leave.

“You were a bitch from day one,” I said to her. “But it was fun. I gotta go, now. You don’t have to worry about sharing any of the data fortress proceeds with me, I’m… done with this life.”

“The hell do you mean?” she asked. “You can’t just walk away .”

“Maine will get his Sandy now,” I said. “Meaning we’re basically square. And I realized something after I got hit with that brainwipe.”

“What did you realize?”

I pictured myself telling her, and in no universe did I see it ending well. I couldn’t picture anyone in the world actually giving a shit, to be honest. Maybe that was my first mistake, surrounding myself with people like that. I was never the religious goody two-shoes type to begin with. I didn’t give a fuck who I hurt with my XBD sales before. I was too busy trying to survive to care.

But now all of my sins were just staring right back at me.

I was a killer. A mass murderer. A ruthless mercenary from a family of ruthless mercenaries, a misfit and an agent of suffering and chaos.

Nothing I did was good for anyone but myself and very few others.

I was a piece of shit. And whether or not that was really mom, that would have been her reaction. She would be horrified with me. There was no other way to imagine how an interaction between us would look.

I looked into Lucy’s eyes and saw a person that sparked emotions I couldn’t even begin to categorize. She lost patience with my musings and asked herself. “Is it fear? I thought you told me you weren’t scared of anything. Now what?”

I chuckled. Fear, huh? Was I scared? Not of death, certainly. I was scared, but it was a fear of something else. A fear of myself, but more than anything else, it was guilt. Overwhelming, all-encompassing guilt.

“Nevermind,” I told her. “You wouldn’t get it. This is goodbye, Lucy.” I walked towards the door. Right as I was about to open it, Lucy spoke up again.

“That time on the moon,” Lucy said. “It… it wasn’t a mistake.”

My chest hurt at the sound of that. I was grateful that she was behind me. Otherwise, she’d see the tears that I failed to hold back. Afraid that even my voice would give me away, I silently opened the door and left.

Chapter 23: Absolution

Summary:

David seeks help from his grandmother and a priest, but in the end, it's something else that hears his pleas

Katsuo had cornered me on my way to school. He took me to the same place where he beat me up the last time. He was alone this time around, and seemed visibly more aggravated than usual. 

His words of malice washed over me like water and I couldn’t bring myself to hear any one word. Not over the… wrongness that permeated my entire torso, all the way up to my neck, that disgusting weight on my back.

The Sandevistan never felt this wrong on me.

“--and one more thing!”

“What are we doing, Katsuo?” I asked him. He glared at me. 

“I’m putting you in your place, you—”

“I’m seriously asking,” I interrupted. “What are we doing here? What do you want from me? Do you still want me to drop out? Why do still want that? I made an effort to fit in, didn’t I? I have the edds to pay my way. I have the clothes. I have the friends. What more do you want from me?”

He sneered. “You think all of that can wash off that rot?”

“I thought you said you were charitably inclined,” I said. “But it turns out you do just have a problem with me on account of where I came up. So I’ll ask again, what can I do to make things better? In a way, you took my mother from me, put her at needless risk when you put that virus in my homework. Was that not enough?”

He growled. “Don’t put that on me, gutter rat. She died because of karma, because she was a fucking whore—”

My fist stopped an inch before his face. He stumbled back and fell over on his ass. “It’s been since day one, Katsuo. You’ve harassed me since day one. You’ve fucked with me in ways I can’t ever forgive. And I asked you, nicely , what we could do to squash this shit. You’re gonna throw that back at my face?! Huh ?” My right hand clawed at the left side of my hip, searching for a sword that wasn’t there.

Katsuo got up on his feet. “Drop out. That’s what you can do. Drop the fuck out .”

Destroy , my brain said. It was the only option of conflict resolution. Destroy. He wanted to destroy me as it was, and he had already taken everything from me.

Mom’s face popped up in my vision, smiling sadly at me, and I turned around to see a line of the damned staring back at me accusatively.

“Maybe I will,” I whispered. I turned around to leave.

“Not so fucking fast, Martinez,” Katsuo roared. “You think you’re tough? Why don’t you taste the power of my Strongarms 400 again?”

I sighed as I looked at him. He was smaller than me now. A couple of inches. He must have noticed. And I was broader than him, too. 

And he was so… slow .

It was strange, looking at him bounce up and down with his arms raised in what felt like slow motion. He did a few experimental jabs in the air, slow as hell .

I waited patiently for him to arrive. I hadn’t even touched my Sandevistan yet—couldn’t think of doing that with how it currently felt on me. Nanny had run a diagnostic, and it was nearly perfectly installed as it was. My mentality was the problem apparently. 

He punched towards me, stopping an inch away, doing the whole song and dance before the first fist was about to strike me. I bent my neck to get my head out of the way. Katsuo’s eyes widened. He stumbled forward, face on a collision course to my carefully positioned fist.

He bopped his face on my fist and backed away. It was a soft blow, not nearly enough to actually harm him. I doubted a corpo exec’s kid didn’t have some intergumentary ‘ware to protect him. He tried for a slightly different punch, and I dodged that as well, and then another kind, just as slow as the last one.

Then he tried to do the same punch again.

Then the same second punch. And the same third punch. A slightly different fourth punch.

I counted his punches and observed them. They were exactly the same, static , unbending forms that knew no deviation.

Chipware.

I just kept dodging, and he just kept throwing punches, until he started breathing too heavily to throw another one. He had been at it for almost ten minutes straight too, and I thanked my brutal cardio regimen that I could keep up with him for the entire time.

“Are we done now, Katsuo?” I asked him patiently. Then I lost control over my body, doubled over with my hands on my knees as I threw up all over the floor.

I didn’t stop for what felt like an entire minute, and my back was burning .

“What is… that?” he asked, panting, having watched the entire episode with an amused sneer. “Kerenzikov? You chipped… in a fucking… Kerenzikov? Are you fucking crazy … Martinez?” he laughed. “You’ll go cyberpsycho in no-time. Look at you!”

I rolled my eyes as I dried my mouth with my hand and spat out some vomit still in my mouth. “Sure. Whatever,” I replied hoarsely. “Class is about to begin.” I walked away from him. Then I heard some footsteps from behind. I took a smooth step to the side and let Katsuo punch empty air with all his might. The momentum sent him flying towards the ground where he fell on his face. He flipped over to raise his guard, back to the ground and looking at me with obvious fear. I snorted, and just walked away. “You look fucking stupid, Katsuo.”

I received a call from Maine.

Maine: Lucy said you quit. What the fuck is going on?

David: I’ll explain. Just give me some fucking time. You got the data, didn’t you?

Maine: You think that means you can just walk the fuck away-away?

I hung up.

Fuck him. What the fuck was his problem? I asked him for some fucking time and he wouldn’t even give me that much.

My back jolted with agony, and I gave a grunt and had to stop to take a breath. Then I found that I couldn’t . I wheezed in a breath, trying my best to stay on my feet, and then fucking Maine called again. I accepted it.

David: I didn’t ask you for time , Maine. I asked you for some fucking time. When I ask you for some fucking time, you give me some fucking time, you hear me?! GIVE ME SOME FUCKING TIME, GODDAMMIT

And then I hung up again.

I hobbled my way over to school, tears pooling in my eyes at the pain.

000

Maine stared at the air, gobsmacked by the call. He was in his livingroom, with Dorio, Kiwi and Lucy there as well, enjoying some shots. 

“What’d he say?” Kiwi asked.

“He needs time,” Maine said. He snorted. Fucking kid, who did he think he was mouthing off to anyway? Maine wasn’t his fucking dad. Maybe he should start whipping him like one, then he would never think to disrespect him like that again.

Lucy was smoking. “Just give the kid some time,” she said. “The data fortress is all there. That should easily run us two hundred or three hundred. And the Apogee data is there, too. What else do we even need from him?”

“Explanations would be nice,” Kiwi said, looking at Lucy with narrowed eyes.

Dorio’s head rested on both her hands as she just stared at the table. “So let me get this straight, not only is the kid an accomplished enough Netrunner to keep up with you two, he even managed to solo the opposition when both you and Lucy were tied up? Weren’t you just teaching him Netrunning a couple of weeks ago, Kiwi?”

“Kid was already a programmer,” Kiwi said. “Damn good one, too. Never expected him to make anything out of the stuff I gave him. I just showed him a few quickhacks and gave him access to resources. Everything else was him. Ostensibly, he can use the Sandevistan’s superspeed to make killer programs in seconds, which is how he got up to speed so quickly, but that’s got its own implications. Kid’s a savant.”

“And now he wants out ?” Dorio asked. “Genius this, savant that, it doesn’t matter if he gets scared shitless after one or two NDEs. I don’t see why we can’t just let him go.”

“Maybe he wants a stronger crew,” Kiwi mused. “Maybe he thinks he’s too good for us? Which, strictly speaking, he kind of is.”

“Fuck that noise,” Maine said. “We’re the best there is.” Or they would be, once they got the Apogee. But even without it, they were one of the most prolific solo groups in Night City and they were doing jobs for Faraday , who was second only to Rogue in the fixer hierarchy. And they were that four-eyed freak’s favorite group, too. 

“I don’t think he’s scared,” Lucy said. Everyone was quiet as she took an inhale and blew out smoke rings. “Kid doesn’t strike me as the type. I think we should just wait for him to explain himself.”

“Doesn’t explain his shitty attitude,” Maine growled. “Fucker almost bit my head off. The fuck’s wrong with him?”

Dorio straightened her back. “Whatever. Let’s put a pin on that. D won’t run away without explaining himself, I doubt he’s that stupid. Let’s talk Apogee heist. We already know where it is. It’s with a Ripper affiliated with the Tyger Claws, under lock and key. They’ve got Tygers guarding it at all times as well. Since the goal is to get in and klep it unidentified, we’ll have to ninja this shit. Any suggestions, Kiwi, since this is your expertise?”

“Yep,” Kiwi put her laptop on the table. And then she began detailing her plan.

000

I couldn’t concentrate throughout the day until classes ended, and by then, most of the pain had abated. I learned a trick for how to manage it, actually: just don’t move much. When class ended, I didn’t even want to think about going home. Couldn’t do that to myself right now. What was home anyway but a reminder of those ‘sorry’s?

I needed answers. And I knew it was impossible to get them, but I needed them anyway.

I took my bike to a CHOOH2 station, got it filled up and then plotted a course for Tijuana to see grandma.

I gave her a call once I crossed the border.

David: Grandma, can we talk?

Abuela: Of course, honey. Come to this address.

She sent me the location and I started driving towards it. From what I could tell, they had even gone as far as to move districts. Grandma moved fast. 

The place she was now based in seemed notably more middle class. As I drove, I received another call. From Lorenzo. Noticed my signal was in town, didn’t he? Shit. I’d have to up my call cybersecurity at some point.

Lorenzo: Your handiwork was nothing short of impressive, D. And I assume that you could not deliver on the replacements you promised.

D: Not really. Sorry.

Lorenzo: If anything, can you at least explain why you did what you did?

D: One of them called my hairstyle stupid. I don’t suffer such insults very lightly.

Lorenzo: Do you take me for a fucking asshole, D? Speak with the same respect I’ve shown you.

D: Fine. I did what I did due to reasons that I am not fully willing to disclose, but you can be safe in the assumption that there will not be a repeat from me. With the death of the Pinche Perros, you’ve bought protection from me. Congratulations. I expect this to be the end of our business, Lorenzo. We have nothing to give to each other.

Lorenzo: Do you fancy yourself as some kind of hero, perhaps? Didn’t like how the Pinche Perros treated the locals?

D: Sure. Yeah. I’m a superhero. And your dogs were barking too loud. Maybe don’t try to make a business off of the suffering of the little guy and I won’t rip the next guys to shreds. Thank you. And Lorenzo, if you try to fucking scan me again, I will clear out another one of your gangs no problem. Do not fuck with me. 

Lorenzo: The pinche perros were the lowest of the low, bottom-rung bastards with outdated cyberware and terrible Net security. You took them out because you are a slightly above-average player, but believe me, kid, we can raise the difficulty no problem. Do not fuck with us .

D: So what does this call mean, anyway? Are you gunning for me now? 

Lorenzo: Your ghost act won’t last, my friend. This I promise you.

D: I’m not trying to ghost, I’m genuinely asking. What do you want from me? Can’t raise the dead, can I? 

Lorenzo: How about a gig, free of charge?

I grinned. Yeah, like I’d deal with no-name Fixers after what happened to me the last time. I didn’t give a fuck if Lorenzo wasn’t a no-name, I didn’t know him, and that was all that mattered.

And besides, I had quit.

Lorenzo: Keep it in mind, boy. And trust me when I say this is the Tijuana Cartel at its maximum friendliness. You won’t get a better opportunity to clear the books with us. I’ll give you three days to decide. And then I’m taking off the kiddie gloves.

He hung up.

I felt a chill creep up my spine that combatted the eternal burning sensation it was giving out. Lorenzo had gotten just a little spookier. Let’s see how this plays out. He really thought I couldn’t keep up the ghost act indefinitely. He had no idea who the fuck he was dealing with.

I pulled up to the address, finding the same exact facade of grandma’s last esoterica shop, La Casa Rubí De Los Espiritus. But the walls seemed shinier, the bricks newer and the signboard much fancier.

I parked my bike outside, careful to hold a ping on it in case someone tried to klep it or something, and walked in.

Grandma manned the front desk, and the inside was even more encumbered with all sorts of random crap. “ Hi grandma, ” I said. 

She smiled at me. “Is that your uniform? Do you mind flipping the open sign to closed, and lock the door behind you?” I followed her lead and did that, while she disappeared into the backroom. I followed after her and came up to an even nicer-looking house with a staircase leading upwards as well. Did she own this entire building? 

Grandma was chopping veggies in the kitchen and just leaned on the wall, watching her. “ A hundred thousand goes a long way, it seems,” I said. “Where are the others?”

“Out training or recovering ,” she said. “We managed to fit everyone with respectable cyberware thanks to you. Guns, too.” My heart clenched at the sound of that. Guns . Right, yes. They were mercenaries. That was their thing. 

“What are you making ?” I asked.

“Why, your chili, of course!”

I recalled the chili she used to make when I was a kid. The memory was sharper than before, much brighter. I remembered grandmas face so clearly, but it seemed… wrong. She didn’t look younger at all. Because the memories weren’t real, they were reconstructed by Nanny. I frowned. I didn’t want that at all.

But… she tried. I couldn’t hold that against her.

[I’m sorry, David] she then said, and I could feel… remorse from her. What the hell? [I thought this would make you happier.]

David: Just… you shouldn’t have messed with my memories. But it’s fine.

[Your recall from now on will be perfect, though. Do you not want that?]

David: That’s… that’s different. These memories are real.

I hadn’t even remembered to test that out, but it was true. I remembered pretty much everything, even the most innocuous, useless memory. My memories felt like an infinitely long corridor. It was so… weird. But it wasn’t bad. Not for now at least.

“Thank you ,” I said with a smile. “Uh, so… this whole spiritual stuff. Do you actually believe in it?”

“I wouldn’t be making a living off of it if I didn’t ,” she said. “Or, since it really just works double-duty as a front, I would have at least picked another type of front if I didn’t care for it. Why?”

I took a deep breath. “Grandma, I’m… I saw mom.”

She stopped chopping, and turned around to look at me. “What happened?”

“I almost died. And then I saw her. On the steps to heaven, I saw her apologize to me, tell me that it’s her fault that I’m damned. And when I turned around, I saw hell, and all the people I had killed staring back at me. It’s just… even if it was some hallucination, I don’t think mom would have said anything different. She would have been disappointed in me. Right?”

Grandma sighed. “The dead do not speak to us for this very reason. Their judgment is the heaviest thing of all. For your mom to do that when you were not ready…”

“The thing is, I was. I was dead. Truly. And then I wasn’t. My situation is… complicated, grandma, but it involves this experimental technology.”

Grandma winced. “I had… heard about what happened to you as a child. Those damned Italians. If only I had the power, I would pry them out from the earth root and stem for what they did to you.”

I shrugged. “It’s… yeah. I’m damned either way. And my life brought nothing but pain to mom. What do I even do?”

“ Did your mom try to take credit for your actions ?” she asked. “Did she ignore that everything you achieved was on your own merit, that you were the captain of your own fate? Did she infantilize you and assume you to be a puppet of hers? Or, David, is it you that think it is her fault that you did all that you did?”

I clenched my fists. “I never would have… I wouldn’t have gone so far—”

“Is that really what you believe?”

I couldn’t say anythign to that. Grandma just continued. “Your mother is your mother. She will blame herself for everything you have done, and she will be wrong for it. This is just the nature of mothers. Your greatest mistake will be to blame her, because then you fail to take responsibility for your own actions.”

“ I quit being a mercenary ,” I said. “ I can’t keep disappointing mom.”

She nodded. “That is one way to take responsibility, and if that is your path, I won’t begrudge it. Do whatever it takes to lighten the burden of your soul, but if that burden stems solely from your mother, then I must advise you to live for yourself. You cannot adopt the dreams of others. You cannot be the expectations of your parents. You must be you, because that is the only person you can be.”

“I don’t know who I am, grandma ,” I sobbed. Tears ran down my face, and my back started to ache fiercely. “I don’t know anything! I’m alone, dammit! There’s no one at home anymore. No one to tell me—”

“No one can tell you who you are. You must find that out on your own.”

I looked down at the ground, teeth bared as I sobbed. “ How ?”

“You believe in things. Find out what they are. Throw away all else.”

A mission. I raised my head and dried my face on my sleeve. I had to figure out what I believed in. Fine.

Maybe I could turn to God then.

The thought made me snort, but it was as good a plan as any. “ Thank you, grandma. Anyway, there should be more money in the company account now. Feel free to use it however you want, okay?”

“That money belongs to you and you alone,” she said. “We will not touch what we haven’t earned.”

I took a deep breath and then just said. “Okay. Anything the girls might need? Quickhacks or programs? Keep me informed about any of your needs. Even if I’m no longer a mercenary, I will still try to support you guys in any way that I can. How is the upcoming interview with Militech coming along?”

Grandma looked at me with concern for several seconds, likely debating on whether or not to keep pushing with my mental state. Thankfully, she replied with business. “Without a portfolio of achievments, we’re just going off of the number of our weapons and personnel. Having Netrunners gives us an edge, but in the end, we’re still nothing.”

“The money is yours ,” I said. “Buy whatever you need with it. I really don’t care about it.”

She hummed. “You’ve done well for yourself, boy. Gloria would never dream of having this much money.” the reminder of mom made me wince. “She may not have approved of your methods, but she would have been beyond elated at your affluence. Do not forget that.”

I nodded. “Take that money, grandma. I mean it. And I’ll come back with some quickhacks and help set up a comms line, okay?”

“Alright ,” she said in a tone of defeat. “Since you’re insisting so much. Stay for food. Have you eaten? I know you probably need lots of food.”

I smiled . “That would be nice. In the meanwhile, why don’t you tell me about my family?”

000

The food was just how I remembered it, and it was the best thing I had put in my mouth in a long, long time. Throughout the whole cooking and eating process, grandma told me about my still-living uncles, aunts and cousins, and it was a lot to take in at first, but my memory was sharp enough to recall them all quite easily. My family was filled with all sorts of accomplished combatants, mostly boxers and sharpshooters, and the girls were all given roles of either Netrunners or financial managers. During our heyday, every family member except for the children had pulled their weight and made sure that the Martinezes remained a relevant name in the area, and were loved by the people as the patriarch Ricardo Martinez never oppressed the poor. We had been hometown heroes until that Gonzalez motherfucker had ruined everything, having received Cartel backing as well because the Martinez family’s goody two shoes routine wasn’t pulling in enough money for them.

According to grandma, those days were long behind us now. We weren’t going to be involved in any community now, and all the money we received would go to us and no one else. This wasn’t a world that rewarded charity, only ruthlessness, and Ricardo’s charity had made him vulnerable.

Grandma saw me off outside her store. “ Make sure to pop by to ask Tio Alex and Gabriel for pointers on boxing, okay ?”

I nodded with a smile. “Fine, though I don’t really see the point. Until next time, granny.”

“See you soon!”

I drove off. A gang of masked people popped out from around a corner with guns and I just sped up, instantly hitting almost two-hundred kilometers an hour before taking a swinging turn and leaving them behind.

I called grandma, ignoring the burning sensation in my spine.

David: Are you alright? Are they coming back for you?

Abuela: Just some neighborhood punks waving around some unloaded and broken guns, don’t mind them. Just drive safely, you’re going too fast!

I chuckled.

David: Sure grandma.

I sped up.

000

I arrived at night city in just twenty minutes, though that was more on account of traffic than anything else. Once I did, I didn’t head straight home, instead going towards the nearest Catholic church to my house, some place in Heywood.

We were supposed to be Catholic, but it was mom that actually cared more about the stuff than I did. She always wanted me to wear a fake gold rosary everywhere I went, even if people bullied me for it. I was under the personal belief that if God existed, then he was just a huge fucking dick. The Net called us edgetheists. Now that title was even more deserved.

I pulled up in front of the church and walked in confidently. On the far end of the church behind a podium stood a balding, elderly latino man reading a bible. There was nobody in the church, however. Just me and him. He looked up from the bible with an impassive expression. “Come to pray?”

“Confess my sins, I guess,” I said. “I don’t really understand how this works. Aren’t you supposed to make god forgive me or something?”

He walked around the podium and approached me. “I can’t make God do anything. Only your repentance can. I can help guide you, but most of the effort will be on you.”

“Tell me where to start, padre,” I said. He gave a warm smile. 

“Sit down, son,” he said, gesturing at the pews. I walked up and took a seat at the frontmost pews. “Remember your sins, son. Take a moment to reflect on them.”

Okay. I killed people. Lots of people. One-hundred and eighty-three to be exact. Uh, what else? Adultery? Fei-Fei wasn’t married, though. Did that still count? I don’t know.

“Now what?” I asked. “Are we gonna do a confessional, too?”

“That’s up to you,” he said. “I will assure you that I am sworn to secrecy on anything you admit to me on the pain of excommunication.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Excommunication? What is that?”

“It means I’ll get kicked out of the Catholic church,” he said. 

“Does the church have a megacorp sponsoring it or something?” I asked. I couldn’t believe that there was any other way for them to have that kind of power, especially in Night City.

“Precisely,” he said with a warm smile. “The Incorporato Il Vaticano, of which the pope is the CEO, would not hesitate to send mercenaries to dispose of me if they found out that a priest excommunicated because they broke the seal of confession still tried to pass themselves off as a Catholic priest, and I’m not exactly operating a hidden establishment here.”

Wow. Using my Kiroshis, I made a quick search on the net to confirm this tidbit and came back with evidence confirming the old man’s words. The Catholic church sure didn’t fuck around.

Fine. Whatever. I followed him over to the confessional booth and did a ping for any wiretaps, but came back empty on all counts. The entire place didn’t have anything electronic but lights and an airconditioning system.

And weapons in the back of the church. Lots of weapons. What the fuck? Eh, whatever. This is Night City.

Once I was inside the booth, I could only see a dark mesh that concealed the priest, though from my Ping, I still knew where he was. “Begin,” he said. “By saying ‘in the name of the father, the son and the holy spirit.”

“In the name of the father, the son and the holy spirit.”

“Bless me father for I have sinned.”

“Bless me father, for I have sinned.”

“State how long it was since your last confession.”

“It has been,” I thought for a moment. Mom never had the time to take us to church. I think the last time we even went, it wasn’t even I who had the confession, but her. And I must have been ten, maybe eleven. Come to think of it, it was after Biotechnica pulled their little stunt. She must have felt so guilty to actually come all the way here. “I’ve never confessed before. Is that fine?”

“There’s a first time for everything, my child,” the priest said. “Now tell me, what is your state of life? Where are you currently?”

“I’m in my last year of school… I’ve just quit my… job, I guess. Couldn’t handle it. It’s why I’m here, actually.”

“Now here comes the hard part. What have you done wrong? Tell me about your sins.”

“I killed a hundred and eighty-three people, had sex repeatedly with a woman that’s engaged to another man—I did that one on purpose, by the way, specifically to spite the man—and… yeah. I’m damned for hell. I saw it with my own eyes, actually, though that could have been a hallucination. I don’t know. I never gave thought to the people I killed much. Mostly, I just kept count because I was scared of cyberpsychosis, thought maybe if I counted, I wouldn’t be so eager to take another life. Then in a flight of revenge, that number shot up a crazy amount and…” I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m a disappointment. I’m fucking ev—sorry, I mean, I’m evil, I guess.”

The priest didn’t say anything for several seconds. “You haven’t made any excuses. That is good. Do you want advice?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Do not fixate on individual deaths. Fixate on the reasons behind them. Revenge is a sin, and it is even worse than killing for money, as I assumed you had done before. That was your true sin. How do you feel about those revenge killings as opposed to the contract killings?”

“Better,” I said without hesitation. “The money just muddied things. When I killed those people, it was almost… fun.” That was… actually closer to the heart of the matter than I imagined. My reasons for killing the cartel gang were poor. It was revenge, plain and simple, and it didn’t make the world a better place for more than the time it would take to have them replaced with another gang, maybe even more cruel. Mom would understand the edgerunning, but what I did that night was nothing short of monstrous.

But even then, it wasn’t… it wasn’t what bothered me truly.

“Are you penitent, my boy?”

“Yes,” I said. It sounded hollow to me. But I had to be penitent. Otherwise, why was I even here? What the hell was I even doing? 

“Beseech God for forgiveness now. You must say an Act of Contrition: O’ my God, because you are so good, I am very sorry that I have sinned against you; and I promise that with the help of your grace, I will not sin again, Amen.”

“O’ my God, because you are so good, I am very sorry that I have sinned against you; and I promise that with the help of your grace, I will not sin again, Amen.”

“May our Lord and God, Jesus Christ, through the grace and mercies of his love for humankind, forgive you all your transgressions. And I, an unworthy priest, by his power given me, forgive and absolve you from all your sins, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

“Amen,” I said. And I saw my mom’s face in my mind’s eye, smiling sadly at me, crying, saying sorry over and over again. “I forgive you,” I whispered. “I… forgive you.” Mom’s sad smile widened, and if I could, I would have hugged her.

I couldn’t hold my actions against her. I had to forgive her, and apologize for blaming her in the first place.

But that didn’t lighten my burden one bit.

“We are done now. You are forgiven now.”

“Thanks,” I said, feeling profoundly empty, yet still mired in a sea of agony, both physical and mental.

“Anything else you might need? Were you baptized?”

“Yeah, probably,” I said. “Uhm, thank you for the whole… confessional.”

“It is my calling, son. Do not thank me. I just hope to see you on Sunday.”

“Okay,” I said as I walked out of the booth, and then out from the church. Right before I left, the priest called to me.

“Always remember,” he said and I turned around to see him give me a warm smile. “God will always be with you.”

I continued out, feeling even heavier than before. 

Rebecca’s advice sounded in my mind. Go for a long drive to clear my head. I rode away around town, careful to be under the speed limit so I wouldn’t get cops after me, and continued west towards the desert.

I didn’t stop even after running out of road, just driving on the sand, dodging cacti and outcroppings with ease as I just continued on and on.

The day was darkening into night when I stopped at a hill, feeling all of my stress come to a crescendo.

I got off my bike and started screaming. “What the fuck am I supposed to do?!” I shouted at the heavens. “I did it, didn’t I?! I fucking survived! I did what I had to do, for fuck’s sake!” The Sandevistan’s constant heat in my back was starting to become unbearably painful. I growled, falling on my knees. Everything hurt .

What the fuck was I supposed to do? Why did I have to feel guilty?

“That’s the thing , boy,” the voice of an effemminate male sounded from behind me. I turned around and came face to face with a corporate suit with impeccably slicked, short dark hair, and hawkish features that seemed positively devilish. “You’re not guilty.”

“Who the fuck are you?” I roared at him as I got up, trying my best to ignore the agony.

[David, this man isn’t real!]

I stared at him in shock. He just shrugged. “She’s right. Or is she? Then again, machines never quite learned to understand this part of humanity. To her, I’m just a bunch of neurons firing.”

[He is a manifestation, an alternate identity caused due to an improper repair of your fragmented psyche. A dissociative identity, just like your mother was. He’s not real .]

“Or a fragment of your psyche, I suppose,” he said. “Bla bla bla,” he winked out of existence. “Bla,” I heard from behind me, quickly turned around and backed up. The man was now a woman, a cyberpunk with a shock of black hair only in the middle of her scalp, a chrome arm holding a huge handgun, and a tanktop and leather pants combo. 

If this was an identity, a person, then that meant it could be reasoned with. “What do you want?”

“Hmm, I’m just here to clear things up for you,” she said as she spun the gun by the trigger guard. “Did you forget that chat you had with Maine, my little cyberpsycho?”

The time I told him I didn’t care about the people I killed. “But I am guilty,” I said. “Because of how mom—”

“Don’t even go there,” she said. “Your mom is dead. And if you plan to live a long life, you best put a pin on her and forget about her until your dying moments. Sounds harsh, maybe, but there’s no better way to live as you are.”

[I am working to heal the damage to your brain, David.]

“Fuck that,” I growled. “I can’t be like this… I don’t… I can’t—”

“Can’t you hear how hollow this sounds, even to you?” she asked with a tilted head and a malicious sneer. “Momma’s boy couldn’t meet her infinite expectations and now you’re breaking down because of it? Your mother has haunted you like a specter ever since her death, and you only started noticing it after the Brainwipe. What you need isn’t a change in lifestyle. It’s an exorcism. And I know a thing or two about wayward spirits. While you prayed to God for forgiveness, I was the one that pried her away from your mind, you know, free of charge , but the damage remains. That’s what I’m here to do, tend to my favorite little cyberpsycho in the whole world!” she spread her arms widely. “You’ll go on to do great things, my boy! Look at that!” she pointed at the direction of Night City, but I could tell she was probably pointing specifically at the giant tower that was Arasaka. “This is the dream that you appropriated, right? What if I told you that it all comes back to it?”

I turned back to her, and it was now a him. Specifically, a seven-foot-tall, red-skinned man in a corp suit, and giant red goat horns. My mouth dried as I took in its visage, viscerally terrifying in every way. I could barely breathe. “Your dream is your ends, and your ends are what justify your means. And your means are giving you a hard time. You want to know why, my son?” the devil walked towards me and put both hands on my shoulders like a proud father. “Because the ends aren’t justifying them. It’s as simple as that.”

I blinked, and the devil was replaced with my grandfather, Ricardo Martinez. He was like the pictures grandma showed me, just as young. A dark tan, a short crew cut, and intense eyes with a friendly glint to them. He was just as short as I was before all the biomods too, and looked a little like me as well. And his smile was something I trusted implicitly. “I want Arasaka Tower,” I said to him. “There isn’t an end greater.”

He snorted. “No. There is. There absolutely is, nieto. And if the weight of your actions are what cause you to buckle, it is because the reward is not enticing enough. You don’t want the goal enough, but that, my nieto, is not because you are lacking in want.” he patted my stomach. “There is hunger in you, I know this. And that hunger craves more than the paltry little meal that tower can offer.”

“You’re not my grandfather,” I whispered.

He smiled. “Your grandfather is one of my favorites. A man that knew what he wanted and how to seize it. He got a little, eh, soft near the end, but what can you do. He put enough people in the dirt to deserve a little break.”

[I am almost done.]

David: Don’t… hold on for a second. I need to finish this conversation.

[This person is not real!]

“Bah,” the devil said, now in the form of Saburo Arasaka. Somehow, this form felt even more oppressive to me than the sight of the devil himself. He looked into the air to address Nanny. “This will benefit you as well, machine, so hold off on banishing me for the time being, will you?”

“So you want me to want more?” I asked. 

“I want you to stop hurting,” he said. “And I want you to usher in the new era that only you have the potential to achieve. Remember what your grandmother said? Identify what you believe in if you wish to find yourself. My boy, I could tell you right now what you truly believe in, but I won’t go that far. You have to say it. Right now. What do you believe in? Is it a person? A vision? Don’t think. Just speak.”

I closed my eyes and said the first thing that came to mind. It was a dirty, nigh-evil thing, but in the end, it was the truth. “Myself,” I said. “I believe in myself.” 

The Sandevistan immediately stopped hurting. It felt like I could finally breathe again. I took a full breath and sighed in relief.

Myself. I believe in myself. I am enough. Not just enough. I’m fucking great . I am superior . There is a quality to me that doesn’t exist in others, and it lets me rise above others. And it isn’t Nanny, either, or my affinity for Cyberware. It’s so much more than that. One could say that my affinity for cyberware was likely precisely because of how much confidence I had in myself. After all, the Sandy had finally stopped hurting.

All of the things that make me greater are parts of me, is me . No use separating those components from myself. All of it was me.

The devil took a step away from me with a proud smile. “It’s true. It’s you. You are the person that will change this world forever.”

I frowned. “And what’s in it for you? If you’re the one encouraging me, I can’t imagine that my purpose isn’t terrible.”

“I’m not an agent of suffering,” he said with a laugh. “No, that’s the other guy. I’m all for heaven on earth. And I hate wasted potential. But your purpose is yours, David, and so are your actions. Don’t you remember? You believe in yourself . Not even I can hijack your fate. And besides, you’re coming my way in the end, you know this. I don’t have to work hard to ensure that when it is already a sure fact, so you might as well make your time here count. Or better yet, outrun the clock forever. Now wouldn’t that be a goal to aspire to?”

I nodded. I got it now. 

This was all I needed to hear: I’m damned to hell anyway, so why backtrack? Why not go all the way and come out the other end? Or at least try to see what lies beyond?

“Thank you,” I said. “I believe this is all you can give me. Nanny. Finish it off.”

The devil gave a polite nod of his head. “Thank you for hearing me out. And my tower?” he, as Saburo, gestured towards Night City one last time. “Let it be a modest taste of all that you can consume. And remember, no matter where you falter, I will always love you.”

A chill crept up my spine at that. 

The devil disappeared.

[I have finished healing your fragmented personality. You should not see it anymore. And David… I apologize for not knowing what is best for your emotions. It is a difficult domain to understand for me. I did not mean to upset you—]

David: Don’t worry. We’ll take it one step at a time. And Nanny… thank you for saving my life.

I heard the distant rumble of engines rapidly close by. I turned towards the sound, my eyes automatically adjusting to the low-light conditions to find a fleet of ten cars making a beeline towards me. I ran up to my bike and got on it, trying to get it started for several seconds, far longer than usual. I looked down at the disobedient machine and gave it a scan.

The ignition program was malfunctioning. Fuck . I made a mental note to airgap my bike’s systems—thanks a lot, Net-Of-Things—and faced down the oncoming cars.

This would probably get ugly.

[QianT “Dragon Spine” Sandevistan Integration completed!]

For them. 

Notes:

All of this said, I decided to upload my backlog in bulk because I won't be writing anything else for the time being, seeing as it's exam season and I really need to get focused. And it feels wrong to not share what I've already put down.

I hope this had the emotional impact that I intended it to have. I'll see you guys again in late December. Until then, please shower me with comments :3

Chapter 24: Raffen Shiv

Summary:

The Raffen Shiv learn a lesson

Once they got in range, I sent out a ping and activated the Sandevistan to give myself time to think. The feedback it gave me, even to my newly-enhanced reaction time, was instant, so quick that it almost made me jump . Who knew what else it could do now.

The plan was simple; these motherfuckers were going to die. But that wasn’t why I needed time to think.

I also wanted my conversation with the devil to fully sink in, for my path to fully crystallize in my head. What were my plans going forward? For starters, I needed to get back in with Maine. Edgerunning was once again back on the table.

But that didn’t mean as much as how I could use this current event as an opportunity to further my ends in the other half of my life. I hadn’t focused very much on checking if any new JKs hit the street, and I only had until tomorrow evening to get that fucking brat Jin some more XBDs for his hangers-on to traumatize themselves with. 

I guess I would have to suffice, then.

But I needed to make sure of a couple of things first, because selling BDs of my edgerunning would give people an idea of what I could do, and I couldn’t let that idea be overly broad. Thus, I needed to set up some ground rules for myself.

Rule number one: no rapid-heals. Even if people would explain the lack of pain after getting hit with pain editor implants, I didn’t want to be reliant on that stuff in the first place. Too cheap. Legends didn’t get hit in the first place, and I’d rather not be known as a cockroach that can’t be put down. Wasn’t much dignity in that.

Rule number two: limit my Sandevistan usage to the amount that a normal person could tolerate. Maybe five to ten. And even then, I had to make sure I didn’t push the duration either. Five to ten uses, with ten seconds in overdrive time each. Fifty to a hundred subjective seconds of Sandevistan usage. Let’s just make it one minute exactly.

David: Nanny, can you keep count on that?

[Yes, very easily. Rest assured, I can do it.]

I chuckled at that. Strange. Nanny was just getting weirder and weirder, but I could tell it wasn’t a bad sort of weird. From what I recalled from her point of view, the Brainwipe had merged us somewhat, and although she split us up once again, that was more of a manual effort than anything else. Right now, we could almost be considered two sides of the same organism, rather than entirely separate, if we ever were to begin with. But this was an emotional fusion more than anything else.

I didn’t hate it; she had more skin in the game now. That meant I could trust her.

No extreme Sandy uses. And… that’s pretty much it. My Kiroshis, and the Sandy for that matter, came with built-in Braindance scrollers. Between the two of them, I would be achieving a resolution on-par with anything JK could dish out.

All that was left was to get into character.

I deactivated the Sandevistan and walked up ahead towards the nomads rushing up towards me.

I had to level with myself. Killing; did it bother me? Did it really bother me?

I couldn’t say it did either way, regardless if it was for revenge or for money. None of them mattered a fucking bit to me. 

A hundred and eighty-three.

That number wasn’t a weight to me.

I chuckled. I laughed. What the fuck was that number to me anyway?

It was pride.

It was one-hundred and eighty-three gonkbrained motherfucking bastards down on the ground while I wasn’t. It was an ocean of opps laying flat on the floor, while I was standing.

It was an accomplishment, that was what the fuck it was.

The ping came back positive with all the entities I were dealing with. Thirty. Ten cars, Thirty people, some in fours, some in threes, and a few in twos. What would that be on the final tally then? Two hundred and thirteen bodies.

Enough with that, though. The bodies weren’t the point anyway. They were an accomplishment, but the glory it gave me was secondary to what I would achieve in the future. Best not get sidetracked by pointless flights of bloodthirst. That wasn’t really me anyway. And not in a good or evil way either. It just didn’t make logical sense to care so much about it. Death wouldn’t give me nutrients.

The thirty entities were crawling towards me, and I contemplated who to hack and what to use. Overheat and Breach Protocol, of course. I could breach a car and make it crash into another. That would be more cost-effective than Overheating individuals.

I could theoretically use Overheat on the cars, but what it would overheat didn’t compare to the damage it would do to cyberware and human bodies. I could target the computer parts and brick the cars, but that wouldn’t really kill anyone, just stop them short far away. 

Still valid. I had exactly two Breaches until my ‘deck cooled down, and then I would have two Overheats for the second CPU. I’d have to make that shit count.

Also, weren’t thoughts also recorded in BDs? I was doing a lot of self-centered introspection. Maybe leave those thoughts out in the final edit.

I breached two cars at the same time. At Sandevistan speeds, breaching the ICE wasn’t a matter of skill—and I doubt it even would have been without such speed. I had a clear idea of how to breach the ICE quickly and brutally. It would just take some time. My breach already worked at computer speeds, but this was a lot of computer, so the speed would naturally suffer.

They were almost fifty meters away when I finally managed to breach the two cars that contained four people and had the biggest guns. I made them crash into a car each, deactivating the Sandy because I really didn’t need it.

[Five seconds of Sandevistan use] Nanny reported. That was five subjective seconds? Wow. I fit a lot of thought into such a short timeframe. Maybe I should just think normally instead of relying on the Sandy for time. Nanny hadn’t exaggerated when she mentioned how my brain had changed for the better.

The two cars crashed into two others—one of them went as far as crashing into a third one, and they tumbled ass over teakettle. One ended up flipping on its back, but the others all landed on their wheels, ready to continue driving. Not how I expected that to go. Where were the explosions?

My ‘deck fed me more information from the breach, however. Weapons systems. I activated them all and set the targetting systems to the vehicles around.

Rockets and bullets began to fly from the breached cars.

The surviving cars, now shaved down to the four that had dodged the massive pile-up and bullet hail, continued onward towards me, and I could hear them shout from their cars. I Overheat two of them, bricking the computer parts and setting fire to their dashboards. The back of my skull and my neck was beginning to feel uncomfortably warm.

The remaining two cars rode the rest of the distance.

And I ran towards the one set on a collision course towards me.

This would probably hurt.

Just had to hope that their windshields were not enforced.

I activated the Sandevistan, ran up to the hood of the speeding car, jumped, and flew feet-first towards their windshield.

It didn’t shatter.

It didn’t even break.

Instead, the entire windshield ripped free from its frame with my momentum. I could see the confused faces of the Wraiths that attacked me. That confusion lasted only a moment before it morphed into the beginnings of pure fear and terror.

[Both your ankles have been broken]

Fuck. Well, that was to be expected.

The pain hadn’t even finished crawling up to my brain by the time I felt it healing.

And the windshield had finally made its inexorable march towards the two Wraiths in the car, squeezing them into their chairs. I expected their skulls to sort of pop from the pressure of the windshield, but instead they just sort of broke and started leaking.

The passenger and driver seats backed up from the weight of my attack. I deactivated my Sandevistan and my back fell on the dashboard and hood of the car. I scanned the interior for weapons, and found a combat knife, and a pistol.

It would be hard to reach with the windshield in the way, so I rolled off the hood, got my feet on the sand and opened the door, ransacking the corpses for gear.

Then I heard gunshots. Gear gotten, I jumped over the car’s hood for cover as the second car to make its way was raining bullets on me, heedless about hitting their fellow Wraith. I’d heard rumors that these bastards were no better than the Scavs in the city, and I guess it wasn’t just anti-Nomad sentiment that informed that view.

I sent out a Ping, feeling the warmth in my skull increasing as I received feedback of the two assailants making their way towards me. There was a momentary lull in bullet-fire, and I decided to put those knife-throwing BDs to use. I stood up, and already my arms moved to the tune of that BD before I had even gotten a look at my attacker. The moment I saw him, dressed in a blue T-shirt and a black kevlar covering his chest, with blue goggles on his face,  I locked on the middle of his forehead, threw the knife and ducked down.

I heard the wet thunk of the projectile landing way after I got down for cover again. From the yelp I heard, and the sound of a body dropping, I knew I had hit the bastard’s skull. I grinned. I capitalized on the momentary shock and stood up, jumping over the car, falling in a roll and rushing up to the wraith who had been looking at his dead comrade with a punch that would have sent him off his feet if he hadn’t raised his assault rifle to block. Instead, I hit his wrists, and his gun flew away, as well as his guard. I adapted immediately, far faster than he did, and turned my punch into an elbow as I stepped closer to him, reaching his temple with the strike. He staggered backwards, and would have probably tripped over himself if I hadn’t borrowed a page out of Katsuo’s kung-fu chipware book. I adjusted the grip on the gun I held so I could grab the motherfucker by his collar, pulling him back so I could continue the assault.

But this wasn’t a million lovetaps, the peak of what that wretched brat could muster. This was three decisive punches, each one harder than the last, deforming cartilage, breaking past bone softer than my knuckles, and rendering the man’s face unrecognizable. With each hit, I felt the flow of my own movements as my fist travelled to my opponent’s face, noticed minor imperfections in my form, and smoothed them over so I could deliver the strongest hit that I could. He fell on his knees in front of me, and I remembered the gun in my hand.

Gunshots sounded in the distance, and I knew I had to end things.

I raised the gun, staring into the brutalized face of the Wraith who thought he was hitting an easy mark.

‘Sorry, mom.’

I felt the devil’s warm hands helping me squeeze my trigger finger.

The bullet fired, blowing a wide hole in the man’s forehead.

I focused on the distance now. They were firing at me. Thankfully, I had just cleared out a perfectly good cover-spot, one of the Wraiths’ quadras. This one hadn’t been fried or anything, either. 

I ran into it and tried to start it, pressing a red button. A window popped up in my eyes, a prompt for a security key.

Thankfully I had cooled down enough for another breach. It took a couple of seconds, and during it, one of the Wraiths had pinged a bullet on my new ride’s side windows, although it hadn’t managed to break through them. Sturdy shit. Hell, maybe I could keep it. Didn’t Maine own a Quadra? His was a little fancier, like a working-class Aerondight, the shit Faraday was driving but cheaper.

This was a solo ride, though. I wouldn’t feel ashamed pulling up to a gig driving this. A school function? Probably. I’d have to save up for a Caliburn if I wanted to impress on such an occasion.

Fuck it. Klep.

The breach finished and I stepped on the gas. The good thing about the chips I had read so I could understand traffic laws was also that it covered the basics of how to drive a car. It was a rough start, but nothing catastrophic. That was pretty much impossible with my reaction speed. Maybe I’d become an even better driver than Falco if I gave this little baby a whirl for a couple of hours.

I did a quick reverse U turn and immediately drove forward, right at a row of gunmen. A hail of bullets struck the windshield—none cracking the reinforced glass just yet—while I ducked and kept half an eye on the road, accelerating the car to its max. The Quadra’s acceleration pushed me back into my seat, almost forcing my upper body in full view of the windshield and the bullets. The gunmen dove out of the way, and I ended up only clipping one of them. While the Quadra continued driving, I dove out from the car, landing on a perfect roll and getting my gun up in time to assess my surroundings. Just for good measure, I dipped back into the Sandevistan.

I counted six wraiths. My last Ping, not counting the people I had just flatlined, counted fifteen survivors. My quickhacking had killed almost half of them in one go, leaving only a few survivors crawling away from the wreckage or making their way to my position to avenge their chooms.

I shrugged. All the same to me.

I took aim just like Rebecca had shown me and sent a bullet into the nearest Wraith who was just getting up from the timem he had thrown himself out of the way of my Quadra.

One down. Didn’t quite hit him where I had intended. Instead of a shot to the low part of his forehead, I had almost missed his head entirely, taking out the top part of his skull.

I readjusted my aim to another target and became more mindful of my aim. Had to think about how to go about the next one.

The answer was just like Rebecca had emphasized before; gun posture. I had ‘heeled’. The gun was pointing subtly upwards because of the way I held it. Easy fix to that; readjust my wrist.

The next hit, aimed at the next target’s forehead, blew his throat wide open. Shit. Still a kill, but that just wouldn’t cut it.

My next target had been too slow to raise his gun before I had entered Sandy speed, so now he was stuck looking at me with sheer terror. I’d take care of that for him.

The next bullet blew his mind. Apart. And just where I wanted it to as well.

That was the form, then.

Was it reproducible?

Three perfect headshots later proved that yes, it was.

I deactivated the Sandy. [Eight seconds] Nanny reported. Action took longer than thought. Sure, that was always true, but the discrepancy was really something to behold now that my mind had become practically unshackled.

I looked around the floor for a long-distance rifle I could use to take out the assholes running at me. They were five. I sent out a Ping. Five people still in or around the pileup, some moving slowly away from it all. Three were running like mad towards me.

I didn’t find a precision rifle, but I did find one of the guns Rebecca had me play with—a Copperhead. According to her, it was a power-type weapon, one that used conventional gunpowder for bullet propulsion instead of railgun technology or smart homing propulsion. Was it the most accurate in long distances? According to Rebecca, that depended only on the shooter.

I picked up the gun and held it in the grip that she taught me, took aim and braced my left arm for the incoming recoil. I squeezed the bullet and let the gun spray. Like before, the recoil wasn’t what I had expected, and was in fact incredibly manageable, way more than I had seen in action flicks. Usually the newbie would pull the trigger and lose control of the spray of lead immediately. Even on my first try with Rebecca, that hadn’t happened.

But accuracy was a bitch. I did short squeezes, constantly correcting my aim. The good thing was that the rapid-fire nature of the gun gave me several shots at once to get my hits in before the aim was ruined. I was probably better off using this in long distances than a nekomata or some other type of sniper rifle. At least I didn’t have to rely on a long rechambering process.

It took only three attempts with the copperhead before a cluster of bullets finally found my opponent.

It stopped the other two dead in their tracks, but all I could focus on was remembering and internalizing the feeling of doing it right. Thanks to my sharpened memory, I could immediately go back into that feeling.

I tested it out on the second last idiot Wraith. The spray struck him in his mid-section, cutting him down. The remaining Wraith booked it .

I let him.

He’d make for a smaller target. That meant better target practice.

Once he was to a point where I started losing confidence in hitting him. I sent a spray after him. IT missed. Fuck, why? Okay, I knew why. Too high. I did something. Let’s not do that something again.

Second attempt, too low. I overcorrected. Let’s goldilocks this shit . 

Third spray was just right .

I snorted. I turned around to take in the sounds and smells of war.

I blinked slowly.

That’s it?

No. What the hell. I couldn’t show this to any of my classmates. Jin would flip his shit.

Shit . I went back into the car that I had made an emergency exit from and drove up to the wreckage zone where another ping confirmed only four living people left. Wow, what a shitshow. Sucks they had to get done like this, by a high schooler no less.

Did any of the people I killed ever have the wildest idea who had done it? I had almost four weeks of combat training under my belt, most of it self-taught. Then again, it wasn’t really the combat training that made me such a menace.

The Sandy’s weight on my back was reassuring now, and while I dreaded the idea of opening my body up to more weakpoints and vulnerabilities, I couldn’t deny my desire to chrome the fuck up. And now that I was getting back into the solo game, that desire had only magnified.

I walked up to the wreck and saw some people peeking out from their cars, crushed and trying to get out. I eased their pain one by one, finally getting to a guy that had crawled away almost ten meters, only to flip around and see me.

He smiled. Tears trickled down from his eyes, hitting his ears and pooling there. “ Please. ”

I pursed my lips and shrugged. Couldn’t help him with that. Gonk saw my face. “Sorry, choom.” I pulled the trigger. His skull immediately became a mess of flesh and bone. There. All done.

Done, but not done.

Jin wouldn’t let it end here. I knew that fucking psycho needed more. It was already bad enough that I wasn’t a cyberpsycho, and I wasn’t as fired up as you’d expect from a guy who had just killed thirty people. Something about my brain made these high-action situations feel different. Slower.

I could process more of it. I was in control.

And that probably made for shitty cinema.

Shit. 

I walked back to my car and browsed its hard drive. The nav data would tell me where these gonks came from, and I’d finish up from there. Probably make a cut in the BD between now and the Wraith stronghold.

Had to get back for my bike as well. Hopefully their hack didn’t fuck up the hardware, but my bike was some new shit. I had given its security protocol a lookover already, and short of some really good hack, anything done to it would be resolved with a quick reboot.

I drove to the bike and on the way, gave it a prod with my deck. It spun on its own and came to drive towards me, meeting me halfway.

I got off the Quadra, on the bike, and rode off.

000

The Wraith camp, a little abandoned warehouse that they had squatted in, return roughly four people in my Ping.

Fuck . It was over.

I didn’t even bother to do shit with it. I didn’t care. This was seriously disappointing.

Fuck it. I’d have to scrounge up some really early JK shit. That should be enough to sate them. His early work wasn’t nearly as popular as the 20th installment and up. JK had popped off at the point when he managed to get his hands on a virtu of a cyberpsycho that made news not only in Night City, but internationally, for having ripped apart a close relative of a Eurozone megacorp CEO. 

People liked cyberpsycho BDs, but they loved to be in the moment when history had been made. I couldn’t count on both hands how many times I had stopped by the area of a cyberpsycho rampage, remembering exactly how it felt to be inside that rampaging monster. 

You felt connected to the darkness of it all. And when you were one with the darkness, it couldn’t hurt you anymore.

I drove off to my stolen Quadra once again and called Reyes.

El Capitan: What’s up, kid? 

D: Took a few Quadras off the hands of some Wraiths who won’t be needing them anymore. You got that Autofixer shit going, right? You need any?

El Capitan: Fuck no, hahahah. They’re modded to hell to survive the badlands to the point that that’s where they belong pretty much. Restoring them would be like building another car. And I don’t need that kind of smoke from those unwashed bastardos. And it’s not like anyone but them will buy it.

Shit. What the fuck, man?

D: Shit, okay. Anything you might need from a bunch of dead Wraiths?

El Capitan: You got the coords on any camp I might not be aware of?

D: I mean, I don’t think you’ll even really want it since I basically aired it out for the most part. But listen, I can pay you back money-wise for the loan. When are you free?

El Capitan: You can pop by tomorrow afternoon if it works for you. You need any gig-gigs?

D: I think I’ll take it slow for now.

El Capitan: Hah! Who the fuck are you and what did you do to that crazy solo named D?

D: Talk to you later, Capitan.

El Capitan: Later. And kid, I suggest you ditch that car where you found it. Quadra Type-66 Reavers are fucking shit in normal roads, at least compared to the Type-66s optimized for regular street performance. And if you want something that can keep up with your merc work, just give me a ring. If you got your heart set on a Quadra, I can fix that, too. The Javelina is a solid option; even its base form has the sturdiness of a Wraith Type-66, and plays well with city roads. And it’s got space and bulk enough to shove as many guns and turret systems as you want. Give me a call whenever you’re ready.

D: Thanks, I’ll remember that. Peace.

El Capitan: Peace. 

Well, that was a bust. 

Whatever.

Right now, I just wanted to sleep—

Dorio was calling me. I accepted it.

Dorio: Wanna talk?

I wouldn’t say no to this. I did need to get in touch with Maine and them. But first—

D: I was dealing with a lot of shit last I talked to Maine, but I didn’t mean to get… angry, I guess-guess. Yeah. We can talk. Just wanted to say sorry.

Dorio: Say it to his face. I don’t care. Just wanted to chat. Come here.

She sent me the coords for a… gym? A boxing gym, in fact.

Okay, so we were doing this then.

000

The boxing gym wasn’t a particularly busy one. Not many people walking around, but the few that did were lumbering titans of flesh and steel, monsters that looked on the verge of doing some really drastic shit. They looked gross. Why would they let themselves get to this point.

Dorio was sparring with a lesser monster in one boxing ring, and I approached it from the sidelines to give them a look.

Clearly, this was an Animal gym. And not just the run-of-the-mill Animal gangoons walking around the streets, but the ones that made appearances in TV to paint the gang as being more dangerous than it actually was.

Had Dorio maybe been an Animal before joining up with Maine? I didn’t want to think about that very much.

Dorio’s opponent didn’t have an ounce of body fat, instead just muscle and sinew. Chrome replaced most of his joints and probably also his tendons, a natural consequence to having muscles stronger than your body could handle. Soon, I’d have to get those as well just to keep up with my desire to be stronger.

But I wouldn’t let myself look so monstrous. 

Dorio knocked her opponent out—the man went sailing over the ring fence, rolling on the ground and coming to a dead stop.

Then she noticed me. She smiled and raised her fist in the air. “Fuck yeah! Come on up, kid!”

She was kidding. I sighed and removed my blazer. This would probably fuck up my uniform more than it had already been fucked up.

I climbed up on the ring. “I thought you wanted to talk. Are we doing this instead?”

“We can do both!”

“I can’t box,” I said.

She instantly deflated. “You forreal? Fuck. Get down then. I’ll show you the forms on a sandbag. Why the hell did you even get up if you can’t fight?” she grumbled as she hopped off the ring and towards a sandbag. I was about to go and pick up my blazer, but before I could, some asshole Animal picked it up off the floor and used it to wipe his forehead.

Guess I’ll buy a new one.

Motherfucker.

It was my fault for leaving it on the floor, though.

I walked up next to Dorio, and she launched into an explanation about footing, and position. While she did, I just observed her body. I told her to continuously repeat her movements while I tried to capture all of it with my eyes and the Sandevistan.

I got the picture after a minute or two, and tried to emulate what she called a right cross, which was meant to be the strongest punch in boxing. I could see why. The maneuver borrowed power from the rotation of the hip and the entire torso—the entire upper body was party to the punch’s strength. Even your feet, actually. The entire body worked towards this punch.

I sent the punch flying into the sandbag. It blew back with a satisfying thunk. 

“Good!” Dorio said.

Not really. I hadn’t timed my feet right.

The second attempt, I almost did, but not quite. The third, I was almost there. The fourth, I managed, just about.

But that revealed another point of weakness; my hip flexibility. I got down to do some agonizing stretches, trying to free up a greater range of motion. After some snaps and tearing, I healed up and fired off another punch with all the force that my hips could muster.

The sandbag reached half the height that it did when Dorio punched it. 

Okay, that was good. I looked up to Dorio. “What’s next? A jab, right?”

“Yeah,” Dorio said with narrowed eyes. “You chipped in or something? Or is it chipware? Didn’t Pilar tell you those aren’t worth shit?”

“It’s chrome,” I revealed. “But it’s a little complicated. Just safe to say: I learn fast, okay? It’s… kind of my thing.”

“Brain implant? Whatever,” she said with a shrug, and then a wide smile. “Let’s see how good we can make you in an hour!”

During that hour, we didn’t do much ‘talking’ that didn’t involve drilling forms. Learning was… ridiculously simple. Not even just mentally, but also physically. Movements that I had only spent a few dozen repetitions drilling became engraved into the core of my being, like I could do them asleep. It was almost as if the martial art itself had some magical properties that made them stick to me that much harder than anything else, except maybe shooting or swordplay.

By the time I had finished mastering all the fundamental attacks, guards and rules, we sparred. She helped me put on my fist bandages and then my gloves, and then she did the same to herself in a fraction of the time before clambering up to the ring like an excited monkey.

“No Sandevistan,” Dorio said. “We’re doing this raw.”

“Correction,” I said. “I’m doing this raw. You’re doing it with chrome arms.”

“I’ll go slow, I promise,” she said. She came up to me with a punch that was, indeed, slow.

I turned my body away from the punch subtly, stepped in and sent a punch to Dorio’s face so aggressive that it threw her off her feet. She landed flat on the floor.

She got up immediately, no worse for wear, glaring at me. “I don’t tolerate cheaters, kid.”

Fuck. “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t touch the Sandy, I swear. My reflexes are just… like this.”

She tilted her head. “You’re serious? I heard Becca say something about that, but I figured she was exaggerating.”

“Nah, that’s… just my nervous system now,” I said. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think you’ll be able to beat me if you continue going slow.”

She chortled. “Yeah, well if I don’t go slow, I’ll fucking kill you the next time I land a hit. I’ll go medium, how about that?”

She instantly went on the attack, and while she was still slow to my eyes, my body wouldn’t be able to take advantage of the momentary opening without Sandy speed to nudge me.

So I stepped aside and away from the next barrage of punches, searching intently for an opening. Finding one, I stepped in and knicked her cheek with my glove right before ducking under an oncoming punch and then getting a more solid hit on her face.

Or it would have been solid if it wasn’t for the train that crashed into my chest, lifting me off my feet and paralyzing my entire body—what the actual fuck was that.

I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t…

I finally could after a moment, and I used the power that that singular breath gave me to stand up and raise my guard.

I forced more air into my lungs by sheer force of will, disregarding the paralysis of my diaphragm. I should have seen this coming. Dorio had been clever, and I had been naive. But that attack implied a whole host of other attacks and situations in which I could be vulnerable. And the more I thought, the more such vulnerable situations multiplied in my mind. General situations could contain several more specific situations, all with their own differentiating factors.

Boxing was like chess, really. And now that I knew Dorio’s toolset, I just needed to find an opportunity to win.

She rained a hail of blows down upon me, none of them even touching me. Several opportunities flashed before my eyes, but they were all false. And I wanted her to think that I had learned just that from my last mistake. One opportunity flashed before me, this one also false, and I made to capitalize on it, only for it to be a feint. Dorio bit, putting a little too much of herself into a counter-attack that was entirely too ill-timed, revealing an opportunity that was likely true.

And I threw caution to the wind and put everything of myself into this window, driving a right cross into her face, punching as if I was trying to hit the spot behind her. Her face sailed back with a spray of blood from her nose and her eyes widened.

Her entire body flickered and suddenly her fist was now in front of my face, and written on her glove was death.

I activated the Sandevistan and got out of the way.

My back was against the ropes and I panted, both from the exertion of the fight, and the close brush with death. 

“Shit,” Dorio said, then she chuckled. “I almost killed you there. Good instincts, kid. It’s why I think it’ll be a waste for you to leave the biz, you know.”

“I’m not leaving,” I said. “I figured my shit out.” I stood straight and my breathing normalized. “Just needed time to process things, get my brain on right.”

“You were scared?”

I laughed. Scared didn’t even begin to cover it. “Well, to tell you the truth, I literally went to hell where I saw my dead mom apologize for having failed me, then I went to church to get absolved of my sins and after that didn’t work, I went to the desert where I saw the devil himself telling me to chase my dreams. I wasn’t scared. I was out of my damn mind. And now I’m better.”

Dorio’s eyes were wide. “Holy fuck, kid. Wow. I always thought it’d be nova to be a Netrunner. Glad I never chased that dream. Shit. You really okay, though?”

“The devil gives a good peptalk,” I said and she just laughed. “I’m fine. Tell the others I’m back.”

“That’s well and good,” she said. “But it ain’t exactly good enough. You’ve always just had one foot in this world, and you showed that by trying to leave things behind. And that shit doesn’t build trust. I want to know whether we can depend on you or not. You’re no more important to the crew than anyone else, so if you think you can just walk away whenever it damn well pleases you—”

“I could have been a lot of things after mom died,” I said. “Done a lot of shit to make the scratch needed to live out a quiet and easy life, but instead I chose to pick up a sword and kill a bunch of gonks. If you think I’ll walk away for some ass-backward reason again barring extreme circumstances, like let’s say, getting your forebrain almost burned to a crisp by a giant fire daemon, then you have way more faith in my sanity than I do.”

I was fucked up, and I was okay with that. I took a deep breath and relaxed. Yeah. Feeling okay. Two-thirteen headstones to my growing graveyard in hell and it didn’t bother me any.

Dorio looked at me for a moment, and I returned her look without flinching. She sighed. “Fair enough, kid. You make a good point. And for what it’s worth, I’m glad you ain’t dead.”

I chuckled. “Thanks, I guess.”

Notes:

We're back. Sorry for the delay. Was not in a good headspace for the last two weeks. Went on a disastrous New Years' Eve trip to Paris that forced me to basically cut off half my inner circle of friends, make a vow to kick alcohol for at least six months, and now I'm trying to rebuild my lost sense of self-respect after having spent a truly shitty time with people who do not have any respect for me, whom I thought were friends.

Travelling compatibility is real, fellas XD

Thankfully, there's writing to distract me. Glad to tell you guys that I didn't sit totally idle since my exams, however. While I didn't write, I did make plans upon plans and I have a general idea of the story's direction for at least ten more chapters, probably more. All I need now is the willpower and discipline to carry out the writing portion.

As a result of David's altered brainpower, things are gonna get a little overly analytical from now on, and the differences between him and the average brain is gonna get even more magnified once he gets his BD edited. I wanna try for a more Dune-ish style, lol.

Chapter 25: Braindancing Queen

Summary:

David seeks to gain a BD before Jin's party

Before I went home, I stopped by Lizzie’s Bar for business.

Since Doc and I were not—nor would we ever again be—on speaking terms, it was up to me now to take the initiative when it came to looking for BDs. And while I didn’t know exactly what channels he got his JKs from, I did know that most of his porn stuff came from a gang known as the Mox, a gang that consisted mostly of prostitutes or people committed to protecting them.

I stepped in line and waited for my turn to enter the neon pink building until I was face to face with a baseball bat wielding woman who gave me a once-over. “You new here?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Don’t touch what you won’t buy, or we’ll have a problem. You see someone you like, go to the bar or just book them using the localnet. Got it?”

“Yeah, sure,” I said. “But I’m just here for BDs.”

She shrugged. “I don’t really give a shit what you do, man. Just ask the bartender.”

“Okay,” I said, and tried to step forward, only for the bouncer to hold her bat in my way.

“I want fifty.”

“Ah, sorry,” I sent her the entrance fee and she raised the bat and gave me a genial smile. 

“Don’t sweat it,” she said. “Have fun.”

I went inside and saw exactly what I expected to see—a bunch of brain potatoes zoned out wearing their BD wreaths and pitching a tent in their pants. Scantily dressed Mox girls walked around, marketing themselves subtly, but making sure not to look any one patron in their eyes. They seemed profoundly uninterested in the job, yet they were posing in such casually sexy ways, emphasizing their back arches, breasts and legs. Maybe that was a part of the marketing.

Wetwork probably was different from just regular work in that way. You had to manipulate repression to get ahead. Acting coy and all.

One girl walked in front of me, then past me, and I followed her movements. She was dark-skinned, with long black stripper boots, wearing nothing on her lower body but a pair of pink panties. She also wore a white tank-top, and above that a short-sleeved pink jacket cut off at her midriff, and her hair was dreadlocked and tied up in a bun. She was pretty, too. Really pretty.

Her face flashed in my mind’s eye again, my perfect recall coming in handy as I examined her face closer. Yeah. Really pretty.

Fuck. I chuckled. She got me good there. Ninety percent sure it was on purpose, too. I should probably call Fei-Fei at some point. I proceeded toward the bar, pushing my horny teenager brain down and trying my best not to get side-tracked again. And also to try and prevent myself from interacting with the girl, because I didn’t quite trust myself to not be an idiot right now.

On paper, consuming the services of prostitutes always seemed slightly gross to me, like a failure of masculinity and power. I knew that others saw it as a form of ultimate masculinity and power, because this sex was bought by money, which was synonymous with power. But looking at these workers right now, I’d hesitate to feel any sort of disgust at them. They were people, working to survive, just like my mom did. And while Katsuo would have shit to say about them and my mom which enraged me to no end, in the end I couldn’t quite resent their differences. 

“See someone you like?” asked the bartender, a handsome man with EMP threading contouring his chin, a shock of necklaces on his neck, and an unbuttoned blue shirt. I chuckled. “Or are you just feeling guilty about cheating on your output? Been there.”

I laughed. “Mostly just philosophizing, I guess,” I replied honestly. 

“Enny for your thoughts?”

Well, if he was asking. “I like what the Mox does. I think this work is as respectable as any. Just took me coming here to fully realize that.” Hell, it was probably more respectable than being a corpo. At least as a sex worker, you only had to exploit yourself and not anyone else. But that was all work when you got right down to it. Exploit your assets where there’s a demand for them. For some, assets could also count as other people.

“You want a drink?”

Fuck it. Huh, what did I like again? To be honest, I liked none of the hard liquors more than the other. They were just a better option than beer. “Double tequila. Also, I want to know where I can get some edgerunner BDs.”

“Check the localnet,” the bartender said as he uncapped a bottle of tequila and poured a measure that looked more than a double, dipping the bottle up and down as it poured. I connected to the localnet with my eyes and quickly found the BBS sub with the BDs they had on sale. I checked the miscellaneous section for their non-porn options, but came up empty on any new edgerunning shit.

Crap.

The bartender put the glass in front of me and I took a sip of it. I heard the scraping of a bar stool next to me, and it was a girl, probably a Mox, moving closer to me. She had an undercut and long hair that almost covered her right eye, green at the start, turning pink from the middle to the end. “Find anything you like?”

“Not really, no,” I said as I took a deeper sip.

“Shame. I might have some fetish stuff for you out back. If it’s too embarassing to say out loud, I can give you a call.”

Ah. Was she the Braindance Editor then? “Thanks, but I wasn’t looking for porn, actually. I wanted some edgerunning XBDs, and I have no idea where to really get any after my supplier, uh, ghosted me. You got any of those out back?”

She raised an eyebrow. “You want psycho BDs? It’s a weird place to ask for that stuff. You’d have better luck at a boostergang bar, we only really sell porn here.”

Damn. Guess early JK was a go. But also…

“Hey, I know this is a longshot,” I said. “But I’m assuming you’re a BD editor, right?”

“You’d be right about that,” she said. “You scroll a BD or something? I can edit your virtu if you’d like.” I pursed my lips.

“That’s gonna be hard. I’m trying to censor a lot of it. Any chance you could just point me to a place I can buy the tech for editing?”

“I can be discreet,” she said. “Wouldn’t be able to work in this biz if I couldn’t. Grab your drink. I can take you out back right now and we can talk shop. Name’s Judy, by the way.”

I felt a little uneasy as I followed her. The bartender made a coughing sound, and I remembered that I had to pay. After getting that business done, I followed Judy further into the club. I sank another gulp of tequila to take care of the slight anxiety. Would an early JK even cut it? The advantage of my little Wraith face-off was that it was fresh, never-before-seen, and the death toll at the end of the day was somewhat impressive. But was it really, though? It was too easy. No tension at all. I didn’t feel the fear that most edgerunners felt while tightrope walking between life and death. I was too in control. It wouldn’t be interesting.

“See, the problem,” Judy said. “Is that you’re underestimating the skill necessary to edit virtus. It’s not something you can learn overnight. Thankfully, you don’t have to.” We walked to a backdoor that led to a tight corridor and finally got to Judy’s workshop. She fell on her work chair and faced me with arms folded. “So, what did you scroll and what do you want left out?”

“My face for one,” I said. “From any reflection and stuff. Names and identities of the people I was thinking about at the time,” I said. “Uhh,” I rubbed the back of my neck. “It gets really specific at points,” I admitted. 

She raised an eyebrow. “Alright, then. You got the virtu burned yet?”

I ejected a chip from my neck, one I had filled with a virtu that was scrolled by both my eyes and my spine. 

“So what we’ll do to start with,” she said. “Is you’ll rewatch the BD and tell me exactly the parts and thoughts you want censored and removed. I’ll watch and make notes as we go.”

“Okay,” I said, thinking that over. I had perfect recall over my own thoughts. I could just tell her right now in excruciating detail everything I wanted scrubbed from the BD. Still, I wasn’t eager to go through with this. I had no idea who Judy was, and now I was entrusting her with knowledge of my solo alter ego. The only thing that protected me was that she had no idea what I did during the day, but even that was quite flimsy. Some of my thoughts would anyway shed light on this.

That being said, I needed this BD done. I was backed to a corner now and the only way forward was to take a risk. Just had to man up and raise my risk tolerance a little.

“I’ve got the details actually,” I said as I opened up a word processor in my eyes and activated the Sandevistan so I could finish writing every element I wanted scrubbed from the BD. Then I sent it to her. 

“Okay,” she said. “Now let’s talk price. But first, you’ve gotta tell me what the fuck it is you scrolled. Seriously. Don’t be shy.”

I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Well, I’m a solo, and that right there’s a gig.” Not really, that was a lie. It was just random violence, but I didn’t want her to think I was crazy.

“Oh,” she said, sitting straighter. “ You’re a solo? You seem so… chill.”

“It’s been a long day,” I said as I downed the last of my tequila and looked around for places where I could put the glass. Judy just leaned forward and offered her hand, and I gave the glass to her. “Sorry. Yeah. So it’s sort of an Edgerunner XBD.”

“Weren’t you looking for them?” she asked. 

“Yeah,” I said. “This is the backup plan.”

She hummed. “Ten thousand.”

I winced. “That’s steep for just a BD edit, no?”

“It’s an XBD. Those are different. Illegal for one. And ultraviolence ain’t my cup of tea, so you’re paying extra for that.”

I sighed. “Can we do eight thousand?”

“Ten thousand,” she said firmly. I frowned.

“Come on, that’s—” I sighed again. “Fine.” I wired her a transaction request using my shell corp and she accepted it with a smile. “I want about ten copies.”

“Pleasure doing biz.”

“I need this done fast, Judy,” I said. “Tomorrow afternoon at the latest or I’m fucked. I’m sorry to pressure you, but it’s my ass on the line, too, and I’ve paid a lot for this.”

“Shit won’t take that long,” she said. “Just head on over at six in the morning and it’ll be ready. How long is it?” she slotted the BD into a wreath that was only connected to her PC monitor. “Three minutes. Yeah, it’ll be done in time. Don’t worry, kid.”

And… here it is. “Judy,” I began. “I don’t suffer loose lips lightly.”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “Are you threatening—”

“Yes. Yes, I am.”

She stared daggers at me, and I returned that stare with an impassive one. I didn’t need bluster. I just needed her to understand.

She relented first, and looked away to type something at her keyboard, not saying a word to me. “See you in the morning,” I said as I walked away.

000

Judy Alvarez watched as the apparent solo closed the door on his way out, her heart still roiling from the sudden and gratuitous brush with impending violence. She’d first taken a shine to the kid after overhearing his conversation with the bartender. Didn’t seem like the bad sort. Probably wasn’t, either. She felt bad for having ripped him off on editing his little BD, but after that blatant threat, not anymore.

But she had no reason to fuck the kid over. And even if she did, as revenge for his mouthiness, she’d rather do so after learning about what he was capable of.

She put on her BD wreath and watched the virtu unedited first. Most people began at half-strength on emotion, but she could already tell from the data in the virtu that the emotions never really peaked beyond comfort levels except for just one occasion. This would probably be a boring watch then.

Then she was on a little plateau in the badlands, the city of Night behind her and the endless desert in front of her. Her bike had been fucked with. Wraiths were closing in.

She immediately considered options.

So many options. So many thoughts. Ideas. Plans. Branches of the future stretching out endlessly, each one being analyzed, each calculated for optimal efficiency.

Judy felt as if her face was being pressed so close into a TV screen that she was pushing into it, through it, her entire self being replaced by the subject on the screen. The Solo.

The Solo’s mind raced. Judy pressed the emergency brakes and stopped the virtu, and then ripped the wreath from her head.

What the fuck?

Her brain was buzzing .

What the fuck was inside this virtu?

It was like she was wearing a Kerenzikov, only her perception of the thoughts running through the subject’s head was normal speed despite the speedware making every thought whizz by at three times the speed.

She put the virtu on half-speed and disconnected some parameters of her personal link so she wouldn’t lose her ego so she could watch the rest. The kid managed to stop time somehow, using a Sandevistan, which gave him time to think even more.

A lot of morality bullshit, too. He had a hangup about not having a hangup about killing. Weird . And that number he kept thinking about? What was he, some sort of middle-school syndrome patient? How in the fuck had the kid that had just been in her workshop killed a hundred and eighty three people? That was insanely excessive. 

The kid sent out his quickhacks, and things only got weirder from there. It was as if she had just gone from driving a Mai Mai to going full throttle on a Rayfield Excalibur AV. She halved the speed of the virtu again and ignored the technobabble in the quickhack. Most Netrunners who scrolled BDs requested to have the tech babble edited out to not give any watchers an in on their techniques, but the kid’s files said nothing about changing that up. Whatever. She wouldn’t touch it then.

The kid sent pandemonium into the midst of the thirty wraiths that were making their way towards him, killing several almost instantly in the ensuing hail of bullets and rockets. A voice, probably the Sandevistan itself, informed him of how much he had used it, and he was surprised at that. He had gone through some brain changes evidently, and it had made him vastly better at processing information. That explained so much. 

He stopped two cars, and then he activated the Sandevistan again to drop-kick the windshield of the first car coming towards him, instantly killing the two passengers inside.

A sharp pain travelled up her legs before disappearing. A minor spike in emotion followed. She’d keep the pain in, since it was so brief that it would probably just give the watcher a high. And the kid moved on from it with admirable swiftness too; no lingering mental microtrauma.

The kid’s mind wandered from time to time, thinking about random stuff as he threw a knife straight into the skull of an approaching Wraith. 

It felt surreal to be in his body as he charged at a gunman with nothing but his fists, completely ignoring the fact that he had his own gun. The brutality he executed was calculated and workmanlike, but no less gruesome to watch as he deformed the guy’s face. 

Then the biggest spike in emotion yet occurred. Her mind’s eye flashed with the face of a beautiful, red-haired woman, the rolling barrel of a heavy machine gun, fire and vehicles, and then an impressionistic scene of heaven and hell.

‘Sorry, mom.’

An otherworldly force seemed to hug around the Solo’s body—clearly a figment of imagination but a remarkably stable one—pushing his trigger finger and killing the Wraith.

She paused the virtu and made sure to scan for more emotional crests. She hadn’t expected this one to affect her nearly as much as it did.

And the client wanted this deleted.

That… wouldn’t do, though. That was a defining moment. She didn’t know what it defined or what it did for him, but she knew it was important.

Grief. Lost loved one. Loss of innocence. Those were killer themes, sold for a fucking premium in Night City, especially when packaged in with edgerunner biz. Too many hardened and jaded criminals scrolled their BDs. There wasn’t a contrast, really, between the moral reflection of their actions and the reality of it. No story .

‘Mom’ would have to be replaced. Also the post-traumatic imagery. She could obscure the faces and defining characteristics. But the ‘sorry’ had to remain. A sorry to a deceased loved one, a step into the underworld.

She nodded. And continued the virtu.

The Solo was all biz from there on out. He got into a Wraith car, admired its beauty, decided then and there that he would get it. Some more shit about a guy called Maine and his car and… a school? Kid went to school? Hold on, was he doing all of this to impress his friends?

What the actual fuck.

This kid was a nutcase.

The show continued as the kid drove his newfound dream car into a herd of Wraiths shooting at him, killing only one of them before diving out like an action hero, processing every portion of his surroundings in order to make a landing that didn’t even so much as scratch him on the rocks on the desert. He raised his gun, activated his Sandevistan and popped each Wraith one by one.

No. He popped them the way he had been taught to pop them by someone called Rebecca. And the impressions suggested it wasn’t long ago that he learned it either.

No… it couldn’t be the same Rebecca. Had to be a coincidence. The kid didn’t flash any visual memory of this Rebecca either, so Judy had no way to confirm. Either way, he took his enemies out with perfect precision after getting the hang of shooting. Then he got up and looked for a long gun, found a copperhead, shot some newcomers, and let one of them run so he could get better target practice.

“Are you threatening—”

“Yes. Yes, I am .”

At first, Judy had been surprised at the balls of this kid to just walk into an outsider’s turf and threaten them to their face. Judy had heard a lot of shit from desperate people, but threats rubbed her wrong wherever they came from. And she had almost returned his money and then thrown him out on his ass for it. She hadn’t taken the threat particularly seriously as well either. What could he do?

A lot. He could do a lot.

Back to the virtu, the Solo drove up to the wreckage and finished the job, dispassionately executing every last Wraith. The last one, he finally felt some emotion. The slightest hint of contrition, honest contrition too, but in the end he was resolved to only one course of action. After all, the gonk had seen his face.

And now his was riddled with bullets.

The virtu ended there.

Judy bit her thumbnail, considering that wraith’s last moments.

She called Rebecca.

Becca: Yo, Judes? Long time, no talk! What’s up?

Judy: Got a question for you. You in touch with any solo that sports a Sandevistan?

Becca: You heard of D already? Yeah, he’s a newbie in our crew. Crazy motherfucker and fucking competent too. He’s my choom also. Whaddya want with him?

Judy was just about to talk about the virtu before ‘D’s voice popped up in her head.

“I don’t suffer loose lips lightly.”

‘Gonk saw my face.’

Judy: Not-nothing. Just heard rumors is all.

Becca: Wait a minute. He didn’t come to Lizzie’s did he? Did he? Oh my god, you have to tell me if he did.

Judy: No, not at all, I’ve never seen him. Me and the other girls just heard rumors about a Sandy in your crew, we wanted to know if they fuck as good as they say. You know, cuz they’re, like, super fast? Hahah.

Becca: Nah, he doesn’t fuck. Me, at least. But I’ll ask if he uses it when he fucks next time I see him and settle this debate for ya, no problem. Was that all?

Judy: Yeah, pretty much. Why not swing by Lizzie’s sometime? Your brother’s a regular, why ain’t you?

Becca: Because my brother’s a regular. Ban him and I’ll finally come back.

Judy: Hahah. See ya, Becs.

Judy hung up and started chewing harder on her thumbnail.

Ah.

Fuck.

000

I woke up extra early today so I could both swing by Lizzie’s to pick up my BDs and also so I could send in a request to have several more sets of uniform ordered. It was about time I replaced my stuff with something that fit better, and also because I didn’t want to bother with getting rid of every single dried bloodstain from a white shirt.

I came to Lizzie’s with my casualwear and saw the bouncer sitting on a chair staring up at the sky with golden eyes. She saw me and ended the call. “Back for more?” she asked.

“Yeah, I have some biz with Judy,” I said. “Can I come through?”

“Fifty eddies first,” she said.

Judy popped out from the door and saw me. “Ah, hey you, come on in.”

“I’ll pay, first,” I said.

“Pay?” Judy asked, then looked at the bouncer. Ah, fuck. why do I let myself get scammed so easily?

“I never had to pay to begin with, did I?” I looked at the bouncer, who was just grinning.

“Nope.”

Judy looked at me with wide eyes. “How much did you pay her? I can return the cash if you want.”

I raised an eyebrow at that. She was being pretty agreeable all of a sudden. What did she want? Or rather, what did she do? “No, it’s fine. It’s just fifty edds anyway.” A long time ago, I couldn’t imagine myself ever saying that, but now I could. Way before even graduating, too.

Nova.

I followed her into the bar and to her office. She was walking with a spring in her step. “As agreed, all identifiers have been removed. All reflections, names and faces, except for the Wraiths. I tweaked the experience a little to sort of shave down the density of information—you think, like, really hard , you know? Really solid thoughts, if that makes sense. Fast too. Not that it’s any of my business, but you might wanna get checked for neurodevelopmental disorders. You’re kind of… all over the place,” we reached her office where she kept a ziploc bag of chips. “Anyway, here they are. I threw in an extra ten chips. You paid a lot for this edit, and it’s really not a big deal. And yes, I will keep my silence on this. You have my word on that.”

Ah, I understood now.

She was scared of me. “I’m glad you understand.” I accepted the bag. “And hey,” I said the beginnings of an apology, but thought better of it. Maybe just double down instead. “I think you forgot the original and uncopied virtu.”

“Was just getting to that,” she said with a strained smile as she handed me the chip in a small ziplock bag. “There you go.”

I searched her eyes for any hints of deception, but all I could find was fear and discomfort. “Thank you,” I said. “Preem work.” And I turned to leave.

But not before breaching into her shit of course. She was a techie, not a Netrunner, but her cybersec was still solid enough to stall me for the amount of time it took for me to walk into her workshop and almost be out the door. I did a quick scan through her drives and found nothing just as I walked out the door. 

She knew better , I kept telling myself on my way home to get dressed up for school. She knew better than to fuck with me at this point.

Still, it was a risk I absolutely hated taking. Leaps of faith rarely went unpunished in this city.

000

At school, I was just breezing by in a daze of simmering anger and discontentedness, my typical cocktail of emotion whenever I came to this hellish academy. It was more than average now though; my interaction with Judy left me uneasy, vulnerable, and the fact that I was doing all of this to gain the favor of some fifteen-year-old only added more salt to my wound.

During lunch, I ate in the park as always, out of the way of the other cliques and groups. Mid-sandwich,  I got an unexpected call.

Fei-Fei: Hey there. Forget about me yet?

I smiled.

David: Likely story. Was actually thinking about you recently.

Fei-Fei: See a pretty girl walk by or what?

I raised an eyebrow. How the fuck could she guess that?

David: No, I mean—yeah.

Fei-Fei: Hahah! Relax, choom! It’s not like we’re dating or anything. I don’t expect exclusivity from you.

David: Yeah, yeah. I know. It’s just, it’s a weird setup for me. This is new.

Fei-Fei: It’s, yeah, it’s new to me, too. Feels a little strange, but better than commitment I would say. Anyway, there’s a party going on tonight

David: Yacht party,  yeah, I heard. You got invited too?

Fei-Fei: I go wherever Katsuobushi goes, for better or for worse.

David: Katsuobushi, hahah. I’ll use that one someday.

Fei-Fei: No, it’s my… pet-name for him. Best not to use it. 

David: Damn. Guess I’ll just go back to the tried and tested ‘gonk’.

Fei-Fei: You can call him Studd-San. He has a chrome dick, you know?

David: Fuck, really?

I laughed.

Fei-Fei: Honest! It’s got a vibration function and everything! Feels like getting drilled by a jackhammer. Have to screw up my pain thresh just to enjoy it. And he’s like, super fixated on his dick, too. Talks about it a lot. He calls it a fucking spear, the dickhead. Literally.

David: What a freak. Wait, it hurts?

Fei-Fei: It’s not a big deal. I can just not feel the pain when I want to, and I was mostly just doing it because I felt bad for him. He doesn’t have the balls to try anything I don’t want.

David: Careful or he might replace them with more chrome.

Fei-Fei: Hahahahahaha! Oh man—and you know, he shaped it weirdly too. ‘For your pleasure’, he said-said. He’s such a gonk, I can’t.

David: Jesus Christ, choom, you can’t be serious

Fei-Fei: Like, I feel bad for him sometimes. He tries so hard to flaunt daddy’s chromy gifts as if that means anything. Never understood how you could be so proud of having earned nothing at all. Like, his best qualities? Daddy bought them. Everything from chipware down to his oversized plastic dick. That being said, don’t ever get a Mr. Studd, David.

David: Oh god please don’t talk about that.

Something about cutting my dick off to get a ‘better’ one skeeved me out way worse than chipping in entire arms or legs. Maybe I was putting too much importance on the concept of manhood? Probably. Wasn’t like chrome couldn’t just make anyone a man, or a woman, or anything in between.

In the end it was all just matter. The deeper concepts like masculinity and pride being centered around a body part made as much sense to me as religion or spirituality when I really thought about it.

Thing about Katsuo was that he was just bad at using his tools. Not me, though.

I finished the last of my sandwich.

Fei-Fei: I’m serious! You don’t need a vibrating glans function or a dick long enough to stick out of my mouth! Just use your fingers and tongue like you always have, go deep and slow just like—

I had to make sure no one was around to see me blush or react physically to Fei-Fei’s words. I let her go on for a while though, and resisted every urge to return the same energy and frustrate myself even more. Instead, I just got down to biz.

David: You think we’ll get some alone time during this party?

Fei-Fei: Probably. Studd-San will be busy kissing up to his baby cousin for most of the time. While that happens, you and I can go LEO.

David: You’re gonna regret riling me up, choom.

Fei-Fei: I will most certainly not. And here’s a parting gift. See you tonight, big bad solo.

Fei-Fei hung up the call and left a photo. I downloaded it and opened it in my eyes.

She was in her school’s bathroom, wearing her school uniform; a brown and black plaid skirt and a long-sleeved white shirt with a tie, only the shirt was pulled up to reveal her boobs.

That… did things. 

I was racing against the clock now. Either I calmed down in the next five minutes or I’d be late for the next class.

Notes:

Would it be too much to put David through another traumatic event this close to his freakout in the desert?

Chapter 26: Apogee of Heists

Summary:

The day of the heist to retrieve the Apogee Sandy is upon us

The final bell rung, and Nakajima didn’t waste any time getting in touch, although this time it was a call and not an e-mail.

Nakajima: We should have a meeting sometime, start laying out the final plans to work on our build. And I’m gonna level with you, you also need to explain to me some of the shit you did.

David: Right, sorry. I’ll tell you in person. Can I get back to you on that meeting time later? Need to check my schedj and all.

Nakajima: Don’t put on airs, kid. What could possibly be more important? Fuck, fine. Let me know quick though. We don’t have time to loaf around. We’re gonna be working double time as it is.

David: Of course. I’ll let you know in time. Was there anything else?

Nakajima: Just an incentive; I can make the case for you to test out early on some of your subjects to the dean, but that’s only if we get a decent placement on the case comp. Your humanities and lang courses.

My eyes widened.

David: Are you serious? That means I could graduate a semester early!

Nakajima: Hold your horses, scriptkiddo; you’ll still have to pay for the exams. Can’t have you getting out of an entire semester payment without some price. Anyway, just consider that incentive to take shit seriously.

David: Oh yeah, I’ll definitely take this seriously now!

Nakajima: You gonk, does that mean you didn’t give a shit before?

David: My signal’s weak. 

Nakajima: Cut the shitposting, kid

David: Audio’s buzzing. Good… bye.

I hung up. 

I hopped onto my bike and pulled out from Arasaka Academy grounds sedately, where I eventually gave Maine a call. He picked up quite quickly.

Maine: Heard you had a chat with Dorio. You back on the team now.

D: Yeah. Listen, I was in a pretty rough place when I yelled at you—

Maine:  Come to Aldo’s. Bring your gear. We’re going on a gig right now. Can you make it?

D: If it’s over before seven, yeah. That enough time?

Maine: Should be enough time. You gotta get on the uptake quick, though.

D: I can be quick.

Maine hung up. He was… different. 

Well, it made sense. Fuck. How would I make it up to him? Maybe I could do this gig free of charge? 

I sped on home, got dressed and geared up, sword and gun strapped to my belt.

I doubled my speed going to Aldo’s, managing to get there only fifteen minutes after I was called upon.

Maine waited for me outside the warehouse with his arms folded. I bowed my head at him.

“I’m sorry for the disrespect, Maine,” I said to him. “I’ll take this gig for free to make it up to you.”

Maine’s expression didn’t change from his cold neutrality. “Dorio told me you went batshit for a few ticks.”

I shrugged. “Yeah. Head wasn’t on straight after I got hit.”

“How about now?” Maine asked. “And what about later?”

I shook my head. “It was an extraordianry circumstance. Won’t happen again. I figured my shit out and I’m here for this team. Ride or die.”

“Not exactly,” Maine said. “You still got that corpo dayjob you’re looking forward to. And I ain’t takin’ any issue with that. But that don’t mean you can just cut and run at any time.”

“I know,” I said. “And it won’t happen. I promise you. I owe you guys everything for giving me a chance, and I won’t run from that obligation.”

“Good,” Maine said, and then he finally grinned. Tension fled out from me in rivers as I saw it. “Catch,” he tossed me a chip and I caught it and slotted it in. He walked into the warehouse and I followed.

“Kiwi did her research. Turns out the data fort y’all klepped made life a million times easier for us. The name of the game is surgical,” he took me to the back room where Lucy and Kiwi were typing away at their external decks while Pilar was off in some corner soldering some circuit boards. “We made a plan thinking you’d still be out of commission, but with you here now, things can get way easier. In and out, unnoticed. No killing. No breaking. Just entering.”

Maine plopped himself next to Dorio on the sofa and I sat opposite to them. “So where do I come in?”

“It’s just you, Kiwi and Lucy. They will hack the security system. You will Sandy your way through, get the payload and come out peachy keen.” 

“Really?” I asked. “And what if things go tits up? Should I cut or should I cut ?”

“You get burned, you might as well kill whoever saw you,” Maine said. “For your own good. We’re not just stealing some eddies here. Money can’t buy the Apogee, you know.”

I nodded. Using the Sandevistan, I read through the contents of the chip in what appeared to be an instant; the building, its interior and its location as well as the people on guard duty, their rotation and movements. It was comprehensive, though that was probably because of my own efforts—or Nanny’s, if I was completely honest.

“Got it,” I said. 

Pilar stood up from his workstation with a sigh and spotted me. “D, my man! Check out this dongle!” He raised the USB stick in the air and tossed it to me. I caught it. “The girls’ll load it with some hacks, and you can use that to gain entry into the Tyger fortress.”

“Gradual entry,” Kiwi said, not taking her eyes off her cyberdeck. “The dongle has a receiver, we’ll be installing keys on the go. That way you get instant access with each use, lets you take advantage of your speed.”

“Nova,” I said. “This’ll be easy then.”

“Idiot!” Maine roared as he smacked me on the back of my head hard enough that I saw stars for a moment. Didn’t do any real damage, but it’d turn into an annoying headache in time if I let it, so I just healed from it. “Don’t start gettin’ a big head before a gig or you’ll jinx it!”

“Sorry,” I muttered. Lucy chuckled, and I glared at her. “What’s so funny?”

I almost completely forgot about her.

Tough luck that I couldn’t heal from this headache. Now I was back in with the queen of hot and cold herself, Lunacy.

“You, you gonk. You look like a kicked puppy,” she sneered. “Oh, by the way, you still haven’t been cut in yet.”

Her eyes flashed blue and I received a payment request for a hundred and twenty five thousand. Fuck, that was a lot.

Also reminded me that I still had to pay Reyes back. Fuck. I’d have to do that in-between finishing the gig and going to the yacht party. I might even run late at this rate. Katsuo said eight PM. I probably should have saved Jin’s contacts; that way, I’d be able to inform him if I was running late. Instead I’d have to run that through Plastic Dick.

Whatever. This would be quick anyway.

“So who’s in the gig?” I asked Maine. 

“Lucy and Kiwi will follow you, help breach the building. Falco will drive.”

“Pass the dongle,” Kiwi said, raising a hand. I tossed it towards her gently and she grabbed it, plugged it into her deck, and started a transfer. Then she stood up. “Alright, let’s go. Double time it.”

000

The location was a large courtyard building that doubled as a martial arts training center, a meeting place for Tyger Claw bigwigs, and a ripperdoc clinic for only their best rank and file. Officially it was called the Deravaja Dojo and it was open to the public, though the data said it wasn’t a good idea to go in unless you had a good lay of the place’s culture or enough Tyger friends to either cover for you in case of a faux pas—those were quite often deadly in this place. 

Falco parked us a block away and I was psyching myself up for the mission, cooling down like Falco had advised me to all that time ago.

“Alright,” Kiwi said. “Go time.”

I activated the Sandevistan, exited the car and made my way into the facility. A prior Ping had already informed me about the reachable access points, one of which was in a corner of the facility without cameras or people; a deadspot right where the dojo connected to a larger building right behind it.

With my sword and nothing else—a stealth op wouldn’t be that stealthy if I let my gun fire—I made my way to the access point and plugged in the dongle, resuming time.

Kiwi called.

Kiwi: ETA fifteen seconds. No one’s on you yet.

I waited fifteen seconds, and Kiwi gave me the confirmation to pull out and make my way to the first restricted area: the dojo’s backrooms, where the bigwigs had their meetings. Kiwi had already looped the cameras from when I had plugged in the dongle, so all I had to worry about was people spotting me.

I sent out a Ping, getting an overview of who was around me, activated the Sandevistan and zoomed past Tyger Claws, both the office variants and the heavily tattooed and chromed out rank and file, making sure to stay in their peripheral view if I could help it.

Reaching the second access point, I plugged the dongle in again and waited patiently while Kiwi informed me of the wait time.

My Ping told me someone was coming. I zoomed out of the way, stopping around a deadspot without any guards or Claws. The camera I was in front of was looped, though, giving me enough time to stay put and wait.

Then a door opened and out strolled a little kid. Utterly invisible to my Ping.

She had a pair of pigtails and was dressed in a little dungaree dress. And she looked up at me with wide eyes. I looked at her as well. She looked at my sword. Then she said, in Japanese, “ I want that!”

I chuckled uneasily and replied. “I’m sorry, but it’s dangerous. I can’t give it to you.”

“I want it!” she shouted. Fuck !

Kiwi: What’re you doing, D? Upload’s done, we have access.

D: Gimme a sec.

“How about a magic trick instead?” I asked. And she smiled now.

“Magic! Magic! Show me magic!”

Bodies were starting to move in on us, hearing the noise.

“Okay, blink and I will disappear,” I said

She blinked emphatically, I activated the Sandevistan and ran up to the access port where I took out the key and ran up to another door. I slowed down my Sandevistan to open it, slipped in and went straight ahead to the final access port.

Fuck, that was close.

D: Some kid caught me. She didn’t have any chrome, so my Ping came up empty. Can you tap into the airwaves, see if that raised any alarms?

Kiwi: Kid walks around in a Tyger Claw stronghold, chances are they’re related to a bigwig. If we stay cold the rest of the gig, nothing will come of it. But that’s only if we stay cold. You better make sure the Ripper doesn’t catch you. He’s in there right now, watching a braindance. No traps as far as the scans can tell, but those could be air gapped. Use your eyes, D. And go.

I took out the dongle, rushed up to a new door and opened it.

Kiwi tapped me into the camera feed that showed the ripperdoc spacing out in his clinic, deep inside a BD.

Now all I had to do was find the Sandy. I cranked up mine to the maximum and immediately got to work turning the entire clinic upside down, inside out, spending subjective minutes on the task all the while making sure that the ripper was still snoozing.

By the end of it, I isolated its possible location to three different safes, all of them old school analog shit.

I let out a snort. This motherfucker was smart. I snapped some stills of the safes with my eyes and sent them to Pilar along with a message. ‘You think the Masamune could do these in?’

Pilar responded quickly. ‘If those are what I think they are, then yeah. Only problem is they’re made to squeal when you try to break in like that. Even with super speed. Fuck, you guys should have brought me on this. I could crack it easy. Thing was obviously built to counter netrunners without any techie skills.’

I gave him a call.

D: You think I could break in?

Pilar: Press your ear against the wall and I’ll help ya out, but you gotta be fast on this shit, okay? The moment I say turn or stop, you turn or stop, got it?

D: Got it.

Pilar gave me painstaking instructions and I followed each and every one until the safe finally clicked.

It came up with some chrome, but not a Sandevistan.

D: Wrong safe. Gotta try again.

Pilar: Fuck!

I glanced nervously at the braindancing ripperdoc and got started immediately on the second safe.

Halfway through my attempt on the second safe, it made an unexpected snapping sound.

Pilar: Ah, fuck. Start again. We were too fucking slow.

D: Shit.

Second attempt, same story.

Pilar: Motherfucker!

D: Shit.

Kiwi sent me a message. A Tyger Claw was coming in injured. The Ripper would be called upon.

D: Again! Fast!

I blazed through the third attempt, getting further than before, but in the end, Pilar couldn’t keep up before the safe snapped and reset once again.

Fuck .

D: Again!

Another message from Kiwi. The injured was pulling up fast.

I activated the Sandevistan and carried the safe out from the clinic, just in time too as the ripper was starting to rouse awake.

In a deadspot at the corridor just leading up to the clinic, I began on my fourth and hopefully my last attempt. 

Snap . Another fuckup. 

I was starting to realize I had been very lucky to have gotten it right to begin with. I lifted the safe and carried it to another deadspot in the facility as I heard shouts of urgency; the Tyger Claws were carting their injured here already. Only a corridor away, I began on the fifth attempt.

Pilar: Two clicks right, three left, two right. Stop. Two right. Two left. Three right. Stop. Two right. Three left. Two right. Four left. Five right. Stop. Three L. Two R. Three L. Four R. 

The safe clicked open satisfyingly and I held my breath as I gazed inside. In a see through plastic bag was a metallic spine. I let out a sigh of relief. I stood up and pushed myself in Sandevistan mode to my maximum, carrying the heavy safe into the room where the Ripper was thankfully working hard to save a gangster’s life while his friends were watching. I put the safe back in the cabinet I found it in, and remembered to close the other safe as well, having forgotten that I had left it open. With the piece of unknown chrome as well as the Apogee, I ran out.

Each time I was met with a door, I spent only the fraction of a second standing still necessary for the door to open enough that I could pass through. I was fully out of the Deravaja Dojo and its surrounding building around two and a half real-life seconds after I had gotten the Sandevistan. I popped back into Falco’s car, and he didn’t waste any time driving away, gently of course.

Then once we had fully left the Tyger Claw building’s sightlines, we took off.

Falco looked over his shoulder. “We happy, kid?”

I grinned. “Very happy,” I said. Lucy, who was right next to me, looked at the two bags of cyberware with narrowed eyes.

“What’s that other thing?” she asked. 

“No idea,” I admitted. “Had to play loot boxes to get the Sandy. Got this weird old thing instead. Figured I’d bring it with me anyway.”

Maine called.

Maine: Heard the good news! Got in and out no problem! No alarms or anything either!

D: Got a couple of close calls near the end, hahah! Heart’s still pounding like crazy! Fucking nova!

Maine: All’s well that ends well, kid.

D: Also, hope you wouldn’t mind cutting Pilar in. Without him, I wouldn’t have been able to do shit. Pay him what you would have paid me.

Maine: Kid, this ain’t the yakuza. You sure you don’t wanna be paid?

D: Nah. I was being a gonk. I deserve this. 

Maine: Fuck, kid. Ain’t every day somebody that came up your way turns down a cool one hundred K for less than an hour’s work.

Oh. 

Okay.

No. No turning back now. This was a principle thing. It didn’t matter how high the pay was. Besides:

D: Now that you’ve got your own Sandy, we’ll be swimming in edds.

Maine: Ain’t that the truth! Swing by Turbo’s and we’ll do a quick afterjob celebration, aight?! And I ain’t hearing any excuses, you will be there or I’m hunting your scrawny ass down!

Maine hung up and I sighed. Oh well.

Pilar gave me a call.

Pilar: You magnificent motherfucking maniac, D! One hundred K?! Listen, I’m busy cumming buckets right now thinking about all them Lizzies’ hookers I’m gonna rent out, talk to you at the party!

I grinned uneasily at that. What have I done?

I took off my mask so my face could breathe, then I looked down at the Apogee Sandevistan, and then at Lucy. I schooled my expression as I popped out a shard from my neck and handed it over to her.

“What’s that?”

“Proof,” I said simply. “Maine’s chipping in again, and I’ll need more people on my side to convince him to take it slow.”

Lucy slotted it in while Kiwi looked over her shoulder. “Ah, the chrome-mixing conspiracy you yapped about before,” she said. “That’s supposed to be proof?”

“Yep,” I said. “It’s textfiles highlighting the mathematical inefficiencies, how they can be resolved, and why I’m convinced it’s supposed to work like that and not just some shitty human error.” Falcon made a confused grunt and I explained the basic concept to him. At the end, he just whistled.

“Wouldn’t put any o’ that past the megacorps,” he said. “Seems a little obvious in retrospect; corpshooters are chromed up to the gills, so is MaxTac, but they don’t lose their marbles that easy. Must be good brand loyalty.”

“Good programmers, too,” I said. 

Lucy ejected the shard and handed it over to Kiwi. “Saved a copy,” she said. “I’ll figure it out at some point.”

I was confused as to why she couldn’t just do that right now, but the textfile had thousands of lines of code—thousands that were highlighted at least—and she couldn’t process through all of that in just a couple of seconds.

“In any case,” Kiwi said. “Maine’s not gonna rush to chip the Sandy in once I tell Dorio to have him hold off.”

My eyes widened. “Wait, you mean you’re taking this seriously?”

“Don’t pop a boner on that account, kid,” Kiwi said. “I’m pragmatic, not gullible.”

“Not that it be any of my business,” Falco said. “But tiptoeing around Maine ain’t good form.”

“I told him to his face already,” I said. “He didn’t believe me. Would be more credible if it came from the Netrunners in his crew and not just me.”

“Ain’t you a netrunner?” Falco asked, and I felt my face heat up.

“I mean—”

“Are you blushing?!” Lucy asked. “Falco, you got this kid flustered !” 

My good mood evaporated. “Shut up, Lunacy.”

“Or what? You’ll quickhack me, netrunner ?”

“Bitch, who exactly was it that saved your entire life in the net?” I asked. “If I’m not a netrunner, what does that make you? A scriptkiddie?”

“Don’t call me a bitch, you dumb corpo cunt!”

“Then stop acting like a bitch, Lunacy .”

Falco was howling with laughter while I went at it with her. There was something infinitely satisfying with seeing Lucy’s mocking smirk gone, and instead replaced with indignation and anger.

000

Three beers later and one extremely awkward conversation with Rebecca about how I used my Sandy while fucking, and I was pretty much ready to blow this popsicle stand. I let Maine know I was gonna delta and made my way to my bike, only to find Lucy leaning against it with her arms folded.

“Gimme a ride home,” she said.

“Magic words first,” I said.

She rolled her eyes. “ Please gimme a ride home.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I thought you said the bike was a death trap.”

“Quit fucking around—”

“I’ll give you a ride,” I acquiesced as I pushed past her to sit on the bike. “Hold on tight.”

Lucy hugged my waist gingerly, her grip far too soft.

So I began the bike with a quick acceleration that jerked her grip off me so hard that she had to grab onto her seat to not fly out from the bike. I slowed down, giving her enough time to make her wrap her arms around my waist with a death grip.

Then I sped up even more. Her fingers clawed for a hold on my shirt and her arms were squeezing my sides tightly, but I could tell she was fighting tooth and nail to hold on. I couldn’t help but laugh as I dodged through traffic, jerking the bike erratically and taking sharp turns that would have thrown Lucy off if I hadn’t been holding her hands tightly.

Before she knew it, I started to slow down as we were pulling up to her apartment building.

Lucy hopped off before I even came to a stop and started growling at me. I laughed. “Couldn’t keep up?”

“You fucking gonk !”

“C’mooon,” I said. “You were talking all that good shit a few days ago. What the fuck happened?”

She laughed in incredulity. “Maybe if I was blackout drunk I’d enjoy it!”

“Sounds like a skill issue,” I said. 

“David, you’re retarded.”

“And you’re too slow!” I cackled as I pulled a wheelie on my bike and spun around the street.

Lucy’s face began to twitch, her lips quirking up and down. Then her eyes flashed blue as something crashed into my ICE.

I slowed my bike down just in time for the short circuit to hit my spine and drive the wind out of my lungs. I tried to heal by using the Sandevistan, but found that it was offline for the moment. Wow . I definitely had to fix that vulnerability. Healing was my biggest trump card.

Twitchingly, I glared at Lucy, and she just smiled back with self-satisfaction. The Sandevistan went back online and I activated it to heal my jittery nerves. Then I just grinned. “Nice one. Won’t always work, though.”

“Wanna do an arms race?” she challenged.

“I don’t race slow people,” I said, and her smile fell. I shrugged forlornly. “Nobody can keep up with little ol’ me. I’m just too fast.”

“Fast in bed, too, probably,” she said.

“Is that a fact?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at her. “Why don’t you find out for yourself?”

“Fuck off,” she said. “Gonks who talk big can never deliver.”

“Not this gonk.”

“ Uwu I have sex really good, I swear!” she mocked. What the actual fuck was everybody's obsession about my sex life anyway? First Rebecca's absolutely hexed question about whether I used the fucking Sandy while doing it, and now this?

“You’re the one who brought it up! You know what? Fuck this. Fuck you. You’re home. Go home now.”

I turned my bike around and prepared to go, only for Lucy to stop me with a “Hey!”

I turned my head to her. “What?”

“I’d probably find it more preem riding that death machine if I was drunk,” she said, her arms folded and her expression neutral. “How about Friday?”

My eyes widened at that, but I schooled my expression quickly. “On you this time?”

She rolled her eyes. “Sure. Would only be fair seeing as you’d never be able to beat me in a bet.”

“Fuck off,” I muttered. “Fine. See ya around. And do read that chip. I can’t explain anything to you via call, so you got any questions, save it for a face-to-face meeting.”

I expected her to scoff at that, but instead she just nodded, her expression still serious. It made me happy to see how seriously she took this.

I peeled away from her street and considered my options. First, Reyes.

After hitting up a bank, I swung by him masked up and delivered to him his cash as promised. We exchanged pleasantries and parted on good terms. From there, I went home to get changed into a non-merc outfit and hit up Jinguji for some new threads.

Yamanaka kept faithful to the yellow and white theme after I told him that the neomil suit was okay, but only okay. He seemed to take that as an affront as well as an opportunity to upsell me on more neokitsch, this time a bright yellow suit with white cuffs, a white belt with golden buckles, a white shirt underneath with a neon blue tie that had a dancing circuitry pattern on it.

The shoes were also yellow, and as for glasses, this time they were white-lensed and horn-rimmed, a little nerdy looking, but I didn’t fully mind it. 

All that done, I made my way to a luxurious part of the docks where a huge yacht was moored, just in time for the sun to set over the pacific, leaving behind my solo life and stepping into another every bit as treacherous and high-stakes.

I took a deep breath, remembered Falco’s words about keeping cool, and remembered my training before exhaling slowly. Classes, know-how, street smarts and confidence. I had it all. What mattered was wielding my weapons with skill. I got lucky in the last party. Things worked out for me without much trying. It wouldn’t always be like that however.

Things would work out this time, too. Not because of luck. Because of skill.

I could do this.

Notes:

Chapter's a little shorter than normal, but brevity's the soul of wit and all.

Chapter 27: Yacht Party Part 1

Summary:

David debuts as a BD action hero and gains a superfan

After I parked my bike, I received a call from someone I hadn’t spoken to in a long time.

Ichinose: Yo, I’ve got work for you! And two new referrals! Five hundred eddies for this job, a debug.

I stopped and stared at the empty air.

My lips quirked upwards.

I chuckled.

Then I laughed .

Ichinose: What the fuck, David?

I kept laughing.

This man’s existence had completely slipped my mind. The basic bitch netrunner I did jobs for way back when mom and I could barely afford rent.

Now it was this guy who couldn’t afford me .

David: Sorry, pal. I’m done with this work.

Ichinose: Come on, David! Six hundred, okay?!

David: Put another zero there and we might be talking.

Ichinose: What the fuck? Who do you think you are? I’m offering you good eddies right here!

David: You think that’s ‘good eddies’, Ichi, then you must be out of your gonk mind. Either you pay me better or you drop it and lose my contacts.

Ichinose: You think I won’t fucking doxx you, kid? Do you even know who you’re playing with?

I spent a moment entertaining the fantasy of doxxing him in turn through our comm line, but I quickly gave that up, not seeing the need to. I knew for a fact that he couldn’t crack my cybersecurity even if he wanted to, and I always made sure never to hand him any identifying information, keeping our correspondence strictly anonymous, except for our first names. He couldn’t touch me with only that. Doing anything against him would imply that I considered him a threat, which I didn’t.

David: Thanks for the edds, but I’m afraid this is where we part ways. I’m going to block you now. 

Because really, that was enough.

Ichinose: What?! You think that’s—

I blocked Ichinose and quickly put him out of my mind. Seriously, six hundred eddies for three jobs. The past me would have jumped at the opportunity, burning an entire weekend tirelessly typing away just to have Ichinose pay me three days later up to a week. His only selling point was that he eventually paid, but he had a godawful attitude. 

Whatever. He didn’t matter. I put him out of my mind and started meditating again, finding my cool. Time to put my corpo on… again. 

A couple of security guards stood before the ramp up to the pleasure barge. They held up a hand to stop me and shot me a scan. After a moment of waiting, he gave me a nod. “Right this way, Mr. Martinez. If you provide us with a key to your vehicle, a valet can get it parked for you.”

Hmmm. 

My gutter rat id instinct was to tell him to fuck off with that obvious scam, but my corpo superego overrode that impulse. If anyone tried to steal it, I’d find it and take it back. No worries.

“Here,” I said, sending the man the electronic key. “Not a scratch on it or it’s your ass,” I said, just to be a cunt, and also because I couldn’t contain my gutter rat instinct for much longer. Maybe it was trashy of me to be so attached to something as paltry as a 66 thousand eurodollar motorbike, but what did that matter to me? That bike was still precious to me, if only sentimentally, since I could easily afford several of them at this point.

I proceeded up the ramp and into the main deck of the ship where loud music played. Bottles of expensive champagne and liquor bandied about as corp students celebrated the generosity of one Jin, last name Ryuzaki, son of Arasaka’s head of finance.

I spotted Allister and Walter chilling in some corner, surrounded by ‘lesser vassals’. Really fucking depressing, that. I always thought they were all just… friends . That wasn’t the case. The truth was, there were no true friendships in this world. Only rivalries or subordinates. 

Allister gave me a call and I accepted it.

Allister: Turn around and greet Jin first, you gonk.

I hissed inwardly and did as I was told. That was uncharacteristically harsh of him, though I knew why that was. He only got so heated when things were dire, and I guess me not acknowledging the top dog first was a sufficient enough breach of decorum to even have him of all people cursing. I sent him a quick thanks and walked up to Jin, who was seated on a raised platform on a table with Katsuo, and Fei-Fei , wrapped around Katsuo all lovey-dovey.

I tried to suppress a smile at that. “Hello, Jin,” I said. “Katsuo.” And then to Fei-Fei, I tilted my head. “I haven’t had the pleasure of introducing myself to you, yet. What’s your name?”

“Mei Jing Fei,” she said, and it occurred to me just then that this was the first I’d ever heard of her full name. I guess Fei-Fei was always just a pet name, then. Cute that she had given it to me so early. Proved that she actually sort of liked me. Well, I always knew she did, but I guess this meant we were real chooms.

“A pleasure, Jing Fei,” I said. 

“David, my man,” Jin said, getting up to greet me. He pulled me into a bro-hug, patting my back and holding my hand. “You been well and all?”

“I have,” I said. “I hope the answer is likewise.”

“Can’t complain, can’t complain,” he said. “Been bored as fuuuck , though. I really hope you’ve come with a fix for that.”

Ah, here it was.

I stepped back and did a ninety-degree bow, ripping off the corporate apology chapter of the corporate culture textbook almost verbatim—I had read and memorized that section just for this. First rule of breaking bad news to a superior: full honesty and no excuses. You fucked up and they’re going to be mad. Don’t try to downplay it. You shouldn’t have gotten to this point in the first place.

“I was not able to procure any new XBDs off Jimmy Kurosaki’s make as of late. I apologize profusely for my blatant inadequacy.”

“What the fuck?!” Katsuo roared. “This lazy asshole didn’t even deliver? I heard so many rumors too of another XBD out on the street!”

Fuck, really?

Or was he just lying to put me in deeper shit?

Knowing Katsuo, it could be either or.

“Eh,” Jin said. “I keep an ear to the ground myself. Haven’t heard of any new Jimmies out. Probably just bullshit. If Davey couldn’t find it, I doubt they existed in the first place.”

I felt slightly guilty about that. I could have hit up a boostergang bar to find the XBDs, in D attire sure, but I had been sidetracked on getting my own XBD edited, hoping that was enough. Beside, Jimmy didn’t release that often anyway. It had been about three weeks now, and his next upload would probably happen in a week or two.

In all actuality, this was a genuine fuckup on my part, and one that I really shouldn’t continue making a habit of reproducing, or I could just kiss my dreams of corporate overlordship—as Lucy put it—goodbye.

“That being said,” I said as I straightened my back. “I have brought with me a Jimmy Kurosaki XBD of the second installment. Something I hope you haven’t sampled yet.”

Jin’s grin widened. “ Oh . You crazy motherfucker, you got the full series?! Why didn’t you fucking say so? Shit, that’s awesome! I’ve still got a huge ass backlog I need to catch up on! Second, you say? Yeah, that’ll do nicely .”

“I also have another XBD,” I said. “An up-and-coming no-name solo. Not a cyberpsychosis scroll. The guy’s pretty collected and all. It’s more like a ‘day in the life of an edgerunner’ type thing.”

“Preem,” Jin said, though I could tell he wasn’t super into the idea. “So how much were you thinking?”

“A hundred per chip?” I said. “That adds up to forty chips, for four thousand.”

“You’d like that mindblowing amount, wouldn’t you, David?” Katsuo taunted. “Four thousand making your dick hard, isn’t it?”

I could give it for free considering how little I relied on this stupid income stream for anything else but social capital, and I was ready to make such a statement before stopping myself.

It was the principle of the matter, wasn’t it?

Allister could easily afford being an XBD gopher for these assholes because he had enough money to never make that an issue, but the indignation of the matter wasn’t the loss of money: it was being made to do something against your will. Subjugated and employed .

I couldn’t let myself fall into that trap and lose all rep. Four thousand was chump change, but it was the price to pay, and I wouldn’t budge on that, even if I was going wayyy underneath cost. 

Now, to construct a sentence where I enforced my bottomline without coming off as desperate or insulting.

I just… ignored Katsuo and refocused on Jin. Sometimes, the best response was no response at all. Besides, how childish would I have to be to try and get in a band-for-band contest with some rich asshole anyway?

“Yeah, sure, fuck it,” Jin said, thinking absolutely nothing of the transaction as his eyes glowed blue and he sent me the money. That was biz after all: fuck it, pay. Jin was a good customer. I handed him the baggy of chips. “Go chat with your little friends, I’ll call you to test the BDs out when I’m feeling up for it. You good with that?”

“Always,” I said. “I’m never gonna sell you something I can’t watch myself. But I do gotta warn you, the JK is… well, on a scale of one to ten, with ten being Norris, this one’s a solid nine. Schizo paranoid chrome junkie loses his shit, starts thinking his neurons are pumping poison through his brain, and it’s the government’s fault.”

“Ah, got it,” Jin said. “Thanks for the warning. Fucking hate to have another vomit clean-up session. Really harshed the vibe last time it happened. Fucking pussies man, can you believe them?”

“They can’t tolerate the darkness of the world,” I said with a shrug. “Would rather hide away than embrace it. Would rather fear and be prey than join the dark and be a predator.”

Jin’s eyes widened. “Exactly! They think it’s all fucking games just because they’re corpos, but this is Night Fucking City, choom! You can’t let your eddies blind you to the truth: we all look the same on the inside. Blood and meat.”

“Unless you become a chrome monster,” I said. “Then you’re more… right?” Wait, what the hell was I saying?

Jin was… I was genuinely relating to him now. He actually knew. He understood the world, understood my own obsession with XBDs.

“Yeah!” he chuckled. “Then you’re more .”

I gave him a grin. “Pleasure doing biz, Jin. Holler if you need me.”

“You know it!” He patted both my shoulders, the overly familiar gesture not lost on me. Our little moment of connection was cute and all, but that didn’t mean jack shit considering our places in the hierarchy. The gesture made me feel like a pet: a really fucking good pet, but a pet nonetheless.

That was the other end of the equation, wasn’t it? Get too good at being a corpo and some asshole would want to pimp you to their own benefits.

Maybe it was high time I disappointed him at some point. Tactically.

I finally got to meet Allister and Walter, giving them a chipper greeting. “Hey, guys. Having fun?”

Walter handed me a drink and gave a grin. “Sure. Depends on whether or not the XBD you brought is gonna trigger another spew fest.”

I laughed at that. “I have a feeling Jin’s gonna let people sit this one out. I already warned him.”

Gasps of relief shot through the gathered peanut gallery. Relieved chuckles and smiles aplenty. Even Allister gave a grateful smile. “That’s all we can hope for. Sharing a hobby with the young master is well and good… as long as you have the stomach for it.”

I felt bad for him. “Well, if it's any consolation, I can help you build up the tolerance.”

“I’m afraid it’s more of a… fundamental difference in mentality,” Allister said. “Some were made for civilized society. Others were made to maintain it. The latter do so because they know what the alternative is. They can stomach it. Shape order from chaos.”

I tried not to cringe at his anime-esque speech. “It’s no big deal once you get the hang of it,” I said. I genuinely thought it was more of a skill issue than anything fundamental. I wasn’t born a badass solo who fucked my worst enemy’s girlfriend on the regular and raked in hundreds of thousands on a weekly basis.

Huh. Putting it all down like that, maybe I was just… constructed alternatively. 

Put together in an unorthodox fashion.

I downed a measure of my drink, a mojito of all things. Wow, that was thoughtful of them.

“Don’t talk down to Allister,” one of the peanut gallery said, a cute girl at that. “Do you really think you have the station to speak to him in such a familiar manner?”

I frowned at the girl. “Sorry, who the fuck are you?”

“Quiet, Minako,” Allister said. “I will excuse David’s impudence for now, as it has most likely to do with the drink I gave him.”

Allister called me. 

Allister: Just play along, I’ll owe you.

I rolled my eyes.

“My apologies, Allister,” I said, despite how much it churned my guts to do so. “I spoke out of turn.”

David: That being said, I would like to talk to you about… how I can sort of skip this bullshit. How do I get standing in my position?

Allister: Have rich parents, or be owned by them.

David: And?

Allister: Or prove yourself to be such an asset to Arasaka in your young age that they will be invested in your future. Short of winning a tender with the company, or maybe winning a case competition or something like that, I don’t see you having many opportunities to do so. Just keep your head low for now and smile. I told you before, didn’t I? Be quiet and mysterious. You’ll be less offensive that way.

He already gave me that advice before and I had already forgotten it. That was dumb of me. I wouldn’t do so again.

Especially now knowing what it would take for me to gain some real respect up in this bitch.

The case competition.

That shit really did matter beyond just winning some scratch and looking good on a CV, didn’t it? If I won that case competition, actually won it , then I wouldn’t just be some promising programmer. I’d be a prodigy. And these kids would be bound to respect me at this point.

In the end, Allister’s advice to ‘have rich parents, or be owned by them’ still applied, only this time I chose the richest parent of all: Saburo Arasaka himself.

All of that was quite a bit away for now, but I’d get there sooner rather than later, as long as I didn’t rock the boat too much, or rise too much to Katsuo’s bait.

That would be easy.

000

Eventually, Jin summoned us to his BD auditorium—he even got one built in his ship, what a rich asshole—to have everyone watch me watch the XBDs I had set forth.

Neither were particularly shocking to me. The first one did get me to jerk violently as I exited it, but my own XBD didn’t do anything to me at all. It just made me feel a little stupid and inexperienced. If that was me right now, I’d have done way better. Had better strategies, better skill. 

Judy had also left in the bit about me apologizing mentally to mom, but all the identifying information was absent, including the fact that I was apologizing to my mother, so I didn’t think much of it. Perhaps she just thought it was too spicy to let go of.

Also… my thoughts felt really slow, and less… complex. Like I had gone from grandma’s chili to some canned chili you’d find in a SCSM machine. Whatever, maybe that would boost the watcher’s viewing pleasure more. I hoped so. I paid good money for these edits. Having Judy fuck me on this felt like it would go beyond the pale as a prospective business partner, to something totally unforgivable.

After leaving the Wraith massacre XBD, Jin looked at me expectantly. “You good?”

I chuckled. “Yeah,” I said. “Of course.”

“Alright!” Jin clapped his hands and faced the crowd of partygoers. “Now, attendance is strictly optional. If you can’t stomach this shit, fuck off right now. If you try your hand and start vomiting, you bet your gonk ass I’ll fuck you up.”

000

Being born as the son of Ryuzaki Masaru gave Jin an unimaginably difficult legacy to follow. 

The man had been one of the first transfers from Japan to go directly from the main headquarters in Tokyo to Night City after the unification war to make a fortune for himself. Tokyo already had its established dynastic corporate families, and thus Night City was the only option left for an enterprising individual with dreams of upward mobility.

And Night City delivered on the promise of glory… to anyone with the courage and luck to brave the hellhole. 

And Masaru had that in spades. Backroom deals, assasinations, sabotage and espionage had shot Masaru up from a lowly peon to a director, with naught but his own two hands. Had it cost the family? Yes, the fuck it had. 

Jin was an only child now. And he had traveled to America with five older brothers and three sisters, all of whom were wiped out in the crossfire of Ryuzaki’s reckless and unstoppable rise to the top. Jin was not only just lucky. He had been crafty, taking after his father and clawing for survival, using his mind as well as his guts to make the decisions necessary to keep him alive all throughout puberty.

Unlike his cousins or his generation, he was a born fighter.

And he could respect another fighter. Like David-kun for example. Diligent as he was, it didn’t compare to to the sheer grit that he detected in the kid’s eyes. Real recognized real, and Jin could recognize a motherfucker like David.

But this no-name mercenary in this XBD?

That was a real fighter right there.

Contemplative, competent, calm. A professional unlike any other. A killer that kept his cool like no other cyberpsycho Jin had ever seen. And sure, that was to be expected: the solo wasn’t a cyberpsycho after all. But to be so calm and collected, to be so detached from the concept of luck and chance, taking everything in their own hands, even their fate, through nothing but sheer skill and grit? The solo had felt a lot of things while Jin watched him, but he never felt a shred of real, actual fear. No, this motherfucker was…

He was real.

Real.

Gonk saw my face , the man thought as he contemplated on whether to let the last Raffen Shiv live or not. Without even an ounce of actual grief, he dispatched the guy. To this solo, his opponents weren’t even human. They were cockroaches , bugs to be smashed down and eradicated to protect himself.

The XBD ended and Jin ripped the headset out of his face and stood up. He looked around in his auditorium at the others, these mice who cowered before him like the fucking maggots they were.

Try something, bitches! Just fucking try something! Yeah!

They did not, because they knew their fucking place. Even Katsuo, the chickenshit weirdo who had to rely on his father to get his dick wet. 

David, unlike the others in the room, met his eyes, expectantly, waiting for an evaluation. 

Jin decided to scare him a little. “You!” he roared, pointing his finger at him and walking towards him. David’s eyebrow lowered, and he just looked at him flatly. “Got anything to say for yourself?”

David, for his part, didn’t give a shit. “Did the experience not meet the young master’s expectations?”

Bastard. Preem bastard, though. His bastard. 

Jin’s expression turned into one of glee. He started laughing. “The fuck it didn’t!” He hugged David bodily. “That shit was nova !”

He pushed himself off David and shook his head feverishly, getting rid of the goosebumps that formed on his skin. This was insane, unlike any other XBD he had gotten his hands on before. This was gold !

“You know who scrolled this?” Jin asked.

“Yes,” David said. “At least from my sources.”

“I want more,” Jin said, his tone leaving no room for disagreement. Thankfully, David smiled.

“That can absolutely be arranged. My sources tell me this is only the first among many. At least, before the gonk flatlines. I’ll keep a watch for any new ones to hit the market. You’ll be the first to get your hands on them.”

Really, now? Kid didn’t look like he was bluffing. He could actually swing this sort of deal. Amazing. 

Jin shot him a call.

Jin: How much to get you seriously on this case? I need more of these yesterday .

David: Twenty thousand, monthly.

Jin furrowed an eyebrow at that.

David: These weren’t cheap coming across. I’m paying for first access, here. These BDs never hit the streets yet. You’re the first eyes on ‘em.

Jin: No shit?

David: I guarantee it. 

They’d figure that fact out in time. But for now.

Jin sent the kid twenty thou.

Jin: Keep a fucking eye out. I want new ones fast . And before anyone else.

David: Bet.

Anyone else would berate Jin for the frivolous expenditure, but Jin saw it as an investment.

He could learn from this solo. Not mercenary skills, no. But mercenary mindset. Money above all. Even your safety. And who better could embody this principle than someone who sold their body for violence?

And not only that, but somebody who did it so fucking well ?

David better fucking deliver, or he’d know what it meant to get on the wrong side of a son of the Arasaka Corporation.

Katsuo then gave him a call.

Katsuo: I’m saying this as your cousin that loves  you, but you have to stop entertaining this street trash ! Can’t you see how much you’re sullying the Arasaka name?

Jin immediately saw red.

Jin: Damare, kusoyaro. I’ll beat the fuck out of you if you keep yapping at me. This is the last fucking time you talk about my ‘bad habits’, you fucking worm. I’m not your goddamn son to be spoken to like that.

Katsuo had the good sense to immediately hang up the call, which was good. The way Jin felt, he would have immediately jumped the lanky fuck right there.

Fuck, he still might, just from seeing his conflicted, bitch boy expression. Whatever. Probably just the high talking.

000

That went… better than expected.

A little scary, if I was being honest, to have Jin suddenly become such a superfan of my solo stuff, but that was okay. I had a supply that only I could provide, and I would provide so long as it kept the kid pacified. 

Was it, strictly speaking, ethical to supply a child with what amounted to a drug just because they had money and influence?

As far as my humanities teachings in Eastern religion had told me, the answer to that question was something called ‘mu’: The question’s premises were flawed, making an answer impossible.

What were ethics? Laws? Hah. What was a child? Jin ? Hah. What was a drug?

All of it was so mired in loaded language that it wasn’t even worth answering. I was just me, like I always was.

Instead of obsessing over how bad my actions were, I would rather like to think about what they achieved. My XBD sales put food on the table. They made mom happy. They removed pressure off my back and gave me time to do good in school and impress mom. That was the good that it did, and I’d think of nothing else but that.

And now it had made me twenty-four thousand eurobucks. Nothing else was worth contemplating than that: what my actions did for me and those near to me. 

I had survived the first stage of a Jin party: being the providor of illicit entertainment. The second stage, however? That was yet to come.

I walked up to the main deck of the ship, and saw that we had already made our way from the coast, surrounded by an inky blackness on all sides. Why do a yacht party at night? Seemed like a waste considering the lack of a view. Well, I could still see with the ‘Roshi’s. Problem was it was all monochrome. No color, cuz of all the dark.

Fei-Fei sent me a call, and my mood immediately lifted.

Fei-Fei: Awesome job, choom! Holy shit! I’ve never seen that psychopath so elated before!

Fuck if that didn’t make me grin ear to ear as I leaned over the railings, looking at the monochrome horizon of the ocean. 

David: Thanks, Fei-Fei. Honestly, I’m a little iffy on  being so high up on his list of favorite people. Feel like a pet, you know.

Fei-Fei: We’re all pets in the end. Better a good pet than a bad one.

David: Correction, we’re all pets, yes, but we can distinguish ourselves by our owners. And I don’t intend to be owned by Jin.

Fei-Fei: Why not? He’s… He’s an asshole, yes, but he's meant for great things, and you’re useful as fuck. And smart. You can handle his demands.

David: Let a guy dream, won’t you? I can be meant for great things, too.

Fei-Fei: It’s not healthy to dream big, you know.

I laughed.

David: Don’t I know that? Fei-Fei, do me a favor and stop worrying about me. It makes me feel like scop. Please.

I hoped for the last word to not come off as pleadingly as I had really meant it, but Fei-Fei’s response reduced my worries immensely.

Fei-Fei: It scares a girl to know that their choom is shooting as high as you are, you know. But if you want me to believe in you, I will try. Let’s enjoy today, okay?

David: Thanks, Fei-Fei.

Chapter 28: Yacht Party Part 2

Summary:

Katsuo tries to pull something for relevance. David, well... just read and find out :)

While I breathed in the oceanic night air in on my lonesome, still glowing from my recent victory with Jin, something was still on my mind like an uneasy itch.

And to my pleasant surprise, it wasn’t that I had gotten some gonk-kid adrenaline-addicted to my XBDs. No, my only feelings in that case was flattery and an inflation of ego that probably wasn’t healthy for me.

[Inflated egotism leads to an overestimation of one’s capacities and abilities which can end poorly. Luckily for you, I can remind you of your limits, and you will believe them because that is the rational thing to do.]

David: Hmmm. I don’t know about that. When your ego is big, you won’t listen to reason, even coming from the most trustworthy source of them all.

[Very well. Then prevention is the answer. How will we do that? By systematically tearing down your self-esteem once it crosses certain boundaries?]

Ugh. I hated what she was getting at, but I couldn’t deny that she was right.

David: I suppose so. Just… stick with the facts. Don’t tear me down unrealistically.

[Very well: your chances of death in the line of duty as an edgerunner is astronomical compared to the average person. Your continued survival can be attributed to luck as well as your own skills, and should you fall for your own myth of personality, you will undoubtedly die.]

I didn’t like hearing that.

[That you are not special?]

Especially not that.

Ugh. More worries on my mind, but still none of them was about Jin. He could jack off every night to how cool D was, I didn’t care.

What bothered me was my only avenue of upward mobility according to Allister: the case competition. I had joined it so it would make my CV look good and open doors for my future. What I hadn’t ever entertained was the possibility of winning. 

That was just because I didn’t know what was at stake.

And that was status .

By winning the case competition, I could stay relevant without having to rely on the friendships of kids with higher-up parents. I could stand tall on my own merits, protected and made to grow by Arasaka itself. 

It was still a risky path, though. Become too useful, and I would never be anything more than just a tool. Usefulness wasn’t always power. 

Still, it was the first sliver of self-determination in Arasaka I had ever had an opportunity to reach. I couldn’t squander it.

For better or for worse, I had to win this. 

That meeting with Nakajima on Friday, I would have to bring in my A-game. Maybe even use my considerable amount of money to hire some spies or netrunners to figure out what our competition was doing. Or maybe get to doing that shit myself, so I could outdo them.

School had long-since lost its ability to challenge me, and all I really busted my ass on these days was edgerunning, but now I had to work hard .

That was for later.

Right now, I still had to get through these children’s games , and maybe make some pocket money betting ludicrous amounts on a game that I would learn on the spot and then eventually master, because people had a terminal habit of overestimating their underdeveloped, granite-smooth pea-brains, and underestimating me .

[Despite your increased rate of cognition and your other mental enhancements, there are still ways to blindside or outsmart you, especially if you do not remain vigilant against such attempts.]

David: Don’t worry about that. All I do is suspect and worry.

[As you continue to master your surroundings, you become less inclined to putting your mind through something as stressful as constant vigilance.]

David: True.

As more and more people emerged to the main deck out from the media room where Jin would be trying to press every one of his cronies into watching my BDs, I decided to go to Allister’s table where there was still some booze.

I recognized some of his friends talking amongst each other, but him and his attack dog Walter weren’t around yet. Knowing him, he’d probably volunteered them both to enjoy Jin’s BDs in order to get closer to him. 

I ignored his friends and just took a seat, slowly sipping my drink, wondering who I should call in the crew. Or should I call anyone? What if the cruise had some kind of fucked up wiretap machine? Nah, best not get too cocky. My two lives were separate, and I didn’t need to blur that separation.

“How do you do it?”

I heard the voice projected in my direction, which was a surprise because I knew that I was the only person in my direction. I looked towards it and saw Minako, that girl who had told me off for ‘talking down’ to Allister.

“How do I what?” I asked, putting some hint of exasperation into my words. How else was she going to get a meaningful answer without specifying what she was talking about? Yes, I knew it was a verbal hook to make the listener more interested in hearing out the line of questioning by building up anticipation, but it was so tired . And annoying.

“How do you watch all those BDs without caring?” she asked.

“Minako,” one of her little friends, another girl, murmured to her nervously. Like she was asking her to stop poking some wild animal.

“The trick is in liking the stuff,” I said with a shrug. I was going to elaborate,  but Allister’s reminder to be an aloof and mysterious figure shut my mouth.

“You like what you see in BDs? You want to kill people?”

Ah, was she trying to verbally trap me or something? Maybe record myself saying something fucked up so she could hold it over my head. “Of course not,” I said. “My BDs are educational,” which was true. I was learning the ways of the solo while recording that last BD. “That’s nothing anyone should shy away from?”

Minako gaped at me. “You mean becoming a cyberpsycho and killing dozens of people is educational to you?”

“Of course not,” I said. “Where are you getting that from?”

She blinked owlishly at me. “You know you are selling XBDs, right?”

“That’s a blatant lie,” I said.

“Minako,” her friend said, pulling her arm. Minako just pursed her lips and crossed her arms in front of her chest defensively. I probably shouldn’t have opened my dumb mouth.

I gave Allister a call. After a few seconds, he accepted it.

David: I think one of your friends is trying to entrap me.

Allister: Did you say anything?

David: Of course not.

Allister: She was more likely trying to blackmail you. But you’d have to be naive to think it was going to work. Whatever. Is there anything actually important? I’m fighting to hold down my dinner right now.

David: Well, if it isn’t anything important, good luck. By the way, was it the JK you watched first or the other one?

Allister: No, it’s the one Jin calls ‘Wraith Killer’. 

David: How did you find it?

Allister: Horrifying? I’m not exactly enamored with the idea of spending time in some demented edgerunner’s brain mid-mission, especially not when he has the mental urgency of a salaryman going through his last tasks before his shift is done.

David: But it makes you want to hurl?

Allister: There’s something wrong with it. Jin seems to like the ‘feature’, but I think it’s a ‘bug’-’bug’. Guy thinks way too fast . Is that supposed to be normal?

David: First time viewing a BD where someone has mental enhancements? It’s normal.

Well, it wasn’t. But I’m sure my advantages weren’t unique just to me. Had to exist someone like me out there somewhere.

Allister: With any luck, the psychopath dies before there are any more installments.

David: Hahahah. I hope you’re talking about the edgerunner

Allister: I’ll be up in a second. Just… stop talking to Minako, or whoever it is. It’s probably Minako, right? Do you want me to give her trouble?

David: I don’t really give a fuck, choom. Just thought I’d ask you for advice.

“Don’t think you’ve won or anything,” Minako said with a sharp grin. “Soon you’ll outlive your usefulness to Jin-sama, and then you’ll be just another gutter rat trying to claw their way up only to get stomped on.”

Okay, but…

Realistically speaking …

Who could I target or kill that would make Minako’s life a living fucking hell?

I’d never killed a corpo before, mostly because our circles never intersected when I was working. But what would stop me? What could stop me? And if Minako was Allister’s bitch, then that meant her folks were probably reachable to D. Faraday had Maine’s crew and I breach a fucking executive’s limo.

Her parents couldn’t be that much harder to reach.

Well, unless Minako eventually got to find out that I was behind it, then it wouldn’t be a very satisfying retribution. And others needed to know as well, so they would speak to me with the respect I was fucking owed.

But I wasn’t about to blow my cover over some disrespect tossed at me here and there.

But maybe it wouldn’t have to blow my cover? Corpos hired edgerunners all the time to do their dirty work. And dead men tell no tales. Dead parents were no different. All it was, in the end, was a matter of money. The school knew I had it. My peers did as well. Maybe it was finally time that I ‘spent’ some of it getting rid of a rival and getting some fucking respect, finally?

I scanned Minako Ito, found her full name and Arasaka Academy ID. Nothing else on her. To find that, I’d need to connect to an Arasaka network. Like this ship for instance.

I probed through its defenses, and found that I’d have better luck breaching through an access point than wirelessly. Unfortunately, I had left my personal link cable at home.

That was a piece of machine that could just as easily be made into chrome: a cable connected to my wrist, like most netrunners had. I’d had to get on that soon.

But in the end, my plans were foiled. Not by my own inability, but just because I had encountered the briefest of inconveniences. Just for that, Minako’s parents got to live.

I smiled at her.

“What?! ” she barked at me.

“Give your parents a good, long hug next time you see them,” I said. Minako sputtered at that, and before she could ask for clarification and continue digging herself a deeper grave, Allister strode up with Walter, looking a little green in the gills. Walter looked fine, actually.

Maybe he had combat-training? Maybe it took that much to become a vassal for the great Takeuchi clan of the Westbrook province, subordinate to the illustrious Tanaka and Ryuzaki lineages, whose storied escapades could be dated back a whole ten years since the unification wars. Such ancient and important powers.

They didn’t even fucking exist when I was born. Felt that much more stupid for me to care about such a young hierarchy. But that was the trick of the powerful, wasn’t it? They made it seem like their ascent was only obvious, because they possessed some ineffable quality that poor people couldn’t possess. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be poor.

Oh well. Far be it from me to educate my enemies on taking me seriously. All the better if they didn’t. 

I raised my glass to Allister, who just gave a tired chuckle sigh. “Excellent production. Give the director my regards.”

Thank you, thank you, I’ll be here all week.

Allister pitched a conversation with me trying to gas me up to the others. Coincidentally enough, he asked me ‘how I did it’ about me being able to handle XBDs.

So I fed them some cock and bull about facing reality and conquering fear, but really it was just some good old trust fund baby bait. Living a boring life like theirs made them itch for any sort of excitement. It was what gave some of them such a strange tendency to slum it with the poor and do what they did. It also gave them a tendency to get hurt being in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong mindsets.

They were the worst gonks of Night City by far. Jin was no different. He probably styled himself as some kind of superman, an elite given his position through some quality of his that elevated him above me in his mind. The worst thing about him, though, was how fucking convinced he was of that fact. Convinced enough that he had gained an addiction for relating with a subset of people that lived a life he could only dream of— literally. Jin should focus on being a company boy, but instead he was too swallowed up in his dreams to do anything about it.

Was he putting himself at a disadvantage in terms of school and career with his XBD viewings? Maybe. Or maybe it all mostly boiled down to people hating to party with him, which would have its own consequences down the line. Or maybe he was working towards some greater goal. 

It didn’t matter. He could fall or thrive for all I cared: I just needed my eddies and my social capital.

He could fall once I was done using him, once he had outlived his usefulness to me, for fuck's sakes, not the other way around. He wasn’t the one in control here. He wasn’t the one sporting mil-spec chrome that could air out this whole bitch in a fucking second if I was ever inclined. I clenched my jaws slightly and flexed some fingers, trying to work out my frustrations.

Maybe I didn’t need to kill her parents? Maybe I just really needed to fuck Katsuo’s girlfriend again?

But it did help my nerves to think about who to kill to get a leg-up in this world. 

I received a notification on my agent: a public announcement, localized to this yacht, had been sent out about some kind of a… speedboat race through the night ocean. This looked dumb. 

But it hushed all conversations. If I recalled correctly, which I had to after what Nanny had done to my brain, this was a private party, meaning no non-Arasaka allowed. According to Allister, that usually meant things were more brutal because of the hierarchy and the fact that no one was around to watch the higher-ups dick around their juniors.

Thankfully, I had managed to avoid the brunt of that by being in Jin’s good graces. 

But did this little game mean that I once again had to be involved?

Katsuo stepped up into the center of the deck, clinking a fork against his champagne glass obnoxiously. “Attention, everyone!” he said. “Who would like to race me through the obstacle course for a cool one-hundred thousand eurodollars?! Though I will have you be aware that I am no ordinary foe.”

Jesus. Who the fuck would volunteer to do something that stupid?

Katsuo’s eyes widened in glee as he made eye-contact with me, and I got the message loud and clear from his body language. His intent was truly crystal clear: he’d press me into the game somehow.

It might take time, but eventually, he’d mount a set of points that detailed exactly how it was impossible for me to refuse without paying a much steeper price.

Maybe it was worth it to just wait his little blackmailing spree out, to learn about my vulnerabilities, rather than just trust that he had them? Or maybe he would announce them out loud, which would give everyone an opportunity to fuck with me until I had patched my weakness up? Or maybe he was bluffing all along, just pretending to have something in store for me unless I acquiesced?

Or maybe I could just breach him, like a netrunner would?

I did.

I activated the Sandevistan to get the manual portions of the breach out of the way in an instant, and in doing so, I cracked open all of his local files.

And there was some… weird shit in there. A blacksite that was perfect for assassinations. A weapons dealer. Contacts with gangsters. What the fuck?

Where was the blackmail material?

…Ah. There it was.

My fucking case competition project.

Katsuo Tanaka had gotten his hands on my case competition project: all our progress, all our breakthroughs. There, for him to sell to the highest bidder in the competition.

I was going to wring Nakajima’s fucking neck for this. Goddamn that gonk! What the fuck was he smoking?

Fuck . Katsuo would obviously have a backup. He wouldn’t just carry the only copy on him. 

I leafed through the copy and sighed. This really was everything.

And I had zero expectation that he would do the honorable thing and delete it if I did what he asked. No. This project was burned. I’d have to start from the ground up.

Better than before.

And we could do that. Because I was different now. Smarter, faster, better.

But for now, I raised my hand, just as Katsuo ringed me.

Katsuo: Oh, are you volunteering? I’ll have you know that if you lose, one-hundred thousand will be required of you by law should you agree. Which you should. You have no idea—

David: You have my case comp files, I know. I saw it. I don’t care. I’m just gonna play with you to crush you. 

Katsuo: Oh? Even though you know I have your balls in a vice grip?

David: Katsuo, you’re a talentless fucking waste of time. I’m going to do the nicest thing I’ve ever fucking done and warn you: you do not want to get into it with me. Not now. But you know what, Katsuo? I do want to get into it with you. I want to fucking crush you into a powder and fucking snort you. And you know I can.

Katsuo’s victorious grin turned ugly at that, and I just stood up.

“Let’s get this shit overwith,” I said. “Hundred thousand, you said? Let’s make it two, if you’re not a pussy.”

Katsuo grinned. “Fine, then! Two-hundred thousand goes to the winner! It will be a competition for the ages!”

I didn’t waste any time doing something as meaningless as shaking his hand or some shit. I just waited for the seamen to point us to our little speedboats. The ship’s side illuminated the ocean so that the others could watch it, and dotted around the surface were a bunch of glowing buoys bound by rope. I got a look at Katsuo’s body language, and it screamed supreme confidence.

It didn’t take me a fucking second to guess why. The game was rigged. How ? The seamen showed us to some ladders that lowered us each to the waiting speedboats beside the ship. I was very purposefully led to one speedboat, and got on it.

I Breached it.

The code was jumbled and weird, so rather than try to decrypt it, I just saved a full backup and reset it to an earlier version. The code changed, the memory allocation had reduced, and from what the diagnostics tool had given me, the performance was better across the board.

Was this the right set-up or just a red herring?

I breached Katsuo’s speedboat just in case, and found that our codebases were pretty much the same, considering we were operating the same machines.

Eh. I decided to also throttle Katsuo’s speed, so he wouldn’t get that much of a lead on me. Weirdly enough, there were no autopilot modules he had installed. Perhaps he had actually rehearsed for this instead of just pinning all his hopes on cheating? How cute.

A loudspeaker sounded from the main deck. “This is a race across the ocean! You must drive across each buoy at your designated route and cross the finish line before your opponent does! A buoy must be crossed in a five-meter radius for your race to count as valid, and each of you will have your own finish lines equally distant from each other!”

I read through the user manual and tried to put all my knowledge into reality by staring at the controls. The umpire continued going on about some common-sense rules that I only paid half an ear of attention to.

As I settled into the driver's seat of the speedboat, my eyes scanned the array of controls before me, each button, dial, and lever beckoning for my touch. The cockpit was a symphony of technological prowess, with sleek screens and illuminated panels casting a soft glow against the dimly lit interior.

My fingers traced the edges of the control panel, feeling the smooth texture of the buttons beneath my touch. Each one seemed to hum with latent energy, waiting to be activated at my command. I took a deep breath, steeling myself for the task ahead.

At the center of the panel, a large touchscreen display blinked to life, casting vibrant hues of blue and green across the cockpit. Icons and symbols danced across its surface, indicating various functions and settings. With a tap of my finger, I accessed the main menu, revealing a plethora of options to customize and fine-tune the speedboat to my liking.

To my left, a series of knobs and sliders controlled the boat's throttle and speed. With a deft twist of my wrist, I adjusted the throttle, feeling the boat respond to my touch with a low hum of anticipation. Beside the throttle controls, a row of switches toggled various auxiliary systems, from navigation lights to onboard sensors.

On the right side of the panel, a joystick protruded from the console, serving as the primary steering mechanism. Its smooth surface fit snugly in my grip, offering precise control over the boat's direction and trajectory. I tested its responsiveness with a gentle nudge, watching as the boat's digital display reflected my movements in real-time.

Above me, a series of overhead displays provided vital information on the boat's performance and status. Gauges and indicators flickered with life, tracking everything from engine temperature to fuel levels. I made a mental note to keep a close eye on these readings throughout the race, ensuring that the boat remained in optimal condition.

As the umpire's voice echoed through the loudspeaker, the anticipation on the water intensified. Contrary to my expectations, my body was doing the opposite of my mind. My heart beat steadily, my breathing even and controlled, like all of my emotions and nervousness had lost control over the pure professional that my body had become, and my fingers hovering over the controls as the countdown began.

"Three... Two... One... Go!"

With a surge of adrenaline, I slammed my foot down on the throttle, feeling the speedboat leap forward with explosive power. The wind whipped through my hair as I navigated the waves with precision, each buoy marking my path toward victory.

Beside me, Katsuo's speedboat lurched into motion, but it was clear from the start that he was struggling to keep pace. His boat wobbled erratically as he fought to maintain control, his frustration evident in every movement.

Meanwhile, I activated the Sandevistan, feeling time slow to a crawl around me. With heightened perception, I steered the boat with unparalleled precision, each movement calculated and deliberate. The world seemed to move in slow motion as I effortlessly maneuvered through the water, leaving Katsuo in my wake.

Despite his attempts to catch up, Katsuo's efforts were in vain. With each passing moment, I widened the gap between us, my skill and determination propelling me toward the finish line with unstoppable momentum.

As the race progressed, I made strategic use of the Sandevistan, slowing down time at key moments to navigate tight turns and avoid obstacles with ease. With each buoy I passed, victory seemed within reach, a testament to my mastery of the cybernetic technology at my disposal.

And as I crossed the finish line, the cheers of the crowd washed over me, a chorus of triumph and celebration. I had emerged victorious, proving once again that nothing could stand in the way of my success.

I drove the boat to the hull of the ship and climbed up the ladder without giving the race even a second of my attention. I didn’t care nearly enough to pretend at this point. Two hundred thousand was well and good, but that didn’t erase the progress I had made with Nakajima. I sent him a text.

‘The biggest asshole I know got a hand on our project. We’re starting from scratch.’

No use doing anything else but ripping the bandaid off cleanly.

I received an answer almost instantly.

‘FUCK! I was going to talk to you about somebody having accessed my files in the network. So we’re done?’

Done ? What the fuck was he talking about?

‘We’ll meet on Friday.’

I’d finish this entire project on my lonesome if I had to, but ‘done’? That was loser talk.

And was I a loser?

“Congratulations, winner!” Jin strode up to me and put a drink in my hand and a pat on my shoulder.

“Thanks,” I said. Then I made a call to someone.

David: I hope I don’t sound needy when I say this, but it’s been a long one hour since I got here, and I really need to fuck your brains out.

Fei-Fei: I thought you’d never ask!

Notes:

Firstly, RIP Akira Toriyama. If it wasn't for him, and therefore One Piece, and all of anime, I would never have picked up writing. I may not have watched a single episode of DBZ, but I can recognize and appreciate his insane amount of influence.

Anyway onto the story. As always, comments are not only appreciated, but necessary for my continued good health. My vital organs depend on long and opinionated comments for their continued service, ever since I bought them at a discount and connected their monthly payments with my comment section and Kudos score on Ao3.

Chapter 29: Yacht Party Final Part

Summary:

Do anyone actually read these? I forgot all about them after my hiatus.

Truths about Fei-Fei's situation are revealed and Katsuo musters the courage to take drastic measures.

My time with Fei-Fei felt all the sweeter despite my setback.

And didn’t Katsuo have a great timing?

While I was pumping up my intensity, ready to end this whole thing, my transfer request came through, and my coffers had suddenly inflated by two-hundred thousand.

I thought of how grandma might be surprised, but stopped immediately, as I had no desire to keep thinking about my grandmother while having sex.

That isolated event did end up making me last longer, which I’m sure Fei-Fei must have appreciated. 

The two-hundred and thirteen gonks I had already put in the ground aside, I was going to hell for that. Jesus Christ. Thinking of grandma during sex?

“One second,” I said, as I ‘dismounted’ from Fei-Fei to lie next to her. “Need a breather,” I lied, trying my best to banish more thoughts of grandma. It was so hard . Like a mind-virus that kept multiplying infinitely no matter how many of those strays you caught. I needed to look into meditation at this rate, Jesus Christ.

The flesh was willing, and the body was capable of delivering, courtesy of Nanny, but it was the mind that refused to cooperate. 

“It’s okay,” Fei-Fei breathed. “Need… a minute… too.”

What? She wasn’t even the one doing all of the moving! What the heck, man? Was she really just that weak? Eh, whatever.

“How long has it been?” I asked.

“Forty-five minutes,” she said.

“How long do you have?” I asked.

“Until Katsuo calls again,” she said with rolled eyes. “I don’t wanna think about that right now. You wanna just… talk?”

“No,” I said, with an imperious tone. “I came here to have sex and nothing else.” I chuckled, just to make sure she knew it was a joke. “Fei-Fei… thank you.”

“For letting you fuck?”

Pft. “I’m letting you fuck,” I said.

Fei-Fei seemed ready to fire back, but instead she just deflated, holding onto my body with a firmer grip. “Yeah, I won’t lie, having you is… a privilege.”

“Stop. My ego can only take so much inflation,” I said. Fei-Fei giggled. “I mean, does Katsuo really suck that much?”

Fei-Fei gave a heavy sigh in lieu of an answer.

“He doesn’t take feedback?” I asked. “Or do you just not say anything?”

“I say things,” Fei-Fei said. “I tell him what to do, like I do with you sometimes, but… it’s not the same. It’s… really fucking not , ” she said. “When I tell you to do something, you listen, but… sexily.” I chuckled at that. “I mean it! You actually give a shit is what I’m trying to say. When we have sex, it’s not one person bringing their own one-sided strategy against someone else. I feel like we’re both in this together , and I don’t have to pretend to enjoy it. We’re working towards the same goal. With that asshole, it’s just… he pretends to care, but really he’s annoyed. He’s not doing it for anyone else but himself, and when I put in my two cents, suddenly I’m the asshole for ruining the mood. That… curious glint in his eyes, always on you, just… it doesn’t exist with him.”

“Katsuo’s never been the curious type,” I said, thinking about all those times he refused to work harder than me in school, only to inevitably fuck up and get a lower grade than me.

All culminating into the first occasion where he fucking cold-cocked me into oblivion, ruining my chances of getting a good grade on the exam that was to occur not five minutes later . Miserable bitch , what the fuck did I ever do to him? I sighed. Whatever. “Fuck him,” I whispered. I held onto Fei-Fei as well, a fellow victim of Katsuo. The only person that truly understood me.

As much as our first time had me stressed out, Fei-Fei had dashed my worries about being the type of person that just took pleasure instead of reciprocating it. All this time, I thought sex was just… a thing a guy did as good as possible, while the girl rewarded you with the feeling of their hole, and a well-placed scream of ecstasy or a stream of piss every now and then. Like in the pornos.

Being with Fei-Fei had, honest-to-god, turned me well away from all the pornos I once watched. None of that manufactured, fake crap could compare to the real deal, and the real deal was more than just power and domination. It was more than just taking from the girl and feeling great about it.

It wasn’t love . I needed to make sure that I knew that, because I didn’t want things to get complicated, and I could recognize, intellectually, that love didn’t factor into matters. 

It was connection. It was the sociality of homo sapiens distilled into a brief period of time. It felt fucking good, fucking. And it was right . Even if it didn’t create another generation, just the feeling of the act was enough to satisfy any man. 

But there was a trick to having a healthy relationship with it as well. Not just ‘moderation’ because that only described the end-result of a healthy relationship, not the process of attaining one. The trick was to view life in an entire spectrum. In this scenario, life meant dreams, goals, basic needs, and human connections. Find a balance between all those things, not just the one thing most likely to give you the most dopamine of them all. A lack of balance in this regard would only make you into another drug addict, only your drug was naturally produced in your brain. But there was no difference.

“I’m grateful,” I said. “To have you as well. Unlike what you’d expect from a smoking hot specimen like me, I don’t… really get… that much attention. From girls.”

“David,” she said, in a warning tone, and I had to chuckle.

“Listen, I’m an outcast, not an incel. I’m not gonna fall in love with you,” I said.

“I just gotta make sure,” she said. “I really, really can’t afford that drama.”

I felt my heart clench slightly at the pain in her voice. An uptick in empathy was to be expected post-coitus, so I didn’t pay that feeling any mind. “I haven’t asked you before, mostly because I know the answer, to some extent, but… how do you really feel about being forced to be with Katsuo?”

“Fucking terrible?” she said.

I clenched my jaws slightly at that. “Yeah, and what can I do?”

“Fuckall,” she said, with zero hesitation.

“Okay then, what could God do. Or better yet, Saburo Arasaka.”

“Well, he could… let me not go through with this bullshit,” Fei-Fei said. “See, the problem is I’m not a person. I’m an apology gift. If my company didn’t have to apologize, then I’d no longer need to do anything. But they do, so I… yeah.”

“What did they do?” I asked her. “Your company.”

“They lost some kind of high-tech cyberware,” she said, though I already knew that. “It was… a Sandevistan, I think. Top of the line, experimental stuff. Manufactured by a partner of Kang Tao, my… family's company.”

It didn’t take me a second to connect the dots. A partner of Kang Tao that produced Sandys? QianT. What was mine called again? QianT “Dragon Spine” Sandevistan.

Fuck.

Fuck .

Fuck!

I withheld my reactions for a moment as my mind raced to consider any and every angle of this situation. Did she know how the Sandy looked? Was that why she was interested in me? Did I just walk into a trap? Or did she like me for who I was, and all of this was some great coincidence?

I held the proverbial finger over my Sandevistan’s activation input while I spoke. “The Sandevistan is a type of boosterware,” I said. “Speeds up your bodily movements by a certain factor.”

“Whatever,” she said. “Can’t believe I took the fall for this bullshit. Well, my father did, but he’s not the one paying the price, is he?”

I pored over every inch of Fei-Fei’s reactions and speech, but I couldn’t crack into any ulterior motive. Her attitude hadn’t changed a single bit despite the change in topic. Was she just this good at masking her emotions? 

“It’s not right,” I said. “You shouldn’t have had to pay the price for that.” I spoke this statement for the sake of triggering a wider range of reactions, still to make sure that she wasn’t hiding her knowledge.

“The fuck am I supposed to do?” Fei-Fei asked. “My dad’s a traditionalist, and the Arasakas are scummier than any Night City lowlife.”

Still nothing. Time to bring in the big guns. “Watch yourself,” I said. “Arasaka Corporation is the greatest in the world. I won’t let you badmouth it.”

I could feel Fei-Fei shrink in my grip, and it felt awful to do this, but I needed more data . I still couldn’t tell if she was fucking with me, if she knew that all of her life’s misery was situated exactly right next to her. “You… don’t have to say that stuff. My room is bug-free.”

Naturally. Even in Night City, there were places where one could still have privacy, especially for the rich and powerful. 

Besides, I had the bedroom scanned the moment I came in.

“I’m sorry,” I said, because I could no longer resist the disgusting feeling in my chest, telling me I was the biggest scumbag in the world. “I’m… Fei-Fei, I come from nothing. Arasaka is all that I have. I shouldn’t have said that, but…”

“No, it’s fine,” Jing Fei hugged me tighter. “I know the position that you’re in. And I want to say: I admire your tenacity. I only wish success for you. I just… don’t wanna dance around my words with you.”

“Fuck Arasaka,” I muttered. Fei-Fei laughed. “No, sorry, I was just being a paranoid gonk. I really can’t fucking stand these people. Surprisingly enough.”

“Wow, what a shocker,” she said.

“Fei-Fei, I want you to wish upon a star,” I said. “But, like, an evil, fucked up star that can only grant murder-based wishes.”

She giggled. “Murder fantasies are more for boys, I think.”

“Just give it a try,” I said.

“Katsuo,” she said. “No. It’s… can’t just be one person. David, I’m between a rock and a hard place here. Either I say no, because I do still have human rights, and I’ll be blackballed from the corp world and broke as fuck, or I say yes, and it’s either Katsuo, or Jin, or whoever’s next on the list once either of the fuckwits die. Killing isn’t the answer.”

“It’s money,” I said. “And connections.” I sat up and looked at her lying on the bed. “And mark my fucking words, Fei-Fei, one day I’ll have both.”

“No,” she said, in a tone that brokered no argument whatsoever. She didn’t say it to negate my own dreams, but to reject my over-the-board gesture. She couldn’t afford some little guppy like me bullshitting to her. Couldn’t afford hope. Her survival in high society hinged on her reducing her levels of hope to the lowest possible extent.

“I’m just being a good choom here,” I said. “Don’t read too much into it.”

She sighed, clearly unhappy about the topic of discussion.

I’d take care of Katsuo eventually, sure. But that wouldn’t free Fei-Fei. What remained then, but to become such a badass corpo motherfucker that not only could I go from an Arroyo slumdog to a Westbrook king, but also bring someone else up with me?

And who was a better target of my benevolence than the one person I had fucked over to this extent?

Fei-Fei, I’m sorry. I’m fucking sorry. I didn’t mean for you to get screwed over like this. And I know that the right thing to do would be to return what I stole, but I’m… I’m sorry, but I’m not a fucking saint. I’ll help you.

I swear. I’ll help you.

I laid back down next to her. “Whatever,” I said in a long breath. “Right now, it’s just you, me, and bliss. Now let’s work hard to blow each others’ minds.”

Fei-Fei’s sullen expression softened into a slightly dishonest smile. I chalked it down to her not being fully able to get back in the mood after this conversation.

“Ah ah,” I said. “I need enthusiasm , not resignation. I’m not Katsuo. You don’t owe me shit.”

“Can we just lie down together?” she asked.

I killed my disappointment the moment it rose and gave in with enthusiasm. “Sure!”

I gave her a tight, one-armed hug.

“I changed my mind,” she said.

Whookay!

000

Katsuo POV

Everything… everything had gotten so fucked up!

How? How ?

Fei-Fei was being more of a bitch than usual, Jin was starting to openly abuse him, and now David was … Fuck!

In the privacy of his room, Katsuo lined up a column of glitter, brought a crisp, hundred eddie note to his nose, and gave the line a swift huff.

Glitter was, generally speaking, a bad idea . To people without top-of-the-line biomonitors and optical apps that made him acutely aware of exactly how much he could take before literally dying. With all those aids in hand, it really wasn’t that easy to overdose. 

Katsuo inhaled deeply, taking in all the rage and anger that was thrown out into the universe in disordered waves of red and black, and melded all those motes of emotion into his body, where it burned in a core at the very center of his being: a core called hatred.

Katsuo scoffed at the very idea that he had hesitated to kill David to begin with. Now, though? There wasn’t a single inch of doubt in his mind . David needed to die. Die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, DIE, DIE DIE!!!!

“Shih-neeeeeeeeeeeeh!” Katsuo roared. 

Enough with the frenzy. It didn’t matter. Anger never killed a gonk. Only action ever did. And action was all that Katsuo needed. He had all that it took now, courtesy of his father. All that was left to do was amass the sakki . The bloodlust that welled in his heart was plenty . It was to the point that he couldn’t imagine how he had ever been able to hesitate to begin with.

“Fuck me,” Katsuo laughed. “Such an idiot! I was such an idiot!”

No. Even once the glitter wore off, Katsuo couldn’t imagine a scenario where he wouldn’t be able to personally pull the trigger, not that it would ever become necessary.

No. Katsuo would keep his hands clean, and get rid of his biggest rival in one fell swoop.

000

Jin sat on his little sunlounger like an Asian deity of legend, legs crossed, and his chin resting on his upraised fist, with a bloodthirsty grin on his face. I didn’t read into it very much. He was clearly just being the edgy brat that he always was. I truly despised having to check in with him, but I’d already gotten my fill of the party, and I really wanted to get going. And there was only one way to get away from a party like this, according to Allister, and it was to talk to the head fucko. 

“Were my BDs to your liking?” I asked him.

“Wraith Killer,” he said. “I need more Wraith Killer.”

Uhhh, he doesn’t only kill wraiths. How did I break that? “The merc’s name is D,” I said. “I’ll keep a lookout, always.”

“I need this shit, David,” Jin said. “And if you can’t deliver…” he threatened. I resisted scoffing with every fiber of my being.

“That depends entirely on the merc,” I said. 

“I don’t want to hear excuses, David.”

Wow. Wow . Get me the fuck out of here!

“No excuses here, young master,” I said. “Your will is my command. If D does not deliver, then I shall record the BD myself.”

Jin laughed . “Fuck me, man. You’re a tough-ass nut to crack, you know that? You ever been scared before in your miserable little life?”

“Yeah,” I said. 

“How come I don’t scare you?”

“Because, my undergrown choom, you’re about as scary as a psychotic middle-schooler who is best friends with your school’s principal.” I didn’t say any of that, of fucking course. Still, those were my true feelings. Jin didn’t scare me. It was what Jin represented that frightened me. 

“Your power and acclaim is truly awesome,” I said, doing my best to act sincere. “I cannot help but—”

“Nah, fuck off,” Jin waved me off, his expression trully annoyed now. “I know fear and worship, and none of that is coming from you right now. But I get it. I fucking do. I don’t want you kowtowing before me like we’re in a xianxia or something.” The hell was a xianxia ? “I was just curious is all. But honestly, I just need things to be constant between us. You get me the good shit, I’ll give you clout.”

I felt a flare of rage bubble up in the depths of my core, and I let it speak for me, a slight gamble, but one I didn’t expect to regret. “Then let’s cut past the song and dance, and be realistic. I wanna delta. You want your BDs, and I want clout. Want, want, want.”

“Want, want,” Jin said with a giggle. “Well, you can fuck off if you want, I give you permission! Thanks for tonight, man. Hope to see you soon!”

“Yeah, I can’t wait for your next installment of eddies,” I said, hoping that it came across as a joke. I was rich enough that the paltry sum Jin could offer to buy my BDs was literally nothing compared to what I already earned. Jin did laugh, which did end up making me feel better.

Jin had eyes. He knew that my net worth far, far, far exceeded what little I could earn from selling him BDs. “Though that shit does have me curious, though,” Jin said. “Where do you get all your cash from?”

“Mexico,” I said, hoping that that was enough of an answer.

“How come Katsuo thinks you’re a fucking brokie, then?”

I threw up my hands in defeat. “Katsuo’s microscopic understanding of the world doesn’t compare to the real thing. We were sorting shit out, meaning less money for me. In the fucking meanwhile, I was going to Arasaka Academy. How easy do you think that is for a brokie? It’s fucking impossible, choom. Still did it. You think anyone can afford that on a joytoy’s pay?”

Jin laughed. “Fuck all that shit. I know you’re real. Real recognize real, am I right?”

“Right,” I lied.

“You’re like my Oda Nobunaga,” Jin said. “And I’m Tokugawa Iyeasu.”

“Thank you,” I lied. “That’s… thanks, man.”

“I need you, man!” Jin said. “You and I gotta get close. I like the way you think, and I know we can accomplish crazy shit working together. Whatever. Next time, we’ll talk okay?”

“Okay,” I said with a nod and a feeling of genuine joy in my heart. I did enjoy this development, despite Jin’s presence in it. It paid to have powerful friends, even if they saw you as a slave at the end of the day. Proximity to power was still power. I just needed to figure out a way to leverage it. 

“ Mata ne , David-kun,” the brat uttered. I responded with my own ‘mata ne’ and left him behind me.

Really? Tokugawa? Oda? History wasn’t my strong suit, but holy fuck, even I knew this much. He was calling me the war-hungry bastard who earned himself an early grave, while he was the mastermind who conquered the Warring States era of Japan. Oda was the least successful of the three great unifiers in the long run. Laughable. 

He had straight up told me I was going to go under for his goals. The little bitch had another thing coming for him.

I sent a text to Allister.

‘I’m fucking off. Have fun.’

‘You think I have fun in this fucking place?’

That was the most irritated I had seen Allister.

‘Sorry, bro. Stay strong.’

‘I’ll try.’

I chuckled. A couple of sailors escorted me to a speedboat tied to the side of the boat, where I could access it from some ladders. I climbed down them, got on the boat, and one of the sailors drove me back to the shore. I didn’t climb up the ladder to terra firma so much as I just jumped from the boat, my patience utterly done. I made a beeline from my motorbike and started driving it out from the docks and into the city. 

Notes:

Shorter than I wanted it to be, but I wanted it to be out more than I wanted it to be long. Let me know if this is a fair trade-off.

My initial plans with this arc was to have some pirates invade the yacht. Actually, before that, I was going to have Fei-Fei find out about the Sandy, and then try to blackmail David regarding this fact, only for David to let her get killed by the invading pirates, which was the thing that I hinted on in an author note several chapters before (something along the lines of "is it too soon to put david through more trauma?") Obviously, I scrapped that because I do like Fei-Fei.

And the pirate thing just felt contrived. I was planning on David solving the pirate issue by breaching the hacked security weapons, and using them against the pirates WHILE they were threatening to kill Fei-Fei in order for the Arasaka bigwigs to take them seriously. The plan was to have David save them, and then Fei-Fei would run to DAVID for comfort, while Katsuo is just standing there like the fucking buffoon that he is. And this was going to be his trigger for planning an actual HIT on David.

I decided I'd rather go with this direction instead, because my long-standing agenda is that "drugs are fun", especially the cocaine-expy of the cyberpunk universe. It sure does inspire fun things, such as killing people.

But in all honesty, I ran out of steam for this arc. It just felt like a rehash of Friday Night Fiesta, which was actually a fun arc. I feel like I might just gloss over future Jin party chapters.

In any case, I'll run away from further writing obligations for now, until y'all provide me with some good feedback regarding this chapter.

Chapter 30: Code Review

Summary:

David and Lucy get incredibly intimate... Netrunner-wise. Very NSFW.

David: I wanna get drunk.

Lunacy: Why are you calling me, then?

David: Because you’re an alcoholic.

Lunacy: Suck my dick

David: You have a penis, Lunacy?

Lunacy: I’m going to fucking kill you.

000

I drank a gulp of my michelada and put it down on the table with a clink.

Lucy, next to me, was nursing a glass of vodka, having taken a sip of it beforehand. She looked at me expectantly, waiting, like the predator that she was. Pretty sure she was older than me. Maybe she was a predator. Hah.

“Why the fuck,” she said. “Are you dressed in a twenty-thou suit?”

“Academy get-together,” I said. I took another long gulp of the michelada. “Cuz I’m the corpo cunt, right?”

[Your inebriation has risen]

David: Don’t sober me up unless it’s an emergency. I want to be less… here. Right now.

[Less… present? Why]

David: because reality is a shithole and I want to escape for a fucking second.

[...Let me know when you are done running.]

Bitch!

Whatever.

She was right. I was running. That was my strong suit, wasn’t it?

“Something’s got you all hot and bothered,” she said. “Talk to me once you’ve finished that drink.”

I up-ended the rest of the glass, ice and all, into my gullet. It was a stupid and an uncomfortable move, but it got the job done. “ Fuck trust-fund babies.”

She raised her glass. “Na zdrowie.”

“ Salud ,” I said, raising my empty glass. I shot an order for tequila on the Net of Turing’s, fine with whatever they would give me. I never fancied alcohol to begin with. Just its effects. “Lucy, what do you even do?”

“The fuck do you mean?”

“When you’re not ‘Running for the crew. What do you do?”

“I relax,” she said. “Because I’m not a mouth-breathing corpo that’s gotta nine-to-nine every day.”

“You know what I do?” I asked. 

“Fraternize with people with a net worth ten times yours?”

“Fraternize with people with a net worth one hundred times mine,” I corrected. “But it’s not just the fucking money. It’s the… listen, so I got this fifteen-year-old kid addicted to my BDs.”

“You still sell BDs?” she asked. “Thought you—”

“ My BDs,” I corrected just as my tequila, double shot, arrived, and I downed it in one go. “D. Me. He’s my number one fan now. And I’m not above frying some gonk kid’s brains out if they’re rich enough to give me the clout needed to get some fucking respect, and I’m not going to lie to you, he is fucking rich .”

“You’re a fucking ghoul, David,” Lucy said. “A fucking ghoul.”

I ordered another double tequila and raised my empty glass, all the while ordering another one. “ Salud !”

She, obviously, didn’t return the cheer. I clinked her glass anyway.

The tequila came quickly this time. I finished the glass again in one go, feeling queasy as I did.

[David, you should seriously reconsider your course of action. You are poisoning yourself.]

David: shut the fuckkkk upppp.

“I used to think,” I said, and thought for a moment. “I used to think I was above that shit. Thing is, I wasn’t. I just… wasn’t able to handle it. Not the fucking workload, fuck that. You saw my grades, I’m a fucking star. It was… the people.” I looked her in the eyes now. “Lucy, if there is one thing I need from you, it’s to not tell me to drop out. I don’t need that shit. Please. ”

Lucy’s expression was ugly to behold, anger and disgust aplenty. But I could also make out an inch of… pity in there. She didn’t say anything, so I continued.

“I’m finally to the point where I can handle the people, but they’re… so fucking gross. Everyone’s out to eat your liver raw. It’s… gross.”

The next glass arrived, and as I was about to down it whole, Lucy’s hand reached to stop me. She took the glass, and… drank it herself.

I frowned at her, but she returned the frown more intensely, and shook her head. “What did you expect, David?”

“I expected less alcoholism from you,” I said.

“Fuck off,” she muttered. “What did you expect? You’re a part of this world now. You gotta swim in these waters. No shit you’re gonna get dirty.”

“It’s not even about that,” I realized, because truly, it wasn’t. It was… “I’m not shit to these guys. And my one shot of getting some relevance? Apparently, that got screwed over as well.”

“And you came bitching to me about it?”

I smiled. “What can I say? I’m a masochist.” I ordered another tequila, feeling my head getting woozier than ever before. “Roast me, I don’t care. I deserve it anyway.”

“You didn’t ask me out to boost your confidence, did you?” she asked.

I shrugged. “No, not really. Doesn’t need much boosting. I’m mostly running on capability, not hope. Confidence doesn’t figure into my game plan that much.” I gave her a small smile. “Maybe I just wanted to know how hard you could kick me while I’m down?”

“That’s not a fair contest,” she said. “I need you up and full of yourself before I can deflate you.”

“Hardy har har,” I said. “I’m… pathetic right now, yeah.”

Should I just get Nanny to detox me?

[That would be advisable, yes.]

“David. Drop. Out.”

Ah fuck.

David: yeah, just sober me up

I immediately felt a sudden change in my mind. Suddenly, I had gone from overly secure and shielded from any concept of risk, to aware. Yeah, definitely no getting drunk. “I need respect,” was all I said, because it was all that needed to be said of the entire situation. Nothing else mattered to me but that. And soon, I would get back into it with Nakajima and get the case comp perfected , and then I would be up there, a future rising star in truth.

And maybe someday… an Arasaka CEO.

Lucy snorted at me, then she raised my emptied tequila glass, and said “Na zdrowie.”

I nodded towards her, since I didn’t have any drinks on me right now. 

“You’ve felt it, then,” Lucy said. “That cold indifference?”

“It’s all I feel.”

“The complete lack of compassion or understanding for your wellbeing? Total disregard—”

“Yeah,” I said. “Sounds like… another Tuesday for me. Nobody batted an eye when my mom died. My bully still tried to beat me to shit. The principal didn’t give a fuck. The only reason I’m still enrolled is because I worked hard .” I looked at Lucy hard now. I must have looked positively murderous to her, but I needed her to understand what it meant for me to still be in this school. “Nobody talks to me during the day. The only time people ever address me, it’s to buy XBDs . Otherwise, I’m literally an island. I’m with this girl to spite my bully, who is apparently his fiancee , and she’s the only other person that treats me like a human being apart from this one underclassman of mine, who used me to gain clout from this son of an exec of the financial fucking department of Arasaka . And he’s the one I got hooked on my BDs, by the way. And I’m gonna use him as an elevator to get me to the top of Arasaka.”

Lucy didn’t say anything at that. I didn’t need her to. Didn’t want her to.

“I know,” I said. “It’s hella shaky. But it’ll get better. Once I finish my case competition, hella fucking hard to program, by the way, I’ll finally get some respect.”

“You bitch !”

I laughed. “What the fuck , Lucy? You thought I was going to ask you for help? I’ve got this shit on lock !”

Her eyes glowed golden, and she shot me a call.

Lunacy: Talk through comms. Show me what you’ve got. ‘Hard to program’? You just want help.

I sent her my formulas, and the AI architecture.

Lucy’s eyes raced through the document, and her face lit with disgust. “This algorithm is going to cost people jobs .”

“All of them will,” I replied without hesitation. “No matter the category of competition you enter in, any winner solution is going to cost jobs. That’s what the best of them do. Save Arasaka money.”

She kept looking through the document, until she finally closed her eyes, and opened them, irises bereft of that golden glow. “It’s good,” she said. “It’s fucking great. You… came up with it?”

“Yeah!” I said, suddenly realizing that I did , didn’t I? Nakajima really wouldn’t have come this far without my calculations. Then my mood soured at the memory of Katsuo. “I need something better now, though.”

“Jesus,” Lucy whispered. “David, if it’s money to retire that you want, you can get that without a corp job!”

“That’s not what I want,” I said.

“No, you want nothing. This is your mom’s dream .”

“Yeah, well, I took it. For myself.”

Lucy looked at me for several long seconds, likely wondering if I was joking.

“If it’s not the money , then what?” Lucy asked.

Then what?

“Immortality,” I said, feeling the word resonate with a deep part of my soul. Yes. Immortality was right.

I wanted to live forever. Either in flesh, or in the memories of all.

Lucy sighed. “You’re being a dumbass.”

She was right. So right.

“True,” I said. “Honestly? I just… I want better things,” I said. I really did. I hated the slums. Hated the gangs. Hated that being a mercenary was such a lucrative job, despite how absolutely awful it was to your surroundings. 

If things were better, then people wouldn’t have to hurt each other so much. 

“You can do that,” Lucy said, and I couldn’t believe my ears for a moment. I looked at her, but her eyes were perfectly innocent, glowing with a supportive light. “I think you can,” she said, before I could ask her to repeat herself.

“Really. You actually believe in me,” I replied with rolled eyes. “Fuck off, Lucy, I know—”

“I do believe that,” she said. “If you put your mind to it, I doubt there’s anything you can’t achieve. But that’s the thing, isn’t it? What stops you from just being another power-hungry psycho like your classmate? Why can’t you become a Katsuo? You have it all right now—”

I patted the bar counter at an exact amount of force loud enough to interrupt Lucy, but not enough to frighten her. “I won’t ever be like Katsuo, so kindly, shut the fuck up.”

“Because you came from the bottom?” Lucy asked. “You’re a sleeper -Katsuo, so what? You still have it in you.”

How could she accuse me of such soullessness? How could she think me to be so evil?

Was there no good that I had achieved in spite of her negative hopes for me?

Two-hundred and thirteen corpses said no, but I wouldn’t let those corpses dictate my direction in life. I still had so much good to live for. Maine and his crew, Nakajima for taking a chance on me, and Fei-Fei, even though I had wronged her the most.

“Because, Lucy,” I said. “I… feel that I like you guys. Maine’s crew. I like you guys. And I’ll do anything to protect those bonds. Anything.”

And to me, there was no other truth but that. I would die before I let Maine or any of the others come to harm. I would kill to protect them. Had, already, and would once more, if given the chance.

I didn’t need some overarching love for the rest of the universe to know that there was still so much here for me to work for. 

Lucy wasn’t convinced. Something about that bothered me immensely, though I didn’t want to unpack the feeling.

[I, for one, don’t understand.]

I frowned.

David: I wouldn’t expect you to.

[Despite your dismal expectations of my social ability, I do have the capability to compute situations rationally. Lucy’s problems with you involve morality, which makes no sense to me.] Wow, why was she being so feisty?

David: She doesn’t make sense. What can I do?

[Tell her?]

David: See, there’s problems with that.

[She despises you for being a prospective corpo. She deems these people to be evil, yet her line of work is far from morally pure, by any credible system of morals or ethics.]

David: Sour grapes, maybe? Gutter trash hating on the fortunate isn’t exactly a new story. 

[Then why do you sit there and accept these aspersions cast on your character when she has every bit of the potential to cause harm as you do? In fact, your goals extend less towards causing harm, and more towards amassing wealth and power for yourself. I know that you do not disregard all humans as a matter of course, and though your lack of guilt at taking lives confuses me, I can sense that it is situational. Deep down, you do value your fellow man. Inasmuch as they don’t attempt to stand in your way.]

I sighed. She was right. I couldn’t just sit here and let Lucy shit on me. That wasn’t fair, not just to me, but to Nanny, who was hitched to me. Whatever weird shit had happened to her core programming, I could tell hurt when I heard it. And despite our myriad differences, she was on my side. I couldn’t let her get hurt.

“What you think doesn’t matter to me,” I said. “I’m not going to force you to understand, or explain every inch of my motives, or convince you I’m not some big evil asshole. I know what I am, I know that what I’m working towards is valid. You need to figure out your hangups, because dealing with them ain’t my fucking responsibility,” I glared at her.

Lucy’s head bent backwards in shock. “Yeah? You—”

“I’m seventeen,” I said. The bartender had passed just as I had said that and frowned, but didn’t do anything about it. “It’s not crazy that I don’t have everything figured out, that I might be chasing other people’s dreams. The hell does that matter, anyway? I’ve still got time, still got options. That’s why I’m doing this shit: so I have options. Maybe once I graduate, I’ll decide to do something else? But at least I’ll have the fucking scratch to make the decision. Maybe I’ll even become some spiritual type or whatever, who gives a fuck? Point is,” I spread my arms around. “I’m hoarding options. So many options. So much freedom . Hell, maybe that’s my dream? Who cares? All I need to do is keep working, keep getting options, and in the end, maybe I’ll make up my damn mind, or maybe I’ll still be drifting, but rich enough that it won’t matter.”

In the end, I wouldn’t want it any other way. 

I’d rather have mom be alive, definitely, but aside from that, things were working out perfectly.

“The work is ugly,” I conceded. “On both sides. But in the end, that’s not gonna be enough to make me give up. All of this was just a minor blip,” I stood up. “I’ve got better shit to do than cry and moan about getting shit from some brat. Thanks for helping me realize that. I’m off.”

“Oh wow, so you’re fucking off now that I hurt your feelings,” she said dryly. I chuckled.

“Honestly, I’m grateful,” I said. “For your shit, that is. Helps me build a thicker skin. But I got work to do, and I doubt I’ll go to sleep tonight.”

“The code you sent to me and Kiwi,” Lucy said. “I wanted to talk about that.”

“What’s there to talk about? Either I’m right or I’m wrong. What do you think?” Despite her interest in an amicable conversation, I really did feel the pressure to go home and spend every hour that I could on research to figure out how to best finish this case competition.

“Sit down for a bit, David,” Lucy said, her tone… sullen ? I obeyed, albeit with a groan. “Here’s the thing, David: I hate corpos,” I wanted to butt in with a ‘shocker’, but honestly, I was more curious about where she was leading up to this. “And I don’t trust you in particular very much either, so there’s that to consider,” I squirmed a little as she laid her feelings out bare. Why did I care, anyway? I’d known this chick for almost a month now, and those facts couldn’t be more accurate. “But I think you’re different enough to tolerate. You’re reliable and great to work with.”

“You don’t hate me?” I asked with an overdramatic tone.

“Shockingly enough, no,” she said. “Anyway, you had a tough day at work. Ain’t right to tell you to quit on that account. Like I said, I’d rather not put you down while you’re feeling pathetic. So… sorry. Yeah.”

Wait, what ? “I didn’t catch that last part.”

“Fuck off, you gonk.”

Hah. “Apology accepted. I shouldn’t have to bitch to you about things that aren’t your concern, anyway, so I understand.”

“Good, glad we understand each other,” she said. Then her eyes flashed gold, and I received a file transfer request. I opened it and saw a text file that was… questions. Wait, she didn’t understand some parts?

Granted, a lot of it was pretty involved mathematics, and if our Graph Wars game was any indication, I had her beat there by miles. And that was before that Brainwipe and Nanny had overhauled my brain.

“Okay,” I said, and launched into a long-winded explanation of my working. Lucy butted in every now and then with questions, and requests to take things slow so she could work through the problems herself. After about thirty minutes of this, she finally nodded.

“Checks out,” she said. I looked at her blankly.

“It checks out to you because I explained how it checks out to me ,” I said. “Call me crazy, but I did want independent verification, you know.”

“You’re right,” she said. “And if you were wrong at some point, I’d be able to tell.”

Okay, if you say so. 

“What do you think?” I asked. “Spooky, isn’t it?” I looked her up and down. “How much chrome do you have anyway that you haven’t edited?”

“That’s… not a problem for me,” Lucy said. “I’m pretty light, all things considered. Haven’t chromed up in… yeah.” Lucy’s signature social ICE-wall erupted between us and I knew better than to try and breach it. I was good at actual hacking, but hacking people was a whole other ballpark. 

“Not trying to be a dick,” I said, backtracking from my little ego-trip. “Besides, it shouldn’t matter unless…” 

“Unless you’re a big black borg with anger issues,” Lucy said dryly. I chuckled mirthlessly at that. “It’s… yeah, between you and me, David, it’s not looking too good for him.”

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

“He doesn’t show it, and he works well, but there are times, I hear, when he… sorta loses it. In small ways. Never violent or anything. Just… kinda fucked up. Dorio keeps him straight, but objectively speaking , he should already be speccing down and taking heavy-duty antipsychotics if he wants even a chance of a normal life. This sort of stuff isn’t just something that willpower gets rid of. It’s the beginning of the end.”

“No,” I muttered. “No, Maine isn’t that stupid. He’s got it handled. Has to.”

“Maine’s a chrome junkie.”

“He’s got it handled ,” I said. 

“You know that other chrome you klepped today?” Lucy asked. “It’s called a Chrome Compressor. Top of the line shit. Reduces neural strain by a ton, lets you chrome up more for less consequences.”

“Oh!” I said. “That’s preem! Maine definitely needs that. I think it’ll—”

“Yeah, whatever you’re thinking, Maine’s thinking it times ten. He’s hit paydirt, and he won’t stop with just the Sandy now. You know that, right? This thing… it only gives false confidence. Lets people like him run off the edge with a smile on their faces. The shit works, sure, but Maine’s not going to accept that the way it works means that he needs to never chrome up again, and maybe he’ll have a shot at not doing something terrible.”

I growled. I was about to tell Lucy to shut up when Nanny interrupted.

[Now she is speaking rationally and you are being the irrational one.]

David: I can’t just let her say these things, it’s Maine !

[Yes, the man that forced you to work for him, the man that has repeatedly done harm to your body, and is now refusing to consider the fact that reality does not care about his ambitions. Need I remind you that my specialty is biocyberization and the effects on the human body? Just from observation, I can tell that he needs to slow down, and from what your handling of his personality tells me, he won’t .]

David: He’s maine !

[I recognize the emotional needs of yours that he has fulfilled, but my assessment is that it is heavily outweighed by the possible consequences of further association with him.]

“Maine will listen to us,” I said. “I floated him the idea of rewriting his soft exactly because of this, and I can. I did it with my own shit. With you and Kiwi backing me up, and the Chrome Compressor doing its thing, there’s definitely a shot.”

Lucy laughed mirthlessly. “You don’t understand. It will only make him feel like it’s safer to chrome up!”

“Then we’ll talk to him,” I said. “Lucy, I owe him.”

“The fuck do you owe him?” Lucy asked. “A sandy? He has one! The money he put down for yours? He’s got that back plus way more just from having you work with us! You don’t owe him fuckall!”

“I owe him for you guys!”

Lucy’s expression looked genuinely concerned now.

“Rebecca, Dorio, Kiwi, hell, even Pilar. And you. Falco, too. All you guys mean something to me,” I said. “And I have no one . You know that.”

“You should rather live alone than die with the wrong sort,” Lucy said. “I like the crew, too. But it’s… it’s a big old wishing well. Every one of them’s got dumb and unachievable dreams, and Maine’s is even crazier  than anything else. The only person I can imagine gets close to achieving anything is you .”

“Lucy… are you thinking of quitting?” I asked.

“...Three netrunners are a crowd, don’t you think?”

“Lucy, don’t—”

“Yeah, no,” Lucy said. “I’m not quitting. Not yet, at least. But it’s not like I’m planning to grow old with this bunch, either. And you’re the same, David. I can’t imagine you growing old with them, either.”

“Forget all that for one second,” I said. “Seriously. I’ve only been here for a month, and I’ve got plans on my own, too. Fuck all that stressful shit for a second. I just came out of one frying pan.”

Lucy raised a glass to that.

“Let’s code review each other’s quickhacks,” Lucy said, and I raised an eyebrow at her. She had to be fucking kidding me.

“What’s the catch?” I asked. 

“The catch is, I’m betting I’ll walk away with more than you will,” she said. “It’s a sign of respect, David. Ain’t that what you always wanted?”

I felt my heart swell with pride. It was true, though, wasn’t it? Even if letting Lucy in on my playbook was disadvantageous if I was ever matched against her, the fact remained that she was also exposing her vulnerabilities to me. Not only that, she trusted me to be able to elevate her ability.

Fuck .

And Lucy was the real deal, too, wasn’t she? I remembered acutely what she did to access that corp limo. That was real skill. And the shit she pulled in that data fortress?

“Are you serious?” I asked. 

“Deadly,” Lucy said. “Between you and me— again —Kiwi’s been halfassing your training. But you are in the big leagues, and it’s time you get treated that way.”

Kiwi? Half-assing my training? Yeah, no shit. She was way worse than Nakajima. He was the one who actually taught me how to code. Well, not really. He did point me in the right direction for some productive self-study though, so I owed him that much at least. Kiwi, too, albeit to a lesser extent.

“Thanks, Lucy,” I said with a chuckle. 

Fuck… this was really nice of her.

000

We spent the rest of the night in her house, caffeinated to high hell and working on each other’s code. Lucy’s stuff was preem . Better than anything they’d ever sell in some Net storefront, that was for sure. Her shit blew that Asimov BBS out of the water. 

We were each on our external cyberdecks, tapping away at the tablets—Lucy sitting in the window sill while I was lying upside down on her sofa, locked in. “Your Ping’s clever,” I muttered.

She huffed. “You’re seriously on my Ping?”

“I don’t get distracted by flashy things,” I said, scrolling through her text with my eyes. I had decided not to use the Sandy to speed this up. Didn’t make sense to, with Lucy doing her best in human speeds and all. “Fundamentals are good, too. Your Ping’s more thorough than mine.”

“Yours is more powerful.”

I chuckled. “You’re on my Ping, then?”

“I don’t get distracted by flashy things,” she aped. “But to be fair, even your Ping is flashy. Just barely too heavy to take on a deck slot, but still pretty efficient.”

After finishing reading her Ping and testing it out several times, I came to the conclusion that I seriously needed to redo mine. Lucy’s style wasn’t as polished as mine, but it was cunning . Clever. I was good at programming. She was good at hacking . Those two skill sets might sound the same, but they were not. 

If I wanted to up my game, I needed to be better, like she was.

“Your Overheat’s weird,” she said. “Check out mine.”

I did. And I could see why she thought that. Her approach was entirely different. More straightforward even. Wow. All that wasted effort. 

Anyway, two can play at that game. “Yours is good, but inefficient,” I said, as I started pouring in some comments. In the meanwhile, I explained to her what she did well and what she could do better.

And so it went for almost four hours.

Lucy had ordered takeout at some point, and we worked while we ate. Then she got bored and busted out some brosephs from the fridge. I didn’t allow myself to get buzzed as I drank. As much as it felt like what I was doing was the height of creativity and ingenuity when I was shitfaced, sober-me would destroy drunk-me ten times out of ten. It wasn’t even a competition at this point. There were no upsides to being drunk. It just left you vulnerable, weak, and gave you a stupid and false cheer that wasn’t even real.

I noticed the slightest dip in the quality of Lucy’s comments going forward, and that only proved my point. 

Since my quickhack repertoire really wasn’t the longest, we ended up working on her stuff at the halfway point of my stay. I got to see her Short-Circ, Reboot Optics, Cyberware Malfunction and Weapon Glitch.

All of it described Lucy to a tee: ruthless and deadly, but deep down quite clumsy and improvised. I was realistic enough to not put Lucy’s capabilities on a pedestal. It wasn’t arrogance. It really was just realism. If she really was the best , then she wouldn’t be living in this apartment, or hold such a grudge against the rich. She had places to grow, too.

Maybe I could help her, the way she was helping me? Of course, no questions asked. 

As long as she gave me the respect I was owed, I’d return the favor as well. Nothing else to it.

Lucy gave me some good starting lines for that array of quickhacks, but I sensed that as much as I was helping her improve her iterations, mine was going to be entirely different, from the ground-up. I would avoid her pitfalls and incorporate her strengths. In return for that, I made damn sure to clean up every inch of code I could find.

"Did you really get with your bully's output?" Lucy asked me. My fingers froze for a moment, and I wondered if that was the best idea, for me to have dropped that particular tidbit.

"Not on purpose," I said. "Didn't know who she was at the time. I, uh, hang out with her from time to time though. It's nice. She treats me with respect."

"Why?" She asked.

"She hates Katsuo, too," I said. "It's an arranged marriage apparently. Fucked up."

"Careful," she said. "You really shouldn't be getting into that shit if you're serious about making it."

I grunted in affirmation. That was easier said than done. Maybe it was the right path for me, and maybe I'd have heeded Lucy's warning before today, but now all I could think of was how much I had cost her.

I didn't feel like explaining that to Lucy, either. She would think that Fei-Fei was playing some kind of game, but I had already read enough of her to conclude that it wasn't likely. Not unless she was some kind of international super spy or some shit. Lucy would have no reason to trust my intuition, but that was because she couldn't fathom its depths.

That wasn't arrogant of me to think, either. It was... all apparent now, the world itself. My eyes had opened, and with it, my ability to observe and intuit the world had skyrocketed. Watching how people talked and acted. Nothing could really get past me anymore.

Still, Fei-Fei was a risk in other ways than just whatever she might decide to do. All in all, Lucy wasn't wrong. I did need to put up some distance.

Even if it sucked. I could still owe her without putting myself at risk.

A few minutes more passed in silence as we tapped away at our tablets.

“It’s disgusting to watch you work,” she said. “Makes me wanna chip in some boosterware.”

I chuckled. “I had that same despair watching you work on boosting that car. I could barely follow you without using the Sandy.”

She hummed. I turned my head to find her seated right next to me on the sofa, like she had for the last two hours, but I only know realized just how close to me she was. 

And how close we had become tonight.

You didn’t show your ass to someone you hated. Didn’t show your code, either. She knew what I was capable of, and I knew the same. We had co-authored each other’s greatest weapons. 

You didn’t do that shit with someone you didn’t trust.

Lucy trusted me.

“I can… take a look at your chrome, too,” I said.

She looked away from me abruptly to stare out the window, and I could tell that I shouldn’t have said that. Chrome was a touchy subject for her, wasn’t it?

Her first piece wasn’t her choice. She had said as much the first time we hung out after I joined the crew. Then she’d told me about how her body had been taken from her by a corp. And if a corp had chipped her in, then it was unlikely that any of the pieces conflicted with each other.

“You don’t need to have that shit chrome on you anymore,” I said. “You have the eddies, don’t you?”

“David, stop,” she said. “Drop it.”

Dropped.

“Sorry,” I muttered. “Whatever. I’m… kinda tired.”

“Heading home?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Thanks for tonight, Lucy. I learned a lot.”

“Believe it or not, me too,” she said. “Might need to brush up on my programming, actually.”

“Never hurts,” I said as I stood up. 

My brain buzzed with ideas of what to do that made no sense to me, and I elected to quiet those impulsive thoughts instead of acting on them. Tonight was a good night. No need to press my luck, especially now that I had gotten it conclusively proved that Lucy not only didn’t hate me, but actually trusted me a ton.

No need to push the envelope.

…Why did I even want to push things?

Eh, whatever. Stupid, hormonal teenager gonk brain. Superintelligence couldn’t trump youth apparently.

“You had a lot to drink,” Lucy said. “Sure you don’t wanna stay the night?”

“Can’t,” I said. “Gotta make it to class in the morning, plus I’m able to sober up on command, so it’s really not that big a deal.”

“Oh,” she muttered. “Alright then. See you.”

“See you,” I said as I put on my blazer and made my way out her apartment.

It didn’t occur to me until I was halfway home on my bike what Lucy had just asked of me.

But I still refused to believe it. Couldn’t be anything else but friendly concern.

Yeah.

Just concern.

000

In the quiet of her apartment, Lucy finished the dregs of her beer, feeling profoundly unfulfilled.

She didn’t know why. Her mind kept brushing up on one particular reason, but that never quite stuck.

Maybe she just wanted to program more? Yeah. Made sense. David had shown her a lot. Inspired her, even. It was nice, working with him.

Hopefully, the feeling would go away once she finished working on her code.

Notes:

I have a confession to make. I don't know why I called it the Bloodsurge Edgerunner. I guess, like, the blood surges when he activates his Sandy and he gets all fast, but that's so forced.

The phrase sounds cool, okay? Plus I was into the Livewire Ripper when I first started writing this, and I guess I wanted to riff off of it.

Ah, I recall now. The first title was 'Blood and Bone' which evoked David's regeneration abilities, but that didn't become relevant enough to warrant an entire title in the end. And I'm still slightly miffed that I didn't include David's corporate aspect in the title either. Man, I hate titles.

Chapter 31: Cartel Blanche Part 1

Summary:

David skips school. Absolute havoc ensues.

I stole a few hours of sleep before having to wake up a little half-cocked. Nanny ran basic maintenance on my body at night in ways that she couldn’t do when I was awake. Missing a full four hours of sleep, the minimum length of time necessary to get back to basics, wasn’t immediately fatal of course, but it did… reduce me.

Nanny prepared some graphics actually, to show exactly how lessened I was.

-4.5% reaction speed. -12% energy efficiency, tying into a -4% reduction in physical coordination. I could neither move exactly as I wanted, and the movements that I did make were superfluous and overly strenuous. I had lost finesse. Most problematic was a -15% duration of concentration. 

A one-hour nap during lunch could solve things, but then that would mean that I had to track down a place to sleep. After having pissed off Katsuo. No thanks, I’d rather keep my head on a swivel.

I’d just have to accept this debuff for now.

I could call in sick to school. It wasn’t like I had a perfect attendance record as it was. My grades were my selling point. I’d have to fill in some bullshit form and endure a reaming from the administration, which was customary. They only wanted to make me feel like shit, but they had no intention of stopping me from taking a leave if I really needed it. All students had a right to a certain number of days off school. Fourteen days to be exact.

This year, I had used exactly one of those days. It was the day after mom died.

Although the lack of sleep had started me off on this train of thought, what continued it was imagining what I could do from skipping a single day of school. I had no assignments or exams due today, classwork was the same as always and I could catch up given literally half a second.

I checked my to-do list, a highly neglected document despite the fact that its very existence was precisely to remind me of neglected tasks. I thought that having the app be in my eyes would make things easier for me to keep track of, but that proved to be a fucking lie. Maybe I should literally just have Nanny tell me these things?

Tasks

• Decompile the OS and get to the bottom of what the fuck Sandy even does. 
• Buy cheap Daemons for inspiration
• Decide on next chrome (review necessity steps below)
• Will I be incapable of doing without it?
• Am I currently incapable of something such that only more chrome can help me?
• How will this chrome help me take over Arasaka or stay alive?
• Make road Ping that scans the streets and finds cars so I don't crash and burn like a gonk

Top of the list was reading and optimizing the Sandy.

Damn. I had been sitting on this for weeks .

First thing first, if I wasn’t going to school, then I might as well sleep an extra hour and get rid of the debuffs.

Before that, I used mom’s terminal to quickly fill out and send in a form of absence citing health reasons. I would not be submitting a doctor’s note, which would make my absence count for three days of how many days off I had left, because that made total sense. But I had the days in spare and I might as well use them rather than lose them.

That done, I took an extra hour of sleep, woke up exactly ninety minutes later courtesy of Nanny, who had also let me fall asleep in an instant.

Finally, I felt fully well-rested.

I looked for a personal link cable around the house. I found one under a drawer. I disinfected it before reaching to my back where there was an inlet. From there, I connected the link to the Sandy. I put the other end inside an inlet in my PC tower. From then, I started accessing the code, having to breach it as I did. My own ICE wasn’t holding my access back, but the native security protocols within the cyberware did.

Or cyber wares as it were. My Sandevistan, a chip in truth, was attached to the enormous neural link that was now my metallic spine. They were a package deal, the neural link having been manufactured by the same people who made the Sandy, hence its ‘Dragon Spine’ appellation. Doc had apparently gotten rid of my old Arasaka neural link to make room for the Dragon Spine. Nanny confirmed as much when I asked. That was interesting, and it made sense. The Dragon Spine did cover the spot at the very peak of my vertebrae where my ‘Saka neural link used to stay.

I let out a breath through my nose, slightly annoyed that I had let this surprise wait for so long. Nothing had stopped me from getting to the bottom of something as important as my own chrome, except for the fact that I was just inherently shitty at managing tasks. I either went all in on something, or I did not give a single fuck. No in betweens.

Eh, whatever. Being hard on myself like this was equally time-wasting and wouldn’t achieve anything. Might as well spend that energy figuring out strategies to master myself. And I could do that later as well.

“Nanny, remind me to figure out ways to master time management later,” I said.

Wait, this was it though, wasn’t it? Use Nanny for this shit.

“Scratch that,” I said. “Just remind me to ask you to remind me whenever I come up with a task that I need to do. Especially if there’s multiple. Do you understand?”

[I do] Nanny said, entirely without judgment. I appreciated that, honestly. Anyone else would have called me a massive gonk.

Back to the Sandy.

Beyond the surface level crap, I got down to the basic functions, how the spine functioned as a spine, and not just a foundation for whatever the fuck the Sandy was.

And it was efficient. Really efficient.

Good , too. I really liked reading this code. It was understandable, yet still complex enough to give me pause and require a moment to parse it.

And… it was familiar .

[I ran an update on all of your chrome after the incident at T3nshi’s data fortress] Nanny said, and my eyebrows shot up. [I neglected to mention this. Somehow. I do not know why.]

Alarm bells rang through my head as I heard that.

"What do you mean you don't know?"

[I gave you a more general rundown of your capabilities. I was going to tell you about this, but then my priorities shifted as you became more concerned about utilizing your increased reaction speed and the other advantages you gained. In comparison, my optimization of the Dragon Spine was practically neglibile to your increase of combat potential.]

"Wait, are you blaming me for you forgetting to tell me this?" I asked, frowning at my monitor.

[No, I am concerned as well that I neglected even to mention this. As well as dozens of other things that I did, such as optimizing your ICE and reducing the cooldown period of your cyberdeck. Your Kiroshis experienced some tune-ups as well."

Damn, okay. What the hell, though? 

[My attention seems to be... compromised.] Nanny said. [We shall have to address this together at some point. I can tell that it was you who gave me this affliction. You must repair me.]

"You're a class fucking act, you know that?" I muttered. I had already read through her updated code, and knew that she wasn't possibly trying to lie to me. That was impossible.

After all, after what happened at T3nshi's Data Fortress, we were practically two sides of the same coin now. I could sense the work she did in the background. She was just as much a part of me as I was of her.

[Apologies. That was rude of me. In any case, I definitely believe I was going to include these changes in the Sunday patch notes, as you requested.]

I rolled my eyes. I couldn't argue with that. “You think I’ll be able to make any of my own touches then?” I asked. “As far as I understand it, we’re pretty much tied for coding skill, considering our... entanglement or whatever.”

[You may, though the improvements will not be very substantial. Unless inspiration strikes. In any case, I gathered vast amounts of data on your nervous system in order to provide a better framework for which your Sandevistan neural link can work for you. I have some… ideas regarding further improvements we can make. Though they will not be improvements, but simple applications of what your chrome is already capable of doing.]

“I’m all ears,” I said.

[Your reaction speed is almost perfect. Your body is strong and fast enough to keep up. But the signals that your body receives in order to react are far slower than the speed at which your mind acquires and calculates new data. The Dragon Spine may allow us to program your body to react to certain stimuli without conscious effort. For example, you may be able to draw your gun and shoot it the moment you register a credible threat to your life, such as seeing the metallic glint of a pistol as it is about to be drawn. This will help you lower uses of the Sandevistan as well, and make you not as reliant on it.]

I pondered her words, and considered the possible consequences to this.

It was dicey, I’d admit.

The ‘draw gun’ code —for that was what it was—would have to be perfect, or I’d blow people’s brains out at the drop of a hat. I needed an ironclad trigger.

[We need additional data, of course] Nanny said. [And a lengthy experimentation phase to prevent any undue incidents. However, there is one thing that we can do given my current stores of data.] Nanny then described to me exactly what she was talking about, and I couldn’t help but agree. It was harmless to everyone, and mostly harmless to myself, and would pretty much get me out of any pickle.

We got started on programming the solution, and by the end of it, I was pretty happy with my gains. I used the Sandy to get as much done as I could, and then continued reading through the code, reaching the Sandy chip itself.

That was… difficult.

“You didn’t update the Sandevistan itself?” I asked.

[The Sandevistan operates on a level beyond my current understanding of associated academic fields.]

I took her meaning as I read through it.

This whole thing was just… bullshit.

Physics equations with the wrong signs, theorems I had never heard of yet, and other random crap that did not make sense at all littered the code. Some sections cut off into nowhere, and some looped back together, painting a questionable picture of the programmer’s conception of time itself . It was as non-linear as code could even be, and quite frankly I was shocked that any of this crap even worked.

I didn’t know how. I didn’t know enough to even wager if this was poorly done or a masterwork of coding.

I smiled and chuckled at myself, in arrogant irritation and amusement.

I wasn’t the best after all.

Whoever wrote this? Yeah, they were either insane or just downright godly.

It did make me anxious, though. 

I needed more research. More math. That was always going to be good for my ICE building. I needed to read up on the latest in mathematics, maybe break into a corp data center or two to klep some info on cryptography, because I knew that no mere library would have the bleeding edge of that field just lying around.

Physics , too, because this crap touched on some really freaky stuff, and I did have a hole in my knowledge when it came to bleeding-edge physics, when it didn’t pertain to quantum computing at least.

I could leave that kind of research for another day. Maybe Friday evening or the weekend, but right now there were still other things to do.

New cyberware.

I had no candidates in mind.

And that didn’t matter as much as Maine chipping in.

I called Kiwi and Lucy.

They both picked up pretty fast.

Lunacy: Thought you’d be in school right now.

Kiwi: I think our bad boy ditched school today

D: What’s the data on Maine chipping in?

Kiwi: We talked this morning. He was gung ho. Then Dorio and I teamed up on him and got him to chill. I explained to him the thing about cyberware software and he chilled after that. He’s given us like seven days to come up with better code for his softwares. I’ll give you both chip copies so we can get this done quick. There’s pay in it, too. Twenty-five each.

I wouldn’t say no to that.

Kiwi: There’s a lot to get through, though. He’s chipped in eighteen times so far, and that’s not counting his upgrades. That means eighteen different softwares we gotta get fixed before he loses his patience and proceeds to chip in.

I groaned.

D: At least he finally took us seriously.

Lunacy: Big of the big guy.

Kiwi: Come see me as soon as you can.

D: Got it. Thanks for stepping up, Kiwi. Appreciate it.

Kiwi: You’re not exactly a script-kiddie you know. After what happened that day, I figure I owe you more courtesy than I would any gonk off the streets.

Lunacy: Real sappy, Kiwi. Grew a soft spot for him already?

D: You’re one to talk.

Kiwi: Oh? Do tell.

Lunacy: Don’t believe a word this dipshit says.

D: She let me review her code.

Kiwi: Daaamn . Okay. Might as well have showed him your ass, Luce

Lunacy: Fuck off, it’s not like that. He was begging me for help on some project—

D: See, that’s actually bullshit, though. Lucy just doesn’t wanna admit she thinks I’m the better programmer.

Lunacy: Do you have a death wish?

Kiwi: I’m gonna give you two a room.

Kiwi disconnected from the call.

Lunacy: What the fuck was that about?

D: Relax. It’s whatever.

Lunacy: No, it’s not whatever. Don’t just go around saying that shit, you know how that makes me look?

D: Like you don’t hate my guts?

Lunacy: You know that’s not it.

D: I wanna hear you say it, though.

Lunacy: You know what? I do fucking despise you.

I chuckled.

D: I know you don’t.

Lunacy: Aren’t you supposed to be in school, anyway? 

D: I ditched, cuz I’m a trashy delinquent, and I needed to get some shit done anyway. Feels good getting to sleep in, though.

Lunacy: It’s eight in the morning.

D: Guess you gotta get on my level to understand.

Lunacy: Self-aggrandizement is a bad look. You know what that word means, prep-boy?

D: Thoroughly

Lunacy: So what’re you doing today?

D: I have no fucking idea. Went through my to-do list. Found some fucked up shit in my chrome. Can’t deal with that until I do more research, but yeah. Thinking I should maybe have come to school after all.

Lunacy: The Sandy?

D: Not something I wanna talk about in open comms. 

What was I going to do today? I felt that there definitely was something I wanted done. Or something someone told me to get done.

By today?

Hmmm. Dammit, I could have sworn there was something ticking down on me.

[Three days ago, the Tijuana Cartel gave you three days to complete a gig free of charge, or else they promised retribution.]

Oh…

Okay.

Yeah, that made sense. 

I knew there was something. I knew it. I just couldn’t bring it up.

What the fuck good was perfect memory if I forgot to remember shit?

Ah, whatever. “Thanks Nanny,” I said.

D: Yeah, I just remembered something. I’m going to Tijuana.

I chuckled as I said something I didn’t think she was going to take seriously at all.

D: Wanna come?

Lunacy: What the fuck for?

D: It’s… a long story.

Lunacy: Ahhh. Fuck it. Sure, why not? Wanna meet somewhere near yours for once?

I was shocked that she’d even offer. 

D: Sure, there’s a place we can grab some coffee near me. We can head off from there.

Lunacy: See ya.

Lunacy disconnected. Her sudden bout of friendliness was another point to the name I saved her as.

I didn’t hate this, though.

I’d appreciate her as a friend.

I’d greatly appreciate her seeing me as a friend, too.

I had… no reason to. At all. She had been beyond nasty to me. It hurt my pride that I couldn’t muster more anger.

Mom would be proud of me for letting go of anger, though. She was always so concerned about that.

I’d do it for her, then.

000

I waited on the main street in front of H4 for my bike to roll by. I kept an eye on the streets as always. Things had changed after I got money. I always did use to be wary about my surroundings, back when I had nothing and was only a step above a rat. Now that they were pretty much extinct in Night City, I had practically been a rat at the time. Just another streetkid, but way out of their element.

Now that I had money and power, I did continue to keep my vigil. No sense of losing that instinct, especially when it had served me so well in the past. I had never had a run-in with real gangoons before, because I knew pattern recognition. I could read people pretty well, too. I was always the first to delta and last to join up on whatever crazy adventure the neighborhood kids tried to drag me into.

My Yaiba finally rolled up in front of me. I jumped on it and took off, at normal speeds however. The mods were starting to wear and tear, and I needed to get stuff fixed before I even dared to go full throttle.

The cafe was anyway just a couple of blocks away. I parked my car by the sidewalk, locked it electronically, and would have proceeded into the cafe if it wasn’t for a voice that stopped me.

“David? Is that you?”

I recognized the voice. I turned around and saw Andrés approach me with a wide grin. He was thin, but slightly taller than me still, and had long black hair tied in a ponytail. He was a streetkid. Street man now, I guess. “Andrés,” I said. “Long time.”

“ Damn , you got big,” he said. Then he switched to Spanish and said “ And you got yourself a preem ride, too! How the fuck are ya?!”

“Fine,” I said with an awkward shrug as he encompassed my form with a wide hug. 

He took a step from me and grinned. “Still doing Arasaka school or they kick you out yet?” He looked at me, and his eyes lingered on my sword with a brief frown.

“Still at it,” I smiled politely. 

“Good, good ,” he said. “What’s the katana for, though?”

“I practice,” I shrugged. “Hey, it was preem catching up to you and all, but I’m—”

“Nonsense, nonsense,” he said. “I’ll buy you some coffee, nova?”

Oh god. Before I could even answer, he had already walked into the cafe. I followed. He was already at the counter, ordering loudly (and rudely) two Americanos. 

“And make it fast too, comprende?” Andrés asked. The middle-aged manager with the horseshoe mustache nodded with a frown and started making the drinks.

“It’s really not—” I said, but he interrupted me again, the fucking gonk.

“Ah, don’t worry about it, I’ll spot you,” he said.

What the fuck was going on?

“Andrés, I’m meeting someone.”

He grinned. Behind him, the manager arrived with our order. “You got a date coming or what?” he turned back to the counter and accepted the two plastic cups of coffee. Then he walked me up to a table and had a seat in a booth next to the wall adjacent to the windows overlooking the sidewalk. He rushed up to his seat before I could even sit myself. I decided to sit across from him, facing into the cafe. “Why don’t you tell me about her?” he asked me.

I got an alert from my bike. Someone was trying to breach it. The progress was really fucking slow, though.

Oh god.

Yeah, it explained why the dickhead rushed up to his seat. To try and make me face away from the sidewalk outside.

“What the fuck, man?” I asked him.

Andrés frowned. “Don’t be so annoyed, choom. I miss you—”

“We haven’t talked in over a year. And you took it pretty shittily when I said I was gonna split from your gang permanently, remember that?”

“Yeah, but, you know, that’s how it goes . I never did anything though, did I?”

Because I had done my best to avoid him. But I had seen his hunting dogs. I had seen him try to find me.

“Andrés, I’m not gonna flatline you,” I said. Andrés’ expression froze. “Due to my respect for the work you got me, back when I needed it. You gave me a lot of shit. I was grateful, too. I paid you as much as I could to say sorry for splitting, almost as much as you gave me, in fact. Which , by the way, proved that being with you was entirely unprofitable. I honestly wish I’d never met you. I get that you gave me good work, but I split anyway because that’s what my mother wanted.”

“Ah, yeah, Gloria. How is she?”

I stared at him flatly. “She died almost four weeks ago.”

“Oh,” he frowned. “Shit man, that’s a tough break.”

My bike’s ICE was around… ten percent breached. Guess we had more time to talk.

“But here’s the thing, Andrés,” I continued. “I had time to grow over the year since we last met, and I know you for exactly what you fucking are.” Andrés’ expression shifted to cold neutrality. “A sociopathic fucking bastard that would let children die to make a eurobuck. So why don’t you fuck off, and tell the guy you’ve got trying to boost my bike to stop it before he loses his hands?”

Andrés snarled. “You think I can’t flatline you right now, you stupid bitch?”

“You’re joking,” I said. “Are you really—”

Andrés grinned devilishly. “You sit right the fuck here, don’t say a word , and after I take your bike, I’ll consider us—”

I grabbed him by his hair and bashed his face into the table. Again, and again, and again . And then again. Usually, I’d have stopped at three. A fairer number than four. But the fourth was because I really fucking hated it when he interrupted me.

He backed into his booth, hands covering his face. He looked utterly dazed. Goddammit. Why was he making me do him like this? “I’ve got a friend coming, and you being here really cracks my fucking chrome. You get me, choom? I said I wasn’t gonna flatline you, but you keep trying me—”

He reached into his pants and I grabbed his hair and bashed his face down on the table three more times.

God, what a fuckup he was. 

Whatever.

I stood up and looked at him wheeze breaths through his destroyed nose, his face bloody and ruined. I didn’t make him stand up. I just dragged him by his hair behind me. He was entirely ragdolled, practically unconscious.

I walked out of the cafe with him in tow, opened the door and threw his ass out onto the streets while his streetkid friends trying to boost my bike with shitty cyberdecks watched me.

They didn’t say another word as they scattered, leaving my bike unmolested.

“Friends of yours?” I turned around and saw Lucy look at me with a raised eyebrow.

“Yeah,” I said. “Old friends. He didn’t drink his coffee,” I pointed at Andrés. “You like Americano?”

“No,” she said with disgust.

“Yeah, me neither,” I said. 

The manager of the cafe kicked the door open and walked into the sidewalk, pump-action shotgun in hand as he glared daggers at me, his expression so acutely wrathful that it looked like he was ready to splatter me across the sidewalk.

I sent him a transfer request of a thousand eurodollars before he could open his mouth. His eyes flashed blue as he accepted it and then walked back into the cafe without another word.

“Let’s find another place,” Lucy suggested. “Or just move on, I guess. Not really feeling coffee.” I shrugged. I jogged up to my bike and hopped on top of it, turned it on and drove closer to Lucy so she could get on as well.

“What the hell did he say, by the way?” Lucy asked. “He looks pretty beat up,” she looked at the road where he laid, on a parking spot at that.

“He just tried to distract me,” I said. “From the kids trying to klep my ride. But then he made me remember how he did me a year ago. After I split off from his crew, this gonk piece of shit made me go to ground and hide like a rat for months . He’s the kind of gangster that only uses streetkids. Ain’t afraid to get them killed to make a buck either. Lost some of my childhood friends running with him, years ago.” I shook my head to forget. Just another list of bullshit that I had dealt with all my life. The Night City upbringing.

“Oh, he’s scum,” Lucy said as I pulled off and started driving. 

“Yeah, whatever,” I said. “I don’t really give a fuck, honestly. So about Tijuana, I just remembered that I owe the cartel a free gig. Hence the whole surprise trip.”

“What the fuck, you’re connected with the cartel?”

“It’s a long story,” I said. “And my bike’s slower so I guess I’ll have the time to tell it to you by the time we get ther.”

I told her the story while I rode towards the motorway, afterwhich I put on my mask and increased my speed.

I told Lucy all about my family back in Tijuana, how they got shafted by the cartel, and how I took revenge on the gang that killed them. Now the cartel thought I owed them for the flesh I took.

“So you’re just gonna fold?” Lucy asked. “D, these people know nothing about you. They wouldn’t try to bait you out if they did.”

“Of course,” I said. “And I bet the gig involves compromising my identity in some way too. They’re mostly operating based on the idea that I’m scared or something.”

“Are you?”

“Shivering in my boots,” I replied sardonically. “No, my goal is to learn how the cartel operates, so I can fuck ‘em over harder. They screwed with my family, and now they want me for the revenge that I committed. You think I’m gonna say sorry?”

“I don’t know what goes through your fucking head, D,” Lucy said. “But yeah, I guess not. I don’t see how this won’t just escalate things.”

“I’m going after the rat bastard himself,” I said. “Lorenzo. And after that, whoever is in charge. I get that an organization like that has no true head or heart, but I can still scare the heads and hearts there shitless enough to never try and fuck with me again. They would never suspect that I would jump all the way to the top of the hierarchy to make my move, forgetting that in the end, they’re still made of meat.”

“I feel like you’re underestimating them,” Lucy said.

“Of course. I have no frame of reference to how strong they are, besides the one gang that I took out, all hilariously fucking weak,” I shrugged. “I trust that the higher-ups are stronger. And I guess I’ll find out eventually.”

“Why am I here?” Lucy asked.

I shrugged. “Iunno. I offered sort of as a joke, and you accepted. I was gonna go alone to be honest. I’m glad you’re coming along, though. Mexico trips always get kinda… isolating. New city and all.”

“Glorious Security Solutions,” Lucy muttered. “I guess that explains that. You continue to surprise me, Martinez.”

The toll booth out of Night City was ahead.

“It’s good you brought me along,” she said. “You were definitely gonna get your gonk ass flatlined trying something like sinking an entire cartel.”

I rolled my eyes. “No I wasn’t.”

“Not anymore. There better be eddies at the end of this.”

I chuckled. “You don’t know me at all.”

Notes:

I was going to give my thoughts on the chapter, but I've decided to withhold it as I don't want to affect any of your opinions.

I guess I'm just anxious about how and where I'm going to stick the landing with regards to Lucy and David. Anyway I sincerely hope y'all enjoy. Your comments give me so much life and inspiration. :)

Chapter 32: Cartel Blanche Part 2

Just as I entered the city’s limits, I gave Abuela a call.

Abuela: David! Back so soon! How are things? Did you end up resolving your crisis?

David: Yeah, thankfully. I’m here on—

I felt the slightest intrusion on my phone line, and turned around to glare at Lucy, who just gave me a smug smirk. 

We were speaking Spanish, anyway. What was she hoping to achieve? Weirdo.

David: I’m here on business, but I’ll swing by to hear how things are with your business.

Abuela: You have nothing to worry about, David. We have things under control. But I would love for you to pop by!

David: See you soon.

I hung up the call. “The hell was that about?” I asked her.

“Your Spanish is really good,” she said.

“I’m Mexican?” I said.

“Lots of Mexicans in NC don’t know their language,” she said, “So… you’re gonna introduce me to your granny?”

The reality of the situation dawned on me. What the hell was I thinking? Introducing Lucy to grandma would… raise uncomfortable questions. The girl wasn’t right in the head and would probably say or do something stupid. As I joined a greater stream of traffic leading into Tijuana’s downtown, I gave a defeated sigh. “Are you going to behave?”

She scoffed. “Never.”

Oh God.

I didn’t have to go to granny’s, did I? Not with Lucy at any rate. We could just finish up the gig, I’d drive Lucy home, then come see Abuela.

“I have her number,” Lucy said, “So if you’re not taking me to her, I’ll just… give her a call.”

I slammed the brakes on the bike, causing her to crash into my back, her face hitting my Sandy head-on. Then I sped up once again.

“You fucking—” Lucy cursed.

“ Behave ,” I said. “Or I’ll speed all the way to her house. You’ll throw up once we get there.”

She grumbled, “Fine.”

000

“Hey, grandma,” I said in English as I stepped into her occult shop, Lucy in tow. She was behind the counter, cash register open as she gave it a count. I never imagined that this front even made any money. Or maybe she was counting the laundered money from the mercenary front?

Why did she particularly need a front, anyway? Her business was legitimate, and her partnership was with Militech. Clearly, she just liked this stuff.

When grandma saw me, her eyes lit up. Her eyes seemed… younger. Prettier. Newer . I scanned her, and my suspicion was realized. Kiroshis. Decent models. She ran up to me with a spring in her step that was completely at odds with her otherwise elderly appearance, almost as if she no longer suffered from any of the usual pains and weaknesses of old age. She hugged me fiercely, and even the force of it was enough to squeeze some air out of my lungs. “David! I’m so happy for you!”

“Happy?” I raised an eyebrow.

She pulled back and kept both hands on my shoulders. “You’ve freed yourself from your binds. I can see it.”

I chuckled uncomfortably. I wasn’t… super into the supernatural anymore, not after my close brush with it. I’d rather forget I even had that crisis, being honest. 

“Don’t be ashamed,” she said, “You did a brave and powerful thing.” She looked over my shoulder, “And who is this friend you’ve brought?”

“This is Lucy,” I said to her.

“Can Lucy not speak for herself?” Abuela asked me pointedly. I felt fully disarmed.

“Hey,” Lucy said with an awkward wave. “I’m a… colleague of David’s.”

“Ah, I see,” Abuela said, “Here on business, then?”

Lucy looked at me pointedly. “Yes,” I said.

“Lucy, dear,” Abuela said, “Why don’t you just speak for yourself? No need to be so tense. Have you eaten today?”

“No, but—”

“Ah, so you’re hungry! I can make you both something nice before your gig,” she said, “Follow me!” she walked towards the stairs and went up. Lucy gave me a raised eyebrow, but I just shrugged. What the hell was I supposed to do about this? When Abuela tells you to eat, you just do it.

Besides, her food was bomb anyway. I wouldn’t mind having a bite.

As we walked, Abuela still chattered, “You look Asian, Lucy. Are you from Japan, maybe?”

“Japan and Poland,” Lucy said.

“Pierogi or gyoza?” Abuela asked.

“Uh, gyoza,” Lucy replied.

“I’m making chochoyotes,” Abuela said with a mischievous tone. “It’s another kind of dumpling, but Mexican . You will love it, I’m sure. David, what sort of gig are you here for anyway?”

“Just the usual stuff,” I lied.

“No work in Night City?” she asked as she led us to her kitchen. “I can’t imagine you will make more eduardos here than back there.”

“Eh,” I shrugged. “Anyway, how is your business?”

Abuela retrieved a pan from some drawer, and proceeded to get out a bunch of ingredients from the pantry, not answering my question. Finally, she sighed. “Onboarding is hell. Militech is asking for more cash. We’re taking jobs from them nearly at cost to pay their fees off.”

I frowned. They were being exploited? “You don’t have to do that,” I said, “I saw the accounts. You have more than enough money to pay them.”

“We have things under control,” she frowned, “It’s just some corporate bullshit, you know? Always is. Lucy, do you like chicken? Can you handle spice?”

“Yes,” Lucy said, “S-sure. A little, maybe.”

“David, are pimento peppers spicy?”

“ I have no idea ,” I replied in Spanish, “Probably? All peppers should be spicy.”

“ Even bell peppers?”

“Maybe?” I shrugged. “Try not to burn her mouth off. She’s weak.”

She looked at Lucy with some pity. “Dios mio.”

“I can handle spice,” Lucy bristled, her grin shaky, “I usually don’t eat it, but I can handle it. Go ahead with whatever, misses. And thank you.”

Okay, so she actually was behaving. That was a pleasant surprise. And it made me feel a little guilty for riding her about it.

Abuela chuckled. “I’ll just do it a little spicy for you. And no worries! A friend of David’s is always welcome to eat here! You have his back at work, that means he owes you his life. And that means I owe you as well for taking care of him.”

Lucy looked away. “It’s… usually the other way around.”

“You’re very shy for a solo,” Abuela said, and Lucy looked at her in shock. “You’re a Netrunner, right? Were you the one who taught David?”

“Not really, no,” Lucy said, “We have the same… instructor, I guess.”

“Ai, that’s very good! We have some Netrunners in the family as well,” Abuela began to chop some vegetables, “I know your type don’t like to talk shop or anything, so please don’t assume I ask that of you. How is the Net in Night City anyway? I hear the whole city is connected nowadays!”

While she answered Abuela, Lucy sent me a call.

Lunacy: Your granny is a corpo? She knows-knows you’re a solo, too?

David: Not really a corpo. It’s a merc corp—corporation.

Lunacy: Holy shit. You came from a family of solos?

David: It’s complicated. Didn’t have any contact with them until, like, last week. Helped them out of a tough spot. It’s the reason why I got into shit with the cartel. Why they think I owe them a free-freebie.

“Wow, that’s really amazing!” Abuela said, “Down here, there’s still places the Velo Negro doesn’t cover! Sometimes, you get rogue AIs infecting turrets and causing mass shootings! Scary stuff, no?”

Lucy winced at that. “Yeah, that sounds… awful. I heard rumors that some people down here were developing a quickhack that can temporarily breach the Blackwall. I don’t know why anyone would want that.”

“I can imagine,” Abuela replied, “Cruelty, obviously. And ego. Everyone thinks they can harness monsters, until the monster bites back. I believe the Chinese may have a saying about riding tigers. Once on it, it’s hard to get off.”

While Abuela cooked, she and Lucy continued chatting. They didn’t have much in common, but Abuela was good at meeting her halfway, and Lucy respected that effort as well. It was mildly bizarre to see them together in the same room, until I realized…

I had known Lucy for longer than I had known grandma.

And they were all quite new to me.

Still, it felt like they had been with me my entire life.

I cracked a grin as I watched them. I was lucky, I guess.

I wasn’t alone.

000

We ate and chatted with Abuela for almost an hour until it was time to get going. I hadn’t shared any specifics about why I was here, and I doubted my grandma would be happy to hear that I was trying to give the cartel a nosebleed.

I took off on my motorcycle with Lucy at my back. She gave me a call the moment we pulled up on the road.

Lunacy: What were you even planning on doing today?

David: Uhh, shoot up a couple of strongholds

Lunacy: you mean take them all out? Singlehandedly? What, are you fucking crazy?

David: No, no, I’m not a gonk. I just wanted to weaken them, so their rivals would do the rest for us.

Lunacy: At least you got one thing about this whole operation right; give their rivals just enough to finish the job for us. But I want you to forget your plans for a second. I have a plan.

David: Already? How?

Lunacy: I scanned the net for info.

Fuel tank was low, so I stopped at a gas station. Lucy hopped out from the bike as some gas station attendant ran up to me. I tossed him a couple of bills and told him to get a full tank, and to keep the rest. Just then, Lucy cut the call and pulled me away.

“You’re fucking strong, David,” Lucy said, “But you’re not playing to your strengths right now. Maybe you can survive a shootout against hundreds of goons all gunning after you at the same time, but why do that when you can Full Dive instead? The Net is where you are strong. Because of that… thing you have in your head.”

I frowned. I didn’t like that Nanny was the only thing that made me special, but… it made sense. “Why do we need to Netrun anyway?”

Lucy snorted, “You said you wanted to weaken the cartel, but you don’t even know what the cartel is.”

I rolled my eyes, “What is it, then?”

“It’s a branch of a biotech megacorp known as Green Farm,” Lucy said, arms folded as she eyed him intently, “Partnered to Biotechnica. They provide plenty of services to each other and—”

“Wait,” I said, my blood running cold. “ Biotechnica is behind this?” I clenched my fists.

“Only one of its partners,” Lucy explained, “But if you have it out for the Italians, then yeah, crushing Green Farm would snip at their profit margin. I’d recommend it if that’s what you’re after. Anyway, the key to crushing any corporation is to Rache Bartmoss that shit. We need to go into a data center and leak everything of importance; proprietary data, asset warehouse locations, stash houses, everything. And finally, you leak that shit to the other megacorps. If Green Farm goes down, the cartel follows.”

I nodded along. Everything about me felt cold as I digested the extent of my hatred for the cartel. They were complicit in more ways than one in making my life shit.

No mercy.

“Alright,” I said to Lucy, “Tell me where I need to go, and what I need to do.”

Lucy snorted, because of course she would. “You’d be a flatline without me, just saying.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I waved her off as I looked over at my bike, no longer connected to the fuel pump. I walked up to it and hopped on, Lucy following a moment later. I pulled out into the streets from there and put on my D mask.

“We’re headed to a data center!” Lucy shouted. “I’ll send you the coords!”

She did. My Kiroshis linked to my agent, accepting the data packet, and superimposing the coordinates to the onboard GPS system. I made a quick U-turn, so smoothly that it didn’t disturb any traffic at all, and shot away.

I then received a call from Lorenzo. I accepted it.

Lorenzo: D, my good man. I hope you haven’t forgotten the very attractive offer I handed to you.

Fucking gonk. I was a little curious, though. 

D: Not at all. What are the details?

Lorenzo: Why don’t we meet face-to-face and discuss the terms?

What, did this corpo mouthbreather think I was born yesterday?

D: Not a particularly interesting proposition, that. How about a dead drop? You drop the shard somewhere, and I come pick it up.

Lorenzo: And do your best Speedy Gonzales imitation, eh? Hahah!

What the fuck was that?

D: Yeah, sure. 

Lorenzo: Oh, you are young . 

Shit. 

D: What can you tell me about the gig?

Lorenzo: Oh, same old same old murder and carnage. That’s all you are good for anyway. Can’t exactly put you on a security detail next to an important person, or make you carry around sensitive packages. This is the best-best thing for you.

D: Well, then just tell me who to murder and where the carnage happens.

Lorenzo: I’m afraid the meeting is mandatory. You pissed off some higher-ups, and they want to see you come in person.

D: I see. 

Lorenzo: Believe me, D. You turn this down, and it’s certain death. The cartel has use for you, but only if you can prove that use.

D: Thanks, man. I’ll come right away.

I hung up.

Lucy called me immediately after.

Lunacy: Don’t go, you gonk

David: You’re the fucking gonk if you thought I would go.

Lunacy: Really? Because having access to the higher ups would be something I thought you’d jump at the opportunity for.

I scoffed. 

David: If they’re ready for me, there’s no helping it. I’d be a gonk to just walk straight in. Besides, this plan sounds like it would make us a lot more money.

I drove past the more rundown buildings of Tijuana until I arrived at the business district. I travelled further in, and considered idly about the fact that we were going to infiltrate this place in broad daylight.

“Stop here,” Lucy told me, and I smoothly slid into an alleyway between two high-rises, staying there for a moment as Lucy’s eyes shone blue. “It shouldn’t be too far from here. But… the facility’s well fortified. Over a hundred security personnel, and not the ‘ganic kind, either. These are all corpo borgs. Big motherfuckers.”

“Going in guns blazing ain’t an option then,” I growled, “How do we get in, then?”

“Peel the onion one layer at a time,” Lucy said. “I take care of the cameras. You carry me away from all the goons with the Sandy, and then we keep doing that until we’re inside. That’s when we find an access port and jack in. You wreck shop with that sword program of yours, and done.”

“Sounds easy,” I said with a frown.

“Only reason’s because of that sword program,” Lucy said, “Otherwise we’d have to go in way deeper. But I can tell that it would still be effective even when inserted in the least sensitive parts of the system.”

I considered that for a moment, and vowed to actually take a closer look at the sword and how it interacted with Net architectures. I transmitted a message to Nanny to remind me of this task.

“Alright, let’s go,” Lucy said, “Stop a block away, and take the sandy the rest of the way—and drop the fucking jacket . Why did you think wearing high vis in a stealth op was a good idea?” 

I growled as I pulled up out of the alleyway, muttering underneath my breath. I didn’t know this was going to be a stealth op anyway.

But honestly, stealth was so… boring .

000

My heart almost beat out of my chest as I pressed myself to the wall as tightly as I could. The section of the wall was shadowed by a structure hanging above our heads, giving us just enough stealth to avoid the pair of armored-out borgs walking around with Militech Tech snipers.

The kind of shit that MaxTac used.

This was our third close brush with security personnel as we ‘peeled the onion’ so to speak, travelling one layer of security deeper through the outer rim of the facility. And we still weren’t indoors .

Lucy sent me a message. 

‘Path is clear over the road. Now .’

I didn’t hesitate, activating the Sandevistan, putting Lucy in a bridal carry, before running past the road around the outer warehouses, where the facility received all sorts of deliveries and whatnot. At this very narrow stretch of time, no eyes would be on us.

I zipped across the street to another camera dead zone—confirmed to me by the use of my own Ping—and stopped there.

And there it was. The door to the facility. According to the data that Lucy had scrounged up from some periphery access ports, this door wouldn’t lead directly to the data center’s inner sanctum, but merely an office area populated by more security. We were around the middle layer of the onion now, and things would only get harder from here.

Lucy busted out her external cyberdeck, and linked it with her internal cyberdeck and all her ‘runner Chrome. Her fingers became a whirl of activity as she whittled away at the door’s ICE with pure and utter finesse. She wasn’t just hacking away at the wall like a miner—like any old hacker would do —but instead, she made her breach seem like a natural access protocol, as though triggered from a key. It was far slower than if she had used a key, but that could be blamed on a variety of different factors, most importantly hardware issues. 

It was the form of her hacking that was important at this step, and I took mental notes as I watched her.

Then a message hit me.

‘Take me in—one left, one right, and two doors down—the moment the door opens’

The door opened, I activated the Sandevistan, and didn’t hesitate to scoop Lucy up again and run down the hallway like she had described. On the way, I saw the backs of several security personnel. Thankfully, the door we stopped at had no security.

But it did have cameras.

I glared at one and prepared to take it out with a hack, but then Lucy put her hands over my eyes, and then shook her head. Her own eyes shone blue, and she was sweating, as she worked the door we had stopped in front of.

The moment it opened, I dragged both of us inside. No one was in at the moment, but this place was undoubtedly some kind of an office, with a desk, a terminal, several other miscellaneous office devices, and several access ports.

The door behind us closed.

“I disabled the camera in here,” Lucy said, “The one outside saw us, but I doubt anyone noticed. I locked the door, though. That might become a thing once the person who works here comes back, so we’ll have to work fast.”

I nodded, and rummaged through my pockets for a personal link cable. In edgerunner attire, I never left the house without one. After all, I was a netrunner now. “No ice baths,” I said, “How will that work?”

“We go low-spec,” Lucy said, “Can’t do much of anything else anyw—” she wretched, doubling over and holding her stomach. I immediately appeared next to her.

“What’s wrong? You okay?”

“I’m—” she swallowed and stood straight before giving me a withering glare, “I’m fine. I only just broke three code gates in as many minutes while you blitzed me everywhere at hundreds of miles an hour, so excuse me if I throw up your sweet grandma’s spicy dumplings.”

I blinked and took a step back at the tirade. For a lack of better choices, I latched onto one thing in her speech, “Wait, you seriously thought those dumplings were spicy?”

Lucy took deep breaths before rummaging through her own pockets, pulling out a personal link of her own.

“Stick close to me,” Lucy said, “You might be strong, but you don’t have the experience to run around. And if you thought Tenshi’s data fortress was a bitch, you ain’t seen shit yet.”

“Scary,” I muttered as I stuck the end of the personal link to the back of my head and walked up to the access port to stick the other end in. I pulled a chair of the office while Lucy sat on the desk as we both jacked in at the same time.

I easily crushed the breach and sent my consciousness into the localnet, readying my Sword all the while.

Before I knew it, I was in what looked like the inside of a spaceship of sorts.

“Sci-fi aesthetic,” I heard behind me. “Real popular around these parts, I hear.”  I turned around and found Lucy’s ICON—it looked like a more conservative version of herself. Her white jacket covered up all of her torso and shoulders, and her white hotpants reached all the way down to her knees. As for her face, half of it was covered by her jacket’s collar.

It was charming, honestly. Covering herself up like that made her seem smaller, a little more vulnerable. Not that I’d ever say that to her face—she might cut my head off with her monowire if I did.

Not that a bit of mortal danger ever scared me before. “Say, Lucy, why’d you make your ICON so cute?”

“Why’d you make yours look so goddamn edgy?” she replied with an even voice. I looked around myself, and for a moment, went into third person mode to see myself better. I was no longer a skeleton man. I looked more or less like myself, only my face looked like a sugar skull, and my hair was made out of blue fire.

“Looks preem,” I said, snapping back to first person. “You still haven’t answered my question.”

“Focus, you gonk,” Lucy growled, “Where’s your sword?”

I activated the program, summoning the giant flaming blue sword. Immediately, I dimmed its output, setting it to inactive, as I could tell that just its presence outside had a noticeable impact on our surroundings.

“Use it,” Lucy said, “Make sure the influence spreads quietly. The moment the Netrunners for this data center spots us, they will annihilate us, you hear me?”

I closed my eyes, flashed my Sandy once so I could have some time to do some off-the-cuff modification to suit my needs. Then I spent a few more subjective minutes on creating a proper interface that I could foresee would be useful if I wanted to make more mods in the future. Finally finished, I activated the sword and stabbed it into the floor of this spaceship’s floor.

“What now?” I asked.

“Now we wait and pray,” Lucy said. “Pray that the Runners don’t notice the spread until the Sword is done doing its… thing.” She eyed the sword intently. “Provided you live long enough, David, you could do some real damage with a program like that. Why would you even want to go and do shootouts when you have this thing?”

“It’s Nanny’s thing,” I waved my hand, “And, sure, we sorta… got tangled up together after the Balron almost killed me, but it still feels more like it’s her thing than mine.”

“Can I… talk to this Nanny?” Lucy asked.

I frowned.

[I can project myself here and talk to her, if that is what you want, David.]

David: I dunno, feels weird. What do you even have to say to each other? Ah, fine. Go ahead.

Then she did.

And the ICON that Nanny had chosen for herself was… surprising.

She looked like she could have been my sister. She had an undercut on one side, and long brown hair on the other. She had a high-vis jacket that was red, like a firefighter’s, and she wore red pants as well.

I stared at her for a while, feeling a new kind of emotion bubble up as I saw her. Longing, sorrow, irritation, and… love ? Nanny had always been a tool to me. An object that helped me get stronger. But now that she had a semblance of human emotion to her, all that felt… wrong.

“Ah,” Nanny nodded, understandingly, “I sense that I have caused you distress, David. My apologies. I will modify my ICON.”

“That’s… not necessary,” I said. “Anyway, this is Lucy.”

“I know,” Nanny said, looking at me like I was stupid, “I’ve shared every moment you’ve had with her, you know.” She then turned to Lucy, “You wished to speak with me?”

Lucy, for her part, didn’t seem any more prepared than I did. “So you’re an AI?” Nanny didn’t say anything, as though waiting for Lucy to continue.

Eventually, it was Nanny who cracked, “Apologies, I assumed that was a rhetorical question. Yes, I am.”

“Sorry, I just… it’s hard to believe. You seem so human .”

“Really?” I frowned, “She’s…” I gestured vaguely at her.

Lucy rolled her eyes at me. “You have no idea how AI think. At worst, she’d be considered neurodivergent or something, but if you think she has anything in common with AI, you’re a gonk.”

What the hell? “So, what, you’re some kind of expert on AI psychology or some shit?”

“Got more close brushes than I’d care to admit,” Lucy said, “Nanny,” she turned to my onboard AI, “What purpose were you made with in mind?”

“Biocyberization and its impacts on the human body,” Nanny smoothly said, “Though my purpose and capabilities have widened and deepened over time as a result of certain events.” 

[I will refrain from telling her about my unexpected synergy with the Sandevistan for now]

I shrugged. 

“Don’t you want to have your own body?” Lucy asked.

“I already do,” Nanny said. Lucy tensed up, “Ah, I sense distress in you. I do mean to say that I consider David’s body to be my own as well—” Wait, what the fuck? “--but only in the sense that I inhabit it, too, and I do my part in this body. Living. Like David does. Like you do. I have no interest in taking direct control over David’s body, however.”

“But can you?” Lucy asked.

“Perhaps I could, in the past,” Nanny said, “No, I definitely could have. But if I were to take over David’s body as we currently exist now, he would be able to fight this influence. Our consciousnesses are interlinked, twinned together and forced into a state of symbiosis. I have no interest in taking over his part of our dynamic, but even if I did, he would be able to resist this incursion.”

I nodded along with her words, “She’s telling the truth, as far as I can tell.”

“And what if she isn’t?” Lucy asked, “And what if she’s making you think that she’s telling the truth?”

I chuckled ruefully and spread my arms apart, “Then I’m fucked. No use thinking about it any harder. I don’t have a choice but to trust Nanny, and she hasn’t broken that trust yet anyway, so why should I obsess over that?”

“Gonk,” Lucy said.

“On the contrary,” Nanny said, raising a finger, “By freeing oneself from the clutches of fear, even if that fear is very warranted such as in this case, is far more productive than continuously living in fear. In both cases, you still have no power to affect the cause of said fear.”

“Right,” I nodded, “So if you can’t do shit about what’s scaring you, stop being afraid. It’s a waste.”

“Right,” Nanny nodded.

Nanny’s head swung towards the sword, “Ah, we seem to have picked up some interesting data already.” I immediately honed in on the sword and felt after what Nanny was indicating, and then I saw it.

An experimental quickhack. 

Blackwall Gateway .

Notes:

Guess who's back.
Back again.
Taking a break from the other fic to give this one the love and attention that it deserves. Also I'm here to announce that I have a Discord, so please hop on there and use the little Bloodsurge channel I set up a long time ago.

Happy to be back, y'all! :D

https://discord.gg/fgaUvEzjrg

Chapter 33: Cartel Blanche Part 3

Sword was mining an absolutely insane amount of data with every second. Terabytes and terabytes of it. The only thing limiting the flow of it was the RAM of my internal cyberdeck as it flowed into my external unit. That cyberdeck was designed to hold vast stores, however, so I wasn’t worried about running out of memory there.

As I dug through both units, I quickly recovered the ‘Blackwall Gateway’ hack, designed to forcibly breach the firewall protecting the surface Net from the horrors that lay beneath. The objective of the hack was to open a target’s cyberware to those horrors momentarily, just enough for the rogue AIs to get curious and scramble the shit out of whatever poor gonk got hit with it. The inbuilt kill-switch would then banish those AI back to the shadow realm, hopefully sparing the rest of humanity from another datakrash.

That ‘hopefully’ was pulling a fuck-ton of weight, though. Holy fucking hell, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Why would anyone be so fucking stupid to make such a thing?

As I scrolled through a terminal in cyberspace—an ICON of it, really—I read the other data that we had recovered. Lucy hovered over my shoulder to get a look, too.

“That enough?” I asked.

“No real-world locations yet,” Lucy sighed, “If we left now, we could make a pretty penny, but it wouldn’t sink the cartel. It certainly wouldn’t inspire the big dogs to move for us, either. We need bigger bones.”

I grunted.

“Why are dogs attracted to bones? I don’t understand this metaphor,” Nanny said.

“Dogs eat bones,” I replied distractedly.

“That is almost certainly false, unless dogs have a vastly atypical mammalian digestive system from humans.”

“I don’t fucking know,” I replied. “Honestly, I don’t understand half the sayings or idioms that exist in English. Honestly, I think we just like making shit up.”

000

The USS Stock Exchange floated through the void of space, searching for the next ‘adventure’. 

That meant ‘RP’ was on.

Admiral Dirk strutted in front of the crew, hands clasped behind his back, as he looked through the expansive front window of this digital spaceship, wearing that infuriatingly smug grin that he always did.

“Morning report, captain?” First Officer Hera dutifully recited as the gonk just stood there like an idiot. 

“What do you have for me?” the admiral said, putting on a bombastic voice as he admired the artificial starscape before him.

Hera did a cursory scan through the feeds, feeling a rising headache come on as she began her report. Just the report. She wasn’t in the mood to play space opera with some overpaid asshole who got this gig from being the boss’ nephew. "Well, Admiral," she began, feigning enthusiasm, "for starters, it looks like Juarez caused a pretty severe issue with the LoadBalancerDaemon on our primary nodes. He misconfigured the dynamic resource allocator for the Docker swarm, so now the containers are rerouting traffic haphazardly between subdomains and throwing out 502s. Some of our microservices are getting throttled by an unholy recursion in the Node.js functions, so we're looking at cascading latency spikes across at least three clusters. We’ve got suboptimal CPU usage hitting the Kyber pods because the request/limit ratios weren’t properly set—again.”

Admiral Dirk gave her a blank, vaguely concerned look, his usual cockiness faltering. "So... uh... what do we do about that?"

"Funny you should ask, sir," Hera deadpanned, "because our scripts auto-failed the rollout. We'll need to reset each pod manually, patch the faulty containers, and pray to the God of Graceful Restarts. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg."

She scrolled further down, her eye twitching as she spotted the next mess. “Oh, and don’t get me started on the neural net framework overload in the data aggregation pipeline. Our TensorFlow nodes overloaded during the last anomaly detection run because someone left the batch size maxed out. So, now the Stock Exchange’s entire predictive analytics suite is crashing hourly.”

Admiral Dirk chuckled nervously, retreating a step. "Well, I'm sure you’ll figure it out, Hera. Good luck!"

Then her eyes stopped at a single line in the report. She expanded the topic—

“We’ve been infiltrated!” Hera cried. ‘Admiral Dirk’ immediately swung around, looking at her askance. She followed the signal directly to the offending document, and spotted them there. Two infiltrators. How the fuck they even got this far without raising alarms was a miracle on its own. That obviously meant that she wasn’t just dealing with the average rogue netrunner. No, this one was a professional. From overseas, maybe?

“Wait, fuck, really?” Admiral Dirk responded.

“ Yes, fucking really! ” she transmitted the file location of the offenders and quickly scribbled at her cyberdeck, pulling up a top-down map of the data fortress, and the players involved. Outside of the cluster of netrunners at the ‘bridge’ of the USS Stock Exchange were a pair of signals just loitering about, not making a move to advance further into the fortress.

Why? They had made it this far already, on foot at that . Why stop at just some garden variety junk data—because that was all they were going to get, mining from all the way down there. 

Something was wrong. Seriously wrong.

000

The entire space of the sci-fi spacecraft immediately turned blood red as a loud klaxon alarm blared.

“SHIT!” David banished the terminal instantly, and suddenly he wore some kind of eyewear, perhaps the terminal he had summoned to begin with. Nanny disappeared as well, probably retreating back into David’s head.

“They know we’re here,” Lucy said. Between the alarms and his reaction, that much was obvious.

“Options?” David asked, looking at her like she was truly the answer to everything. What the hell was she supposed to say to that?

“We pull out—” David ignored her entirely, pulling out the sword from the floor and rushing up towards her, program raised for a strike. Lucy held her hands before her in a panic.

David passed by her and Lucy could hear the awful sound of metal wrenching through metal, and sparks of electricity. She turned around to look at David standing in front of an android of some kind, made out of sleek white panels. David had cut it in half length-wise, and it was already dispersing into bits.

That wasn’t all. There were ten more of them at the end of the hallway. And they all wielded guns.

They fired as one. David swung his sword, intercepting all the bullets in a single moment before sprinting up ahead into the thick of it. Lucy hit the deck, head pressed to the ground to avoid the bullets as she watched David effortlessly dismantle each android, dodging their shots, making them shoot each other by mistake.

In only a handful of seconds, David was the last man standing.

How ? 

She could clearly tell how powerful these Daemons were—their code was dense and decisive . Whoever had made them knew what they were doing. They weren’t the average skeleton knight, and still David had treated them like that.

That would have taken her and Kiwi almost half an hour. Tens of millions of eurodollars hinged on the wellbeing of this datafortress, and David handled them almost entirely alone.

Lucy refocused on David, eyeing him intently. 

He can’t be this good, can he?

“Get up, Luna,” David bit out as he eyed the hallway, swinging his head around both sides. No other programs were arriving. Of course not. Why would more come after such an emphatic onslaught? He stabbed the Sword on the ground again, continuing the download. 

“How long is left?” Lucy asked. 

“As long as it takes,” David said. Helpful . Lucy went up to a wall and punched in some code. The wall slid away, revealing a terminal, which she started typing through. “What are you looking for?” David asked, right behind her. Lucy almost jumped out of her skin. He was sneaky. 

“Data on the Netrunners,” Lucy said. Her fingers were a whirl as she typed, pulling up information on the… USS Stock Exchange. Six Netrunners on staff.

And… the facility was in lockdown mode. “ Shit. Fuck .”

“What?”

“We’re locked inside,” Lucy said. “We need to hack the facility open, but even then, we’d need to keep it open long enough that they won’t lock it down again while we’re running.”

“Not necessary,” David said, “I only need ten seconds to get us out of the facility.  Just focus on getting it open— fuck !” David ran off, and Lucy looked over at him running up to his Sword program, pulling it out from the floor, and facing off against another fleet of gun-toting drones.

Lucy punched her fist through the wall next to the terminal and then pulled . The wall followed, creating an impromptu partition between herself and the drones. She turned to face the other side of the hallway as well, expecting more incoming. Mercifully, there was nothing—yet. But she knew it was only a matter of time.

Lucy’s fingers flew over the terminal keys as she executed a series of code injections, her mind racing with potential exploits to break through the lockdown. The fortress’s security was no joke; every line of code seemed meticulously woven with firewalls, redundancies, and protocol checks. Whoever designed it clearly anticipated trouble. She would have to be twice as fast to stay ahead.

Meanwhile, David was locked in combat with the new swarm of drones. Each one was more advanced than the last, their aim more precise, their reactions quicker. Sparks flew as David deflected bullets with his sword, using the weapon as both shield and blade. He was a blur, moving faster than any human had a right to—every swipe, every twist of his body seemed impossibly calculated. He tore through the drones with brutal efficiency, but Lucy knew he couldn’t keep this up forever.

“Come on, come on,” she muttered, glancing at the progress bar for her bypass script.

Lucy’s fingers hovered over the terminal, her gaze fixed on the Blackwall Gateway quickhack. She’d pulled it up almost by accident, the forbidden tool that would bridge their world with the horrors lurking in the shadows of the Net. Just a small breach, enough to send the rogue AIs pouring through to wreak havoc on the fortress. It would be madness, but it might buy them time.

She clenched her jaw. No. Unleashing the Gateway would risk a Datakrash-level catastrophe. Whatever horrors lay beyond the Blackwall, once let loose, might not be contained. They’d be trading a short-term win for a disaster that could spiral out of control. She closed the hack window and shoved the thought aside. They’d have to handle this the hard way.

“ Finally! ” David shouted, his voice cutting through the blaring alarms. He’d downed the last wave of drones in a brutal, unrelenting display of skill. Broken metal and sparking circuitry littered the hallway, the drones no match for his furious assault. “Lucy, how’s the lockdown looking?”

“It’s looking,” she said, fingers already flying over the terminal to bypass the remaining security protocols. “I need a bit more time to get us a clear path out of here.”

David nodded, standing guard beside her, his stance taut and focused. “Just say when.”

The screen blinked with strings of code as Lucy scrambled to unlock the emergency exits. She could see them edging closer to freedom, each line of code bringing them closer. But as she finished the last command, a strange hiss echoed down the corridor.

A new light flickered at the end of the hallway—footsteps in sync, moving toward them. They both turned to face the new threat, and Lucy’s heart sank. There, advancing in perfect formation, was the crew of the USS Stock Exchange. Armed, poised, and bearing down on them with practiced precision.

It was over.

000

“Here’s the deal,” The apparent leader of this data-fortress’ netrunners said, grinning cockily, “I won’t kill you guys immediately if you tell me how you got this far.”

I resolved myself to killing all six of the Netrunners, holding up my sword.

The leader raised his wrist and looked at the time, and then suddenly—

“Whatsthematterfeelingalittlesluggish?” the leader walked up to me with such speed that it shocked me. Why was he so fast—why was everyone so fast?

I activated the Sandevistan on instinct. 

The feeling of using the Sandy while in cyberspace and under this… time slowing effect made me feel like I was ripping my brain in two. But I could handle it, at least enough for a single movement.

I just swung my sword at the guy. His eyes widened in shock as he stepped back an inch, but not fast enough to lose his entire arm from his shoulder.

One of the crewmates then shot me. Ropes of blue electricity tied up to metallic balls wrapped around me, and all I could do was scream. I fell over on my side, dropping my Sword. It slid into the ground and continued the download.

“What in the fuck ?!” the leader screamed. Then he looked down at me in hatred. “Fuck capture! Kill them!”

“Nnnnooo!” Lucy screamed in slow motion, her voice warping, stretching out like a broken record as I lay there, bound and helpless. The restraints burned, each pulse of electricity sending white-hot pain through my nerves, locking my muscles into spasms.

I saw her hands fly over her interface, her expression torn between panic and fury. And then—the walls around us began to shift, darkening, warping like oil spreading in water.

An abyssal crack tore open in the hallway, stretching and twisting with a sound like grinding metal and breaking bones. From within, shadows slithered out, eyes and limbs and mouths that flickered in and out of existence, rogue AIs with bodies that didn’t make sense, that bent space around them as they poured into the fortress. I could feel them thinking , their monstrous awareness clawing at my mind, each thought a layer of raw curiosity so intense, so concentrated that it was indistinguishable from hunger. They would consume everything in their warped quest for knowledge.

Lucy used the Blackwall Gateway .

The Netrunners froze, their bravado gone in an instant. The leader’s face drained of all color as he staggered back, staring in horror at the things spilling from the void. “No—no! Shut it down!” he shouted, but it was too late. The creatures lunged for them, ripping through their defenses like paper. Screams filled the air, their bodies twisted and torn apart by tendrils and teeth, shredded to raw data in real-time.

Lucy reached me, her face pale but fierce as she disabled my restraints. The second they released me, I forced myself upright, barely able to think through the pain. “Come on!” she yelled, her voice almost swallowed by the cacophony behind us. I grabbed the Sword and ran with her. We took off down the hallway, each step a battle to keep moving, to ignore the shadows flickering along the walls. “Pull the plug,” Lucy said, wide-eyed, before disappearing into pixels.

I was just about to follow her back to meatspace when one of the AIs locked its gaze on me. It was human-like—almost—but its eyes were hollow, endless pits, and its face stretched unnaturally wide in a rictus grin. With a sudden lurch, it shot forward, its tendrils whipping out to wrap around my head like a vise.

My vision flickered, the world blurring and fracturing as I felt something cold slither into my mind, peeling back my thoughts like pages in a book. I couldn’t move; I couldn’t breathe. The thing’s presence invaded every corner of my mind, whispering secrets, pulling out memories with its rotten talons.

Then, like a quiet sigh, I heard her. Nanny.

[This brain has reached maximum occupancy. Try another] she said, her voice echoing in the darkness of my mind, calm and deadly. A fierce energy pulsed through me, and the AI froze, its hold loosening just enough for me to gasp in a breath. I felt Nanny reach out, wrapping around the invader like an iron fist, her essence fierce and unyielding.

The AI shrieked, a sound that didn’t belong to any living thing, as Nanny crushed a part of it in her grasp, severing the tendrils that had rooted in my brain. The creature recoiled, its form flickering wildly, as though it couldn’t bear to face her.

[David, get out!] Her voice was sharp, snapping me back into action. I used Lucy’s pre-made exit-protocol, hoping beyond hope that it would flush me out from that hellscape without any of the rogue AI following.

I woke up next to a shivering Lucy and immediately activated the Sandevistan.

I first checked my cyberdecks, both the external and internal ones.

I cracked a grin at what I saw—a stash of intel that was more than worth the risk. Big bones indeed. We had gotten what we’d come for and then some. Without wasting a second, I swung Lucy over my shoulder like she weighed nothing, careful not to jostle her too much as I kicked open the nearest door and scanned the halls for a way out.

Finally, I spotted an exit—but it was guarded. Four security operatives stood at the far end of the hallway, their eyes shifting to us with lethal intent, their bodies ready to strike, each one wielding high-caliber firearms. They were decked out head to toe in chrome, armor plating glinting under the harsh fluorescent lights. Their faces were mostly concealed by visors and combat helmets, but what little skin they had was riddled with cyberware, veins pulsing with neon-blue biolights.

Just as I prepared to slip past them, each of them gave a slight twitch—and in an instant, they sped up to match my pace, moving with the hyper-fast precision only a Sandevistan could provide. Damn it. They all had Sandevistans.

I set Lucy down as gently but as quickly as I could, letting her rest against the wall. These guys weren’t your average mall security guards. They moved with that mechanical, inhuman coordination that only high-grade tech and countless hours in combat could produce. As I drew my katana, one of them cocked his rifle, a massive M179 Achilles tech-rifle. That model was no joke; MaxTac used them to put down cyberpsychos. I’d seen it shred borged-out gonks in XBDs, but seeing it up close gave it a whole different weight. If he hit me, it wouldn’t be just a wound—it’d be a crater.

I launched forward, katana slicing clean through the neck of one guard who wasn’t as borged out as I’d expected. The guy crumpled before he even registered he’d been hit. But the remaining three fanned out, aiming their guns directly at me, each pulling the trigger with surgical precision.

Bullets flew toward me, tearing through the air at a blinding speed. I twisted and turned, ducking low and sidestepping, my movements barely keeping me out of the line of fire. I felt the heat of one round graze my shoulder, but I kept my focus locked, breathing deep and letting instinct guide me.

The next guard was on me in a flash, swinging the butt of his rifle like a sledgehammer. I blocked with the katana, gritting my teeth as the force reverberated up my arm. These guys weren’t just fast—they were strong. His chrome arms strained only slightly, and I could see the smug look beneath his visor, but I slipped the blade free, pivoted, and brought it down across his arm in one clean slice. His gun dropped to the floor, and a second later, so did he as I cut a one-inch deep gouge through his neck, a shallow cut but I couldn’t risk Masamune getting stuck in his throat.

That left two. They took the split-second opening to press the assault, both charging with guns blazing. The guard with the Achilles tech-rifle aimed, and I felt that familiar sinking dread. I sidestepped the first barrage, then the second, my feet barely keeping up with my mind as I danced between the hail of gunfire. Every movement had to be exact, not a millimeter wasted, or I’d end up a smear on the floor.

When I closed the gap, I went for a low slice, feeling the resistance as my katana cut through his thigh plating. He stumbled, and I finished him with a vertical slash that bisected his chest plate.

Only one left. He was bigger than the rest, his frame nearly all chrome, hulking and menacing. He threw his rifle aside, opting for a fist that could probably punch through walls. I sidestepped his attack, feeling the rush of air as his fist narrowly missed me, shattering the wall beside me instead. I spun behind him, every sense razor-sharp, and plunged my blade up between his shoulder plates. The guard spasmed, limbs jerking before he pulled himself out from my sword and swung his arm so fast that I could feel the wind whip me harshly when I dodged.

I stepped back quickly and almost tripped over the Achilles. An idea suddenly popped into my head and I kicked the rifle up to my feet and aimed it at the cyborg, who was beginning to slow down.

I slowed down, too, aiming the rifle carefully at his head and shooting.

Five bullets struck the borg at once, plinking off from his chrome dome and armor. He grinned.

“¿Eso es todo?”

I looked at the gun in shock, but then I remembered, from what I had seen from the XBDs right before the cyberpsychos died.

Long press. Tech rifles needed to charge to get max output.

I pulled the trigger and held it. Nothing came out.

The cyborg ran after me. I activated the Sandevistan and backtracked neatly. He wouldn’t reach me in time. I looked over at the gun and saw a tiny screen right below the scope. The charging progress bar.

I waited for it to tick up fully, waiting for subjective minutes until finally, I let go of my trigger finger—

The cyborg’s brains decorated the ceiling.

“Eso es todo para ti,” I muttered. 

“Let’s go !” Lucy shouted from down the hall. I reactivated the Sandevistan as I rushed up to her, carrying both her and the tech rifle—an absolute steal . I couldn’t believe my luck.

As I ran out the facility, I consulted Nanny.

David: You okay?

[That was… an unpleasant experience. The AI’s code is incredibly sophisticated, and yet it seems to be limited severely in other areas.]

David: You kept some of it?

[Just for studying purposes. I don’t intend on incorporating any of this into myself. I will share my findings with you when we have time.]

I shuddered at the mere idea. When I closed my eyes, I could still see the face of that AI trying to dig my entire life out from me.

I arrived just in time before the main gates of the facility closed, slipping through a gap and continuing my run towards where I had interred my bike.

Finally, when I reached that alleyway and deactivated my Sandevistan, Lucy pushed herself off from me and fell on her knees. She wretched.

I looked away as she threw up, but the sound of wet hitting the pavement was unmistakable enough on its own. 

“Let’s go,” Lucy groaned, getting up shakily to sit on the back of my bike.

“You throw up on me, and I’m ditching you in an alleyway,” I threatened as I sat on the bike and took off with Lucy behind me. I took us down a circuitous route towards the central business district.  "What happens now?" I muttered, "Does the Blackwall come down in Tijuana? Will we get a visit from NetWatch?”

“The killswitch should work,” Lucy said, “And if it doesn’t, NetWatch has it handled.”

I had no idea what to say to that, except, “Fuck.”

“Fuck,” Lucy echoed. “And the data?”

I grinned, “We’re happy.”

Lucy sighed, “Fucking relieved. That mess was… yeah. Gosh.”

“I’m sorry for making you come with,” I said, feeling a wave of guilt suddenly eat up at me. “You almost died—”

“You’d have died if I hadn’t come,” Lucy said. 

“Yeah.”

“So you admit it?”

I grinned. “Yeah. I guess.”

“Then all I want to hear is a ‘thank you, Lucy’.”

My stomach fluttered. “Yeah, yeah. Thank you for saving my ass, Lucy. I couldn’t have done it without you. Happy?”

Lucy’s arms squeezed tighter around my waist. “Just don’t make me have to save you all the time. Or at least pay me before I do.”

I snorted. “Yeah. Anyway, is the data any good? You think there won’t be trouble if it comes out that we used a Blackwall Gateway when we sell this stuff off to Militech?”

“Militech doesn’t give a shit if it makes them eddies,” Lucy said, “And your granny’s got the connect. Our job is done, David.”

Whew .

000

Mercifully enough, Lucy took the lead in explaining to Abuela the nature of our mission as well as our gains.

Abuela kicked her slipper up into her waiting hand and started beating me with it mercilessly. “ Don’t be such an idiot!” she punctuated each word with a hit from her slipper, “ We take care of our own problems, you idiot! What is wrong with you? You could have died, and then what?!”

I cried out in pain as she pulled no punches whatsoever.

Lucy watched on with a grin. Abuela seemed to somhow sense that and turned around to glare at Lucy. “I expected better from you! You shouldn’t have followed him.”

Lucy gaped in surprise, “He-he would have gone alone if I hadn’t—”

“Are you talking back to me?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Good,” she sighed and let go of her slipper, putting it on. She sent one last glare at me, “What’s done is done. I’m not happy, but I would be a fool to not use this opportunity.” Her eyes glowed golden as she made a call. “You stay here,” she said, “Watch the house.”

Minutes later, several cars pulled up outside her little esoterica store—the drivers were some of the uncles and cousins that I remembered seeing from the first time I had come back to Tijuana—and she drove off to Militech with several shards worth of the data that Lucy and I had bled for.

While I waited, I also worked on a new approach to the Arasaka case competition. Looking at the old work, I could readily admit that while it worked, that’s all it really did. It worked. It didn’t work amazingly well. It worked as well as you would expect from some underpaid programmer with zero stakes in Arasaka’s total shareholder value. After all, why go out of your way to make the corp so much money when you wouldn’t share those profits? Classic principle-agent stuff.

In the meanwhile, Lucy would occasionally go out into the streets for a smoke, or mess around with her external cyberdeck, or stare into space, eyes glowing blue as she interfaced with her internal cyberdeck.

Nanny finished chewing on the piece of code and finally came away with a summary of the rogue AI’s make-up.

[The rogue AI appears to be a fragmentary construct, likely a remnant from pre-Blackwall days. However, unlike most scraps, this one displays a striking level of optimization. It’s been refined over generations, each iteration enhancing its adaptability and efficiency. Every single line of code is perfectly tuned for its function—highly virulent, exceptionally lean, and devastatingly intelligent. Origin: machine-made. Intent: unknowable.]

"Great," I muttered, "So, it's like a rabid animal—but built to perfection?" Lucy was still outside smoking, so I didn’t mind speaking out loud.

[Precisely,] Nanny replied, her voice laced with uncharacteristic disdain. [An exceptionally clever rabid animal. Adaptable, relentless. And don’t ask me where it came from. That’s not in its code; probably never was. Whatever made it, made it to last.]

The summary faded from my view, but the unease it left behind lingered. Knowing that there were more of these optimized constructs, creeping just behind the Blackwall and ready to claw their way in, didn’t sit right with me. But hell if I could do anything about that.

[I can show you what I’ve learned, if you want. It would make your trivial task even more trivial.]

I snorted. She had never given any of my projects any real opinions before. This was an interesting development. “Go ahead.”

[I will start slowly.]

I closed my eyes, and immediately felt an invasion of understanding . My mind blanked out, and I was unable to form any coherent thoughts. I wasn’t even able to panic, really.

[Don’t look away from the information. Dive into it.]

I obeyed the voice and let the information crash into me, untangling misconceptions and inaccuracies, replacing what I thought I knew with something vastly better.

When I came to, I looked at my external cyberdeck, where I had played with the Case Comp, and realized… this was trash.

Was everything I had ever built trash?

…Yeah.

It all was.

Fuck. I’d… eventually have to get on fixing that. Later . 

Right now, I just felt… tuckered out. Unable to even work. I never usually felt this mentally exhausted, not after getting Nanny on my side. What gave? Couldn’t Nanny fix it?

[The exhaustion is borne from a rather minute and largely benign form of neural imbalance which I am not able to address with my current capabilities. You will naturally recover within a few hours.]

I sighed, closing the Cyberdeck and resolving myself to waiting.

The hours ticked on and I became slightly worried for Abuela before she finally called me.

Abuela: Prepare for a party!

David: What? Everything went well!

Abuela: Everything went better than well! You are staying for celebrations, okay? Don’t argue! And Lucy stays, too!

David: What happened to the cartel?

Abuela: Their holdings and assets are being absorbed, and their membership are currently either being purged or folded in. I’ve received assurances that our role in this will remain completely confidential, but it is safe to say that GSS has now concluded onboarding. They even raised us straight to level two !

Level two partnership? That was incredible!

Abuela: And don’t even get me started on the money! You are rich , David!

David: No, no, don’t give me that money. You need that to prepare for level two partnership. You’ll have many responsibilities, won’t you? Abuela, I won’t argue with you, I’m not taking any of it!

Abuela: And what about your girlfriend?

David: She’s not my girlfriend! And, sure, fine, you can pay her.

Abuela: See you later, okay? I love you.

I grinned at that.

David: See you.

“Good news,” I said, and Lucy, who was lounging around in a chair next to a pair of shelves chock-filled with esoteric items, looked up. “We won. And you’re getting paid.”

“Ah, that’s great,” she said. Then her eyes glowed golden, and they widened almost impossibly. “ Holy fucking shit !” Ah, the payment must have come through. Abuela didn’t waste any time, huh?

I laughed. “Call it a thank you for risking the apocalypse for my sake.”

“Holy fuck !” she said again.

Chapter 34: Cartel Blanche Final Part

Only minutes after the call from Abuela did I receive a new one—from Lorenzo. With a smile, I accepted.

Lorenzo: You fucking rat . You fucking rat . YOU FUCKING RAT YOU FUCK RAT FUCK!

Hah! Gonk was pissed . This was great.

D: What’s the matter?

Lorenzo: You did this! I know you did this! You fucking—have you any idea what you’ve done? The corp war you’ve incited? You’re in the middle of it, D! My sponsors—they’ll find you, and they’ll kill you.

D: All you had to do was leave me the fuck alone, tio . You just couldn’t leave well enough alone.

The line went silent for a few seconds. Then his voice came back.

Lorenzo: I’m not going to beg, boy. Come and kill me.

D: Eh. I got what I wanted. 

Lorenzo: The fact that you ruined my life aside—I’m honestly impressed. So. Who are you? Militech? Arasaka? You’re Arasaka, aren’t you.

I felt an irrational flare of rage at that. Arasaka had done nothing to teach me the skills required to pull off what I had done. This was me , goddammit. D .

D: I’m just D. I’m not a cocksucking corpo wannabe like you. Keep yapping and I really will come find you and kill you.

Lorenzo: *snort* even better. That means we both die. Soon. Well played. I’ll give you this checkmate, but you haven’t won any fight that matters.

I hung up. Enough out of that asshole.

000

Edgerunning and outdoor partying next to a diner after a gig—there wasn’t a better combination. The whole Martinez clan—family and those married in or otherwise associated with us—was gathered in this fenced off bar and taqueria combination. Loud music was playing, the women, wearing loud and colorful dresses, were dancing in entrancing choreographies.

And a few of the main mercs in the family—Tio Alex and some other male cousins as well as a single female cousin—were gathered around me while I showed off the M179.

“ Turns out, all you had to do was long-press to charge the thing up—it punched straight through that Borg bastard’s skull like it was nothing.”

“You killed four borgs with that?” one of my cousins, Gregorio asked. He was a lanky, shifty-eyed guy, and he seemed to doubt me very heavily.

“ Just the last one ,” I said, “The other three, I killed with this,” I patted my side, where my katana was.

“You’re not even a borg ,” he said, “How can you fight like that?”

“Are you doubting your cousin ?” Tio Alex glared at the young man, “ The one that saved us from those fucking dogs?”

“Can it, Gregorio!” the female cousin, Lola, grabbed Gregorio and put him in a headlock. She looked young, probably around my age if not younger, and… she dressed up like me. High vis yellow jacket, a black crop-top and a gold rosary necklace. Instead of my usual pair of baggy pants, she wore short jeans that cut off mid-thigh. She had an undercut on her left side, but most of her hair was messy and spiky, obviously gelled to look that way. “David is the real deal and you’re just jealous!” Gregorio tried to get her off him, but he failed. He fell on the ground, trying to wrestle her before losing strength—holy shit. She went the entire way on him. When he finally went slack, she let go, stood up and gave me a nod, “Go on, cuz. He won’t interrupt you again. So you used a katana?”

I snorted, and unsheathed ‘Masamune’. Its edge was starting to dull rather visibly. I needed to get it honed by Pilar, “Yup. It’s a clean weapon—does good work. Doesn’t run out of ammo, and when you’re fast like me, it works better than a gun.”

“Is that true? ” Alex frowned. The man hadn’t wasted any time taking the family’s newfound income and using it in face-sculpts to get his natural features evened out, making him look far more normal for Night City standards—and probably handsome in terms of the shithole that was Tijuana. His new leg was also a good model—wasn’t choppy and unwieldy like the medical implants they loaded off to veterans of war. It was a combat model.

All the men who had been crippled by the Pinche Perros sported such models—Militech make, upon my recommendation. Not that Militech was intrinsically better. But as long as they stuck to one brand, they should be fine in the long-term. That and not going overboard. 

Like my cousin Lola, for instance, who had chipped in a medium-sized Neural Link that replaced her cervical spine, containing a Sandevistan of all things. Then there were the tendon and ligament replacements she had chipped in as well. All Militech at the very least. But I definitely needed to have a chat with her—or Abuela if she wouldn’t listen.

“Yeah, ” I snorted, “It depends on how good you are. Without chipware skills. If you go at it naturally and learn from the ground, you can be good enough to take out any gonk who thinks they’re invincible because they chipped in subderm or whatever. Chipping in isn’t a replacement for real skill.”

“What chrome do you have?” Lola asked, eyes shining.

“Sandevistan, big metal spine Neural Link. Cyberdeck. Kiroshi optics. All I need, for now.”

“What? You don’t have anything on your body?”

I snorted, “I have biosculpt,” Nanny counted for a biosculptor at this point, “Stronger bones, stronger muscles. The Neural Link gives me better nerves—that’s the real prize of neural implants. Finding a way to boost your nerves, your thinking,” I tapped my head, “And your body control. Those are things that will keep you alive. If I were you, cousin, I wouldn’t chip in until I mastered all those implants you already put in. They will improve your speed and strength, but only you can improve your control and skill.”

“Teach me ,” She stepped forward, “Take me to Night City with you—”

“There she goes,” Tio Alex groaned, “I told you already—he won’t take you.”

I frowned at her , “Why do you want to come to Night City?”

“This place is a shithole!” she cried, “And Night City? That’s where legends are born.”

“That’s where legends die,” I said, “Why do you think you’ll survive a day there?” I stood up and loomed over her. She had to be about five feet and four inches. Small, but not Rebecca small. But Rebecca had skills to back up all that talk and bluster. What did Lola have but a chipped in attitude? “In Night City, you don’t even have to do anything wrong to die. For someone to shoot you just because they can. For a Cyberpsycho to rip you apart, or for gangs to fight while you’re taking a walk with your boyfriend.”

“But I won’t die!” she stepped forward, eyes gleaming and wearing a hopeful grin, “I’m different! I promise!”

I pressed my gun to her forehead. I hadn’t even used my Sandy. She was really just that slow. She froze.

I holstered the gun again. “That’s how much that shit means to me. You’re not different, Lola. You’re average. I can’t take you with me.”

She frowned, “Then I’ll train. I’ll work goddamn hard to get to where you are. I’ll listen to everything you say.”

Gregorio finally woke up. I considered if her knocking him out had been for my benefit—to let me know how much of a fighter she was. That was just… adorable.

“But you have to guide me,” she said, “Teach me how to get like you.”

I palmed my forehead, “Don’t you have, like, school to go to?”

“Don’t you ?”

“You don’t do Netrunning?” I asked, “I thought the girls—”

“Abuela is old-fashioned, but I’m not a hacker. I’m a gunner.”

She clumsily drew her pistol and showed it to me. A Lexington. Ancient stuff, “That won’t even tickle a borg. And the real guns would break your arm if you used ‘em. But I know if I leave you hanging, doing your own thing, you’ll try and do something stupid. So I’ll check back, teach you a thing or two. But I’m not bringing you to Night City, you’ll fucking die if—”

“YES!” She jumped in the air with both fists raised, “You won’t regret this, primo! I’ll make you proud!”

I snorted, “If you wanted to make me proud, you’d go to a corp-school and get a degree and an office job.”

“Ew, no! That would just kill me slowly instead of fast.”

“Hah.”

My mirth mixed with a bit of melancholy as I considered her words. In the end, all roads did lead to death, didn’t they? That was just life, though.

Lucy came out from the bar, carrying with her a pair of beers. She looked around for me, and when she saw me, she walked up to my little semi-circle, throwing me the beer. I caught it and dreaded having to tough through the fizziness. 

“Hey!” Lola grinned brightly at Lucy, “You’re David’s choom, right? Are you a Netrunner?”

“Yeah,” she said, neutrally, “What’s it to ya?”

“You’re a real edgerunner?” 

“Nah,” she said, “I don’t see the sense in flirting with death. I leave most of that to David.”

“It must be so cool, working with him,” she gushed. “I bet he’s a huge bigshot in Night City. I wanted to join his crew, but he said I’m not ready.”

I laughed at that. As did Lucy.

“It’s not his crew,” Lucy said.

“Hate to disappoint,” I grinned, “I’m not the top dawg, prima.”

“What?!” she gasped, “Someone out there is stronger than you?”

“Girl’s a riot,” Lucy snorted as she took a drink of her cerveza. Before I could answer Lola in the affirmative, Lucy made a humming sound to forestall me. She swallowed the beer, “But you did get one thing right—ain’t nobody in the crew stronger than David. He’s the real deal.”

I snorted, “Maine’s a beast.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, David,” Lucy crooned, “Not in front of your adoring cousins.”

I laughed, while Lola only looked confused. 

“Who is the strongest edgerunner?” Lola asked. “In Night City?”

“Some guy called Adam something,” I chuckled, “What was it again? Smasher. Adam Smasher. Night City legend.”

“Then there’s Morgan Blackhand,” Lucy said, “Another legend. Probably dead. David’s good, but on account of the fact that he just started this gig not two months ago, I’d say he’ll probably be the best someday—provided he lives long enough.”

“You only started two months ago?!” Lola asked me, wide-eyed.

“No way,” Tio Alex scoffed. The other cousins muttered amongst each other. Gregorio scoffed in doubt. Good that Lola hadn’t seen that, she might have put him to sleep again.

It was one and a half months ago, but I wouldn’t quibble over the details.

Lola looked at me like I’d just told her I’d fought off a pack of cyberpsychos barehanded. “That’s... that’s insane! How are you even still alive?”

“Skill, luck, and some mil-spec chrome,” I replied, giving her a grin. “Mostly luck. And good chooms. Like Lucy, and some others I left back home.”

“Definitely luck, though,” Lucy quipped, smirking at me over the rim of her beer. “But don’t let it go to your head, David. A lot of people in Night City thought they’d live forever. You know what happens to them.”

“I know,” I said, my tone softening. “But hey, I’m still here. That’s gotta count for something.”

“Yeah, for now,” she said, her voice carrying that mix of teasing and genuine concern only Lucy could pull off.

Lola, oblivious to the undercurrent of our exchange, turned to Lucy with wide-eyed enthusiasm. “So, what’s it like, being an edgerunner? Do you guys get into crazy fights every day? Or is it more like those XBDs where you’re sneaking around megacorps and taking down their servers?”

Lucy chuckled. “A little bit of both. Mostly it’s just trying to survive long enough to get paid. Or when shit pops off, going buckwild and hoping that giving it your all will be enough. It ain’t always, though. I’d have died twice over by now without D having my back.”

Lola practically bounced on her toes. “Still, it sounds amazing! I mean, not the dying part, obviously, but the rest of it! The action, the adventure—”

“The migraines, the bullet wounds, the constant paranoia,” I interrupted, shooting her a look. “It’s not all XBD glam, prima. Most of it’s just messy and painful. And if you’re lucky, you get to grow old enough to regret it.” I couldn’t give her a false impression of the work. Of course, I never experienced all of that mess, not enough to feel bothered by it. I had been stabbed and cut up, of course, but Nanny took care of all of that. 

But for someone human like Lola, all those things would only magnify. She’d be in the muck of it all, suffering every second unlike me.

Lola deflated a little, but only for a second. “Still sounds better than some corpo desk job,” she said stubbornly.

“Spoken like a true Martinez,” Tio Alex said, shaking his head. “Always chasing danger like it’s the family business.”

“Better danger than boredom,” Lola shot back, crossing her arms.

“Danger can be exciting,” Lucy said, her voice calm but firm, “but it’s also a quick way to end up in the dirt. If you want to chase this life, you need to be ready for what it’ll take. And what it’ll cost.”

Lola nodded solemnly, but I could see the fire in her eyes hadn’t dimmed. She’d heard the warnings, but I doubted they’d stick. Not yet, anyway.

“Don’t worry,” I said, ruffling the hair that she made to look like mine. “You’ve got time to figure it out. And if you’re serious, I’ll teach you the ropes—one step at a time. Deal?”

Her grin returned, bright and defiant. “Deal!”

“It’ll be painful,” I promised, “And if I did my job right, you’ll end up hating me.” 

“I can take anything you’ll throw at me.”

It only now dawned on me, how much responsibility grooming this kid into the life would be. Goddammit . Definitely had to make her quit—by any means necessary.

“Practice your shooting. And don’t call me,” I ordered. “I’ve probably got more important things to do.”

Lola’s halogen-light smile told me it would take a little bit more than dickery to get her to stop.

000

Lorenzo Ladron had gone through the motions, ditching every valuable he had on hand in his office to immediately make a bee-line to a private taxi that would take him to an airstrip on the outskirts of Tijuana. All the money, all the valuables still in the city were lost—no matter. Well, it definitely mattered , but what truly mattered now was to get out still alive.

Revenge was the furthest thing on his mind, even. All he let himself agonize over was the size of his emergency funds, the money he kept in a safe place in case anything like this was to occur. It was his retirement policy, and he had added much to it over the years—but he could have added more. Always more. But that was the sort of thinking that had gotten him into this business to begin with—he should do away with notions of ‘more’ just as he refused to consider revenge.

This new life was over.

The taxi pulled up at the airstrip and Lorenzo—not even carrying anything except for a satchel containing important documents, and a wallet stuffed with thousands of eurodollars that would help him land on his feet wherever he went— ran towards his private plane. He had already made the call to the pilot. They should be ready for him, they should—

Right up ahead, he saw them. Green clad soldiers armed with guns, wearing red berets, and the corp logo of Green Farm. The Cartel’s parent company, subsidiary of Biotechnica which was the mother of all illicit drugs in North and South America.

And ahead of them all, a bad motherfucker that Lorenzo would have to be a fool not to consider—Augustus Gonzalez, firstborn son of the Tijuana legend Alfredo Gonzalez, currently the head of security for Green Farm’s operations. The bastard had been the spearhead that ripped through every major crime family in the city, from the Alvarez, to the Suez, Sanchez, Perez, and even the Martinez, ensuring that the Gonzalez name was the only one that carried any weight in these parts.

Lorenzo Ladron came to a stop and met the eyes of his killer. “Night City,” Lorenzo said, “Whoever started this… is a mercenary named D, and he is from Night City.”

“You should have told us about him earlier,” Augustus said, “You would have dodged blame if you had.”

“Why would I involve the Green Farm corporation in a matter that only involved the cartel?” Lorenzo asked. He didn’t know why he was arguing—he knew he was dead. “D killed one of our gangs. And then worked with Militech to plunder us for everything we were worth.”

Lorenzo couldn’t have stopped it—he didn’t even know how he had started it. His empty threats should not have escalated things to this extent. A war between Green Farm and Militech could swallow up all of Mexico, claim millions of lives. It could be the start of the fifth corporate war if Biotechnica got involved.

“D,” Augustus said, tasting the word, “Night City.” He sighed and nodded. He walked up to Lorenzo, long rifle still in hand, strap around his neck. Lorenzo’s blood ran cold as Augustus took those steps, time slowing down to a near glacial pace as Lorenzo counted down the moments he had until death—his girlfriend, Carmen. Their son, John. His parents, who had spent all that money putting him through school, all so he could waste it on being a cartel finance guy. 

Well, at least he made a fuck ton of money while working. No one could deny that he had succeeded. No one could deny that he had lived the dream—if only for a time.

“You’re right,” Augustus nodded. His mustachio’d face, with a close-shaven beard and a military cut, somehow lended him an air of reasonability in that moment. Of… nobility, almost. But Lorenzo refused to let himself be fooled. “There was nothing you could do. But thanks to you, I now have a direction. Run along now.”

Lorenzo frowned, “You’re letting me go?”

Augustus nodded, stepping aside. As did his men, giving him a clear path to the parked jet.

Lorenzo refused to fall for it, “Don’t play games with me, Gonzalez. If you mean to kill me, then kill me.”

“I don’t play games. I came for intelligence. You handed it to me. Normally as a professional, I would pay you. Which I am—by letting you go. And as a fellow professional, I hope you can be assured by my word—you will not die by my hand or by my order. And we have not been ordered to kill you.”

That… pretty much covered all his bases.

He took unsure steps forward. He didn’t run. It wouldn’t help if he did. So he walked. He walked up to the plane, he walked up the stairs, he took his seat in the cabin. The terrified pilot gave his announcement.

The Green Farm security bastardos cleared the runway. The plane took off. It flew, all the way to Miami. And it landed. And Lorenzo took a daisy chain of cabs to a random motel, making sure that his circuitous route would throw everyone following him off.

Only then, under the cover of obscurity, and with the knowledge that the Gonzalez head would not waste so much time before killing some lowly cartel pencil-pusher, did Lorenzo allow himself to breathe a sigh of relief.

He would live after all.

Notes:

https://discord.gg/W5BqBBym28

Chapter 35: Project Reset

Lucy was drunk. It was the only way she could explain her overpowering urge to explore every inch of the body she was holding for dear life, a want almost strong enough to make her forget the need to keep herself anchored to the insanely fast, insanely driven motorbike underneath her. 

The desert-parched countryside shot by blur, and her arms were wrapped around his broad frame. Even through his jacket she could feel his solidity, his muscles, of which he had plenty. Not so many to make him grotesque, but enough to give him a reassuring rigidity. Not too rigid, either. There was a give to him that she liked—that she hoped would stay there forever, unmarred by subdermal implants or titanium bones or synth muscles. 

She knew there was only so much time before he took the plunge and ruined himself, walking down the same path as Maine. She knew she wouldn’t have many other opportunities with him.

Despite herself, her hands kept wandering as the world around her kept on blurring by in a rush of wind and color, and more importantly, she avoided thinking about tomorrow, when they would have to return to… whatever they were to each other. 

“You’re home,” David said, and only then did she notice that they had parked outside of her apartment building.

She got off from the bike and stared at the building for a moment, knowing what awaited her should she go in now. The regret of never asking, of never taking a chance. 

She had no idea when it was that she had changed her mind like this, and to such a level of intensity.

She turned around and gave  David her best inquisitive look, while also trying not to smile, “You’re not gonna walk me to the door?”

David snorted, “What, you too drunk to take the stairs?”

“Screw off,” she muttered, somehow unable to meet his eyes, “You too proud to be a gentleman?”

David frowned and rubbed the back of his head, “Sure. But… I really can’t stay for long. I’ve got a big day tomorrow. Can’t miss school again.” He got off from his bike, though, and they walked together in silence, up the stairs, and then to her door. She opened it, and walked through the doorway.

This was it. This was her chance.

“Got beers in the fridge,” she said. He grimaced—right, he didn’t like beers, “Tequila, too, on the shelf.”

“Thanks, Lucy,” he said in a way that was clearly a rejection of the offer, “But I really need to get going.” Fuck. She needed to say something, anything—

“Today was a close call, you know,” she blurted out quickly, “We almost died. Would have died if it wasn’t for the quickhack we found.”

He nodded, “I know. Trust me, I… I shouldn’t have dragged you into that.”

“Then you would have died,” she said, finally giving him a firm look. “How’s that supposed to make me feel better?”

He frowned at the ground, “We won’t take gigs like that again. This was for family—I had to do it.” 

“At least it paid off,” she snorted. She had more money now than she even knew what to do with. Money she was almost too scared to spend. What would she even spend it on? She had already made enough to go to the moon months ago, and all she was waiting for now was… the right time. A sign, maybe.

“What are you gonna do with that money?” David asked.

“Who knows?” Lucy shrugged.

David looked… stricken. “You’re not going to the moon, are you?” Then his eyes widened, “Not that there’s any problem, you’ve got more than enough to set yourself up real nice. It’ll be preem for sure—”

“I don’t know,” she lied, “Maybe,” she grinned, “Maybe we’ll never see each other again after today?”

David’s eyes widened. He leaned forward in urgency, “Are you serious, Lucy?”

“I might finally escape this prison,” she said, feeling anticipation well up in her heart. What would he do about that? How would he react? “I might just take the money and cash out, like I’ve always wanted—”

The hurt in his eyes made her regret saying any of that. Just like that, she might get what she was angling for—out of desperation if nothing else. 

But that was life in Night City, wasn’t it? Every action informed by desperation and terror, every life nothing but a chain of reactions to a society that saw them all as nothing but meat, chrome, and bags of eurodollars. Nobody ever bothered thinking past today . And David was no exception to that, despite all that he had going for him. And neither was Lucy.

And that was unfair. All of it was. And that unfairness sparked a fire in her chest—anger warring with fear of the unknown, fear of what David would get himself into next time. 

“—Before getting myself killed,” Lucy continued, twisting the knife. “Because that’s what happens when you’re a Night City legend. You get yourself killed—and others for that matter.” And Lucy had to mull over the question of whether or not she could accept that as the cost of doing business, as it were.

“I’m sorry, Lucy,” David said, “Can… can I come in? Let’s talk.” Lucy didn’t budge an inch from the doorway to give David space. Instead, she stared at him, and she wondered what it was about him that made her want to risk it all for him, how much she was screwing herself over.

She was on the downswing of her inebriation, she could feel it. All that remained in her heart was dullness and dissatisfaction, a hunger that just wouldn’t go away —and a burning desire to wash down a shot of vodka, or maybe an entire damn bottle. The elixir that would allow her to ignore the cons of her path.

It would be all too easy to step to the side, let the idiot come in, then lean up and kiss him and —and they could do something they would regret in eight hours, but for now , it would mean everything.

But was ‘now’ enough?

No. She wanted a future. Death didn’t have to be the inevitability that she—and everyone in this accursed city—saw it as. 

“No,” she said to him, “You belong to this city. I’ve only ever seen it as a prison.”

“I’ll come to the moon with you.”

Lucy’s eyes widened. What a sweet, beautiful… lie . Or maybe it wasn’t? No. She refused to let herself believe that. She refused to put all of that on David. He deserved better than that. Better than having to follow her crazy self to the ends of the earth. She let out a shaky breath. “Good night, David.”

She made to close the door. His foot stopped it. Then he pried it open with his hand—and she was powerless to resist it.

“I know you don’t believe in me,” he said quickly, “And that’s fine. No one really does. I don’t need anyone’s belief anyway. But I want you to know, Lucy, that this city you hate so badly? I’ll fix it. I’ll fix everything.”

Lucy bared her teeth, snarling at him, “This is exactly the sort of talk that’ll get you killed , David!” Why would he put such an impossible fight on himself? Did he not understand how much misery he’d be setting himself up for? And for what? For just her ? No. She refused to be the cause of his self-destruction.

“I’ll show you,” he said. His expression was stony, his posture solid as a skyscraper, and Lucy noted absently how tall he had gotten in such a short amount of time. He barely resembled the him of four weeks ago. “I can do it.”

Then he turned around and walked one step away before stopping. His eyes started glowing gold as he consulted the Net. He didn’t turn his head as he spoke one last time, “There won’t be another launch to the moon for four days. Earliest launch is ten PM Monday. We have time to talk about this. But we will talk,” David continued, “When you’re sober. Okay?”

“Don’t bother,” she slammed her door shut at his face.

She still stood there. Heard as he spent only a few more seconds staring at the door before walking away with slow steps.

She felt all too tempted to open the door and to shout after him to come back. But he wouldn’t. Of course he wouldn’t. She had probably well and truly scared him off by now. She wouldn’t blame him for steering clear after their history. 

000

Things had gone too smoothly today, so really, what else was I expecting but another hiccup? Considering Lucy was involved, I really was a gonk to expect anything different.

But oh well. 

I was aiming for the impossible. It made sense that nobody would believe in me. Least of all Lucy, who obviously had quite the experience around ‘Night City legends’, like Maine for example.

It was clear from the way she talked about him that she was confident Maine wouldn’t make it for very long. I had no intention of letting that future come to pass. We had already accomplished more than enough by telling Maine to slow down and giving us a chance to rewrite his cyberware’s codebase. All that was left was proving our worth as Netrunners, and I knew my worth at this point.

As for everything else that followed—I’d find a way. 

No. Not just me. Nanny and I would find a way. We were a team, and I had my doubts that I would have made it very far without her. 

With the cartel no longer a threat, I was better able to focus on the homefront: fixing Maine, doing gigs, training, completing the case competition, and generally making a name for myself. I didn’t see myself returning to Mexico anytime soon unless Abuela specifically invited me over. 

Though, there were some things about my last trip there that felt slightly weird. The well-stocked netrunners, the sophisticated data fortress, and the cyborg guards all sporting Sandevistans—even if theirs were likely inferior versions, and they only managed to bridge our speed gap by leaning on their other chrome. They couldn’t be Militech models—Green Farm was a competitor to Militech, and that server cluster had been theirs. And Arasaka generally didn’t stray outside of the confines of Night City—even their high-end products tended to stay within the city’s borders. Who did that leave? QianT? Did anyone else even make Sandevistans? What was the deal with Green Farm anyway? Why had so many high-class assets of theirs been so close to the US ‘border’ and Arasaka territory?

I shrugged: who the fuck knew anyway. And I wasn’t nearly bored enough to play detective and get to the bottom of the case. It didn’t concern me anymore.

I drove my bike to Reyes’ autofixer shop, paid for repairs and maintenance on the mods and took a Delamain cab home.

By the time I made it back home, it was eleven o’ clock. I wasted no time getting undressed and hitting the bed. Nanny knocked me out the moment the pillow touched my head.

I woke up seven hours later feeling refreshed and ready to take on the day. I blessed this Friday by wearing a newly purchased uniform set, one that better fit my recently expanded body and didn’t make me look like a roid-head. As I thumbed through my clothes, I idly wondered if I should ditch the black shirt in my edgerunner attire as well, since I had more than enough muscle to pull off a bare-chested look under my jacket. It was about time I expanded my wardrobe.

…Maybe I should get a Kill Display installed on my left pec, too, while I was at it? It would be at two-hundred and seventeen… for now, at leas— 

On second thought, nah, that idea was dumb as shit. The first one though, that had possibilities. But I didn’t know shit about shopping for clothes, fashion, any of it. Was there anyone I could ask?

I took a cab straight to school, not minding the extravagant spending one bit. I still needed to pick up my bike, but I wasn’t going to just recall it from the shop once Reyes’ guys were done working on it—I still needed to check it for bugs in-person. Not that I expected him to have planted any, but I’d be stupid to not give it a thorough check at least. I had given the M179 a sweep as well, disabling a security protocol on it that would have transmitted its location in a few hours. After a bit of coding on the way home from the party—most of it Nanny’s work, really—the tech rifle—(which had turned out to be an actual Militech Achilles -class gausscarbine) had finally been made mine. I couldn’t wait to take it out for a spin later with Rebecca.

The first few lessons of the day were mercifully quiet. Teachers never gave me a second look, and more importantly, Katsuo never called me to talk shit. I appreciated the peace for giving me the space to put my ducks in a row regarding the case competition.

And when lunch rolled up, I had everything sorted in a neat and tidy presentation for Nakajima to peruse.

I slid my shard across the table in his office. Nakajima snatched it up without a word, slotting it into his neural port with a sharp click. His fingers drummed a rapid beat on the desk—impatience, nerves, maybe both.

“Alright,” he muttered. “Show me what we’re working with.”

“It’s abstract,” I exhaled, putting on my game face. “Low-level microeconomic efficiency optimization, scaling up into the macro scope of things—or getting borderline, at least. Logistics chains, basically, but on a bigger scale than what you’re thinking of. Arasaka’s got the tech, but their algos aren’t running at peak performance. Too many inefficiencies, redundancies—automated systems stepping on each other’s toes. We know this. The corpos know this. But no one’s built a solution that actually works at scale.”

The holo-projector flickered to life between us, casting shifting diagrams into the air—heatmaps, workflow models, breakdowns of Arasaka’s logistics from the limited scraps of public data I’d been able to scrounge up. Nakajima’s eyes flitted over them, fingers twitching through slides with quick, precise movements.

“Ideas are nice,” he said, his tone neutral. “Execution’s another thing.”

I nodded. “I don’t have the execution. Not yet.” I tapped the first slide. “What I have is a framework. A predictive model that doesn’t just analyze inefficiencies—it dynamically adapts to them.”

I brought up the core concept: an interconnected system that monitored manufacturing, transportation, labor allocation, and maintenance as a single, self-correcting entity.

“The problem right now is segmentation,” I explained. “Everything’s optimized in silos. Manufacturing’s optimized for manufacturing, logistics for logistics, but no one’s looking at the bigger picture. My proposal is an adaptive framework—one that analyzes the entire workflow in real-time and restructures processes on the fly. Think of it like an Arasaka-wide Sandevistan for logistics. Real-time reflexes. Instantaneous organization-wide course correction. No lag.”

Nakajima frowned, flicking through the math, his lips moving as he ran calculations in his head. Then his eyes widened.

“This…” His voice went tight. “This isn’t standard AI modeling.”

“Nope,” I explained, finally grinning a little. “Because standard AI modeling is outdated. Arasaka’s algorithms are built to control, not evolve. This system would do the opposite. It wouldn’t just analyze patterns—it would adapt, iterate, and rewrite itself based on efficiency trends. It’s an emergent intelligence. The longer it runs, the better it gets.”

“And you think this is viable?” He still wasn’t looking at me, just focusing on the presentation.

I hesitated. “I think it might be.”

That got a snort out of him. “Might?”

I leaned forward. “I don’t have the data. The math works, but without feeding real-world training data into the algo, it’s all just theory. That’s where you come in.”

Nakajima’s fingers stilled. I could see the gears turning in his head, the weight of risk-versus-reward playing out in real time. He might’ve just been a sysadmin for the Academy’s network, but he had access—just enough to pull internal logistics data without tripping alarms.

“This isn’t something we can just test in a vacuum,” I explained. “We need real inputs, real systems. I don’t need much—just enough data to refine the model, train it against real-world patterns.”

“…That might be a problem—but, workable,” Nakajima let out a slow breath, rubbing his temple. “I know a shop or two that sells some algo training sets cheap.”  Then he refocused on me.  “More importantly. You’re sure about the math?”

“As sure as I can be,” I admitted. “But if there’s a flaw, I’d rather find it now than after we pitch it.”

He was quiet for a long moment, scrolling through the projection, muttering to himself in rapid bursts of Japanese. Finally, he exhaled, shaking his head.

“This is crazy,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“It’s also better than anything else we’ve got.”

I nodded. “So…?”

Nakajima groaned, rubbing his face. “I’ll see what I can pull.”

Relief flooded through me.

He shot me a look. “But if this crashes and burns, I’m throwing you under the bus first.”

I smirked despite myself. “Wouldn’t expect anything less.”

“And hey,” he said. His eyes were serious as he spoke, “good job. I was convinced that this whole project was a flatline, but this right here… this has potential.”

“Just make sure you don’t leave it in the school’s systems and we’re good,” I reminded him.

He snorted, “That one was on me—you had an enemy willing to infect the Academy’s own systems with you as the viral vector. And I knew about it. Him. I shouldn’t have expected anything less from a class act like that scumbag.”

I shrugged. “Doesn’t matter at this point. All we have to do is adapt.”

He narrowed his eyes and looked at me for a moment, “You’re not thinking of hitting him back, are you?”

I rolled my eyes. As if Katsuo was worth the bother. “No, not really. Besides, I already got mine for what he pulled. He used the case comp as leverage to bait me into a game that he had rigged, expecting me to lose. Since I didn’t , I ended up earning a pretty penny.” I rubbed the back of my neck sheepishly, “Since you were also affected by this, I guess it would be fair to give you half of what I made.”

He snorted and held up his hand, “Keep your ennies, kid. Use it to buy fashionware or whatever.”

“When corpo kids make bets, it’s not with ennies,” I smirked. “You sure you still wanna turn me down?”

A part of me wanted him to say yes, but a more pragmatic and mature part wanted him to accept the money instead. It would build loyalty, and would prevent him from running off to someone else with my work. Or maybe it would teach him to see me as a credible threat? You didn’t give away a hundred grand all casual-like without having quite a bit to spare. Him learning about that would inevitably lead him to taking me more seriously.

He rolled his eyes and shrugged, “Fuck it.”

I sent him the transfer request. His eyes immediately boggled at the amount. Then he frowned, “You added three extra zeroes.”

“A hundred grand,” I said, “Take it.”

He looked at me for a long while, “You didn’t always have this kind of money.” He was definitely referring to the money I already had that allowed me to so easily part with the money I was offering him. “What’s the story on that?”

“Family drama,” I said, “My family runs a corp in Mexico. After my mother… passed away… they suddenly started footing my bills and caring for me.” I tried not to feel guilty at painting those folks in a bad light. Someday, this lie would get easier to tell.

“Sounds brutal,” he said as he accepted the money, “If I knew you were loaded, I’d have asked for cash way sooner. This would easily cover the cost of hiring some dummies to do the scutwork while we get on top of more important things. That’s not even mentioning all the training data we could legitimately procure.”

I raised an eyebrow at that, considering his words deeply.

I was utterly confident in my skill—that was one asset that I felt set us apart from our competition. What did they have? Resources. Machines. High-speed computers, proprietary digital methods, chrome . But all that was just money in the end.

And I had money. Lots of it .

For the first time since beginning this project, I entertained the possibility of us winning the case comp for our specific category of workflow optimization and logistics. A million dollars. But most importantly, my name on the map .

“Does the one-hundred cover all of that?” I asked.

Nakajima leaned back, tapping his fingers against the table in thought. “It’ll cover enough to get us started. Hiring a few temps to do the grunt work, sure. Getting access to solid training data, yeah, we can make that happen. But if we want to go all in—get the kind of compute power and processing speed that Arasaka’s tech division plays with—then we might need to throw around a little more.”

I crossed my arms, letting that settle. Money wasn’t the problem. I had it. The real question was how far I was willing to go. A hundred grand was a test. If Nakajima played his part right, if the plan held, I could double down. I could outspend the competition in ways they wouldn’t expect—from under the table, in places they’d never look.

Nakajima smirked, as if reading my thoughts. “So, you’re serious about winning this.”

I exhaled, my grip tightening on the edge of the table. “I’m done playing for second place.”

His smirk widened. “Then let’s get to work.”

000

Katsuo kept staying out of my way for the rest of the day. Even his chooms wouldn’t even cast me so much as an angry glance.

That was weird .

Clearly, he was up to something. And whatever that something was, he needed my guard to be lowered as much as possible for it to work. So what was it, then?

Dammit, I didn’t have time for this. I needed to find a place to change out of my ‘saka uniform and into a semblance of my D attire—only the sugar skull mask though, since I hadn’t brought mom’s jacket with me all the way to school. My bike was still in Reyes’ shop, and I’d rather fetch it than go home and then go there only to go back home again to work on the case comp. 

I considered how my day would look like from there—Kiwi had already asked me to come over and grab the shard containing the data on Maine’s cyberware before getting to work together. Assuming she’d let me get a glimpse at her workflow, or would be open to a proper collaboration for this project, aside from simple division of labor. Hopefully, Lucy would have gotten over her little episode from yesterday.

I had no idea she carried around all that… worry . 

It bothered me. Especially the fact that it was well-founded. 

Then again, what was I supposed to do aside from follow my dream? Hers wasn’t any better, yet she held onto it so stubbornly. 

I shook those thoughts away and instead ordered a sentient cab, changing inside it as it drove me to Reyes’ shop. All the while, I considered the futility of keeping a secret identity when the AI in the cab knew exactly who I was. Then again, there were plenty execs and Mr. Whos out there that trusted Delamain with their lives.

But all it would take was one netrunner spirited and skilled enough to hack the AI and mine it for all the data it had on every client that had ever used it. 

I gave the white-skinned, bald avatar resembling a human on the screen in front of me a narrow-eyed glance through my mask. “Do you know who I am?”

“David Martinez,” Delamain responded. “You’re a student at Arasaka Academy.”

“Do you know about anyone running around with a mask like this?” I asked, pointing at it.

“An up-and-coming mercenary by the name of D,” Delamain responded, “Which is you.”

I sighed. “How secure is your memory?”

“If my subsystems judge any breach to be imminent, my memory experiences a total wipe of client data. Delamain Corp has maintained a perfect track record of protecting this data, so rest assured and enjoy a safe, convenient and confidential journey.”

I really needed to stop playing around with my secret identity.

Soon enough, Delamain dropped me off near the autofixer shop, and after a few minutes of surreptitiously scanning my bike for bugs and browsing the mods offered by the business, I took the bike and rode it home. Halfway there, I took off my mask as well. Didn’t want to stick around in my merc persona for too long without any reason.

I was already working on the logistics project on my Kiroshis on the elevator ride up to my apartment, hard at work digging the foundation for the AI system when I saw my door in the middle of the hallway, ripped from its hinges.

For fuck’s sakes.

I disabled the hallway security cameras and stomped over to my apartment, skipping over the door when a thick smell of cigarette smoke met me the moment I stepped inside.

Barechested gangoons covered in ink, neon red and green hair, overwrought chrome all over the place.

They were twelve in number. Tyger Claws. Infesting my fucking apartment.

The bulk of them sat on our circular couch around the coffee table, smoking cigarettes and ashing them on top of a huge pile of ash right in the middle of the table. My eyes widened in shock when I spotted that.

I looked around the floor and found it—mom’s urn, lying on its side, opened, empty, the lid nowhere to be seen.

My ears rung.

I stopped breathing.

The world shrank to a pinpoint, the edges of my vision darkening like a camera lens closing.

Then, just as fast, it snapped back. My heart kicked against my ribs. My fingers twitched. My mind screamed for me to do something, to say something, but all that came out was a long, shuddering exhale.

One of the gangoons—tall, chrome arms, too many tattoos to make sense of—looked up from the table, lazily blowing smoke into my ceiling. He grinned, a wolfish, too-wide thing. “Took your sweet time coming home, prep-boy.” He stretched his leg towards the urn and, with his foot, rolled it back towards him. Then he kept rolling it back and forth, with his foot . It was all I could focus on—his ugly, tacky boot made to look like a samurai sandal, pressing down on my mother’s urn.

I imagined all the ways I would torment this guy before finding it in my pragmatism to end his life—gonk had seen my face after all.

But there were too many present for me to have some extended fun. I needed to be quick with this.

The Tyger kicked the urn at me. I caught it with a single hand and refocused on his eyes. His ugly grin fell and he began looking neutral, “ Tanaka Katsuo sends his regards, ” he said in Japanese, standing up. His crew followed.

Notes:

Spoilers: they resolved their problems quite amicably. The Tygers helped David clean up and fix the door before leaving.

Many thanks to Coldbringer, my frequent collaborator, for helping me with this chapter. Come join our Discord server to see what else we've got cooking!

https://discord.gg/W5BqBBym28

Chapter 36: Bottomline

The Sandevistan activated, totally unbidden. That had never happened before. Nanny? No doubt about it.

[The path you’re about to take is wildly inefficient, David] Nanny said, in a tone that brokered zero arguments. Her words were like a splash of cold water on my face, immediately dousing my hot rage and pure, unbridled hatred. Combined with the sensation of the Sandevistan—like electricity was shooting through every inch of my body—all my thoughts and plans came to a hard stop.

D: Killing these dickbags is too easy. And it would lead to a mess. I can’t handle this the Edgerunner way—Katsuo sent them after all. Why?

[The why is not important. Not right now at least. The goal is getting us out of trouble without alerting Katsuo.]

D: Dead men tell no tales. I could kill all these gonks in a moment’s notice.

[And what if Katsuo is watching?]

I darted my eyes around the room and gave a sigh. Ping.

The effects of Ping spread throughout my room, but didn’t spread any further as if—ah, they had a jammer up. Wouldn’t do for me to call for help.

How had they even gotten in? I looked around and found him—a Netrunner, wearing oversized tech goggles that made him look like a human fly. An external cyberdeck was strapped to his forearm. Right. Katsuo had thrown his entire wallet at these boys for sure—Netrunners didn’t come cheap, especially if you were hiring gangoons. 

I couldn’t detect any cameras, however.

Still… something wasn’t quite adding up.

With crystal clarity, I recalled the data I had mined from Katsuo at that yacht party. Gangoon contacts, Tyger Claws, a black site. 

Were they going to transport me rather than kill me on the spot?

I’d highly prefer to avoid shedding blood inside my house. The sheer potential for both my identities to clash and perhaps even merge was too much to accept. I’d have to hire a fixer for one—in order to get my fucking house cleaned, and to get the corpses disposed of. I could ask Maine for help on that one, but… no, too messy. Way too messy.

Like that mess on the table.

Cigarette stubs poking out from the pile of ashes.

[Focus, David. Stop looking at that. We need more data.]

I stared at the Netrunner whose cigarette hand was halfway towards the pile.

Blackwall Gateway was a quickhack that worked especially well on anyone with neural implants.

I couldn’t wait to see what it would do to someone while I was in meatspace.

[Stop it, David.]

I gnashed my teeth. 

Then I deactivated the Sandy. I needed more data.

“Are we doing this right here or are we going for a ride?” I asked the one who had spoken to me. The leader, perhaps?

He grinned. “Boss wants to see you, nii-chan.”

I nodded. 

I could get started while we were in transit, make it look like a group of merc bodyguards intercepted the truck they’d put me in and rained holy hellfire on them. Then I could just proceed on home, leaving the mess in the streets.

All that mattered was whether or not they were willing to restrain me or cuff me somehow. Knowing how pieces of shits like these guys operated, they would sooner just kick the shit out of me in this apartment and drag my broken self to the meeting with Katsuo.

Well, if that was the optimal course, then I’d settle for that.

The Netrunner stubbed his cigarette on top of the ash pile, and then blew on it. The ashes spread across the table, and much of it fell down on the carpet. Then he spat on it. And laughed.

“What?” the leader asked, looking at the spectacle, and then at me, “What are you gonna do about it, gomi?”

[David, no—]

“Me?” I asked. “Nothing.”

But Katsuo wasn’t the only gonk in Arasaka Academy that could scramble some huscle on a moment’s notice. He had random Tygers—fucking nova for him.

I had D.

I looked at the Netrunner.

I activated Blackwall Gateway.

My cyberdeck’s Icepick smashed through his flimsy self-ICE in under a second, and a backdoor to cyberspace’s worst abominations spontaneously opened up inside his network.

“What the f—” the Netrunner stood up and stumbled forward, tripping over his feet. The main gangoon turned around to look at him in shock. My eyes fell on his katana, and I drew it.

Then I activated the Sandevistan and lined a long slice to his throat. I could sense the blade hitting subdermal chrome, but its sharpness—or perhaps some kind of mod—allowed me to part it and hit a vital vein just as I was running out of blade on my cut.

The rest of the Tygers were still frozen. One had reacted, his face slowly transforming into an expression of shock—a Kerenzikov, perhaps? Not that it mattered. I walked up to him and sliced a long chop across his unprotected neck and moved on. Like before, I hit subdermal. Having expected that, I didn’t overcommit on the force of the chop and instead pulled back and eyed my next target.

I got through five Tygers before I managed to lose my katana to the over-armored necks of one of the goons. No biggie. They had katanas to spare. I pulled out two from the soon-to-be-dead gangsters and continued reaping, until there was no one but the Netrunner left standing.

Ping had caught his jammer—it was in his pocket.

I deactivated the Sandevistan.

“—fuck is going on with me?!” He fell on his knees, before the body of his former leader, “They’re not real, they’re not real, they’re not—fuck!” he screamed. He rattled off a prayer to God in Japanese that devolved into a sustained howl of pure terror.

I walked up to the pile of mom’s ashes, retrieved the still-lit cigarette he had dropped in front of it, and then I went back to crouch in front of him, his leader lying dead right between us. He looked up at the ceiling, still screaming.

“You didn’t stub it properly, gomi,” I muttered, stubbing the cherry on his forehead. If he could even feel it, or if his screams had changed in pitch, I couldn’t tell. It seemed that the hack was tormenting him well enough on its own.

Gnarly stuff, really. I couldn’t imagine a situation where I’d ever use it on someone—well, unless they had fucked with me like these gonk fucks already had. There wasn’t a thing I wouldn’t do to get my pound of meat at that point.

I reached into his pockets and pulled out the little jammer—a cubical machine with a small antenna. I tossed it in the air and sliced it in half before immediately dialling Maine.

Fuck.

The Netrunner’s screams came to a crescendo before slowly abating, every orifice in his face streaming with blood. I was glad that he had suffered.

Two-hundred and twenty-nine.

000

The whole crew ended up coming out to help. Even though I had only asked for a bit of help. Maine had arrived at my door twenty minutes after I had called, with everyone in tow: Dorio, Rebecca, Pilar, Kiwi, hell, even Falco, and… Lucy.

Minutes prior, I had done my best to scoop as much of mom’s ashes into the urn—careful to separate as much of it as I could from the cigarette ash. By the time the rest of the crew had arrived, I had mercifully been able to complete that single task at least. Returning the urn to the shelf on the wall. Vacuuming up all the ashes that hadn’t mixed with the blood.

Getting to avoid anyone bringing up the topic.

Finding the lid hadn’t been hard, either. Washing the blood out of it and then thoroughly drying it had been more difficult—metal and blood seemed to share the same scent, which made it difficult to tell if I had truly cleaned it or not.

For some reason, as I stared transfixed at the urn, I found myself wondering, quite intensely, what would mom think? Would she be disappointed?

All my life, I had lacked true resolve. Sure, staying in Arasaka for as long as I had, with the grades I had, all the while suffering from nightmares every night—that wasn’t a walk in the park. But when it came to thoughts of what to do after Arasaka, after mom was done torturing herself in order to give me a fair shake in society—I had always come up empty.

Until mom had died. At that point, my direction became crystal clear. 

The top of Arasaka tower. By any means necessary.

But I had blundered at some step. There was no other way to characterize today—or hell, the yacht party. Somehow, I had pissed Katsuo off so badly that he now wanted me dead. 

And for what? For being better than him? For being a gutter rat? What the fuck did I do that was so goddamn bad?

What the fuck did I do?

Whatever it was, there was no apologizing for it now anyway.

Neither was there a need to. Once again, my direction was crystal clear.

Corporate Conflict taught that there were three destinations of conflict—Conquer, partner, and destroy. 

Weeks ago, I had made it my resolution to destroy Katsuo, knowing there were no other options available. I had made good on that resolution time and time again, showing the asshole up, taking from him more than he could possibly imagine. I had even gone as far as to prove to him that he was no longer my equal physically.

But all that? Baby shit. Nothing. It was actually nothing.

I hadn’t beggared his family yet. Killed his father. Crippled his mother. Scavved those shitty arms from his shoulders. Stopped his fucking heart. 

I hadn’t come close to destroying him.

“David?”

Lucy approached me from behind. I was still staring at mom’s urn. Watching her. Thinking.

It was… embarrassing, calling the crew here, getting them involved at all. Like running to mom’s bedroom after wetting the bed. I couldn’t handle my shit after all. Couldn’t take responsibility for my own damn safety.

[David. Lucy called your name.]

I turned around and looked a bit to the left of her head, avoiding her eyes. “Yeah?”

“Are you hurt?”

“No.”

As I turned, I realized that the entire crew were standing behind her in a row, expectantly. The bodies were gone. All that remained was blood on the floor. That could be solved quite easily. Hell, even the door had been repaired—Pilar had replaced the hinges with big industrial motherfuckers that looked like they could easily secure blast doors. Not that it mattered.

“I’m moving out,” I announced, “Also… thank you for coming to help. And I’m sorry for calling you all out on such short notice. I was… stuck.”

“The fuck happened?” Maine asked, gently for his standards.

“Corporate conflict,” I said, “An overeager classmate has decided to take our rivalry to the next step.”

I received a call from NightCorp, a bill for disturbances, and payment options for how much I wanted the NCPD to not be notified. Twenty-five grand.

Twenty-five fucking grand. I was down to seventy-five thousand on what I had won from Katsuo now. Not that money was tight at all—it was just annoying to learn that he had cost me something this tangible.

“And what’re you gonna do about it?” Maine asked, walking forwards and stopping only a few feet away from me, by Lucy’s side. 

“I’ll kill him,” I said. I squinted in thought, “In a way that won’t be traced back to me. The prep will take a while. I’d rather not fuck things up any worse than I already have.”

“I’ll say,” Kiwi muttered. She was sitting on an unbloodied section of the couch, “I scanned the meatbags—one of ‘em’s got a pretty worrying name. Turns out he’s the nephew of a Tyger Claw middle-boss. Might end up following up on this and cause you more grief.”

“Ain’t that a fine pickle you done landed yerself in,” Falco snorted. 

“There’s more,” I said, “The corpo shitstain that ordered all this—he’s Tanaka’s son.”

Maine’s eyebrows rose. “Tanaka Junior is on your ass? Why?”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Pilar started chuckling, “You’re telling me that’s the guy—”

“Yes,” I said, interrupting him before he could tell everyone about Katsuo and my stints with his ‘fiancee’, “But I’m willing to bet it ain’t about that. He’s been on my case since day one.”

“Easy plan, then,” Maine shrugged, “Tanaka’s the guy Faraday’s been targeting. We take him out, and you end up getting yours anyway. Kiwi, where are we on that?”

“Nowhere, since I paused all that in order to take care of your chrome, genius,” Kiwi said. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Maine grunted, “Don’t need all that sass from you.”

“Sass is a part of the package.”

I looked at Maine, “We’ll work on you, first. Then we figure out Tanaka. And I’ll handle biz on my end.”

“Your end?” Dorio asked, arms folded, “You’re talking as if this doesn’t concern any of us.”

“Because it doesn’t,” I replied. “I never meant for both sides of my life to get mixed up like this, and I’m not letting things mix any further. I’ll take advice, sure, but I’m going at this alone. I don’t want nor need help anymore.”

“Good,” Kiwi said, getting up, “And here I was ready to get my hands all dirty with some intel-gathering for a baby corpo assassination, but it sounds like you’ve got things covered. And I won’t beg you to take my help.”

“Enough with the corp talk!” Maine boomed, fists clenching. Kiwi stopped mid-stride towards the door and turned to Maine, “I won’t tell you how to live your life, David. It’s your choice what happens next. Right now, though? We’re going on a quick gig. Then we’re hopping over to the Afterlife. And you’re coming. As payment for helping you clean the bodies.”

“That’s fair,” I said with a nod. He was free to demand that payment, and it was a light one, given how much need I was in. Maybe that was his company discount? Then again, Maine had always been a fair boss—the beginning of my employment under him notwithstanding.

I looked around for Pilar, who was on the other end of the couch, playing catch with himself with a—a fucking grenade. It better have nothing inside. Meanwhile, Rebecca was—sitting on my bed, looking my M179 over in clear awe.

Fuck it. First thing first: “Pilar—” he fumbled with the grenade, but eventually caught it. For fuck’s sake, it better not be loaded. “You mind giving my gear a quick once-over before we get going? Plus, I got this new tech rifle from Mexico.”

“Yeah, sure,” he said, “I won’t even ask for pay.” He better not, after I cut him in on the Apogee heist money. 

Rebecca perked up and ran into the living room with a big grin, holding aloft a rifle that was only a foot or so shorter than her.

“You got a fucking MaxTac rifle and didn’t tell me?!” Rebecca shouted. 

“It was only yesterday,” I muttered.

“The hell happened yesterday?” Maine asked, looking at me in shock. “You went to Mexico?”

“Family obligations,” I said, “I’ll tell you in the afterparty.” I sighed and dragged my hands down my face. I caught a look at Lucy, still looking at me in uncertainty, her posture unsure. I’d shelve that one for later, too. Right now, I needed to get my game-face on.

I was slightly grateful for this opportunity to get to work. It would help clear my mind.

“Alright,” I said, walking up to Maine, arm outstretched, “Thanks. For everything. I’m in.”

His hands were enormous as they engulfed mine, and he gave a steely nod. “Don’t sweat it, kid.”

000

It turned out that the gig Maine had in mind was quite low-pay and low-risk even—and given that I wasn’t even being paid to begin with, I took that as something of a win. Usually I would have cared more, but now—

Maine had practically done me that corpse disposal for free. Then again, I didn’t know the going rate on such stuff. I’d have to ask Reyes to give me the lowdown on what services his type offered. Pretty soon, I’d be in the position to make semi-regular use of such people to further my own career. Through Maine, I already had—in getting some cleaners to clean up the blood without asking any awkward questions. It took the bastards less than ten minutes, and then they were gone, just like that. Then, forty minutes later, near the outskirts of town where the city touched the desert, it was time for the gig.

We were festival security.

A shitty gig, but an easy one. No high-speed chases, no shootouts, no corpo drama—just standing around, looking scary, and tossing out the occasional rich-kid asshole who thought they were tougher than they actually were.

The place was packed with elite brats rocking neokitsch fashions, and as was usual for Night City, many were only now beginning to stand out as the sun slowly sunk beneath the city scape. Everywhere I looked I saw glow-in-the-dark synth-dreadlocks, smart tattoos shifting across bare skin, crystal jewellery that would soon begin to glow in the dark, designer ponchos that probably cost more than mom would have made in a month. 

Three quarters of them were corporate brats slumming it for the weekend, trying to find some “authenticity” in the dust and neon. Too many of the rest were actual nomads and street rats, vultures circling the drunk and clueless, picking pockets and sockets, but well-dressed enough to pretend they weren’t. Technically, we were supposed to do something about that, but I wasn’t feeling any inclination towards protecting corpo brats from petty theft. I’d hate to get in the way of their hustle—they had very likely sunk a large portion of their savings into getting tickets for this event, and stealing was the only way for them to recoup their losses.

I drew the line at physical violence, and made sure to keep an extra eye on the dipshit drunk girls running around without a care, who thought money and status would protect them from particularly spirited lowlives.

I guess, in a way, it actually did. In the form of me. 

Maine had the heavies—Dorio, Rebecca, and Pilar—roving in a car, watching for Wraiths dumb enough to raid a place this crowded. Rebecca was even using my Achilles tech rifle, since I wouldn’t have the option to in this place. Lucy and I got stuck near the fenced-off entrance, babysitting wasted corpos who couldn’t handle their chems and wannabe gangsters looking to start shit.

Kiwi had wisely decided to bail on this particular job, citing 'better things to do' as her reason for absence.

“Got another one,” Lucy muttered.

She nudged her chin at a guy wobbling toward us, shirt unbuttoned, eyes glassy. Some corpo kid, early twenties, expensive cyberware—but no sense of balance.

“Yo, choom, you good?” I asked.

He blinked at me, then at Lucy. Then he grinned, throwing an arm around my shoulder like we were old friends. “Duuude, I love you guys, man. You’re so... so… like, preem.”

I peeled him off and pulled him up a little so he would stand straight. “Where are your chooms?”

“Dude!” His eyes widened and he turned around to re-enter the crush of bodies in search for his chooms. “You’re so right! I gotta find my—” the noise drowned his voice out as he disappeared into the crowd.

Lucy smirked. “You’ve got a real way with people.”

“Yeah, I guess,” I muttered.

The music rose in volume and I was unable to hear Lucy’s retort over the sound of the Pretty Kitties belting out their chorus. Her eyes glowed golden and I received a call at the same time—from her. I accepted. Hopefully, her voice would drown out the sound of the generic pop bullshit.

Lunacy: So, Corpo-Cunt, how are you planning on flatlining the other Corpo-Cunt?

I grit my teeth, almost glad that being here on this shitty gig gave me the time to think over that exact question rationally. 

D: Slow-release quickhack. BG. I’ll chip him at school and let it activate when he gets home. Preferably after he goes asleep, in the middle of the night. No muss, no fuss. 

Lunacy: That’s… underwhelming.

D: I’m not exactly going for Kill of the Year here. I’m just a corp student. I don’t even know how to hold a gun.

She narrowed her eyes at me.

Lunacy: I don’t know. I just assumed you’d be more willing to shit where you sleep after what you did in your apartment. 

D: That was different. They pissed me off.

Lunacy: Why?

I snorted coldly, gnashing my teeth and clenching my fists. Then I took in a deep breath and exhaled slowly. 

D: It’s nothing. Not anymore. I won’t let it happen again.

Lunacy: Finding them in your house got you shook up, huh?

I bit back an angry retort and instead focused on the crowd, looking for dorph heads or laced up gonks trying to start a fight. Then I scanned around for careless women and found a few, but none of them were in any immediate danger.

D: They fucked with my stuff.

Lunacy: What stuff? Your porn BDs?

D: My mom’s ashes.

Her eyes widened and she stopped.

Lunacy: Oh. I’m sorry, David.

I clenched my jaw and then sighed. 

D: It is what it is. 

I’d been dealing with this shit for way too long. Katsuo thinking he could shit all over me.

Why the fuck had it taken me this long to realize that the motherfucker needed to die? 

I received a call from Fei-Fei.

D: Someone’s calling.

I felt an intrusion through our link and blocked it instantly, tossing Lucy’s influence out and ending our call. She furrowed her eyebrows in surprise—and maybe a bit of outrage. I had no interest in unpacking any of that, not right now.

Instead, I debated on what to do. What if she was a part of this? What if Katsuo finding out about Fei-Fei and I had driven him over the edge? 

Either way, this call wouldn’t put me in a worse position than I already was. Katsuo had made his move. I was now alerted. And Fei-Fei couldn’t trace me through this line either. Not unless she was hooked up to an industrial ICE breaker, and even then, she needed to be a Netrunner for it to work.

Ah, fuck it.

I accepted.

Fei-Fei: How are you celebrating this Friday evening?

Her chirpy tone completely threw me off. Was she serious? Trying to confuse me? Or did she really not know?

D: After-school work.

Fei-Fei: After-school work? I didn’t know Arasaka Academy allowed their students to work after school. Wait—are you blowing me off? You could just say it if you’re busy, you know. No sweat, choom.

Her awkward slang-use cracked through a bit of my dark mood, inadvertently made me break into a tiny grin. I saw Lucy stare at me intensely. I turned around from her and schooled my expression. This was no time to be dropping my guard.

D: Not work, per se. But I’m doing a project for the corp. Katsuo set me back by a mile, so I’ve been, uh, busy.

Fei-Fei: Too busy to grab a few drinks in Japantown? I know of a nice and discreet spot where we can meet.

D: Too busy, Fei-Fei. Sorry.

Fei-Fei: It’s fine. Maybe another time.

D: How’s Katsuo doing? 

I hoped my tone came off as light.

Fei-Fei: Why do you care?

D: I’m just curious.

Fei-Fei: Listen, David. I don’t want to be used against him in your feud. I think I’d be putting on way too much risk—more than I already am by associating with you.

Shit, she was right. It was unfair for me to use her like this.

But I couldn’t leave her in the dark, given all the risk she was under. I trusted her, in a manner of speaking.

D: Katsuo sent some goons to have me killed.

Fei-Fei: Oh my god. David, are you okay?

D: I’m fine. They didn’t touch me.

Fei-Fei: David, I’m so, so sorry this happened to you. I really am. But—I can’t be involved with this. I can’t.

D: Just giving you a heads up. Stay safe

Fei-Fei: Thank you. And you too.

She ended the call first.

I analyzed our dialogue for a moment, wondering just how much of it was an act. I hadn’t let much slip—knowing it was Katsuo that had set me up was something, but in case that fact ever made its way back to the bastard, he’d probably let up on his offensive and focus more on defense.

For all the good it would do him. 

His days were numbered.

I’d be going to ground until Monday, crashing at the house of whoever in the crew would let me—then I’d go to school like nothing ever happened. I’d go through the day like usual, then between classes, I’d use the Sandy to chip him while we were in the hallway, in a dead spot between all the surveillance cameras. And that would be it. He’d die a horrible death that couldn’t be traced back to me—materially at least. I’d have picksocketed back the chip after it was finished installing into his chrome. And there would be no log of any of that on his agent either. No timestamp to show when his system had been infiltrated. No cameras connecting him with me. For all appearances, he would have gone to bed, then screamed and thrashed around while Trauma Team was en-route, but they would never get there in time. 

The Blackwall Gateway killed within seconds.

I contemplated what my academy days would look like without Katsuo there. Quiet. Peaceful. And with Jin thoroughly enamored with my services, even during the occasional party, I’d be untouchable.

I shook myself from the reverie, feeling like I’d be jinxing myself by fantasizing about the situation too much. I wouldn’t allow this to stay a fantasy. Not on my life.

The gig continued without anything too crazy happening. Lucy and I played hero a few times, breaking up fights, tossing out the trash, making sure that the Trauma Team ratfuckers could reach a few of the OD’d corpos without stepping on too many other corpo toes. Turns out that the bastards weren’t nearly as able to bulldoze through a crowd of people to reach their policyholders when most of that crowd were policyholders themselves. And the few Street Kids inside with them gained immunity by association.

Maine reported a shootout with some Wraiths, triggering intense jealousy in me. I’d have preferred to be out there, in the desert, with Rebecca and Pilar’s bickering overlaying the quiet backdrop of wind blowing through the sands, keeping watch on the horizon. 

Getting to let out all my pent up energy by blowing up Wraith Quadras. Scattering their numbers, playing target practice on them as they rushed away. With the ground as open as it was, it made for ideal target practice conditions. 

Once nine o’ clock struck, our shift ended. Falco picked us up in his Chevillon Emperor and drove us straight to the Afterlife.

It was the first time I had been back since I first snuck in all those weeks ago. But for some reason, it felt like it had been years since then. So much had happened. 

I wondered if they’d even let me in, if I had managed to make enough of a name for myself.

As we got out of the big car, I walked up to the end of the line and stopped there. Then I saw Maine and the rest proceed past the line. I blinked and hurried after them.

“You big dork,” Rebecca giggled as she hip-checked me, hitting my knee.

I shrugged, “Can’t blame me for being careful. Last time I tried coming here, the bouncer wanted to punch my head off.”

“When was that?” Rebecca asked.

“Uh, three or four weeks ago,” I said. “I was trying to get in touch with a fixer.”

“So you came to the Solo Valhalla,” Rebecca said dryly. Then she guffawed, “Dork!”

Lucy slowed down from the head of the pack to walk next to Rebecca and I, inserting herself in the middle. “This is literally the peak Solo hangout, D. And you tried coming in here for a tutorial.”

I sighed, “I was strapped for edds.”

“You’re fucking crazy,” Rebecca laughed. I just shook my head. It wasn’t that big a deal. Besides, the bartender had been a huge help.

“That was pretty ballsy,” Lucy conceded, “But I guess you didn’t know any better at the time.”

“I guess.”

Lucy turned to me, as though she was expecting more. I kept looking ahead, not meeting her stare. I wasn’t in the mood for small chatter anyway.

Once we reached the entrance, the bouncer gave us all a look, and his eyes stayed on me for a few long awkward seconds.

“Let us the fuck in already,” Maine grunted.

The big bouncer shrugged and gave a nod. I ignored the angry glances of the other solos waiting in line behind us and proceeded inside. 

For being the peak of Solo hangouts in the city, the Afterlife really wasn’t much different from any other moderately well-kept bar in town. It was tagged all over the place, dark and neon, and it was small compared to what one would expect of a place this important. Small and cozy.

Maine picked a booth for us to get into and started ranting about sand getting into his finger joints, which turned into a group discussion about how much the sand sucked. I pretty much tuned out for all of it. 

Even after the drinks arrived, I was mostly inside my own head, planning out how I’d code the program meant to kill Katsuo. It had to be slow-acting, clean, indirect, untraceable—

“D,” Maine said. I paused my thoughts and looked up at him, irritated. He was sitting diagonally from me, opposite side of the table at the very end of the booth. “I know you got two jobs you don’t wanna mix, but in light of the fuckin’ mess that happened earlier, I’m wondering if you wouldn’t be down for a way to nab our guy through your guy.”

“I’m down,” I accepted instantly, now fully engaged in the conversation. Maine grinned. 

“You’re finally fucking with us!” Pilar cheered, arms raised, “Welcome to Earthside, ya fucking Highrider!”

“Some caveats though,” Maine said, “Your guy can’t die before we reach our guy.” Fuck. “But I’ll make it worth your while.” Shit, I’d take the gig for free. 

Kill the elder Tanaka. Give Katsuo a call rubbing his dad’s death in his face, the same way he talked about my mom.

Then I’d find him and kill him.

And the best part? Senior’s death would make it so that Katsuo had no corporate backing anymore. No corporate backing meant no proper investigation into his death. That is unless Mrs. Tanaka didn’t use her inheritance money to get the two of them exactly that.

But I would go for the three-peat in that case. What was one more body? 

All this blood was just paint to me at this point.

“Keep your money,” I said, my voice cold, “This one’s on the house.”

000

The empty bottle of expensive liquor exploded against Katsuo’s bedroom wall, but it did nothing to calm his nerves as he panted in exertion.

It wasn’t enough. He wanted to punch the wall until it was reduced to rubble—punch it until the Strongarms broke against it. Anything to get rid of this full-body buzzing that seemed to concentrate the most around the hands.

His hands, he forcefully reminded himself, remembering what the therapist had told him. His hands. Him. Someday, he might believe that lie—but today, it did nothing for him.

Katsuo: Where the fuck did they go?! Why aren’t they answering?

The person at the other end of the line took a moment to reply, angering Katuso even further. The fists clenched—his fists. God damnit!

Omaeda: My nephew and his boys are unlikely to be the type to run away with a client’s money. Especially one of your status.

Katsuo: I don’t need your shitty excuses! Give me the status of the job already!

Omaeda: I am unable to reach my nephew, waka-sama. 

Then he said nothing else, as if that was any explanation whatsoever. 

Katsuo: What the fuck—

Omaeda: That means that it is very likely that they are tied up in some way. 

Katsuo: Dead? You mean to tell me your dozen gangsters fucking died?!

Omaeda: I will keep you apprised of the situation, waka-sama, provided that our remuneration reflects this new danger level.

Katsuo: Don’t give me that shit! You took this job for the money I gave you—

Omaeda: Having assumed, from your intelligence might I add, that ours was not a militarized target. But given that my boys truly have lost their lives, I can make no other assumption than that.

Katsuo could hardly believe his ears. What the hell, is this scumfucker blaming me for this shit?!

Katsuo: You didn’t do your due diligence. I only told you where he lived. You underestimated him first.

So, what, did that rat have turrets in his house or something? Or a retinue of solos of his own? He lived in a mega’ for fuck’s sake. And based on the academy records, he still fucking did, even after coming into all that money he loved flaunting around. 

Katsuo: I paid for twelve guys for exactly this purpose. How the fuck they all lost is beyond me—and absolutely your problem. So if you don’t want my father to call your boss, you make this right, you hear me? You make this goddamn right. Bring me David Martinez—dead or alive, I don’t fucking care. Just bring him!

Omaeda: Fine.

Katsuo hung up.

Goddamn this. Goddamn them all. Incompetents, the lot of them.

With any luck, those fucking idiots would have just killed David and laid low because they knew they had screwed up on the orders of bringing him in alive. At this point, Katsuo would have preferred that outcome. But it all just seemed… wrong.

Katsuo debated on calling David, just to see if the line rung. Then he would hang up if it did, a clear sign that he was still alive.

But then David would know. He would know. And then he’d come after Katsuo.

Let him try.

Katsuo shook his head and made himself remember who he was: Katsuo Tanaka. The executive’s son. The most powerful student in Arasaka Academy’s senior year. 

David Martinez was nothing. And his end would be quick—and he would not be remembered.

He called David. The line began to ring. Katsuo resisted the urge to cut his own call short. He walked to his desk and reached for a bottle of sake. He forewent the cup and downed a gulp straight from the bottle.

The line kept ringing.

And it kept ringing.

Katsuo’s heart raced as the line kept ringing until—

David: Pray.

He cut the call immediately after.

 

Notes:

The song I was listening to while writing this was: Man at the Garden by Kendrick Lamar.

David deserves it all man.

Coldbringer (DiabloSnowblind on Ao3), despite the name, brought the heat with Beta reading.

Discord link: https://discord.gg/W5BqBBym28

Chapter 37: Cyberware Rebirth

After we left the Afterlife, I drove Lucy to my house to pack up all my most important belongings—my mother’s urn, my school uniforms, my BD Wreath, personal link, external ‘deck, and collection of XBDs. I stuffed all of it into a backpack and then drove us both to Kiwi’s house to get started on fixing Maine’s chrome software.

We didn’t chat much during the ride, and when we got to Kiwi’s house, the older Netrunner was equally disinclined towards social niceties. Small mercies. Getting set up took us about half an hour, as did coming up with a plan to tackle the mountain of implants whose code we needed to fix.

When I had first proposed this project—fixing Maine’s chrome—I had never imagined I would be going into it so… distracted. I didn’t want to work on this—well, I did. But now, in these circumstances? I wasn’t in the right headspace for this. There were only so many things I could care about at once—and right now, all I cared about, all I could care about, was working towards my plan of ending Katsuo.

But—and I had to force myself to admit this—Maine was right. Better to wait. Faraday had set the crew up with a big job involving Katsuo’s old man for later in the week. If I killed his little shit of a son now, the old man’s behavior would become erratic, and the last thing Maine and the crew needed was a complication before a key job that might take us to Night City’s big leagues.

It was with that thought in mind that I started my section of the work, first bringing up Maine’s general diagnostics before diving into the particulars of his chrome’s software, getting a feel for the lay of the land before diving into the source code, so to speak.

By the time it was one AM, Lucy called it quits—she was too tired to be productive. Kiwi and I worked until 3AM when she got too tired as well.

Then it was just me.

We had made good headway, her and I, but now that I was alone, I’d finally get to do this at my speed.

I activated the Sandevistan as my mind interfaced with the terminal before me, and got to work, mentally typing out every line, belting out hundreds of them every second.

Lines of code scrolled across my vision like a never-ending waterfall, a mess of bloated logic and deliberately obfuscated subroutines.

I spotted another redundancy loop—fucking hell—nested deep inside the firmware, pinging unnecessary micro-requests between the neural interface and the limb actuators. A few million cycles of that bullshit, and the delay would start creeping in, the cognitive load ramping up just enough to stress out a user’s nervous system. And that was just the obvious stuff.

I disabled the Sandevistan for a second, rolling my neck. Math. Fucking math.

My eyes flickered to the screen’s clock. 4 AM. Whatever. I dove back in, Sandevistan humming, brain parsing logic at speeds no human coder was meant to.

After honing in on certain irregularities in the code, I found that a biometric feedback loop flagged as “adaptive stabilization” was doing the exact opposite of what it was meant to—feeding erratic voltage spikes into the nervous system whenever it detected an off-brand implant. Subtle enough to feel like fatigue or stress at first, but keep running a mixed loadout, and the glitches would start. Twitchy reflexes. Bad sleep. Then mood swings, paranoia. Then...

Fuckers. I exhaled through my nose, hands flying across the terminal.

There. I rerouted the feedback to a null state, then ripped out a parallel callout that was dumping junk data straight into the optic nerves. I had some experience with that already from re-writing my Kiroshis and finding out that the warning on the label for possible migraines when switching away from those implants was warning about something engineered entirely by design.

A quick diagnostic pass. No errors.

Good.

5 AM. I moved onto the next segment—Maine’s subdermal weave. Arasaka and Zetatech both had “maintenance packets” running in the background, sniffing out foreign firmware and subtly tweaking resistances, making non-native chrome feel heavier, slower. A deliberate desync. Death by a thousand micro-lags.

“Lazy,” I muttered, deleting the entire process chain.

Another efficiency test. I ran the numbers.

And my jaw clenched. What the fuck is this?

Some corpo dickhead had left a memory buffer hanging open, hemorrhaging processing power into dead cycles. Not even sabotage—just bad coding. Waste. The kind of thing that added up over time, slowing everything down by imperceptible fractions.

I rewrote the routine from scratch, cutting out the bloat, optimizing the calls.

New test.

CPU load dropped by 27%.

I exhaled.

They made chrome that ran worse by design. And no one cared, because the end result kept people on corpo-approved hardware. If your shit ran like garbage, they wanted you to blame yourself.

Not tonight.

Tonight, I was burning every wasted cycle to the fucking ground.

The little sleep I caught was only to ensure that my mind was present enough to continue coding. I knew it would shoot my reflexes to hell, but I wasn’t planning on doing anything physical for the next few days anyway, and sleep was just a distraction. The sooner I got this working for Maine, the fucking better.

Hopefully, by Monday, we would get entirely started on hollowing out Tanaka’s private drives for Faraday, and then I could get started on Katsuo.

Pretty late in the morning, Lucy found me—still hunched over my terminal, empty wrappers of various snacks and junk food scattered around my keyboard, speakers now blaring ‘Chippin’ In’. I enjoyed the irony, and the energy from the music and the corpo-processed sugar was what I’d needed to keep my pacing.

“Did you get any sleep?” Lucy asked groggily, yawning somewhere behind me.

“Yeah,” I said, eyeing the little clock widget on the corner of the computer terminal. It was almost 8 AM. Sloppy. Lucy should keep a better schedule than that.

Suddenly, I received a text message from Katsuo.

I’ll have you know I’ve already informed the NCPD that you have the motive to kill me. So if you even come close to my fucking property, they’ll come down on you like the fist of fucking God, you hear me? Stay the fuck away from me, you gutter trash!

I dismissed the message. Didn’t matter. Once his dad was out of the picture, no one who cared, no one who had any real pull would be left to throw the kind of money at the pigs it took to make them do their fucking jobs. His mom wasn’t Arasaka—I’d done my homework.

“How far have you gotten?” Lucy hovered over my shoulder, getting into my space. She smelled sweet—like she had just showered.

“Almost done,” I said as I typed away, doing it old school. I had racked up a bit too much Critical Progress for comfort: a full 50% in fact. That was just from using the Sandy while mentally typing.

“With your part?”

“With all our parts,” I said.

Lucy leaned in closer, “The fuck? What do you mean ‘all our parts’?”

“I’m done with fixing all the sabotage,” I said, “Right now I’m just fixing the shit code besides that.”

Lucy stiffened beside me, but I was too tired and irritated to care, or even look at her. “It’s crazy that these guys were allowed to even get these jobs to begin with,” I scoffed, eyes still flickering over the screen as I sniffed out another pattern of some shit-for-brain’s rank goddamn incompetence. “You’d think the corpo jackass who got the job to program all the firmware’s punishments for brand disloyalty would be halfway decent at writing good code when it fucking matters. And these are some high-end parts too,” I gestured disdainfully at the screen. “Maine’s got some really top pieces of chrome that really shouldn’t be this badly coded. Pieces I’d expect corpo huscle to have.”

I was getting deep into this coding job, I was perfectly aware. But too deep? No. True, I usually have just stopped at just fixing the firmware sabotage, but all this shit code was also a contributor for Maine’s neural strain and thus potential cyberpsychosis. Therefore, cleaning up the baseline code had to be done too.

But there was even more to this, wasn’t there?

While there was value in ensuring modularity for each piece of cyberware—having a way for them to connect and synergize was several times more neurally efficient, almost by an order of magnitude. Of course, I couldn’t hard-code the connection, or the next time Maine dechromed or chipped in, the whole network would fall apart and very likely kill him. But I could design a dynamic interface layer—something lightweight, self-adapting. A middleware that sat between all his chrome, smoothing out the inefficiencies and letting different systems talk to each other without stepping on toes.

“Lucy, I’ve got an idea,” I said, “pull up a chair and I’ll show you.” She hurried to do just that. “The main problem,” I said, pulling up the schematics, “besides the straight-up sabotage, is that every corp’s got their own proprietary protocols—different data formats, encryption layers, all that bullshit. They don’t want their cyberware to play nice with others.”

Lucy scooted her chair closer, peering at the code. “Yeah, no surprise there. So what’s your fix?”

“I’m thinking a universal handshake protocol, better than the SCOP they’re already peddling.” I started typing, the screen filling with fresh lines of code. “Something lightweight, modular. It’d recognize and map new implants on the fly—no hardcoding, no brittle dependencies. If Maine swaps out a part, the system adapts instead of frying his brain.”

She hummed, watching my hands move. “Smart. That way, each piece only needs to understand one language instead of every other brand’s garbage. How do you handle power draw?”

“Already on it,” I said, switching to another function. “Some of his chrome is guzzling juice like an AV, while others are running on a trickle because they assume they’re in a corpo-approved loadout. I’m balancing the flow—adjusting distribution dynamically so no piece gets over- or underpowered.”

Lucy leaned in, scrolling through my work. “Okay, but latency’s still a problem, right? Different brands, different refresh rates, different processing speeds…”

“Exactly,” I said. She was catching on fast. “So I’m writing a predictive sync algorithm. It’ll smooth out micro-adjustments in real time. No more lag spikes, no more misfires.”

She tapped the screen. “You’re overcompensating here. If you buffer too much, he’ll feel like his limbs are lagging.”

I frowned, scanning the code again. “Good catch. I’ll tighten the margins.” I adjusted the parameters, trimming the fat. The lack of sleep had definitely fucking gotten to me for me to slip up in such a way. Embarrassing, really. How much other stuff had I let go? I’d have to check with Lucy for sure.

Then I started building. Lucy watched, sitting quietly as I typed away, realizing my plans. Occasionally, she’d ask questions, and I’d do my best to explain without throwing off my train of thought.

Finally, after I was done, I ran a test.

Power efficiency up 59%. Neural load down 62%.

Lucy let out a low whistle. “Damn.”

I leaned back, rubbing my eyes. “Yeah.”

Now, I could officially say that I was too deep in this gig. I'd already completed it, completed the code-fix.

But this wasn't a fix anymore.

It was a complete game-changer.

With this, Maine wouldn't just be running on better software that simply wasn't designed to fuck him over for picking and mixing—he'd be running on something no corp would ever allow some unaligned merc to run around with. Something that could perhaps rival their own in-house products.

He'd be running on the shit that ensured that the megacorps of today had unchecked military superiority.

How far could we take this?

No. Wrong question. I blinked away some of my exhaustion, grit my teeth for a moment, and remembered my mission, which brought to mind an even more important question:

How low could I take this?

Because if I could execute on these principles of software, but in reverse, I was pretty sure I now had just the thing to use against Katsuo—

And put an end to his entire sorry chapter in my life.

000

Kiwi couldn’t believe her eyes. All the diagnostics she ran, all the tests, came back with stellarly positive results.

From the jump, she had never assumed that between the three Netrunners, their best efforts would ever amount to even a twenty-percent reduction in neural strain, after weeks of hard work at that.

But the numbers didn’t lie, no matter how many times she ran them. Eventually she just found herself staring at the screen, trying to process the implications.

“Well?” Maine asked. He and his mainline Dorio were hovering behind her, obnoxiously staring at the screen as though they even understood what the fuck any of it meant.

David was further behind, sitting on a couch, arms folded, staring into space with an intense expression of ill-contained anger. Yesterday’s tussle still weighed on him, that was for sure. Even after all that work, too.

Fuck, had the kid even slept? She had found both him and Lucy working away when she had woken up at nine, only to find that not only were they done with what they had initially set out to do—they had gone above and beyond to boot.

He had gone above and beyond. Kiwi had quizzed them on what the fuck she was looking at, only for David to answer most of her questions without missing a beat. And every time she turned the code around, she found no problems or blemishes—not even with the tests or diagnostics that she had designed.

“We’re done,” Kiwi muttered. “It works.”

Too well. Too fucking well.

Frighteningly well.

93.4% down on neural load from baseline.

93.4%.

She didn’t like it. The results were too good. And the code—it looked unholy. Like literal magic. Parts of it had even been written in assembly, which was—what the fuck? Who even learned how to code in that archean syntax in this day and age? You couldn’t even get lower-level, closer to the language of the actual silicon. Looking at it all destroyed her conception of limits, but in a way that didn’t really illuminate her either. Instead, all it made her fixate on was her own downright lacking acumen.

Kiwi had worked with many so-called ‘geniuses’ and ‘prodigies’ over the last twenty years. She’d even been called one herself. Often. This was something else. There was—something deeply fucking wrong with David. Was his brain part AI or something? Was he a flesh-suit for some horror from beyond the Blackwall? What else could explain this?

“That was quick,” Maine muttered.

“Is it good work?” Dorio asked, looking a touch worried. And in Dorio’s eyes, Kiwi saw only a future of death.

If Kiwi still had a proper jaw, she would have been gnashing her teeth. Yes, the fucking thing worked. It worked so well in fact that Maine would probably do something ridiculous like tempting fate and going full borg, chroming up until there was nothing left of him—and then he’d go cyberpsycho anyway, because nothing could stop an actively using chrome addict from chasing death, aside from no longer using.

And he’d never stop using.

How many years had David bought him?

Months, more likely. Maybe weeks.

Kiwi stood up from her chair so fast that it rolled back all the way to the table near the couches, and then she whirled to face Dorio. “You wanna know how good this work is? I fucking quit—that’s how good.”

“What the fuck?” Maine asked, shocked.

Lucy had just returned from Kiwi’s kitchen with a bottle of liquor, only for her to freeze and stare at Kiwi in shock. Even David looked surprised—and slightly outraged.

“Let’s get this soft inside you quick,” Kiwi said coldly, “Then I wanna make a clean break, Maine.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Lucy asked, shocked, “Kiwi, you can’t just quit.”

Kiwi glared daggers at her erstwhile mentee—another overpowered little prodigy, but at least this one was actually human. “You gonna stop me?”

“Kiwi,” Dorio looked concerned, “Talk to me, girl. What’s the matter?”

Kiwi inhaled deeply, “This stuff is gonna reduce Maine’s neural load by ninety-three, point four, percent,” she looked at Maine seriously, emphasizing every syllable, “That means you get a blank slate. You’ll feel like you’re in meat again.”

“No way,” Maine growled, “Quit bullshitting.”

“It’s not bullshit,” Kiwi said, “And you have those two to thank for it,” Kiwi gestured behind them, to where David and Lucy were. David huffed and looked away. Lucy snarled. Kiwi glared back for a moment with all her ire. Lucy, that idiot little girl, was only nineteen. She had no idea what she was really working with. Kiwi scoffed contemptuously before turning back to her ‘leader.’

“You can do whatever you want with your life now, Maine. You can let this trick you into thinking that chroming up any more is safe—because yeah, up to a point, it would be. But I won’t be there to see you when you inevitably break. They can babysit you, but I’m done.”

Maine looked lost for a moment, just for a passing breath as he searched her eyes, her dead-set expression. But then his bafflement turned to anger before flickering to sadness, and finally, resignation. His fists clenched. “Fine. But I’m getting that soft installed, Kiwi.”

Somehow, her outburst had only emboldened him. Of course it would have. That was how Maine responded to risk—by doubling down. Always, doubling down.

Kiwi wondered if she had made the right decision getting out now rather than later, while Maine was still in the upswing of his career as he continued to chip in and get stronger and stronger and stronger. The millions she could make playing with the big leagues while Maine slowly killed himself made her hunger.

But she knew that there was no easy way to cash in her chips once she got started on a winning streak. No easy way to get off that stock bubble before it popped. Always, there’d be a part of her whispering for her to stay, to make more, to keep playing around while the ticking fucking nuke next to her got more and more unhinged.

Getting out now—that would be the wisest thing she ever fucking did in her life. Maine was a ticking time bomb. David was just a monster. Too dangerous to live. The moment a corpo found out even half of what she had—

Her thoughts stopped. Hm. There were… profitable possibilities there.

“And I’m giving you a week to think about this,” Maine said gruffly. “Let’s get started already.”

000

Maine closed his eyes after his three Netrunners were finished plugging cables into his chrome, every access port now exposed to them. Usually, he’d have done this at his ripper’s, but that guy’s place was hardly any cleaner, really. And this way, he’d save some edds.

The moment they got started, he blacked out.

And then came to a moment later in his dreams, feeling like everything was somehow right with the world.

Light. That was the first word that popped into his mind when thinking about how he currently felt. Light.

His Kiroshi Optics booted up—they didn’t include the giant logo in the start-up screen for some reason—and he finally saw the room. He was sitting on one of Kiwi’s Netrunner chairs—a spare that could handle Maine’s weight. One by one, the three Runners were pulling out the cables, and metal panels slid over the access ports on his chrome one by one.

He could feel the strange movements of the panels—the inhumanity of it—, but they didn’t bother him for some reason. At all.

“How do you feel?” Kiwi asked, her tone cold.

Maine moved his right arm once all the cables were off, and curled his fingers. Seamless movement. Smooth joint-action. And the arm felt like it was his in a way that it hadn’t before. His mind knew where the limb was, with crystal clarity. The imagined location of the limb, and the actual location was one to one—with zero margin of error. It was shocking that his hand wasn’t meat.

Neither of his hands. Or his feet. His feet!

Everything felt smooth as an oil slick. He no longer had to force his mind to sync with his chrome. Like it was all pre-synced.

It was like he could finally relax a muscle that was always straining. It was almost heaven.

Dorio gave Maine a hand, and he took it—and felt her touch, her warmth, through the receptors. His hands didn’t have the soft give of finger paddings. His Realskinn didn’t cover his hands at all, leaving them bare and metallic. Yet, every surface exposed to Dorio’s touch felt alive. He could feel her.

And in that moment, all he wanted to do was feel her. For hours and hours.

Maine cracked the widest grin he could, “Aw yeah, baby. We need to get our asses home and get busy.”

Dorio’s eyes widened and she smiled, slightly bemused. “I thought you’d be chipping in the Sandy and Chrome Compressor first thing?”

“That shit can wait, I’m—”

“Pay up,” Kiwi muttered. Maine felt a stab of irritation at the uppity bitch for interrupting his moment. His anger evaporated almost as soon as it arrived when he sensed the rest of his body, how right it all felt.

He shot the bitch her cash, and made sure to do the same to Lucy and David. As he got up, he wrapped his arms around Dorio.

Then he kissed her.

It felt like the first time.

000

Lunacy: Kiwi’s hexed. What the hell is her problem? Why would she just quit like that?

Lucy rode behind me on my bike as I drove her sedately to her house. After that, I’d head to Pilar and Rebecca’s—for my tech rifle, and for Masamune. After the party, Rebecca had stolen the former and Pilar had taken the latter for honing.

Once that was over, I’d do some gigs with Reyes to calm the nerves.

Lunacy: Not gonna answer? What, you don’t give a shit?

I growled.

D: Kiwi’s a shit teacher and a mid coder. I don’t give a shit where she goes.

Lunacy: Stop the fucking bike. Right-right now!

God fucking—whatever. I pulled up on some sidewalk in Japantown. Lucy got off from the bike and—walked away.

What the fuck was this now?

D: Lucy—

She cut the call.

“Lucy!” I shouted after her. She kept walking. I put the bike on park mode and jogged after her, “What the fuck am I supposed to think, here? Leaving us out to dry for fucking nothing? Because, what, we’re better than her? What the hell was I supposed to do? If she can’t handle that we’re better than her, then why would we care?”

She turned on her heels and threw her open hand at my face.

I caught it by the wrist. She snarled and pulled her hand back.

“You’re a fucking asshole, D,” she said.

“SO ARE YOU!” I roared.

A few passers-by turned and gave me some odd looks, but no one stopped. Lucy’s eyes widened.

“So are you,” I repeated, “You’re a fucking asshole too, Lucy. But what you don’t do is leave on that account.” I sighed, “Take it from me, okay? I left once too, thinking it’d be better for all of you. When I left, I wanted to die. I had nothing. No one. And I regret it. I regret it bad. I won’t ever abandon any of you again. Not in this life. No matter what happens. I won’t quit like Kiwi did, I won’t forget everything we ever did because things got inconvenient. Whether I’m down there in the dirt or in front of a terminal—or any other fucking thing—I’ll be there,” I snarled at her, “So you be there too, alright?!”

Rather than wait for a response, I whirled on my feet to walk back to my bike before some dipshit boosted it.

I felt Lucy’s hand wrap around my wrist and stopped. I turned my head to look at her. She finally spoke.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said. “Not anytime soon at least.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. Good. Good news. I nodded. She let go of my wrist and instead followed me as we went back to the bike. She hopped on the back and I got on the driver’s seat.

As I pulled away from the curb and drove off, Lucy called. Only way we could talk at the speeds I was driving at.

Lunacy: Where are you headed after dropping me off?

D: Pilar and Rebecca. Getting my stuff looked at.

Lunacy: Don’t mind if I tag along?

I shrugged my shoulders, tamping down on my slight excitement.

D: Sure.

000

“That’s fucking crazy,” Pilar muttered as he took a long drag from his cigarette, “Fuckin’ all of it. The chrome, fixin’ it all, and now Kiwi’s bailing? Fucking Kiwi? She’s an OG, been with us since the start! Shit is fucked up.”

Pilar sat on his chair, back turned from his work desk where he was working on a katana—mine, most likely. Around us, Lucy, Rebecca and I stood, Lucy having delivered the news.

“She’s not leaving,” Lucy said, “Maine gave her a week. She’ll come to her senses soon enough.”

Pilar groaned, dragging a hand down his face, “Fucking shit, man. Everything’s crazy. Should pay Maine a visit, see if he’s as good as you say. One thing’s for sure, though. Sure as fucking shit in the sewers at least: we’ve got some gigs coming our way. Serious gigs.” I clenched my fists in excitement. Just fucking bring it.

“Well, shit, D!” Rebecca said, looking up at me in awe, “And you too, Ice Queen! Next time I chip in, you wouldn’t mind takin’ a look, would you?”

“Not if you’re going overboard,” I frowned, “Seriously, Rebecca. I’m not playing.”

“We’re not here to enable chrome junkies,” Lucy said coldly.

“Fine! Jesus Christ—never said I was going overboard, was I?” Rebecca rolled her eyes. Then she gave me a pout, “And I told you to call me Becca, didn’t I?”

I sighed, “Alright, then. Where’s my tech rifle, Becca?”

“First things first!” Pilar announced, swiveling on his chair to face the sword. “Your Masamune—sword edition! I got some fun materials I kept on hold ever since you cut me in on that Apogee klep and boy was I glad to get a shot at using ‘em” Pilar’s eyes were gleaming. “Sword’s a beaut, right? Look at her, at all that metal! All made from a single piece of armor cladding salvaged from the hull of a Weapon-class spacecraft, cold-forged and grinded down with synth-diamonds to keep the alloy’s internal crystallinity all preem. Did you hear that right? Weapon. Class. Spacecraft. Those things don’t even officially exist!”

Pilar wildly gestured at the sword, as though even he was struggling for words, “So it’s got the best of both worlds in terms of hardness and flexibility—that means this baby’s now packing some serious edge retention. You won’t find a better blade this side of Japan actual, I’d bet a thousand eddies!”

I scoff-snorted. A thousand? Cheapskate. Still, I looked at the rest of the design: the tsuba—yellow in color—was circular, with a star pattern of cross frames inside, and the hilt was bound in white cloth, arranged to only reveal a vertical pattern of yellow diamonds—the bare guard. As for the blade itself, it was as black as tar, nothing like normal steel, and was somewhat thicker than normal for a sword—but with a single-bladed cutting side that narrowed to a molecular edge, if Pilar wasn’t shitting me.

“The tang’s full, in case you were wondering,” Pilar was practically dancing, “And all in all, this bad baby weighs a cool three kilos. A little heavy for a katana, definitely, but nothing a little chrome wouldn’t fix—and in exchange, you get pure cutting power. Brother, I’m talking cuts that rip clean through armored vehicles. Let alone borgs.”

“No shit?” I asked, reaching for the handle and pulling it out of the crafting mounting to get a closer look. Yep, the weight was substantially higher compared to the last version, but it was nothing I couldn’t easily handle.

I did an experimental cut in the air.

“Watch where you swing that!” Pilar yelped, scooting away rapidly as I swung a healthy distance away from him. Was he doing that for my benefit, to sell me on the new sword’s sharpness? Not like it mattered anyway—never look a gift horse in the mouth, whatever the actual fuck that meant.

I swished the sword some more in the air, appreciating the bell-clean sing of a sound it made as it cut through the air. Something too fine to be called a whistle. Anyway, point is, I was getting this for free. No need to be a bitch, Pilar.

“Feels nice,” I said, “Is it all ready to take home?”

“Yeah, pretty much,” he bent over under his desk, rummaged through the trash, and found a long stick which he tossed at me carelessly. I grabbed it—not a stick, but the scabbard. It was painted a high-vis white.

“Appreciate the colors, Pilar. Thanks, choom,” I muttered, sheathing the blade and resting it over my shoulder. “But…”

“What?” Pilar asked, with a tone of affront. “The fuck’s the problem?”

I shrugged, “Masamune doesn’t work for me. As a name.”

It had always been just a placeholder. A generic name to give to a good sword. But a weapon like this deserved a more personal appellation. I thought for a moment.

Whenever I thought of such personal stuff, my mind would inevitably wander back to mom’s face. Her red hair. The ruby implants on her cheekbone.

The encouraging glint in her eyes, and the smile that I hated—for being so full of lies, chief among them the lie that everything was going to be alright.

Less of a lie, though… more of a comfort. And comforts didn’t have to be true. That’s why people believed in god after all.

“Eikō,” I said.

“The fuck that mean?” Pilar asked.

“It means Glory,” I said, looking the scabbard over. “I guess, in a way, that’s what I’ve always been looking for. Nothing’s changed on that account.”

“Whatever floats your boat, nerd,” Pilar said.

Lucy scoffed, “You’re the one that named it Masamune, no?”

“And who the fuck are you calling a nerd, anyway?!” Rebecca yelled shrilly, “You’re a goddamn NCU grad—”

Pilar moved first, pulling a gun from his desk to aim at Rebecca—who had already made her move, aiming her own pistol at his face.

Jesus Christ.

“I got it first, big bro,” Rebecca intoned evenly, “You fucking know I got it first.”

Pilar sagged in defeat as he put the gun back on the desk, “Yeah, yeah, fuck off you pale shortstack bitch, don’t ever ask me for money again. Trying to air out my dirty laundry in front of guests? Who the fuck do you—”

I cleared my throat loudly.

“—think you are anyway, you Mox-fucking braindead amoeba—”

“You think you’re any better, you Strom-sucking shit-metal listening SCOP-for-brains—”

“GUYS!” I roared. They both finally shut the fuck up and turned to me, “Let’s pin that until I’m out of here. For fuck’s sakes.” Jesus Christ. I turned to Becca, and reached out my hand in a ‘gimme’ motion. “The tech rifle. Now.”

“Now?” Pilar whined, “It’s Achilles-class, man. Achilles. Class. Do you know how rare—” his eyes lit up. “Hol’ up. Got an idea. About that tech rifle—wanna trade it in for—”

“Now,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “Worked pretty hard for it. I want it back.”

“Shit,” Pilar muttered, hanging his head.

“But I’ll give you edds for other stuff,” I said, “You got a tech pistol or something? Something small that can still blow a hole through a borg. Never been much of a volume guy, honestly. I’d rather have something more decisive.”

“Becs,” Pilar groaned, still looking at my tech rifle sadly, “You got some Buryas lying around in the back, don’t you?”

Becca snorted, “You want me to give him trash?”

I looked at Pilar in annoyance.

“The fuck did I do?!” Pilar yelled plaintively as he took in my look, “You said decisive and small and you’re not much of a volume guy! Fair! Fucking fair! The Burya holds four bullets, it’s small as far as handguns go, and can blow a hole through a borg easy! Is it light? Reasonable for a non-borg to use? Subtle? All good questions! But what it can do is blow through shit!”

“Yeah, when it doesn’t break the arm of whoever shoots it!” Rebecca complained, “And David’s mostly ‘ganic!”

“I’ll take it,” I said immediately. This was exactly what I was looking for.

000

Pilar led the way, weaving through the cramped corridors of their place—barely more than a glorified bunker stacked high with parts, weapons, and whatever loot they hadn’t offloaded yet. The armory was in the back, behind a reinforced door that looked like it had seen its fair share of break-in attempts.

"Welcome to our humble arsenal," Pilar announced grandly, throwing the door open.

Inside, racks lined the walls, packed with guns of all calibers and origins. Old Militech rifles sat next to Kang Tao pulse carbines. A wall of handguns gleamed under the flickering fluorescent light, from standard iron to the kind of high-powered iron that could punch through AV hulls. The air smelled like oil, ozone, and gunpowder—homey, in its own way.

Rebecca sauntered in, kicking over a box of mags as she went. “I really need to clean this place up, holy shit. Never expected visitors, though.”

Pilar snorted, already digging through a crate labeled “Old World Bangers.” He pulled out something dusty: it looked like a brick of steel, ugly, heavy-looking, and unmistakably Soviet in design.

“Glory to the progress of Soviet Socialist science!” he declared, dusting it off then holding it up like it was some lost relic of a bygone era. Which I supposed it was.

Nanny gave me the thing’s specifics. The Techtronika RT-46 Burya—this one was matte black with thick plating and a revolver-style cylinder, with a massive bore practically daring you to test its stopping power.

I reached out, and he dropped it into my hand. Heavy as hell. Had to be, what, ten kilos? Fifteen? Hard to tell nowadays, what with my newfound strength.

“This bad boy was Techtronika’s attempt to make a hand cannon for the common soldier. Big mistake! Thing kicks like a pissed-off cyberpsycho, the weight and recoil is way above what a ‘ganic soldier can handle. Half the people who fired it ended up with shattered wrists! They had to cancel their production line after only a few months.”

Rebecca snorted. “Yeah, ‘cept nowadays, all that Soviet steel means it’s still around, while half the shit corpos make today fries itself in a month.”

Pilar nodded, happily explaining. “Yep, the Burya handcannons are practically immortal—with the mass production standards they had back in the day, the thing would eat modern garbage for breakfast. They don’t even make guns like this anymore, except for the best of the best corpo huscle.”

I turned the gun over in my hand, getting a feel for it. Something caught my attention on the side of the barrel—someone had engraved some tiny Russian characters into the steel, which, after a quick consult with Nanny apparently translated as: for the indestructible union of free republics.

Interesting. This pistol had history. As for the thing’s stopping power, it had a four-round drum, electromagnetic rails running along the barrel—definitely not some everyday peashooter. I scanned it and my eyes immediately widened at seeing the power this thing could output.

That was fucking insane. How many dozens of mach could this thing launch a round?

Lucy, who’d been quiet up to this point, finally spoke. “It’s excessive.”

“That’s the point,” Pilar grinned.

Lucy gave me a look, but I just ran my thumb against the drum. “Guess we’ll find out.”

000

The four of us stood in a back lot of their bunker, a makeshift range with some old car doors, thick slabs of scrap metal, and a few unfortunate mannequins set up as targets.

I squared up, feeling the weight of the Burya in my grip. Rebecca leaned on Pilar’s hip, both of them grinning like they were about to watch something hilarious. Lucy stood beside me, arms crossed, impassive as ever.

I took a breath. Lined up the shot.

Thought of Katsuo.

Pulled the trigger, held it—until finally, the gun fully charged. Then I released.

The gun roared—not fired, not discharged, but roared, the electromagnetic rails sending the bullet screaming downrange. The kick blasted through my whole body, rattling my teeth, my shoulders slamming backward as my feet dug into the ground. My whole goddamn skeleton felt like it had just gotten jolted by a power surge.

But I was still standing.

The target? A mannequin reinforced with steel plating?

Blown in half.

All the tension in my body released in an instant, and I felt a full-body sense of relaxation, for the first time since yesterday’s massacre.

Maybe I’d pass on the solo gigs after all. I could do this all day.

“WOO! THAT’S WHAT I’M TALKIN’ ABOUT!” Pilar howled, clapping like a lunatic.

Rebecca cackled, slapping me on the back hard enough to jolt my already-sore bones. “Holy shit, D, you didn’t even fall on your ass!”

I exhaled slowly, flexing my fingers, making sure nothing was broken. The aftershock still hummed in my bones, but I was fine.

Lucy, watching, nodded slightly. “Not bad.”

Pilar waggled his brows. “Wanna go again?”

I cracked my neck, reloading the cylinder. Charged to full. Then I fired.

Again.

And then one last time.

My radius—one of the two bones in my forearm—snapped audibly. Fuck, that smarted.

I turned to Pilar and gave him an impassive expression and a nod, “How much?”

“The fuck was that sound?” Pilar asked, “Did you just break a bone or something?”

“Yeah.”

“What, it doesn’t hurt?”

I activated the Sandevistan. Nanny healed it instantly—hopefully, that would give her useful data. My Critical Progress didn’t move at all from where it had been earlier—in fact, it was now down to 42%.

“How much will you take?” I asked.

“From you? Twelve grand.”

Was that cheap or expensive? You know what? Fuck it.

“Yeah, sur—”

“Five grand,” Becca said, snapping her fingers, “Eyes down here, big guy. It’s my gun,” I looked down at her, “It’s a fucking monster, but I can’t fucking use it, so it’s yours for how much I got it for. That alright?”

“Two grand, and he’ll take it,” Lucy said. The fuck?

“What the fuck are you butting in for?”

“He’s not gonna haggle—gonk that he is—and I’m bored. So yeah. Two grand. Best he can do.”

Not true, but—

“Fuck off, Ice Queen—he could easily do forty-five hundred. That ain’t even a bad deal! This one’s got history, too! Look at the engraving on it! I think it’s modded!”

On and on it went.

I turned to Pilar, “Also need an SMG—small, light, but rapid fire. Needs to pack a punch, but I’m also looking for volume on that. Got any suggestions?”

Pilar’s face lit up like a Christmas tree.

000

Neon lights rippled across the runway like spilled gasoline, gliding over the silhouettes of the models striding down the stage. Gold-threaded kimonos and sequin-infested boas shimmered under the neon lights of the ceiling, the fashion house alive with the murmurs of corpo elites and celebrities alike, all gathered to witness the bleeding edge of fashion. The sweet scent of sakura incense mingled with the more acrid scent of chems being used a few booths over, but Jing Fei barely noticed.

She sat beside Katsuo in their private booth—right where the runway ended—, her hands resting in her lap, fingers knotted together so tightly they ached. She was supposed to be relaxed, smiling, draping herself against his arm like the good fiancée she was meant to be. Instead, she felt like she was suffocating beneath the weight of her own silence.

David’s words still rang in her head, looping like a glitched out music chip.

"Katsuo sent some goons to have me killed."

Despite everything she knew of Katsuo, most of her had believed David instantly. The tone of his voice from the call—the lack of energy throughout their conversation—was a clear marker that something was wrong. At first, she had been angry that he would ask about Katsuo. Afraid that her trust was being abused. Afraid that David would just prove to be another corpo fuckboy who didn’t care who he used. But those words…

A part of her remained stubbornly disbelieving—probably the part that immediately sought to cut the call and remove herself from a situation she was ill-equipped to handle, whether or not David was telling the truth. Inevitably, she had to eventually see Katsuo, and truly face the truth—that the man beside her, the one tracing idle circles against the table with his chrome index finger, had definitely tried to kill someone she…

She swallowed hard. Her pulse stuttered when she risked a glance at Katsuo.

He had been strange all evening, even by his standards. Smiling too much, too widely. Laughing at nothing. And now, that finger of his, still idly tracing on the table, moving faster, pressing harder, as if carving something into the lacquered surface. He hadn't said much since they sat down, just little comments here and there about the designs, but there was something about the way he held himself—rigid yet brimming with energy, like a tripwire waiting to snap.

Then, without warning, he exhaled sharply, flexed his hand, and slammed his fist onto the table. The wine glasses rattled. A few heads turned in their direction.

Jing Fei barely kept herself from flinching.

The catwalking model—wearing a bold get-up of white and yellow that reminded her of a certain someone—barely paid the outburst any mind at all as she showed off her apparel and turned around to walk back behind the stage.

Jing Fei idly wondered if the model had reminded Katsuo of David as well.

"Ugly," Katsuo muttered under his breath, voice barely audible over the music swelling from the runway. "Tacky. Garbage. I swear, Japantown is rotting from the inside out."

She forced a smile, hoping no one had heard him. "I think it's… unique," she offered, trying to keep her voice even.

Katsuo turned to her slowly, his smile creeping back, but his eyes—flat and hungry, like a shark scenting blood—told her the truth.

"You always were too soft, Fei," he murmured, reaching out to tuck a strand of her seafoam-green hair behind her ear. His fingers lingered against her cheek, a parody of affection, and she had to fight the urge to lean away. "You think too much of people."

She felt her stomach churn.

Because he was right. She did think too much of people. And one of them was David.

Did he know? Was that why he’d go so far? To end someone’s life over—what? Because she was cheating on him?

“What do you mean by that?” Jing Fei asked.

He scowled at her, “What do you mean, what do I mean? Wasn’t I being clear?” He scoffed, “You don’t know anything about what it takes to survive, Fei. You’re soft.”

Jing Fei forcefully tamped down on her outrage. She wanted nothing more than to unload the sum total of all her grievances at that very moment, but that could prove a deadly blunder in this corpo chess game. David was living proof of where the stakes now lay.

“Have I done something wrong?” Jing Fei asked.

He snorted, then grinned, “Why are you asking me that? What—was I being too harsh just now? Like I said! You’re too soft!”

She tried not to squirm as his expressions shifted, from annoyance, to confusion, to anger, then to amusement. She didn’t know which was worse—or at what point he would snap. His hand shook. No, that hand was vibrating. What the hell?

“Talk to me, please,” Jing Fei said. At this point, she’d rather he tell her that he knew she was cheating—it was far and away a better position to be in than this. Having to wonder at when his next outburst would be.

But what she definitely wouldn’t do was assume that he already knew. Something about his attitude dissuaded her slightly of that notion.

But that begged the question—why would he put a hit out on David, a classmate? Moreover, a classmate who had his cousin’s favor, and someone who was already below him on the social hierarchy?

“I’m moving up in the world,” Katsuo said through gritted teeth, “Growing up. Learning to do what’s necessary.” He nodded, “Yeah,” he said, as if to comfort himself, “I’m not doing anything wrong. This is the way things have to be.”

“What way is that?” Jing Fei asked. Katsuo grabbed her hand and held it—so hard that it hurt. “Katsuo—!”

“With me at the top,” Katsuo said, “and all the rats scurrying on the ground, where they’re meant to be. On the ground. Not up here—not with me. On the fucking ground.”

“Katsuo!” She cried, looking down at her hand, biting through the snapping sounds.

What the fuck?

She bit down and activated her Pain Editor, and looked at Katsuo coldly. His eyes widened when he saw what he had done and he let go as though her hand was hot. It was numb—and slightly misshapen. She hid it under her healthy hand, and tamped down on the slight nausea at the fact that her body had been injured. Even beyond pain, that simple fact was disconcerting. And distracting.

She had to concentrate—she couldn’t afford distraction right now, not in front of him.

“I’ll pay for that,” he said, a touch of guilt weighing on his eyebrows. He looked at his vibrating hand, as though betrayed by it, “I’ll have to get a look at these hands, too—my hands, fuck,” he winced and cursed harshly.

“What the hell is going on with you, Katsuo?” Jing Fei’s voice was low, “If you don’t tell me, I will have a chat with your mother. She won’t ignore this, you know.”

He glared daggers at her, “It’s got nothing to do with you. I’m taking care of biz. You just sit back and let everything fall to your lap, you useless little girl. Don’t fucking question me.”

Useless little girl? She was the first daughter of QianT’s CEO, and no Arasaka employee, not even executives would dare talk to her this way if her family’s company hadn’t lost their experimental prototype. If only—

—And ‘taking care of biz?’ Killing his classmate. That’s what this gonk called it? Was he for real— ?

Jing Fei felt her composure slipping with every second, and she just… could not find it in herself to care.

“Don’t look at me like that. Why are you so upset anyway?” he growled, “The hand’s fucking ganic. Useless trash—you should have gotten rid of it ages ago.”

“And end up like you?” she raised an eyebrow, looking at his malfunctioning appendage. His eyes widened. She stood up angrily, “If you think I’m your fucking joytoy, Katsuo, you’re entirely mistaken. I do have rights, and options. I’m under no obligation to continue looking the other way when you physically and verbally assault me for no reason.”

“Fei,” Katsuo eyebrows furrowed in consternation and he gaped plaintively, “Please, it’s just—I’ve been under a lot of stress and…” he paused.

Jing Fei’s patience snapped just as the curtains on the stage closed—ending the first phase of the fashion show.

She walked away, broken hand shoved roughly inside her purse so that no one would see. She surreptitiously looked over her shoulder once on her way to anywhere else, and saw Katsuo still in his booth, head buried in his hands. Fucking gonk.

Clearly, she could rule out him knowing about her tryst—injury notwithstanding. He wouldn’t have apologized if that was the case.

This was about David, probably.

Jing Fei felt an urge to call him, see how he was doing—but that would be imprudent. Hasty. Reckless.

She did need to call someone—talk with someone. Not necessarily to rat on Katsuo. She just needed to vent. None of her ‘friends’ would understand, and though Katsuo’s mother was really friendly—all too friendly to have really birthed Katsuo, which did beg a certain question—, Jing Fei didn’t feel like talking to her either. She was too zen—wouldn’t be cathartic to bitch with her.

Her walk took her into the dance floor in another section of the fashion house—steadily filling up after the intermission had been called—, and from there, her destination became simple—she’d head to the bar. Then to a bioclinic to get her hand taken care of. A break like this wouldn’t be hard to heal, but getting the platinum package for an overnight full heal would tip her over her monthly allowance. Katsuo was so going to foot the bill for that.

Once she reached the bar, she just put her order on the Net and settled on calling the one person she thought would put up with her desire to let off some steam—her brother.

He picked up on the second ring, as usual.

Qi: Yeah?

Fei-Fei: The hell do you mean ‘yeah?’ What a gonk way to start a conversation

Qi: For a gonk-ass princess like you, I figured it’d do just fine. Something the matter, your majesty?

Fei-Fei: Screw off—you’re the one who’s actually inheriting something here. That makes you the prince, doesn’t it?

Qi: Still fits—or did you really think princesses inherited shit way back when? Unless they were specifically sent to marry and then kill foreign royalty. That your plan?

Jing Fei glowered—the nerve of this absolute dork.

Fei-Fei: Way to rub it in my face.

Qi: Way I see it, I just gave you a plan.

Marry and then kill Katsuo?

Well, now that she considered it closer, it was a fun fantasy to indulge in.

Qi: *Sigh*, What did he do?

Jing Fei frowned. How had he suddenly assumed that?

Fei-Fei: Nothing you need to concern yourself about. Things are going great-great on my end.

Qi: When your signal stutters, it’s usually because you’re lying.

Fei-Fei: That-that’s a fucking myth and you know it.

Qi: Yeah, sure. Keep not listening to me. Your big brother—the only one in this city who's got your back. Don’t worry, I can handle it.

Fei-Fei: That’s why I don’t listen—because you’re so good at taking your lumps.

Qi: Doesn’t mean you have to take yours, you know. I already told you to stop seeing that rat fuck, didn’t I? I’ve got things handled.

Fei-Fei: But dad said—

Qi: Forget dad. I’m serious, Fei-Fei—forget him. He’s off his meds. This set-up is fucking crazy. No one sane is gonna go for it after granddad kicks it. ‘Saka wants money, we can pay money—but you’re not money, Fei-Fei.

Her drink finally arrived—a gin and tonic that glowed blue under the bar’s blacklight. She took a sip with her uninjured hand while replying.

Fei-Fei: You’re forgetting the set-up is also enforced not just by granddad, but by Kang Tao, who wants to smear dad’s face in shit after his fuck-up, and Arasaka isn’t exactly unhappy to play along if it means humiliating their rivals.

Qi: It ain’t right that this should all fall on your account—dad doesn’t own you. He doesn’t get to take insult at this, not when you’re the one going through it.

Jing Fei looked down at her drink forlornly. For some reason, she couldn’t help but resent her brother’s efforts. Well-meaning as he was, she felt like he’d only hurt himself in the end.

Fei-Fei: Wish I’d at least have had the choice to shop around a little—find a prep boy that actually caught my eye and wasn’t chosen for me.

Qi: …someone catch your eye, little sister?

She pictured an overconfident guy with a taper cut, excellent in bed, the only warmth she had felt in an ocean of cold steel. Jing Fei’s eyes widened and she blushed.

Fei-Fei: Nevermind that.

Qi: I’ll pick you up wherever you are and we can talk. Sounds good?

Fei-Fei: Not tonight. I’ll just be by myself.

She’d have taken him up on his offer if that gonk Katsuo hadn’t injured her. She’d rather not her brother have to deal with that—since men were categorically incapable of not putting their feelings front and center whenever a woman close to them was hurt.

As if they were the true injured party.

Her brother was better about such things than most men, and he wouldn’t really fly off the handle and do something regrettable if she let him know about the injury—but she’d rather he not go through that stress anyway. He was going through enough as it was.

She received an incoming call just then—from Katsuo.

Fei-Fei: *Sigh* I’ll call you back, alright?

Qi: Stay safe, okay? Love you.

Fei-Fei: Don’t make it gay, Qi.

Qi: You’re fucking crazy and I’ve had enough of you. Alright, bye.

She could feel amusement come through the line though. Once he hung up, she accepted Katsuo’s call.

Fei: What is it.

TonKatsu-Ramen: It’s David. David Martinez. A classmate of mine—the one that Jin’s taken a liking to. Remember him?

She blinked. He was going to tell her, then? Would it be wise to even listen? Wouldn’t she be… implicated somehow?

Fei: The one in the overly bright get-up?

TonKatsu-Ramen: That cretin, yes. My father—he’s had enough. He can no longer abide by the fact that Martinez stubbornly remains ahead in the class rankings. He bade me to take matters into my own hands. To… ensure my superiority.

Jing Fei’s eyes widened. She felt a sudden surge of revulsion from the pit of her stomach—enough to make her nauseous. That was it? That was the entire reason why David almost died? And was still actively in danger?

Fei: Oh.

TonKatsu-Ramen: You’re soft. I told you that already, didn’t I? You think I’m a monster, right? You think I chose this path, don’t you? If I’m a monster, then what about your parents? Or grandparents? You really think you’re better than me because you’ve never had to work for all the eddies you’re enjoying? Don’t give me those fucking eyes, Fei—I’m serving my family here.

Eyes? He couldn’t even see her! The comment made her look around, wondering if he had caught up to her somehow. She couldn’t find him. Meaning he was too much of a coward to approach her, and tell it to her face that all this was for, for…

A class position. That’s what this was for? He was securing a class position?

She looked at her gin and tonic, and the nausea redoubled. She definitely wouldn’t do any more drinking tonight.

No matter how she turned it around in her head, she couldn’t make sense of it—any of it. He was an executive’s son. Merit didn’t matter for someone like him. And no one looked at high school class rankings. Or hell, even NCU rankings. He had more connections in his pinkie toe than David had in total. His success wasn’t even up to chance—it was a guarantee.

Fei: So you’ve secured your position, then?

TonKatsu-Ramen: Not yet—that scumfucker got help somehow. No idea—never knew he had so many resources, but he clearly does. Getting rid of him won’t be easy.

Fei: Or necessary. He may have already gotten the picture. Shouldn’t you wait and see?

TonKatsu-Ramen: He means to kill me.

Fei furrowed her eyebrows. David?

Fei: How? And how do you know?

TonKatsu-Ramen: He told me to pray. He—he called me, then he told me that I should pray for my life! I’m in danger! No—but he won’t touch me-me, no not me. He can’t. He’s too weak. He can’t reach me. If that gutter rat even tries, he’ll be neck deep in Night City’s finest, no two ways about it.

Fei wracked her mind for advice or anything that would defuse this shitstorm.

Fei: Tell him it was just a warning shot, next time you meet. Whatever you did to try and kill him. Tell him you’re letting him off as long as he understands what you want from him. Okay? Why put yourself through all this dirty business anyway? I can understand the need to get rid of a rival, but this gutter rat isn’t worth your time or effort at all.

She desperately hoped that any of that had gotten through to him. He was clearly rattled—did he even want this, or was it his dad?

TonKatsu-Ramen: You think he’d go for it?

Fei: If you remain confident, yes.

Then to add surety, just for good measure:

Fei: And I’m willing to let go of what you did to me if you take this advice—really, this isn’t the move. Your father is wise, but too old-fashioned. And he’s not on the ground like you are. He doesn’t have the information that you have.

And no matter how much Katsuo tried, he would never gain his father’s favor. It was futile. All that boorish corpo would achieve was destroying every last shred of Katsuo’s conscience, and it would be for nothing anyway.

It was downright obvious to anyone with eyes though—Katsuo didn’t want this.

TonKatsu-Ramen: Excuse me, but I will have to make some calls.

Katsuo unceremoniously hung up, leaving Jing Fei in slight uncertainty. She could tell that she had swayed him—but for how long, she couldn’t say. She recalled the way his hands vibrated, the way he had lost control over his strength. He was erratic. Guilt? Drugs, maybe.

She should get on top of that somehow, find evidence that he was using—at the very least, it’d give her a free shot to switch fiancés. She’d take literally anyone else at this point—except for Jin. Even the age-inappropriate son of Arasaka’s marketing exec, who was twenty-eight.

She opened her contact list and stared at David’s name. She felt all too tempted to call him, but her own problems felt practically minuscule compared to what he was dealing with. What would she even say? Especially after she had so curtly cut the call the last time?

In the end, she left her gin and tonic half-drunk on the counter as she made a beeline towards the event’s exit, hailing a Delamain for her trip to a bioclinic.

Notes:

This chapter goes out to my bitchass former job and all those fake motherfuckers I worked with. Every meeting I had was agony--every feigned laugh, every attempt to give more of myself than I could conceivably give, every fuck I had to pretend I had left, making ME feel weird for refusing to put emotional stakes in the company's profitability--fuck y'all for that, you didn't pay me nearly enough to give a FUCK about what goes into another person's pockets. Go to hell. All of you. GO TO HEEEEELLL!!!!

Say it with me, now! Go to hell! Go to hell!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIfg-Ye0FVk

Special thanks go out to Coldbringer for beta-reading.

Discord link: https://discord.gg/W5BqBBym28

Chapter 38: Murder on my Mind

“Chrome Compressor!” Doc screamed at the top of his lungs, “And an Apogee Sandevistan, dead dog!” The Caribbean RipperDoc brought his face so close to the chrome that Maine had put on the table that he was liable to kiss them at this point.

Why the fuck he still stuck to this degenerate, Maine couldn’t quite answer. Loyalty, maybe. The guy had gotten him started after all. And he was the only one that would continue to work on him because he didn’t have all them ‘ethical concerns’ that all those other hacks kept yapping about. 

"You know what you just bought yourself with the Compressor? A whole new life!" The Doc laughed, “And you want to come back to the edge with the Apogee? Genius, I tell you.”

“Calm your tits, asshole,” Maine growled, “Can you install it? Yes or no?”

“Can I install it? You dunno who the fuck I am? Fuck yeah I can install it! Get on that chair so we can start rippin’! Choomba, you hit the fucking lottery! Ain’t a fixer in town with this chrome on hand. It’s bleeding edge, ya get me? Bleeding focking edge! And the Sandy on top of all dat? Which church ya go to? Choom, let me join! You one lucky son of a bitch, you know that?”

Dorio tapped her foot impatiently, “Are you high right now? Because if you are, Doc, I will break your spine in half.”

“Philistines, all of you! No idea the kinda miracle you brought into mi shop,” He shook his head in dismissal, still grinning, “Chair, Maine.”

Maine turned to Dorio, “I want the crew in here around the time he starts wrapping up, babe.” Then he cracked a grin, “I want y’all to be the first to watch when I fire up the Sandy.”

Maine sat himself on the chair, stomach first, careful not to put his full weight on it immediately. He tried getting comfortable while Doc set him up.

“You want the sleepy potion for this one or?” Doc asked.

He’d rather not wait through the entire operation, “Knock me out, Doc.”

He felt a stab in the circulatory access point in his arm—one that would lead to what little flesh still remained in his body. Moments later, he failed to continue holding his eyes open.

He awoke with a start, his back sore and aching, and the world was noisy.

What the fuck is going on? Was the Sandy really this gnarly? No, this—this wasn’t the Sandy. David and them had already worked on it after all, and sure, it would have a little bit of weight to it, but this—

“Help me—argh!”

“D, you’re gonna kill him!” Lucy.

“What the fuck is going on, D!” Rebecca.

He heard a wet slicing sound and then—

Something pushed him out from his chair. Maine shook himself awake and stood up, biting through the pain to find—David standing there, glaring daggers at him, mask off. “That scumfuck’s your Ripperdoc, Maine?” David asked quietly.

The scumfuck in question was behind David, nailed to the wall with a katana by his chrome shoulder. 

Maine didn’t think—he just punched. Something within him seemed to wake up, and it felt like he was ripped from the regular flow of time, his fist descending on David’s head like a meteor, sure to hit and splatter him to pieces.

Then David’s eyes widened and he—stepped to the side. Maine’s fist flew by him harmlessly.

The shock of his Sandevistan’s activation drained the anger from him. It worked. It worked.

He marveled, staring at his fist in awe, ignoring the noise going on around them—Dorio shouting, Pilar laughing, Rebecca pointing her gun at Doc, Lucy was glaring at Maine, eyes glowing blue. None of that mattered. What mattered was that Maine could do this all day.

That was just one activation, and the sting in his spine hardly compared to the worst that he had gone through in life. Yes, this would do nicely.

David ripped his sword from the wall—and the shoulder it was attached to—and sheathed it. Doc looked rough. His entire face was bleeding, bruising up. Teeth were scattered on the ground. The Ripperdoc could hardly even breathe through all the damage that had been done to him.

Maine’s curiosity, intermingled with sheer outrage, finally won over, and he glared at the rookie Solo, “What the fuck is going on—”

“Your two-bit Ripperdoc did the install on my Sandy too,” he immediately said, “I thought I killed him for it. Guess I never did,” he kicked Doc’s leg contemptuously. 

“Goddammit, D!” Dorio shouted, “He’s the only RipperDoc that’ll work on Maine!”

“This guy almost scrambled my brain—on purpose,” David retorted, “Then he sent scavs to my house to pick the Sandy off my back. But if I flatline his worthless ass, I’ll be the bad guy!”

Maine honed in on his words, and then looked at Doc.

And he remembered David’s concern, the fear in those fearless eyes at the mere idea of chipping in.

All because this scumfuck tried to screw an honest kid out of a hard-won treasure, after everything he had been through.

He reached into his pocket for a wad of cash, and tossed it at Doc’s broken form. Then another wad for the medical bills. Scumfucker that he was, he owed his long-time Ripperdoc that much at least. 

Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling of annoyance in his heart at having burned this bridge.

Now where would he find another Ripperdoc?

000

Outside Doc’s clinic, the air was thick with the stench of garbage and chems, the buzz of neon signs flickering against the grime-slicked alley walls. The cramped space was alive with the hum of distant engines, the occasional burst of laughter from some gangoons loitering nearby, and the ever-present, low murmur of the city breathing. Pipes jutted out from the walls, leaking steam in bursts that caught the sickly yellow glow of a broken streetlamp up ahead.

Dorio pulled me away from the main group, just as Falco’s Emperor revved up, its headlights cutting jagged shadows through the alleyway’s filth. Probably about to give me a bunch of lip for screwing with Maine’s biz. Whatever. I’d just—

“Thank you,” Dorio said, arms folded, voice low but steady.

I paused mid-thought, blinking up at her. The flickering red light from a nearby noodle stall danced across the EMP threading on her right cheek, making the thin thread of metal look like an exposed pulsating blood vein—until she went on, her tone softer than I expected.

“Honestly, just ‘thank you’ ain’t enough. Kid, I’m so grateful, I’d fight MaxTac by your side if you asked. And not just for the chrome work you did.” She scoffed, shaking her head. “I’ve wanted to do to Doc what you did for years.”

I looked down at the cracked pavement, boots scuffing against something sticky. Didn’t want to think about what it was.

“Appreciate it, Dorio,” I mumbled.

Dorio lifted my chin up with her huge fist, and I saw her give a comforting grin, one that lied to me, told me that everything was gonna be alright. “And by week’s end next week, we’ll catch that corpo motherfucker and feed him his balls together, alright? Don’t have to do this alone, you know.” She jerked her chin toward the group ahead, the sound of their voices blending with the clatter of the city. “He fucked with you—means he fucked with us. All of us. So I don’t wanna hear any of that nonsense that this is your fight alone. Nova?”

I snorted, resisting the urge to grin. What the hell was her major malfunction, anyway?

“Alright, geez, thanks,” I muttered. “Nova. And… my bad for losing my temper. But that guy? He deserved it.”

Dorio rolled her eyes, the corner of her mouth tugging up. “I know, kid. I didn’t fault you for that, did I? Maine would have killed him on the spot if he didn’t owe him so much for the work he did if you ask me. He was pissed. Ain’t no one in the crew mad at you.”

One edge of my lip curled up slightly, “You peeped how I weaved Maine’s punch?”

Her grin widened, all teeth and delight, “Fuck yeah I did!” She clapped both my shoulders, “clean form, kid! We’re definitely due for another round of sparring. And don’t leave me hanging, alright?”

I shrugged my shoulders, grinning slightly, “Alright… I guess. Uh, hey—you guys go on ahead, alright? Got some stuff to do on my own.”

"Sure! See ya around!" Dorio gave me a wave before walking off to Falco's Emperor. Once they took off, I re-entered Doc's clinic, gun in hand, and watched as he slid on his own blood, trying to get up. He looked up at me, his red eyes bent into terror.

Then I shot him in the fucking head. No way I was gonna let that fucking gonk live another second. He knew me in both my identities. I screwed up by not killing him the first time, but I wouldn't make that mistake again.

I spat on his corpse before leaving.

000

Maine sat still as the last of the cables detached from his chrome, the soft hiss of disengaging ports filling the tinkering room in Pilar’s house. He flexed his right hand, fingers curling with effortless precision. No lag. No phantom strain. Just seamless, natural movement. His mind mapped the limb’s position with absolute clarity—no drift, no hesitation. For the first time in a long while, it felt like his own. His whole body did.

Except for that new oversized Neural Link on his back—the one that held his new Sandy. And the back of his skull, where the Chrome Compressor sat. It hardly hurt—Doc’s shit was good when you were willing to pay preem edds for them. Ideally, he’d have asked the bastard for his opinion on David’s work, but since they were now on the outs, he found himself having to scrape the bottom of the barrel for a professional opinion—Pilar’s, apparently.

Guy was cagier than a motherfucker about his days before he joined the crew, and though Maine didn’t give enough of a shit to pry, he had pieced together a few tidbits over the years—that Pilar had been a walking cyberpsycho factory for Maelstrom, his former gang, and that he himself had ridden that edge for quite a while before quitting.

Pulled down to Earth by his little sister of all people.

Pilar sat behind the desk, eyes flicking between the lines of data streaming across the screen. Dorio, arms crossed, leaned against the wall, watching silently.

Maine flexed his fingers, grinning wide as he twisted his wrist, then clenched and unclenched his fist like he’d just been given a new body. "Shit, man. This is smooth. Smoother than smooth—this is preem-tier chrome feel. I don’t even gotta think about it anymore. It’s just... there. Like it’s always been mine."

Dorio smirked from where she leaned against the wall, arms crossed, watching him like she was making sure he wouldn’t float off in excitement.

Pilar, meanwhile, sat behind the desk, scrolling through the diagnostic readouts. He let out a low whistle. "Well, fuck me sideways. Didn’t think the kid had it in him. These numbers are tighter than my last joytoy’s—" he caught Dorio’s glare and coughed. "Uh, real tight."

"Damn right, he had it in him!" Maine barked a laugh and slapped his own thigh. "I don’t even have to fight my own damn chrome anymore. Feels like I just broke outta a full-body cramp I didn’t know I had. Like my whole ass system’s just... synched up. Perfect."

Pilar snorted, shaking his head. "Yeah, well, don’t start dry-humping your arms just yet, choom. Code’s good. Real good. Cleaner than any gangoon shit I’ve seen."

Maine’s grin only widened. "So I got a free’n’easy ride to the top."

Pilar leaned back, picking at his teeth with a stray cable tie. "Calm your tits, sugar baby—I said the code’s good. Doesn’t make shit free’n’easy.”

Maine frowned, “Huh?”

Pilar grinned, “The install work’s still for shit—course, the fuck else can you expect when your Ripper’s a fucking brain potato who sprays semen all over his fucking work station?” Pilar laughed. Maine clenched his fists in anger, “The fact that D still managed to pull your ass down from the edge just means he’s a fucking miracle worker.”

Maine shrugged, “Still feel nova. That’s gotta count for something.”

“It's impressive work, but it’s not magic. It’s stallin’ your cyberpsychosis, sure—but it ain’t rewinding jack shit. You keep packin’ on chrome like you do, and eventually, your brain’s still gonna say ‘fuck it’ and check out. Even with that shiny new Chome Compressor."

Who said he needed to chrome up again anyway? He now had a Sandevistan. And hell, even if he did want to chome up again, with the Compressor and everything else on top, he felt like he could at least install a couple more implants before he really needed to stop.

Maine huffed. "I’ve got time. I ain’t at my limits yet. I’ve still got it."

Pilar shrugged. "Eh, normally I’d tell you to stop before you go full cyberpsycho and start makin’ modern art outta pedestrians."

Dorio sighed. "Real poetic, Pilar."

"Hey, I call it like I see it," he said, tossing the cable tie onto the desk. "But I gotta give it to you straight as a hard dick, Maine—you’re gonna end up borged to hell before you crack. That shit won’t be pretty. End of the day, kid did a hell of a job. If I wasn’t already drowning in my own genius, shit, I’d be fucking jealous.”

Maine didn’t see the problem, then. And he wasn’t gonna fucking crack. He already had what it took to play the big leagues now. And with Tanaka in the bag in a few days, he’d finally get his recommendation from Faraday. He’d have the rep to take out a big gig with Rogue.

“Don’t appreciate the fucking doom prophecy, Pil,” Maine growled, “Sounds like you’re betting against me. And I don’t like the sound of that.”

“On the contrary, choom,” Pilar grinned, “I’m makin’ a sales pitch! You’re on a one-way trip over the edge and fuckin’ everyone’s started to catch onto it—Kiwi did, ‘s why that hot piece of ass decided to leave. David did, and he hooked you up with fuckin’ real-deal pixie dust to pull your ass back. And since I’m really starting to fuckin’ like that kid,” he shrugged, his overly long fingers splayed, “I’m starting to get the feeling I should put my entire dick into the game—no more half-dicking for me.”

“Get to the fucking point,” Maine growled, growing impatient. This was new for Pilar, that was for sure. To the point that it excited Maine. But it also worried him—what the hell was he planning?

“Since Doc Cyberpsycho’s no longer accepting his long-time choom and latest victim—that is, your chromy ass—that means you’re in the market for a Ripper—and one you can trust.”

Maine’s excitement died immediately. “Not you.”

“I’ve changed!” Pilar pleaded, “I haven’t made a cyberpsycho in years! And I never made one by accident either—so there’s that!”

Dorio pressed a gun to Pilar’s forehead. The gray-skinned bastard didn’t even flinch, “Huh?” He asked, surprised.

“Look me in the eyes and tell me you’re doing this for Maine’s good, Pilar, and I won’t blow your fucking head off for joking about this.”

The orange line on Pilar’s tech visor resolved into two orange orbs like eyes, and Pilar’s expression firmed up, “I’m doing this for Maine’s good.”

“Why?” Dorio asked, “You don’t give a fuck about people like that, to make such an effort—I know you.”

Pilar smirked, “Just trying out something new.”

Maine scowled, “You said you were doing this because of the kid. Why?”

“Ah, that’s easy,” Pilar grinned, “He might not know it yet—or you, or anyone else, really—but someday, maybe soon, he’s going to do something so fuckin’ impressive, it’ll change this city forever. And I wanna be there to fuckin’ see it. And I want him to be alive to see that shit through. And for that to happen, I’ll need to babysit your psycho ass. That work for you?”

“He’s not getting any new implants,” Dorio said, pulling the gun back, “That’s non-negotiable.”

“I’ll do re-installs, maintenance, and upgrades only if the specs aren’t that much higher than before—or if the piece is already falling apart—like those shitty Gorilla Arms. Course, that’ll mean David having to do more work on ‘em. But he worked with shit material and turned it into gold—better stuff’ll only keep you sane for longer, in some cases.”

Maine latched onto that like a lifeline.

“But I ain’t gettin’ rid of more ‘ganic,” Pilar said, “Ain’t fuckin’ happening.”

Dorio took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, as though relieved. Then she gave him a look—eyes pleading.

Maine couldn’t argue with that look. “Fine.”

“Promise,” Dorio urged.

“Don’t,” Pilar snorted, “Any time you make an addict promise something, you’ll only turn him into a liar down the line. I’ll slow him down, but ain’t nothin’ stopping him from looking for a Ripperdoc crazy enough to up-spec him once he’s tired of the brakes.”

Maine growled, “I promise, Dorio.”

Dorio smiled—but it didn’t reach her eyes.

Nothing big, Maine thought, I came into this game without anybody believing I could do it. Ain’t shit changed since then.

He had more than enough belief in himself for any of that to matter.

000

I spent hours and thousands of eddies at the range, listening to ‘Acid Breather’ by Mastiff on repeat, dumping lead into the same poor bastard of a target until nothing but scorched paper and splintered wood remained. I shot because I had to. Shot to perfect my aim. Shot to feel something. Shot just to shoot.

Kept going after it got boring.

Kept going after it got unbearable.

And when the boredom and the pain blurred into one, I kept going still—even after the urge to turn my iron on the other poor gonks at the range crept in. All I felt was rage, and I still kept going.

I took a breath. Ejected my mag. Slapped in another. A deep inhale—controlled squeeze—exhale through my teeth. The target took another volley, paper limbs jerking like some poor sod caught in an EMP burst.

I couldn’t forget my purpose. Couldn’t let my kinder nature dictate my direction.

For too long, I had been at the mercy of my own sense of mercy, and where had that gotten me? Mom—gone. My home—trashed. Katsuo? Still fucking breathing.

At least I’d fix that last part. Take care of him forever. And only a few days after finally gaining the means to do so.

That decisiveness was my one win. My one point in my favor in this entire mess. And yet, I felt like I’d let it stretch out too long. Even a day was too long. A single fucking day where Katsuo could send his goons to my house—to my home—to mom’s home.

I saw it again. The way they sat there, lounging like they owned the place. Smoking up the air where my mom used to stand, laughing like it was some joke. Like the pile of ashes on the coffee table wasn’t my fucking mother.

My grip on the gun tightened.

I emptied my final mag, my roar filling the range, drowning out the ringing in my ears.

I’ll kill him.

I’ll kill him and his dad.

I’ll kill them all.

Fuck him.

Fuck him.

“DIEEEEEEEEE!”

The gun clicked empty. My body trembled. My mind screamed for more, but I was done here.

I shoved past the gonks in my way, ignoring their stares, their muttered curses. Didn’t matter. I had work to do.

My bike roared to life as I peeled out of the parking lot, burning rubber through the streets of Arroyo. I felt all too tempted to take up another gig with El Capitan, but I knew that my stats were lagging after the sleep deprivation—and all it would do was serve as cheap catharsis.

Taking care of real biz was the way—not letting off steam. Not until after the real job was done.

So I rode to Lucy’s house, backpack carrying my most important belongings with me. I gave her a text before arriving, and she was at the door just as I made it up the stairs to her house.

From there, we got to work.

000

“My first idea was to use the Blackwall Gateway,” I admitted, as I typed away on my external Cyberdeck, sitting on her couch. Lucy put down a pair of juice bottles on the table. A nice gesture—she’d finally gotten it through her head that I didn’t like carbonation.

“Gonk idea,” she muttered, “Don’t tell me you used it, like, at all.”

I didn’t want to get into that, so I continued, “But as fun as the image of Katsuo screaming himself to death is, it’s needlessly traceable. And besides, from all the work we did last night with Maine’s chrome, I already have the tools to come up with something significantly less traceable.” Unfortunately, it wasn’t nearly as fun. 

Lucy’s eyes widened, “What—you want to weaponize cyberpsychosis?” Never let it be said that Lucy wasn’t smart as hell.

I didn’t take my eyes from the cyberdeck, but I did point at her, “Ding ding ding. It’s clean, it’s slow, and it will fuck his entire life up. Probably kill him, too. Especially if I figure out a way to override his nervous system to cause self-harm…” the more I thought about that, the more I was convinced. That was exactly what I was going to do. If I couldn’t even be there to witness him losing his shit and ruining his life, then I might as well twist the knife and make sure he died.

No way I was going to leave that gonk alive.

“Not like skezzing people out by force hasn't been done before—the Cyberpsychosis quickhack is pretty famous. Of course, programming it to fit in a deck slot is another beast. But you won't have to worry about that since you'll be slotting the program in physically."

"Yeah," I muttered, "it's why I'm thinking of piling on that self-harm protocol as well."

"The Suicide Quickhack?” Lucy asked, sitting on the couch next to me and looking at the deck. “You really want to get your hands on that? It’s not something you can just build from scratch. You’d have to buy it.”

“Suicide Quickhack?” I muttered. “Didn’t know that was a thing already. Also, what do you mean?”

Lucy sighed, setting her juice bottle down. “It’s black-market tech, corpo-restricted for a reason. It’s not just a simple system override—it forces a neural impulse so strong it overrides self-preservation. The good versions—the versions of the Quickhack that can’t be traced—can induce subarachnoid hemorrhages, aneurysms, even heart attacks. And the way it works? The backdoor protocol is locked down tight. No one’s been able to crack it, and the only reason it even exists on the black market is because a single Netrunner figured it out and started selling access. They keep the source locked up. If you want it, you buy it. Or you klep it from someone else who bought it from the source. No exceptions.”

She glanced at me, gauging my reaction. I was still typing away, half-listening.

“If you’re thinking of making your own version,” she continued, leaning in slightly, “you’d have to tailor it specifically for Katsuo’s cyberware. The black-market Quickhack works on anything because it’s built on a universal exploit—one no one else has been able to recreate. If you go custom, that means finding out exactly what neural architecture he’s running, mapping out vulnerabilities, and designing a signal that his firewalls won’t catch.”

She leaned back, folding her arms. “And that’s assuming he doesn’t have countermeasures. If he’s packing trauma overrides or even basic counterware, a botched attempt won’t do shit except give him a migraine—and put you on his radar.”

I exhaled sharply, fingers still tapping at the keys. Inducing a heart attack or aneurysm? Interesting. But no, I had something better in mind.

“So I either buy the damn thing, go out and klep it, or make it just for Katsuo,” I sighed, “Well, I know the name of his chrome arms, so that’s a start: Strongarms 400,” I connected my optics to the Net and started researching. Then I whistled, “Expensive stuff. Top of the line consumer models from Arasaka. They’re combat-grade, too.” No wonder he punched like a truck despite his slight build.

Lucy scoffed, “Arasaka ICE walls are a pain, but we’ll figure it out.”

“Still,” I frowned, “We need to buy the data on these things. From the Net.” 

“Not necessarily,” Lucy muttered, eyes glowing blue. I looked at her questioningly, “We did nab a pretty fucking massive Data Fortress from the Tygers. I’ve still got it saved on my Network—there. Fuck yeah. Strongarms 400 cyberware operating software. We have it. All that’s left is to figure out its vulnerabilities. Shouldn’t take long.”

I tried to give her a small grin, failed, “Thanks for coming through, Lucy.”

She lightly shoved me with her elbow, “I’m your senior in this craft, David. Don’t underestimate me,” her grin dropped as she thought for a moment. Then, she said, “Still, countering Katsuo’s counterware’s going to take a lot of work, especially considering we don’t know what he’s running. But if we assume he’s running top of the line exec shit and work accordingly,” she shrugged, “Safe to say I’m not too worried. So, let’s get to work.”

“Right,” I nodded darkly, already completely resetting my focus to what came next.

It was time to take everything I’d learned from fixing Maine’s software, every principle of effective mind-body chrome integration, and reverse it all.

It was time to make a cyber poison.

 

Notes:

This is essentially David's headspace at the moment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RXp9HAw8L0

 

Massive thanks to Coldbringer for the beta reading

Discord link: https://discord.gg/W5BqBBym28

Chapter 39: Psychopomp

Summary:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPbHJRkSztk

Calling off Omaeda’s men had been an exercise in patience for Katsuo, who had just assumed that one phone call was all it would take.

Then the bastard had hounded him about breakage fees and paying blood money for the fact that his idiot gangsters had died on a job they had taken on their own free will. Knowing that his father would quite probably have his head if he gave those degenerates even a single enny, he had ended that conversation quite decisively.

By invoking the name of Omaeda’s superior. The middle boss had given up pretty quickly afterwards. He’d even given up on his plan to continue to pursue David entirely for free, if only to take his own revenge. 

Omaeda wasn’t the professional type—that was pretty clear. Who gave a shit if his nephew died? Katsuo had called the contract off—that meant the matter should have come to an end. Yet it stubbornly did not. Idiots.

…Katsuo had entertained, briefly, the idea of letting Omaeda continue on his self-appointed personal crusade without Katsuo’s own involvement. If Martinez could be killed without Katsuo needing to lift a single finger or Eurodollar, that would have been… convenient. 

But that would mean nothing to his father, who had made it very clear he wanted Katsuo to take care of this himself. Any idiot junior employee with enough funds and connections to throw around could hire a fixer or gang boss to take care of a rival—it took a company man of real pedigree to take care of business themselves when the time to shed blood came. That was the quality that his father was searching for in Katsuo.

But Jing Fei was right about him—father wasn’t on the ground, he didn’t know the situation. Killing Martinez, while satisfying in the short term, would only be a dumb overreaction. Not to mention, it might give him needless baggage that a rival could exploit in the future. Skeletons in the closet at his age, while he hadn’t yet established himself in the company? That was pure folly.

And father would appreciate Katsuo disobeying him for giving irrational orders. Right? 

But on the other hand—

“Pray.”

Katsuo twitched. 

“What’s wrong, boss?” One of Katsuo’s henchmen, Thomas, asked. He, Katsuo and his other lackey, Carl, were in the hallway, heading to first period. His thoughts had distracted him from checking over his shoulder and seeing if David would come to school. That was bad. He needed to stay alert. Should he tell his lackeys to keep an eye out? How could he word that order without sounding embarrassing? His father had long taught him how little difference there was between perceived and actual power—his minions needed to know that he wasn’t afraid, that he was ordering them to keep a lookout just for some other reason.

Katsuo clenched his fingers, to stop them from fucking trembling.

Goddammit. These fucking arms.

“It’s that piece of shit Martinez,” Katsuo growled, “Keep an eye out on him—I want to pay him a visit when I see him.”

“Got it, boss.” Katsuo ignored it as he continued to reassure Katsuo that he’d do a good job—both of them were on that overly indulgent shpiel. Not important. None of them were. None of them had real intelligence. None of them mattered.

No, David Martinez wouldn’t come to school today—it was unlikely in the extreme. If he had survived an attempt on his life, that likely meant that he was keeping his head low, running down his allotted absences until he had to come to school or face penalties like suspension or expulsion. That was, if he wasn’t smart enough to look for a way out.

“Pray.”

…Katsuo doubted Martinez would be so smart.

Maybe he’d spend his time away from school working on that cute little project he was doing with the academy’s sys-admin—for an Arasaka IT division case competition, no less.

Fucking overachieving gonk, who the hell did he think he was to even look at such a contest? Katsuo pulled up the files in his optics and gave them a scan—roughly all of it went above his head. 

Katsuo did classes in advanced physics, computer science, and mathematics. The R&D track, just like David—and yet he was able to do this shit.

Then again, David was doing advanced university courses—speedrunning a bachelor while still in high school. The fucking prick.

Even if Nakajima had probably done ninety percent of all this work, and was keeping David around as a glorified data monkey, that still meant that the gonk was earning a first-hand experience with real-deal Arasaka IT. That kind of thing at David’s age was worth its weight in gold to Arasaka’s HR recruiters. Annoying. Maybe Katsuo should do something about that sys-admin? Pull on some connections to get him transferred?

Katsuo smirked at the idea of how worthless that golden CV of David’s would be worth once he came into power—David wouldn’t be able to move a fucking inch once he was in Arasaka’s executive ranks. Katsuo would ensure it. That motherfucker wouldn’t be allowed to breathe in his vicinity—

Katsuo felt a cold wind creep up the back of his neck. He shivered. Then he gnashed his teeth, transforming that sudden bout of meaningless panic into anger.

No. Katsuo clearly hadn’t stepped up his campaign against David. Just sabotaging the project wouldn’t be enough for him—he’d go after Nakajima for daring to help that piece of shit. Transferring him? What kind of pansy shit was that? Katsuo would have him fired. Then he’d buy David’s house from whatever unwashed landlord owned it and crank up the rent tenfold. He’d chase David down to the ends of the earth and destroy him. He’d strangle him with his own—

David’s place in this equation was to endure the pain. Katsuo’s was to dish out that pain.

There was only one way such a set-up ended. David would give up in time.

He and his clique made it to homeroom class and took their seats in their reclining chairs—his two lackeys nattered amongst each other about lesser matters, providing a comfortable backdrop of white noise for Katsuo to lose himself in—they’d alert him if they had anything of real importance to say, but for now, he’d rather rest his mind.

Everything had suddenly become so… tiresome as of late. The last three days especially had been hectic, a horrible end to an even worse week. Down two hundred thousand eddies, paid out to his worst enemy—and a botched assassination attempt on top of that.

“Doesn’t make any fucking sense,” Katsuo muttered, clenching his fists. His two lackeys looked away from their conversation to focus on Katsuo. 

“What do you mean, boss?” Carl asked. Thomas just looked on, a look of concern of all things on his face.

“Was I speaking to you?” Katsuo snapped, glaring at him. Were his own henchmen starting to become a problem? Were they conspiring? Could they rat him out? Maybe he should—

No. Not yet. He didn’t bother apologizing and focused on those words of his.

What… did he mean?

Katsuo felt a strange wave of melancholy pass over him. He sat down, then he remembered. Ah, right.

All this. None of this made any fucking sense; why father would go so far as to suggest elimination on a classmate—with minimal handholding to boot. Katsuo had taken on the assignment, believing that he had all the tools necessary. Clearly, he did not. And father would not provide guidance—only mete punishment. That was his role. 

He could already hear his father try to make an audacious claim—that he was teaching his son how to learn independently, and act without instruction. 

More like willing and wishing with all his heart that his son could measure up to his infinite expectations without actually putting in any of the work to ensure that was possible. Only expectation.

Fei-Fei had been right. So right.

Katsuo felt a stab of guilt at the memory of her—of what happened on Friday. He had apologized profusely, and gone above and beyond on paying for the damages—even including a tidy sum of reparations that would effectively triple her monthly allowance. It had rendered Katsuo completely penniless for the time being—he barely had ten thousand eddies to scrape together—but it was the least he could have done for what he had done.

No. It was those hands. Those fucking hands.

He called her, after stilling the trembling in his hands—was it just him, or were they trembling more than usual?

Thankfully, she picked up. Katsuo had memorized Kang Tao High’s student schedule for the senior year already, in order to make sure that his correspondences didn’t distract her from her studies. Right now, she should be in the same boat as him, waiting for homeroom to begin.

The academy should hurry up and accept her already—it was early on in the school year, and the more they stalled, the worse her exam results would be. Katsuo couldn’t fathom what the academy board was thinking. Ostensibly, one of them had something of a grudge with father, and was dragging her feet on purpose just as a middle-finger to the executive director of R&D. Short-sighted idiots. Why they had to involve someone completely innocent was beyond him.

Fei-Fei finally picked up after quite a few rings.

Fei-Fei: Hey, Katsuo. I’m a little busy.

Katsuo: Just calling to say hi. And also, thanks for the talk on Friday. And also—I’m sorry. Again. For what happened.

Fei-Fei: Of course. 

Katsuo: I never got into it on Friday but it’s just-just—my father. I really don’t understand what he expects of me.

Fei-Fei: I understand, Katsuo, I really do. Can we talk about this more in person? 

Katsuo: Dinner tonight at my house, maybe?

Fei-Fei: Sure. Also… did that guy come to school today? 

Katsuo felt touched that she was concerned—they really had hit it off as of late. At first, Katsuo hadn’t been too hopeful that Fei-Fei would prove a good wife, but when the chips were down, she left little to be desired.

And she had taken his side over his father’s—encouraged Katsuo to go at things his way. Katsuo would never forget that encouragement.

Katsuo: He wouldn’t dare. And I’m not worried. But thank you for asking.

Fei-Fei: Of course. See you tonight.

Fei-Fei hung up then—ah, she did say she was busy.

Having spoken to his fiancee, Katsuo couldn’t deny the lightness in his heart. What was there to worry about in the end? 

Katsuo would always be Katsuo, and David would always—

“He’s there!” Carl hissed. Katsuo immediately jerked out of his reverie, sitting up from his reclining chair to look at David strolling into the classroom. 

…This can’t be real, Katsuo distantly thought, as David walked into homeroom, casual-as-can-be, not even bothering to look at anyone or anything, certainly not at Katsuo. Martinez just… took a seat in the back corner of class, donned his BD wreath and closed his eyes. 

Katsuo’s heart thundered. If David had been a shell of unexploded weapon-class ordinance, Katsuo couldn’t have stared at him with more—

Only then did Katsuo realize that he had stood up at some point, and that half of everyone else was now curiously staring at him.

Blankly, Katsuo sat back down. He stayed still until he felt everyone else’s attention wander away from him. Then he let his head hang. In confusion, terror, bafflement. 

He was… he was here.

How could he be here? Why would he be here, of all places?

And why… had David ignored him?

His hands started vibrating as image after image flashed through his mind—David bringing a gun to school. Having chipped in mantis blades to cut him up. In-built pulse rifle in his arm. Just plain guns packed into his limbs, so many guns that they spilled out from his body in waves, opening hole after hole in Katsuo’s body.

Katsuo bit his tongue. The pain centered him. He closed his eyes. 

It’s not real. It’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not—

Hours passed by, as they moved from one class to the next. And David did nothing at all.

000

As I slipped away from lunch, heading for a meeting with a certain sys-admin, I allowed myself a small smirk. Just for a moment, where I knew the cameras and nothing and no one else besides could possibly see. 

Chip planted. Cleanly, efficiently, and above all, untraceably.

One week. Katsuo was now patient zero of a plague built for him and him alone: my custom Suicide Quickhack. In one week, per my predictions, plus or minus a day depending on the strength of his wetware, he would be out of the picture. My picture. Forever.

And then, well…

The sky?

Mom always said the sky was the limit on the future, right? But… that did feel a little too limiting. Orbital Air had rendered that idiom into a relic of the English language. The sky wasn’t really the limit. 

No matter. Wherever the limit was, I’d get there. Soon. Some day.

This wasn’t just the garden variety gonk-ass ‘I have a dream’ type of ‘someday, maybe’. No. When I meant it, I meant it. Like steel to iron, gun to bullet. The future. Getting closer, one step at a time.

It really would fucking be—someday. I’d get there. 

Then I’d break through those limits, because at the end of the fucking day—nobody would put the brakes on me. Not on my fucking watch.

Katsuo would be the start—the first cornerstone of the foundation of this resolution of mine. 

In a few years, maybe I could even forget about the fact that Tanaka Katsuo had ever existed. Scum like him didn’t deserve to be remembered, not even in my memories. 

Or maybe that was too corpo a way to go about it? Katsuo had ignored me after all—labelled me a non-entity. He had tried to banish me into insubstantiality through prejudice alone. And when that failed, he just…

Kept. Escalating.

…

No. 

Forgetting him would be polite. It would be kind compared to what I had in store for him. Because I could escalate too.

I’d erect a fucking shrine to his name once he finally kicked it—fuck what the corpos usually did. Katsuo was a special kill, and he deserved commemoration.

As I walked down the hall, listening to Never Fade Away, I actually found myself whistling a tune. Cheerfully, for the first time in…

…

Finally, it was done.

000

“What do you want to do with your life?”

Nakajima’s question caught me flat-footed. I wasn’t sure whether to tell him off or to go full corpo. I defaulted to the latter, for safety’s sake.

“To serve the corp—”

Nakajima raised up a hand and frowned at me, “No bullshit. Just—give it to me straight.”

I clenched my jaw, “Why? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” he said, “I gave a good, hard look at what you came up with last Friday—what you came up with in a matter of a single day no less. I broke it down as much as I could—still haven’t got it all down pat yet, but what I do know is that this work? It’s not ‘project’ tier. It’s way higher.” He gave me a level look. “You’re a fucking prodigy, David—I haven’t made it a secret that I think you’re way too good for your level. But do you have any—and I mean fucking any—idea what you could do? So I’ll fucking ask again, and I just want you to be honest—what do you want to do?”

“I want to go to the top,” I replied, “Top of Arasaka Tower.”

He blinked. Sat back. “Huh.”

“That a problem?”

“It’s a little problematic,” Nakajima muttered, “A little ill-advised. Also, I feel like you have no fucking idea how to pull that off but for a vague need to do everything as good as you possibly can—right? Am I wrong? Good grades—in high school and university. Winning the case comp—impressing the shit out of your fellow little-leaguers on your first day, and banking on the fact that management is nice enough to recognize merit for what it is, and will reward you accordingly?”

“It’s my dream,” I said, “And sure—I ain’t got a fucking clue how to keep going after school, but getting good grades definitely doesn’t hurt. Currently, I’m just setting up a foundation.”

Nakajima grimaced, “Kid—stop it. It’s a nasty fucking ambition, and someone will flatline you if they hear about it. Especially since you’d have an honest-to-god actual shot at getting pretty far. Maybe even to the top if you stepped on enough toes. But you ain’t getting there without stepping on toes.”

“That’s too bad,” I shrugged, “Guess I’ll just have to step on toes then.”

Nakajima looked at me for a while, “You know what I wanna do?”

“Climb up the ranks of Arasaka until you get sent so deep into IT that managers won’t talk to you for months at a time unless some issue pops up?” I muttered dryly. Laid-back gonk like him wouldn’t settle for anything less, I could tell. He didn’t have the temperament to really climb the corpo rankings.

“IT heaven—yeah, that,” he snorted, “I’m looking for no stress and extra edds. Hard tasks? Fuck yeah. Managerial nattering? Shoot me in the fucking head. So yeah—that’s what I wanna do. This gig right here’s cushy as hell. Do a bit of work, take the occasional bribe to change grades—it’s practically heaven compared to Arasaka proper—but it pays like shit, and it’s fucking boring. Problem is I’m a freak that likes this work, and I want it to mean something. So yeah—IT heaven. That’s what I want out of this.”

My heart was sinking by the word. I could only tsk internally.

So… project cancelled. Or maybe downscaled, because this was too ambitious and liable to get him too much attention, attention that might ensure that he never gets to enjoy the obscurity that he so craved.

“So… what?” I asked, “You wanna dial it back?”

He shook his head, “No way in hell, kid. We’re doing this—but we’re doing this smart. You sell this to Arasaka as-is and all you get in return is half a mill and your name on every recruiter’s headhunting list in the corp—that prize is colder than ICE, don’t get me wrong. But they’ve essentially paid you half a million for something that could very well make them billions. You hear that, kid? Billions. B.”

I blinked, “You can’t be serious, it’s not that—”

“You’re pouring a tub-full of grease down a creaky fucking system of gears, my guy. Work flows are the blood flow of any corp—and this optimization model is going to do some crazy fucking things once the corp’s at full adoption. Over time, those extra edds are gonna add up—and fast, too.”

I frowned, “So we should dial things back, then. And then sell our new solution for way higher.”

He snapped his fingers and pointed at me, “You’re pissing in the right direction at least, but not quite. Sandbag the case comp and find a way to profit off of this new build—sure. Those are the broad strokes. But other factors do come into play—who are you going to sell this optimization model to? Why would they buy? If they do buy, how much are they going to profit off this? What do you sell it for?”

I frowned at the last one—the most important question, really. “We’d sell for a percentage of the profits, right? Like, if we know the product’s going to massively increase Arasaka’s profit margin, why not negotiate that?”

Nakajima chuckled tonelessly, “You’re pretty shop-happy with your life, I’m not gonna lie.”

“The hell do you mean?”

“Arasaka ninjas aren’t going to appreciate you haggling for what you’re worth,” Nakajima said, “Certainly not where you currently are in life. Neither of us would survive walking away from the negotiation table with fair terms. Where the fuck do you think we are, kid—Ancapistan? This is Night City: The NAP won’t protect you here. You need backing, kid. We both do.”

“Alright,” I shrugged, “Give it to me straight then, genius—what’s your plan to make us rich? And before you answer that—why the fuck would you care to help me out like that?” I leaned over the table, “And try to make it sound convincing.”

“I fuck you over now and I’ll be sitting pretty on placing well in the case comp. I’ll probably end up going to IT heaven too. But if I do my best to help you, you’re not gonna forget that, are you? Eh, Santo Domingo? I know you people are poor as shit, but you ain’t corpo backstabbers, not at heart. You’ll remember me, won’t you?”

“If you don’t fuck me over,” I said. “Westbrook.” Did his people even know the meaning of honesty?

“There it is, then,” he clapped on the table and gestured at me, “assurances.”

“Only problem is you ain’t the ambitious type,” I sat back on my chair and eyed him carefully, “You’d be happy with gaining whatever you got from screwing me over. So what is it that I can give you that would ensure that you remained loyal?”

“You know what a redwood tree is?” Nakajima asked.

“No fucking clue.”

“It’s a tree that grows fucking tall. And I mean fucking tall. Tall as buildings. That’s what you are—a redwood. A redwood sapling, sure—just a baby tree in the end—but all you’ll need is time to grow. And if I passed up an opportunity to be chooms with somebody with a real shot to getting to the top of Arasaka tower, I’d be a fucking idiot.”

“Cool story,” I said, “Still doesn’t convince me that you believe in me. Not really.”

I wish I had the option to threaten his life—the threat of death did work wonders in keeping people honest. 

If only he knew what I had done just hours prior—I’d basically flatlined a corporate rival in broad daylight. In my way to Nakajima’s office, I had used the Sandy to chip a virus into his computer, and thus the entire system. I had been playing the CCTV recording of the crime while talking to Nakajima—reviewing the available evidence against me—and wiping my tracks wherever I made them. They had nothing on me. 

Clean.

Every breath I took felt pure and unladened by the burden of Katsuo’s continued existence. He could call me, screw me over, do whatever the fuck he wanted, but he wasn’t making it past this week. 

“I don’t know what to say,” Nakajima shrugged, “call me curious, maybe? I wanna see how far you go, I really do. Not enough that I’d ever take risks for you, but that’s not what I’m promising anyway. Point is, every good corpo needs a mentor. And there ain’t exactly a line of ‘em waiting to take you under their wing, is there?” Every time he opened his mouth to explain himself, he swung his words around to include how he would benefit me. He’d rather distract me with bullshit than let me discern him too deeply. It was tiresome, but not nearly distracting enough that it made me lose track of what really mattered—namely, his innate motivations.

Also, did he have any idea what Katsuo would do to him if he tried to mentor me? I tried not to chuckle—that was a major risk he was taking, for sure. His inattentiveness to my grade’s social games could have screwed him out of a job, if Katsuo would still live at least. But since he wasn’t, it didn’t pay to warn him.

As a corpo, that was my prime concern—what paid.

“Sure,” I shrugged, “So what’s the plan?”

Nakajima raised one finger, “Find a struggling mid-level corp that Arasaka won’t mind swallowing up, just as a matter of course. Weak-shit corp like that’ll promise us pretty much anything. We ask for shares and licensing fees, sell them the optimized workflow, and let them run wild with it. If the model really is as good as I think it is, their numbers are gonna skyrocket—and then, Arasaka steps in. Like they do.”

I nodded slowly, starting to see where he was going. “And when Arasaka buys them out, they take our work with them.”

“Exactly.” Nakajima smirked. “And us, too, but with benefits. We make sure our shares and licensing fees are locked in as part of the deal. They get their algo, we get paid, the world keeps spinning. Everybody wins. Literally everybody.”

I sat back, considering. It was smart. A hell of a lot smarter than just handing it over to Arasaka for a lump sum. Instead of trying to claw my way to the top on their terms, I’d be sidestepping the system, playing them from the outside. Earning a slice of the perpetually growing pie, ensuring that even as an employee, I’d still have the pull to rise to the top. I could end up starting off as a fucking director, or possibly a vice president. I’d be three or four steps beneath Chief Exec right from the jump. The top itself, in pissing distance.

But there were risks. Big ones.

“How do we make sure they don’t just steal it?” I asked. “Any corp desperate enough to buy this is desperate enough to fuck us over.”

Nakajima grinned like he was waiting for that question. “Two ways. First, we make sure our names are baked into the code in a way that’s impossible to remove without wrecking the whole thing. Watermark that shit on a software level. Second, we keep the most critical parts under our control—give ‘em just enough to make it work, but not enough to fully understand it. They fuck us? We flip a switch, and the whole system turns into a brick. Wakarimasu ka?”

I exhaled, tapping my fingers against the desk. “Risky.” Definitely how I’d do it, though. And not that risky on my part—if violence was on the table, I’d double my ante no problem. 

In fact, I’d fucking welcome it.

“No shit,” Nakajima agreed. “But that’s the game. And I think you’re the kinda guy who plays to win.”

I let the silence stretch for a moment. I wasn’t considering Nakajima’s idea any further—it was sound after all. Instead, I was considering the man before me. He wanted money and comfort. I could respect that.

If he was telling the truth at least. 

And I still wasn’t fully sure about that. You could predict greed—model it, work around it. Hell, harness it for your own use. 

Satisfaction was a wholly different beast.

What did this pencil-necked academy sys-admin want?

“What do you want, Nakajima?” I asked him. “Why are you so eager to reach for more than what you have, risking attention when you’ve already got it made in time?”

He snorted, “Comfort. Everybody wants that. But I also wanna do something big. One big thing before settling down in heaven on earth—Arasaka’s silicon floor. You make shit too easy, David. I was expecting to struggle more, going from the academy to the corp for a proper job, but you’re giving me pretty much everything I want on a platter. Only problem with that is I still wanna do one crazy thing—” he grinned, “And that’s where you come in.”

I saw a bit of Jin in him, then. He was doing this for kicks. 

Westbrook guy like him must have grown up in the fanciest part of Night City—corp school since he learned how to read and use a terminal, then NCU to prep for Arasaka. And from what I knew about him, he was only twenty-three years old. Hardly much older than me, really. Two years out of school, racking up experience as a sys-admin.

He was skilled. Too skilled to have fun. Too in-control of that mind-numbingly predictable trajectory he was headed towards—school to school to work and then better work. He wanted a switch-up from the routine.

I had pegged him as a liar because my Santo Domingo brain couldn’t understand why a guy so comfortable wanted any part in the muck and grime of high risk plays when he’d received everything since childhood and was clearly above playing corpo games. Unless he secretly wasn’t, of course.

Just like Jin, he still had a man’s pride, and needed to really feel like the protagonist of a grand story. You couldn’t do that if life was a cakewalk.

“So it’s about getting your kicks, not greed,” I said, “You want a good high. And you’re too smart to chase one by being greedy.”

“Hah!” he chuckled. “I’ll take it.”

Thing is, he wasn’t too smart to be greedy, because no one really was. Overcoming greed took something other than intelligence, and Nakajima might think himself above such a base trap, but I knew better.

Yes, he would do nicely. I was beginning to wrap my head around him.

I extended a hand. “Alright. Let’s do it.”

Nakajima grinned, shaking my hand firmly. “Fucking knew you’d say that.”

“I guess that still means downscaling,” I muttered, “For now, at least. And since you’ve clearly got an overabundance of time on your hands, and connections that I don’t, I’m guessing you’ll go on scouting duty, looking for corps down on their luck?”

Nakajima grinned toothily, “Makasete.”

I looked at the Netrunner’s jolly face with an impassive expression. I tried my best to find the words, but they just wouldn’t translate to anything corpo, or anything that didn’t sound like a threat or promise of bodily violence.

“I’ll trust you, Nakajima,” I said, “And you have no idea how much I want that trust to last.”

I spotted a twitch in his grin—and a bulge in his throat that came quicker than expected. His pulse had risen. I smelled fear. 

That didn’t tell me much—but it did let me know that my message was sent, and he was taking that desire of mine seriously.

Time would tell if I was being naive for this. But I supposed that would be another learning experience. 

And this workflow bullshit, the algorithm and all that it entailed, was an avenue that I felt safe in burning if it came down to it. I was capable of so much more.

Since it wouldn’t destroy me to put my trust in Nakajima, the risk was fine. I’d handle it. 

000

Lucy opened the door to her apartment to welcome in its newest tennant—David Martinez, fresh from corp school. The way he looked in that uniform, unassuming despite his build, harmless despite the brief glint of steel in his eyes, was funny. He didn’t fit that silly uniform at all.

He cracked a small grin as he saw her, and she couldn’t help but mirror it for some reason. Something about this moment felt special, more so than any other they had shared. He had slept over for the last two nights while laying low, working away either on the program to kill his asshole classmate, or working on that ‘Saka project. They had been on work-mode the whole time, their faces buried in their decks or the terminal while churning out code.

“Good day?” Lucy asked.

David nodded. Then he pulled his head back to look up and take a deep breath. He exhaled slowly, tension easing out of his frame. The silence hung for a few seconds before he shrugged and looked at her again, “Good day.” His smile was relaxed, eyes calm and comforting.

Lucy snorted, “Was starting to wonder if you forgot how to smile. Why don’t you… come in, and tell me all about it?” she asked, backing further into the house.

His eyes sparkled and he gave a brief, boyish chuckle, “I could do with a drink, too.”

Now he was speaking her language.

000

“I can’t fucking believe you,” Qiang muttered under his breath, just loud enough for Jing Fei who was right next to him to hear. They were walking up the stone path to the Tanaka manor in North Oak, pristine green turf flanking them on each side, and Tanaka servants guiding them up front. “Bio-job for a broken hand, one you got right after calling me and saying everything was alright?”

It was Qiang that Jing Fei couldn’t fucking believe. How had that idiot been paranoid enough to have someone tailing her after the fashion show? He had no respect for Jing Fei’s autonomy, and he thought he had that right just because he was family and older. 

“That was none of your concern,” Jing Fei bit out, “And I got it handled, didn’t I?”

“Fuck that,” Qiang shook his head. He was a tall guy, with a purposefully designed stern face, threaded with metal, and with mandibular implants with a mineral finish—a literal stone face. His eyes were perennially hidden behind a pair of sunglasses, and he wore the same type of sharp suit he always loved to wear—black everything, red shirt, and a white tie. Not much better compared to her own get-up—a black one-shoulder dress with a full sleeve, and a one-sided collar where the sleeve was, the inside of the collar red. Then again, this was a dinner with Katsuo and his entire family, including that deranged father of his—she didn’t feel that dressing up in her best was merited in this situation.

She wouldn’t blame Katsuo for his presence—in a way, they were both victims of his… entire way of being. The more she learned about Gotō Tanaka, the more stellar Katsuo’s usual attitude became in comparison. All things considered, he could have turned out way worse.

“What are you planning?” Jing Fei asked.

To his credit, Qi didn’t exclaim something dramatic like ‘his end’, even though a part of Jing Fei would have appreciated hearing that. But a greater and more rational part readily accepted that as being folly. 

“I will take it up with his mother,” Qiang said.

“No,” Jing Fei immediately said, “Not that.”

Qiang looked down at her, “Why?”

“I already took out a favor with that on the line,” Jing Fei said, “It’s life or death.”

Qiang stopped and looked at her, “Explain.”

Jing Fei shoved his back hard. That he finally took a step and continued walking was probably entirely for her benefit. A son of a CEO of a high-tier company like QianT didn’t step outside the house without the finest cyberware money could buy, and combat ability.

“I have a life, you know,” Jing Fei muttered, “And things I’d rather keep private.”

Finally, the expansive stone path led them to the main entrance of the mansion, where Katsuo’s mother stood, flanked by an army of servants. All of them, even Mrs. Tanaka, wore kimonos. Though Mrs. Tanaka’s was by far the most beautiful.

She had an old-world charm to her. Pretty, despite the lack of bio-sculpts. The asymmetries on her face could easily be made out by anyone who gave enough of a shit about the subject, but somehow it didn’t look bad to Jing Fei by any means. In fact, every time she saw her, it felt like drinking a fresh glass of mineral water. No sparkles, no flavor, no bullshit.

She was present, sharp and discerning. Came with the territory of being so tied to corporations after all. But above all, she had warmth where so many others lacked it. The warmth of honesty.

In Jing Fei’s worst days, she often fantasized about spiriting the older woman away from this entire situation—away from her rotten son, and the rotten husband she was attached to.

In another life, they’d probably have been good friends. 

Once they finally reached her, the woman spoke.

“Welcome.” Mrs. Tanaka’s voice was smooth, poised, with just enough warmth to be polite. She inclined her head first to Qiang, then to Jing Fei. “It has been too long.”

Her gaze lingered on Qiang for a beat longer than necessary. “I must admit, I hadn’t expected you to join us this evening.”

Qiang smiled, the picture of effortless grace. “A rare opportunity to share a meal with the esteemed Tanaka family? How could I refuse?”

His tone was pleasant, his manners impeccable—but Jing Fei knew better. This was Qiang at his most controlled, when the ice was thin beneath his feet.

Mrs. Tanaka held his gaze for a fraction of a second longer than seemed appropriate, then simply nodded. “Of course. Please, come in.”

As they followed her through the grand entrance, Jing Fei couldn’t shake the feeling that Mrs. Tanaka had caught something in Qiang’s act—some imperfection in his poise, some unspoken motive beneath his courtesy.

What, exactly, had she perceived? Jing Fei had no idea.

But the uncertainty made her stomach twist.

And with him waiting inside, she already had enough to deal with.

000

The music was blaring in Lucy’s living room, the lights were low, and already there were over half a dozen used shot glasses on the coffee table.

While Lucy laid sideways on one of her couches, she watched David pace around the living room, his eyes golden. He had taken off his blazer and tie, and he had unbuttoned his white shirt at the top, revealing a pair of chiseled pecs underneath—but it was his eyes that hers kept straying towards. He grinned widely, probably eagerly reporting the mission’s success to Maine, letting the crew know that they had already breached Tanaka’s network. It was only a matter of time now before they found something. They had bots scanning every file, fishing for anything of importance.

David’s eyes went from gold to brown. He grinned widely, mouth open as he pumped his fist in the air, “Alright! Fucking nova!”

Lucy giggled. This seemed so surreal. And in all honesty, it was a relief. Poor gonk had been due some comfort for quite a while now.

“Get why mercs love to celebrate after each gig now?” Lucy asked.

David nodded, “Yeah! I feel preem! We should totally go out and celebrate—take the crew out to the Afterlife?”

Lucy sat up properly, “Hold on there, Luchador, or you’re gonna give the crew heart attacks.”

He tilted his head, “Heart attacks? Me? Why?”

“You don’t normally go in for good cheer,” Lucy said, “You kill the vibe more often than not—you’re a total broodfest.”

“Am not,” David denied hotly, “I just ain’t felt the need to celebrate like right now. And it’s not like I turn down afterparties anyway. I just don’t see the point of doing one after every gig—people don’t go out and party every day after clocking out.”

“So, what, only afterparty on Friday evenings at hole-in-the-wall bars with other depressed corpos?” Lucy laughed. “Is that your future, David?”

“Fuck you,” he laughed. Even a bit of ribbing wouldn’t tease out some irritation from him—he was all laughs. “I’m calling Becca and Pilar. Falco, too. Maine’s still on the recovery so—”

“David,” Lucy interrupted, holding up a hand, “What if… you didn’t?”

He raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

Lucy looked down at the carpet, hiding her burning face from him, “What if… it was just us? Tonight at least?”

000

Gotō Tanaka, as usual, killed the vibe with admirable thoroughness.

The short, squat man’s movements were borderline mechanical—like he had installed chipware instructing him on how to most politely partake in the feast before them. He wielded his chopsticks with precise, measured movements, never once glancing down as he picked up each morsel. His face, round and immaculately shaven, remained impassive, framed by hair so sharply styled it looked like it had been cut with a laser. His suit, a muted charcoal with subtle jacquard-style synth-weave patterning shifting under the light, was unmistakably Arasaka—practical, reserved, and absurdly expensive. At least partially carbon nanofiber, no doubt—nothing else could give the styling that sort of blacker than black patterning, like subtle cuts in reality amidst the usual Arasaka black. Plus, it would serve as decent personal protection in its own right.

The dinner itself was an awkward fusion of Japanese-American and Chinese-American cuisine. Jing Fei eyed the spread with practiced detachment. A shocking lack of authenticity. Not that she particularly cared—authenticity, in the culinary sense, was often more of a nostalgic indulgence than a necessity. Given that Mrs. Tanaka had likely overseen the menu, this wasn’t some statement about cultural dilution but a calculated decision for the younger generation at the table. A comfort spread for those who had spent their entire lives in Night City rather than the homelands their ancestors clung to in memory.

Still, it was a bit disorienting—seeing xiaolongbao served next to tuna tataki with a side of California rolls. There was even an entire section of the table dedicated to soy-glazed short ribs—her favorite. More than once, that oaf Qiang had prevented her from spinning the lazy Susan with all the food heaped on top her way so she could take more than was strictly polite. If he really couldn’t tell how much more embarrassing that was, then he was a lost cause.

Though nobody seemed to care—he and Gotō were rambling inanely at each other about market trends and the ecosystem of the business world. They were also very careful not to say even a single thing that could be counted as proprietary knowledge, leaving their talks woefully dry and unstimulating. 

But maybe that was for the best, given their present company.

Jing Fei risked a glance at Katsuo, who was sandwiched between his father and mother, on the opposite side of the round table to her and Qiang. He was the exact opposite of his father—long and lean where Gotō was compact, effortless where the older man was rigid. His blue tech-hair caught the warm glow of the dining room’s recessed lighting, accentuating sharp cheekbones and the ever-present smirk that Jing Fei had long since learned to ignore. He lounged in his chair with a kind of careless confidence, one hand resting lightly on the table, the other cradling a glass of plum wine he had yet to sip from.

If Gotō’s presence was suffocating, Katsuo’s was insidious. Less a weight pressing down and more a whisper in the ear, winding its way into the mind.

It was distracting. Wildly so. He didn’t deserve to have this power over her. The power to psyche her out with only a smirk. Was this trauma? He had injured her. She felt slightly stupid and a tad bit over dramatic at the thought. Trauma was reserved towards more serious issues than hers to be sure.

That still didn’t make his trespasses any less heavy in her mind. He hadn’t even begun to apologize. Maybe she should let Qiang bring this issue up with his mother. 

If only David’s life didn’t seem to ride on this. Then again, Jing Fei had heavy doubts that Katsuo would change his mind based on his mother’s word alone. He likely wouldn’t. But then, she never thought he could be the type likely to hurt his girlfriend—or fiancee, or whatever the hell they were. She just—couldn’t understand him anymore. She wasn’t sure if she even wanted to.

Katsuo reached for his glass of plum wine to try and pick it up. He held around it, picked it up, and trembled. Immediately, he aborted the action and played it off, looking around the table to see anyone that had caught his lapse. Jing Fei looked away before it was her turn to be inspected.

This absolute lush. He was using. Even now.

Or maybe he wasn’t, and that was what was causing these obvious withdrawal symptoms. The shakes? Really? Didn’t he have biomons for that? And didn’t he say he was going to get those arms looked at to begin with?

Bastard.

He had broken her hand, and hadn’t even done the one thing he said he would do—aside from paying her back at least.

“How are you feeling today, Katsuo?” Jing Fei asked, injecting every bit of sympathy she could muster in her words. She spoke in a way that the manly voices of her elder brother and Tanaka wouldn’t be interrupted, but Katsuo had heard her. 

He blinked in surprise, “Me? I’m fine, of course.”

She nodded, “I’m glad to hear that. It’s just that you seemed to have taken a little ill on Friday. You did get a check-up on your arms, yes?”

Mrs. Tanaka honed in on that like a hawk and looked her son over, eyes darting about. Jing Fei could even see her pulse rising—a rather dramatic reaction all in all, and one Jing Fei felt guilty in eliciting, even if it had been deliberate.

“Was something the matter with your arms, darling?” she asked, her voice quite and soft—utterly unable to penetrate the din of conversation, except to transmit its message to its intended recipient, and Jing Fei who had been paying attention.

“Nothing at all,” Katsuo muttered, chuckling nervously, “Yes, indeed, I did go to a clinic, and I was given a clean bill of health.”

“And what about Friday?” his mother asked, “What happened then?”

“It was nothing,” Katsuo chuckled, “Right, Fei-Fei?”

Hanako Tanaka looked at Jing Fei with eyes that betrayed a categorical lack of patience. Her message was loud and clear. 

Don’t bullshit me.

“Of course, you’re right,” Jing Fei said to Katsuo, while giving a pointed look to Hanako—one she made sure Katsuo didn’t see. Hanako gave a nod of understanding and slowly turned to her son.

“And you truly went to a clinic, son?” his mother asked.

“Yes, mother, I did,” Katsuo said, “they ran a quick diagnostic, and did some maintenance. The doctor did mention that it is not completely unheard of for the Strongarms 400 to go through low-level malfunctions in-between maintenance cycles as tight as ours.” And to hear Katsuo tell it, the entire family went for cyberware check-ups biweekly—upon the matriarch of the family’s request. “But it’s all fixed.”

Bullshit.

Clearly, all he had proven with that was that his outburst had nothing to do with faulty cyberware. Nobody skezzed out after biweekly maintenance. This was a wetware issue, far harder to address. It was the meat that was the problem—specifically that pink and likely smooth lump inside his skull, likely drugged to hell and swimming in sweet dreams. Fucking gonk.

Jing Fei furrowed her eyebrows in feigned confusion, “you’ve barely touched your plum wine.”

Katsuo looked down at the drink, then at her—real anger creeping into his eyes for only a moment—before his eyes fell on the drink once more.

Purposefully, he picked it up. His hands were still and stable as they lifted the glass up to his lips. Jing Fei held her breath as she watched him slowly bring it up, tip the contents over into his waiting mouth, and put the glass down.

That… would have taken a rather dramatic turn, given any other outcome. Jing Fei wondered if she should let the matter rest now, or continue laying it on him.

He wouldn’t learn a thing if she let him off that easily.

000

David drove his Kusanagi through the highway like he owned it, expertly bobbing and weaving through the traffic while Lucy held on tightly to his midsection. Lucy herself was no stranger to extreme riding and driving, she could even embrace the thrillseeking of it in her own right—but David was on some other level entirely. Learning to let go of her fear as he pulled immensely risky maneuvers just to save a fraction of a second was difficult, but the longer these rides went on, the more she was able to… simply get used to it.

When David rode his bike, it was as though Night City became only the size of a playground. They could go everywhere. From Arroyo to Watson in a blink and back.

She lost herself in the neon signs whizzing by, their speed turning them into horizontal smears of light. Distantly, she made out the brutalistic Arasaka Tower, a wide and tall monstrosity of dark gray metal that overshadowed all the rest of the city’s skyline, rising almost half a mile into the sky. Around it, holograms of advertisements danced around it like fairies, undercutting the building’s threatening aura. For the first time in… really, for the first time, when she looked at that tower, her soul didn’t darken.

Not while she held David, whose mere presence seemed to erase all worries.

All too soon, the ride ended—the open skies of the highway had given way to the dense crush of buildings inside the city, and the bike slowed down due to sheer necessity. No level of temporal perception could let someone ride a bike safely through the crowd of people down at this level, where the roads belonged more to the people than anyone else.

Soon enough, they were there. A bar in Japantown. David had traveled all over the city only for them to end up right back in her subdistrict. The bar wasn’t any place she had ever gone to, though—an unassumingly named Carlo’s Barcade.

“Wonder if they have Graph Wars,” Lucy muttered as David finished parking the bike. She let go of him to get off the bike. Immediately once she did, the front of her body and her arms felt cold. Almost uncomfortably so. The discomfort was… new. Her biomonitors would have done a better job to regulate her body temp, and from what she could tell from a simple scan, nothing was wrong with them.

“Probably not,” he chuckled, “then again, could be. But what it does have are some real classics.”

“You’ve been before?” Lucy asked.

“All the time,” David said, looking up at the bar’s facade, hands on his hips, “Used to come here with my chooms way back when school wasn’t so serious—when I still had time to hang. After every score, we’d come down here to spend it all. Course, I always saved every eddie, so all I ever did was watch ‘em play.”

“What, they wouldn’t spot you?” Lucy chuckled, “so much for street kid solidarity.”

“Heh,” he shrugged, stepping up to threshold of the open door, “maybe they didn’t like to see another gutter rat actually try to make something of themselves?” He turned back to her, “You coming?”

Lucy followed him into the bar. The inside was dark, dimly lit, but for the bar area and the rows and rows of arcade machines that took up the lion’s share of the floor. Lucy scanned them, and predictably enough, the machines were only emulating that twentieth century style—those weren’t even real CRT screens, just garden variety LED monitors hooked up to a computer loaded with the games.

“You wanna get drinks first?” David asked.

Lucy shook her head—she was more eager to hear about his past. “Why don’t we try a few games first? What did your chooms like to play?”

He looked up and blinked as though to summon the memory, “Some pirate game. Can’t remember what the fuck it was called.”

Lucy looked around, and one particular machine caught her eye, and its name was, “Mutiny?”

His eyes lit up. He looked in the same direction she did and made a beeline towards it, “That’s it. Mutiny. It’s a two-player game between two teams of pirates—the red pirates versus the blue pirates.”

“Tale as old as time,” Lucy muttered. “I’ll take blue—obviously.”

David raised an eyebrow at her, “Come to think of it, you are a born player number two.”

Oh, hell no. “Blue is the default. If anything, red should be player number two.”

He booted up the game. The main screen showed two cartoonish pirate crews, one wearing blue and another wearing red, locked in battle, mouths open and spittle flying out from it. “See how Red’s on the left side? It’s a marketing trick—put the important elements on the left, because that’s where our eyes are primed to go—if you’re English speaking at least.”

“Nerd,” Lucy scoffed, “And if we’re going by the main screen on which is player one and which is player two—” David paid the fee to the game and got to the set-up page where they each had to name their crews. And true to David’s prediction, blue was titled ‘player two’ by default. She connected her system to the game and hastily slapped on her nethandle, Luna. “Blue is the better color anyway.”

“Whatever you say,” he said. She could hear the mirth in his voice. She refused to play along, though—old habits did die hard after all.

David named his team of red buccaneers ‘the D clan’, prompting her to snort-giggle. What a gonk.

“Luna pirates, huh?” he said, “They’re blue, so it could work. Alright, let’s play.”

Now it was time for map selection. David just selected the first one shown—a two-dimensional image of two ships facing a central island that seemed to have two traversable areas—the very top of a hill, and the inside of that same hill, which could be entered from a hole at the top area, and two tunnels at the ground level where the land was closer to the ships on either side.

It was David’s turn as the screen zoomed in on one of the many sprites on-screen, that of a pixelated red pirate wearing a tricorn—the captain, presumably, starting in the underground area of the island. Did he have some sort of special role in the game? “From what I remember, each turn you pick a character, and you can choose whether to move him, use an attack, or both.”

He picked the ‘move’ option. A white line poked out of the player sprite, dotted on one end. Then it extended as though a force had been applied on it, stretching seemingly—ah, Lucy understood. The straight part of the line was where the player ‘pulled’, and the dotted section was on the other side of the character, opposite the whole line. That dotted line mapped the trajectory of where David would launch the character.

He threw his captain into a gap between the island and the ship—straight into the drink. It sunk and—died. The game continued with her turn—seemingly the loss of his pirate captain hadn’t done anything to ease tensions between the Luna and D clan.

“Amazing,” Lucy said dryly, “I can’t even begin to fathom what you’ve got planned.”

“Hey, I only watched them play.”

“And it breaks my heart every time you repeat that story—saddest shit I’ve ever heard,” Lucy grinned as she moved the map around to get a look at her precious crewmates, and the opposition.

She picked one pirate that was nearest to an enemy pirate—on one of the ships. Hers was atop the mast, on the crow’s nest, while his was on the bottom floor.

Carefully, she flung her guy down to his level, and then leafed through her weapon menu.

“The stick of dynamite’s pretty OP,” David said, “I think that was the META. Mostly for the knockback.”

She shrugged and picked it. She flung the stick directly at his sprite, only for it to phase straight through and land on the ground, a few feet away from the sprite. 

“What the hell, that was a direct hit—” a moment later, the stick exploded, launching David’s sprite away from the ship and into the island, taking off a hefty chunk of HP from it as well. 

“Ain’t about contact,” David said as he cracked his neck, “It’s timed, clearly. But it’s starting to come back to me. Yeah, this won’t take long.”

He was right.

Though despite his boasting, he had been on the receiving end of that punishment. He did keep a sunny mood despite the repeated fuck-ups, insisting each time that he was ‘starting to understand it’. 

At some point, she had stopped believing him altogether, only for him to continue with the bit. 

Then came round two.

Different map this time—an assortment of flying islands tightly bunched together. This made traversing the map far riskier, as falling could very well take you to the abyss at the bottom of the map. Though the islands were clustered tightly enough that even missing one jump wouldn’t kill you, as long as you weren’t low on the map.

The first few turns, David maneuvered his boys in ways she couldn’t quite understand—all the while, she just continued to rain bombs and dynamite sticks on them, firing off the occasional cannon shot to break away pieces of environment and make the treacherous footing even more treacherous.

“Hahah! You walked right into it now, you gonk,” David grinned as he fired a stick of dynamite into a cluster of her players, all of whom received knockback.

All but one of them managed to pinball all the way down to the abyss, bouncing off the walls of the islands below and dying.

“Dick!” Lucy shouted hotly as she flung her character back up to the top of the map, putting distance between herself and the bottom. Then she fired off a cannon that managed to take out one single player of his.

David threw the last stick of dynamite he had. This time, her character descended all the way down, and the game ended in his win.

“Hah! Nova!” He turned to her, “Wanna play something else? Racing game, maybe?”

“Sure,” she said, “Just don’t let me beat you over and over.”

“You’re not winning a racing game,” he chuckled, “feels unfair to even suggest it. Alright, you pick the game and I’ll get some drinks.”

000

Katsuo had been excusing himself to go to the bathroom rather, uh, often.

This current return of his marked the third time in only a single hour. He was making it painfully obvious, and painfully awkward.

Gotō, of course, couldn’t give two shits, still locked in a nonsense yammering contest with her older brother. Hanako kept making furtive attempts to see to her son’s fraying health. Katsuo kept making things obvious that something was wrong.

Her intent had been to put him on the spot, to make him feel awkward, to make him hurt at least. If only to return a fraction of the pain he had already caused her.

His hand started vibrating. His mother put her hand over his. He saw that and immediately pulled his hand back, hissing to his mom that he was fine when he obviously wasn’t.

Jing Fei gave him a call.

Hanako saw it when his eyes glowed gold, and she turned to Jing Fei with eyes that said ‘I’ll leave this to you.’

Fei-Fei: you’re acting weird. If you need to leave, I’ll help come up with an excuse

TonKatsu-Ramen: Excuses? What excuses? Why would I excuse myself? I’m fine. I’m perfectly fine.

His eyes twitched, like they were trying to look at several places at once. Be several places at once.

Fei-Fei: Yes. You’re fine. But the others seem a little stressed. They might see something that’s not there and hound you for it.

TonKatsu-Ramen: Like what? What the hell? That sounds paranoid. You need to lighten up. Nobody’s gonna catch on.

Catch on?

Fei-Fei: catch on to what?

“Nothing!” Katsuo hissed, loudly enough to interrupt Gotō’s conversation with Qiang. All eyes were on him now.

“What do you mean, son?” Gotō intoned gruffly, as though daring him to waste his time. 

Katsuo looked at him with a deep-seated horror in his eyes. “I—I believe, uh, food, yes—” he clenched his jaw, “some food fell down the wrong pipe. But I am fine. It is nothing.”

Qiang narrowed his eyes at him, “Is something the matter, Katsuo? You seem… ill at ease.”

Ah, so they just finally noticed?

Fei-Fei got up— a little decorum-breachy, given she hadn’t asked for permission to be dismissed yet, but emergencies called for drastic action—and rounded the table so that she was by Katsuo, “Come, Katsuo; let’s get you to bed. Clearly, that plum wine was stronger than it let on by its flavor.”

Katsuo quickly stood up, “No need; I’ll simply go to the bathroom. One moment, please.” He turned around to walk away.

“You already went,” Hanako said, freezing Katsuo mid-stride, “are you certain you would rather not go to your room?”

000

Playing games with David, it seemed, was an exercise in humility. The only times she’d beat him was while he was still in his experimentation stage, learning the controls, and what he could do if he combined certain game elements.

That was, unless he immediately understood the gist of a game and just trounced her anyway.

The drinks flowed, and each time they wore a machine out to satisfaction, they’d switch to another game, over and over.

It was a funky rhythm, Lucy judged. Like all good rhythms, however, it needed a bit of shaking up.

“More drinks?” David suggested.

She shook her head—she’d had enough. Besides, if she got too drunk, then the gonk would only default to his gentlemanly nature and refuse to act on any opportunity given. His mother had definitely raised him right, but that was annoying. And hot.

“Hey,” she grinned mischievously, “wanna ride the NCART?”

His grin mirrored hers, “fuck yeah.”

He drove them to the nearest station before sending the bike home via autopilot—a slightly risky thing to do in case any Netrunner with enough skill saw the pair of wheels rolling by unattended. Then again, David’s ICE was solid—she’d seen that firsthand.

As they waited for the train, David began, “let’s race for chips. I won’t use the Sandy. Sounds good?”

Lucy’s grin was so sharp that it could cut glass. “Sounds nova.”

The monorail finally arrived at the station. The two of them entered the car right ahead of them from the doors furthest from each other. Slowly, the doors closed, and the cart sped off. 

Lucy got to work. She first scanned the crowd and then looked for physical tells—which way the necks of her likely marks bent, what cyberware they were sporting, how spatially aware they were—and then got started on an innocuous walk through the crowd.

Ever so often, she’d swipe something out of the air after passing by an unsuspecting gonk. No one noticed. No one cared.

She met David in the middle of the cart. He gave her a call.

Corpo-Cunt: I got twelve.

Lucy: I got thirteen.

David scowled.

Corpo-Cunt: Dammit!

Lucy chuckled. They passed each other by, both pretending not to know the other, and waiting for the cart to reach its next station. Usually, she’d have waited for the cart to be closer to the next station before beginning her klepping spree—just to give herself the option of escaping at a moment’s notice if something got fucked up.

But then David would have probably taken advantage of that to rack up points. 

Still, twelve wasn’t bad, given that she had taught him everything he knew. Or at the very least, gotten him started on the basics. And how long ago was that now? A month. 

Considering how far he had come in just a month all at once was… disconcerting. She’d rather shelf that thought for later—or never. Didn’t matter one bit, anyway.

They were consistently neck in neck for the next few cars. They kept racking up chips for over an hour. Lucy would have welcomed the score if her recent windfall after Tijuana hadn’t simply destroyed all her money worries for the foreseeable future—likely for years if she didn’t spend it like a gonk. 

Now, she was just doing this for the love of the game. 

“PICKSOCKET!”

They had just reached the next station when one of the marks had suddenly screamed bloody murder. David, who was deep inside the NCART, must surely have heard it. 

She asked just to make sure.

Lucy: Heard that?

Corpo-Cunt: yup—moving out-out. 

They both disappeared into the crowd of commuters leaving the train and the station, eventually finding each other in the streets. 

They immediately laughed upon spotting one another. 

“Did you get a look at the mark?” Lucy asked, “Which one of us fucked up?”

David bit his lower lip and shrugged, “Don’t have a clue.”

“It was you, wasn’t it?” 

“No, it wasn’t!”

“You still have much to learn,” Lucy shook her head, arms folded. He was pouting—pouting! He might have thought that his tough-boy scowl could undercut the sheer cuteness of that expression, but it didn’t. Not one bit. Lucy resisted laughing and continued the bit, “come to think of it, didn’t you put the entire city on high alert last time you tried this shit? Subtle ain’t exactly your thing, is it?”

He sighed, “Fuck off,” he muttered softly, a grin playing on his lips. “Matter of fact, why don’t you put your eddies where your mouth is then, master?” he pointed up ahead on the sidewalk where a group of pigs had congregated, a pair of cruisers on the streets right next to them. “Klep their shards.”

Lucy gaped. This fucking gonk! 

She almost backed off then, but stopped herself. Fine, he wanted to challenge her? 

Fuck it.

“You think I won’t?” Lucy walked up. David immediately grabbed her arm. Lucy ignored the warmth in her stomach as she turned to David, who looked surprised.

“Not so fast, now,” he said.

“So you were bullshitting me.”

“Not quite,” David said, “Look, I’ll distract them, then you do your thing. Nova?”

Lucy scoffed, hiding her satisfaction, “worried, are you?”

He let go of her and gave her a shrug, “just a bit.” He walked up ahead, to the cops. Lucy crossed the street and quickly walked up ahead to get on their blindspot once David had their attention.

And get their attention he did. He took off in a sprint towards them—they immediately pulled out their guns—only for him to face-plant in front of them and roll in agony.

Lucy didn’t hesitate to get behind them and quickhack them all, ejecting their shards from their neck and taking off before anyone could raise an alarm.

One cop picked David up by the collar of his jacket and punched him. Lucy froze—

Corpo-Cunt: Fucking relax. This is nothing.

Lucy watched it play out as he pleaded his case. Then his eyes glowed blue for a moment—eddie transfer? The cop finally let him go, and he walked past them, catching up to Lucy. “You good?” she asked.

He blinked at her. “Uh, yeah. Nanobots, remember? Don’t exactly go down easy.”

“How much did you pay?”

“Fifteen edds,” he laughed, “First it was five, hence the punch. Then I upped it to ten. Finally, he started buying that I was fucking broke or something. Shit was hilarious.”

Lucy gaped—then laughed. Holy shit, is this gonk even real?

“Man, oh man,” he shook his head, still grinning in delight, “never thought I could have that much fun with cops. How many shards you swipe?”

“Uh, all of them—four,” she said. 

“It’s crazy,” he shook his head. “It wasn’t long ago when… all of this city felt like it would kill me at any moment. Now, it’s,” he chuckled, “I guess it’s finally home now.”

“Yeah,” she said, “I… I’m starting to feel the same, I think.”

“Yeah?” he asked, inching closer to her, so their arms touched, “I’m… happy to hear that.”

“Wanna head home?” Lucy asked.

000

“I am certain,” Katsuo half-spasmed, bit out the words through gritted teeth, “I will go to the bathroom. I need to relieve myself, mother.”

Jing Fei’s heart thundered. She kept a healthy distance from Katsuo—she literally had to. Why was his entire body twitching like that? And why was she—it was like something in her, some deeply buried instinct of womankind had awakened in her bones and was warning her to keep away from him. Jing Fei didn’t understand it—it was like her body couldn’t abide moving even an inch closer to him. She wasn’t sure how much the people in attendance were picking up on, but surely they could no-doubt observe that propriety was being lost. 

Moment by moment, the situation was becoming more and more dire. 

But this is good, isn’t it? If Katsuo exposes himself right now, then Qiang will have witnessed it. And I won’t have to be his fiancée anymore. 

No. Jing Fei didn’t like that plan one bit. Not like this.

“Please, Katsuo,” Jing Fei murmured, “let me help you.”

Was it her sympathy towards Katsuo speaking? He was… a product of his environment. And despite his many, many shortcomings, he did at least try. 

It wasn’t right to not help him, not when he was so obviously suffering.

But why were his eyes moving like that— 

000

Extinction.

It’s coming.

Extinction.

It’s coming.

All things died. Katsuo knew that well. After the arms had been forced on him, suicidal ideation had been his constant companion, always denied, always whispering treacherously from the darkest corners of his own psyche, always denied, denied, denied. But now—

—It was like he had torn through a veil, and was staring at the ineffable immortal truth that lay beyond. Ideation? No, enlightenment. He could DESTROY it ALL AND THEN HIMSELF IN A GLORIOUS SONG OF—

Was this enlightenment?

Extinction was enlightenment. Enlightenment was divinity. 

It’s coming. Should I—

No. I need… to run. But run where? Extinction is—

Fei-Fei waved her lips, saying something useless, something that couldn’t grace this Tathagata’s ears. “It’s coming,” he said, staring at all of them and none of them.

—Extinction is the path to the realm of the Tathagata. I see it now.

The people in attendance continued murmuring, the red dust of the mortal realm suffusing the very meaning of their impure and poisoned words. 

He needed to go.

Where exactly? The whole room seemed quite aimless. Nothing was there for him. The food? No—he had eaten his fill. The drink?

He walked up to the table and grabbed the crystal bottle of plum wine, up-ending the contents into his gullet. He let the bottle drop to the floor, and the walking piles of meat in the room all paused.

Extinction.

It’s coming.

The liquid burned as it travelled down his throat, lighting up his vision, providing further depth to his sight, showing him that—

Warning: Inebriation levels critical—cease further consumptions or else suffer the consequences, you uNwoRThy wORm, you—you make your mother WISH she was dead, KatsuoOOOOO—

Extinction.

It’s coming.

A grip like an iron vice wrapped around his arm, harming this Tathagata’s most venerable body!

Katsuo struck the head of the offending demon with extreme prejudice, screaming at the top of his lungs.

“EXTINCTION!” He screamed. The hand let go. His head whirled around. “IT’S COMING!”

All of these peons would be enlightened alongside him.

In time.

But for that to happen, he needed to find the holy tools.

This Tathagata’s father—the archdemon, the greatest enemy of all—kept those holy tools stashed in a safe, didn’t he?

He walked blindly, letting his feet—and his all-seeing eyes—take him to where he needed to go. A black iron box. He ripped it open. His arms cracked, but he did not care.

Then he rejoined his flock. They stared at him.

The Tathagata incarnate stared back, and for perhaps the first time, felt freedom. He honored the menials, apostates, plebs, and demons with a nod of farewell, jealous that they would feel the holy fire before himself. No matter.

Enlightenment. Finally.

The holy tools let out roars as he pinched at their private parts. Each squeeze of those parts made the holy tools roar in fury, releasing destruction upon the impure bodies of those in attendance. Bodies hit the floor.

One impure body tried to strike at this Tathagata. The demon smacked the holy tool from his grip and tried to wrestle him.

But this Tathagata’s strong arms were four-hundred fold powerful. He screeched his defiance at the archdemon, and the last battle for extinction was met. 

000

Lucy’s rooftop had an almost-direct view to Orbital Air’s launch pad—the one that shot rockets to Luna. Arasaka apparently had quite a few business interests up there ranging from mining to advanced materials fabrication to pharmaceuticals that could only be made in low-G conditions, so the city’s starport always had plenty of activity. That she lived here, seeing all that, slowly earning the money to buy a ticket of her own—

It meant that, every day working in the gutters of Night City, she would return here, her dream in view.

I clenched my jaws as I watched the sight, trying my best not to dwell on how that must have felt for her.

All this time, just…

Fuck.

Both of us sat together on the roof of her apartment block, waiting for this next rocket to take off. I idly wondered if something dramatic would happen by then. Or if something dramatic could even happen.

Lucy was…

I didn’t understand her.

And I guess that added to her charm. She was incomprehensible. Crazy. Out of this fucking world in every sense. 

I didn’t get it. I didn’t see it—not consciously, at least.

I wrestled for words to say—today was fun. Gonk shit like that. Fuck. None of it would fly.

How could it? I was approaching this with the thinking that she was normal, and she wasn’t. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I snuck a glance at her as she sat—just the sight of her was enough for me to feel stuff happening in my chest and in my stomach.

That suave confidence of hers—the occasional lunacy. Hell, even the anger! I wasn’t a fucking masochist by any means, but no matter how she bent her face, no matter what furious expressions it made, I still couldn’t myself. She was just too fucking hot.

Too fucking special.

But.

She was also a person.

And as agonizing as it was, I had to be prepared for a rejection—she had been quite consistent in her feelings towards me after all. Moon date aside—she had been quite drunk at the time. 

Sixteen shots of hard liquor would make anyone do anything.

“Enny for your thoughts?” Lucy asked, her smoky voice gently pulling me out of my reverie to consider her words.

“A thousand eddies and we’ll talk,” I said.

Defaulting to a joke. Fucking classic. Goddammit, D. What is wrong with you? Jokes weren’t even my strong suit.

She snorted. Then she sent me a transfer request for a thousand eddies. She pulled it back as quickly as I saw it. I chuckled.

“It’s a pretty night,” I said, looking up at the sky. Not a cloud in the air. Not many stars either—but that was par for the course with Night City. But it was a full moon. That must have counted for something.

“Yeah,” she said.

Nothing else. 

For several seconds.

FUCK.

Goddamnit, David, tighten the fuck up.

[Tell her you like her]

Motherf—

D: Are you fucking serious?

[Yes. Yes, I am. And before you tell me I’m not able to make these judgments because I’m an AI—I don’t care. Get it over with. Now.]

What the fuck?

D: We’ll definitely talk about this attitude later.

[Certainly. But do go on about your business. I can no longer bear to watch you agonize over such a simple solution to your predicament.]

I was crazy. I was fucking crazy. For even daring to consider this idea—from the advice of an AI no less.

D: First of all, don’t think I haven’t noticed you disappearing on me ever since I killed those Tyger Claws. We’ll talk about that, too.

[Certainly.]

Still, I was slightly relieved to hear her weigh in. 

Goddammit all!

“Lucy,” I muttered, “I have to keep it real.”

“What?” she asked with a slight chuckle. Her mirth killed my momentum immediately.

[Go on.]

“When I first met you, first talked to you, hung out with you,” I shook my head, “I don’t know. Shit just clicked. It really did.”

“David—”

I turned to her, my momentum gathering. I wouldn’t let her interject—not until I had finished my piece at least. I deserved that much at least. “I’m—shit, I don’t know what to say. I’m fucking crazy about you. Have been since I met you. And when I say I’m crazy about you, I mean all of you. All your pieces, all your parts. Physical, emotional, psychological—doesn’t matter. It’s all of it.”

Yeah… I just… completely fucked it up at the end there. Fuck. Whatever. I was being honest. That was what mattered.

“Hmm?” Lucy hummed, grinning, looking up at me, as though to mock me. And god-fucking-damnit, that still worked for me. “And what about me do you like?”

“All of it.”

“Be specific.”

I stopped sitting and got up on a crouch, facing her, “your lunacy.”

She looked away from me.

Shit.

SHIT.

I’d gone too far there, hadn’t I?

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

“I’m sor—”

“Don’t,” she said, pointing her palm at me. “Don’t apologize. You were being honest, weren’t you?”

Was this a test?

Was she trying to see how well I could keep my cool?

While most of me was already convinced that was the case, a small part of me urged me to backtrack and apologize.

No. There would be no apologizing in this juncture.

I stood up straight from my crouch and faced the launch pad far ahead, “Despite my better judgment, and despite your best fucking efforts, I’m crazy about you. And I won’t stop being crazy about you. At times, it feels like a curse. Most of the time, it feels like I’m in heaven.”

I shrugged, still looking up ahead. “I’ve… I’ve never felt this way before. Not really. If I’m being creepy, that’s—”

“No!”

“Huh?” I looked down at Lucy, still facing away from me so I couldn’t see her face, “Hey, I’m sor—”

“I told you not to apologize already, didn’t I?” she replied hotly.

I closed my mouth and looked away. A few seconds passed in silence, then, “I’m not joking, Lucy.”

I walked up to the edge of the roof—just to give her space. And to gain space, as well. Needed it. 

I heard a laugh behind me. Lucy was standing, and chuckling, hiding her face under her hand.

“Fucking gonk,” she muttered.

Was she making fun of me? Screwing with me?

Didn’t care.

“So?” I asked. “What’ll it be?”

Before she could answer, I activated the Sandevistan, appearing right before her—to her view at least. Whatever cocksure remark she had died in her throat, and she blinked dumbly, looking at me—slightly up at me, to my pride. 

Nanny had definitely come through on the growth.

She wrapped her arm around my neck, pulled me down, and our lips touched—

The fucking rocket launched—had she timed this? What a fucking nerd.

Also…

This…

This…

This was it, huh?

Our lips touched. Mine melted into hers. My mouth opened—suddenly, my arms were around her waist, and—

000

Jing Fei couldn’t breathe. Each attempt at a breath felt like drowning, like her lungs had turned into punctured bags filling with warm liquid. A thin, wet rattle escaped her throat as she coughed, the metallic taste of blood coating her tongue. Every nerve in her body screamed, but the pain was distant—muted by the cold that was seeping into her limbs, making her feel weightless and heavy all at once.

Her fingers twitched weakly against the marble floor, slick with something warm—her blood, most likely. It should have mattered. It should have terrified her. But all she could do was stare forward, her vision tunneling to the one thing that truly mattered.

Qiang.

Her big brother. Her protector. The one person in the world who never wavered. He lay sprawled on the floor, his face turned toward her—but he wasn’t seeing her. His dark eyes, always sharp, always filled with fire, were empty. Glassy. A perfect, crimson-edged hole sat between them.

Jing Fei's chest clenched, but not from the gunshot wounds.

No.

No, no, no—

Her fingers dragged weakly against the floor, reaching for him, but the distance was unbearable. Her body wouldn’t move the way she willed it to, her strength draining with every slow, wet breath. She wanted to scream, but her throat could barely make a sound.

This wasn’t real.

This couldn’t be real.

The world wasn’t supposed to exist without Qiang in it. Without his voice, his presence, his unshakable certainty. He was the one who always made things right. Who fixed things. But now, there was nothing to fix. Just an empty body. Just blood pooling beneath his head, staining the marble. Just silence.

A deep, gut-wrenching grief swallowed her whole, heavier than the pain, heavier than the bullets lodged in her body. It was like something inside her was unraveling, fraying apart strand by strand, leaving behind only raw, unbearable loss.

She had never felt so small.

So alone.

Her vision blurred, but whether it was from tears or the creeping darkness at the edges of her sight, she wasn’t sure.

The last thing she saw before the darkness finished encroaching on her vision was a red cross with a vertical line striking through it.

 

Notes:

Was gonna release this one tomorrow, but since I got on a writing kick, I thought, fuck it, this one can come out early too.

Hope y'all enjoyed!

Special thanks to DiabloSnowblind/Coldbringer for the beta reading. Especially for this chapter.

Discord link: https://discord.gg/W5BqBBym28

Chapter 40: Clean-Up Duty

Being with Lucy was… heavy. 

Like hunger, unleashed. 

I couldn’t even say whose.

Our kisses were desperate. Frantic. Like we were trying our best to squeeze the moment for all that it was worth, but convinced that our best efforts wouldn’t be enough. 

She dragged me down from the roof, her grip so strong that if I didn’t know any better, I thought she was trying to hurt me.

Once we were inside the house, I decided… enough was enough. She wanted to play rough? I could play rough.

I pinned her to the wall, my forearm pushing against her collar. She couldn’t budge an inch. From there, I kissed her. She pulled my head closer to her. Then her feet left the floor, and she wrapped her legs around me. I stopped pushing her against the wall and instead hugged around her, still kissing her as I carried her to the bedroom. It was all I could do to not give into my hunger halfway there and just take her on the dirty floor. Instead, I threw her on her ridiculous heart-shaped bed and pounced over her, continuing the kiss.

I felt a buzzing notification pop up in my optics—I dismissed it without looking at it. Then I disconnected myself entirely. Nothing—absolutely nothing—was more important than this moment. Whatever it was, it could wait.

The air between us was thick—electric, almost suffocating. Every breath we took was stolen, devoured in the space between lips that never stayed apart for long. The room pulsed with something raw, something unspoken, something that bordered on violence but wasn’t quite there. It was need, sharpened to a fine edge, honed by time, by circumstance, by the unbearable weight of everything unsaid.

Lucy’s fingers curled against my back, nails raking along my skin, not gentle, not kind. She clung to me like she wanted to carve me into herself, like she was afraid I’d slip through her grasp if she didn’t hold on hard enough. And maybe she was right. Maybe I would.

Our bodies moved with an urgency that bordered on reckless. The world outside the room ceased to exist—the city, the noise, the endless, grinding machine of life that neither of us truly belonged to. It all blurred at the edges, fading into the periphery, until there was only the feverish press of our bodies and the sharp gasps between kisses that tasted like goodbye.

I didn’t want to think about what this was. What it meant. Whether it was a beginning or an end. But there was a finality to it, a weight that pressed against my ribs, made my breaths shallow, my grip a little too tight. Lucy wasn’t soft. She wasn’t delicate. She was fire and teeth and a storm bottled up inside a body too small to hold it all. And I—I was a man who had already seen too much, lived too much, survived too much to pretend that this wasn’t different.

The light above us flickered, casting jagged shadows along the walls, our silhouettes tangling and untangling like restless ghosts. Her hair was a halo of white against the sheets, wild and disheveled, and when she looked at me—really looked at me—it was with an intensity that made my chest tighten. Like she saw something inside me I wasn’t sure I wanted to acknowledge.

Her breath hitched. My pulse hammered.

Neither of us spoke.

There were no words for this.

000

We wouldn’t stop. Couldn’t stop. Even after the aggression wore out, as though we were finally, truly admitting to each other the depths of our mutual affection, the sex became softer, the edges smoothing out. Like we were going from a solid to liquid state.

I couldn’t tell how many hours had passed before we finally decided to take a break, Lucy panting in exertion. Once upon a time, her stamina had outstripped mine by miles. One more benefit of having Nanny by my side—I was barely winded, far better at processing oxygen than she was. 

“So,” I muttered. We’d managed to mess up most of her entire bedroom in the last few hours. It’d take a while to clean up. “I guess that means you like me too?”

Lucy snorted and shoved me lightly, “gonk.”

I chuckled. Then I searched for her hand and took it. She interlocked her fingers with mine, and we just laid there, Lucy’s breath slowly easing up.

Now that all that was over and done with, I reconnected with the Net. “Hope the bots finally catch something interesting.”

“Nah, already checked,” Lucy said, her eyes blue as she interfaced with her deck. “Sweep came up clean.”

I raised an eyebrow. Then what was that notification that I—

“Fuck.”

Lucy turned to me. “What?”

The program I had implanted in Katsuo had fully unraveled—the cyberpsychosis and the suicide quickhack.

“Katsuo went apeshit already,” I frowned, sitting up.

“Bullshit,” Lucy said, “We checked and re-checked the release system so many times. How could that happen?”

I considered the possibilities, and came up with the most likely one pretty quickly, “Wetware issue.”

“No fucking way,” Lucy said, “Corpo like him was skirting the edge all along? With what, a pair of gorilla arms and a plastic dick?”

He had a few more pieces than that, but they were all medical grade stuff for quality of life—none of it was combat rated except for his arms, and even then their only real combat application was their strength and durability. He had no in-built weapons, barely any neuralware at all, and most of his body was still very much ganic. Not even any subderm.

“Maine’s gonna fucking kill me,” I muttered as I scanned through the data and— “MOTHERFUCKER!”

“What?”

My fists clenched so hard that I felt like my fingers were liable to snap. “He’s not even fucking dead yet.”

Realistically, how far could I get if I went full throttle into North Oak, masked up and armed to the teeth, and then shot up Katsuo’s entire manor before beating a retreat? With Ping and the Burya, I’d be able to tag him from outside as long as my aim was true, which it was increasingly becoming. And I could ride out faster than any car could follow me and—

Fuck. Stupid. All of it.

Shit. 

I needed to call Maine.

000

I was on a holo call with Maine in Lucy’s living room. I was standing while Lucy was on the couch, smoking a cigarette.

“Motherfucker,” Maine cursed, “this is gonna fucking cost us.”

“I know,” I said, “it’s my fault. I’ll fix it.”

“Fix it? How?”

“We have Tanaka’s personal data,” Lucy piped in, “we know his movements—and dollars to donuts, his ass is probably still parked at the Med Center—his son ain’t dead yet, so that’s probably where he is.”

“Alright,” I nodded at her, “so we stake the place out. When he leaves, we tag his body-guards, drag his ass into Falco’s truck, and delta. I can do it faster than fast.”

I was already looking for my jacket and my mask.

“No,” Maine said, “this is why you ain’t the ones making plans, kid. What about building security? And you wanna do this right in the middle of Trauma’s front yard? What, are you stupid? We smoke him out and get his ass on the road, you feel me? And I’m fucking coming.”

I nodded. I’d heard that he was taking it easy this week to recuperate from chipping in. Getting a new neural link, one as big as the one the Apogee sandy was attached to, was serious biz after all. “But take it easy, Maine.”

“Don’t give me that shit,” Maine growled, “You fucked this up. You don’t have the right to tell me to take shit slow n’ easy, ya hear me? I’m coming with so you don’t fuck up again. For fuck’s sake, D.”

“It wasn’t his fault,” Lucy said.

“Stay out of this,” Maine said, “the program was his doing.”

“And you signed off on it,” Lucy reminded him. Maine didn’t even bother responding. He just growled at her, gave her a dark look.

I tsked. She did have a point, but…

“I get it,” I said, “I’ll take full responsibility. We’re getting Tanaka tonight. No matter what.”

“Falco’s en-route to pick us up,” Lucy said, “Should we ping the siblings?”

“Already did,” Maine said, “Whole family’s getting together for this one. Bring your gear—any extra jammers you got lyin’ around, too—can’t ever be too careful.”

I donned my jacket and my mask, and gathered my arsenal—my M-179 Achilles precision rifle, the Lexington that Maine had gifted me, the Burya I had just bought the other day, and the DS1 Pulsar that Pilar had sold me along with the Burya, a submachine gun that released an immense volume of bullets rapidly. 

The tech rifle went on my back, the submachine gun around my shoulder, hanging from my right side, the Burya on the left side of my waist to balance out the SMG, the Lexington, and my sword Eikō on the right.

And underneath my jacket, I wore a light harness holding extra bullets and magazines.

“That is overkill,” Lucy said, carrying with her a satchel containing an external deck and likely some more gadgets.

“This is Arasaka,” I reminded her. 

She gave a nod of concession. “Point.”

Falco’s Emperor pulled up on the street, and Lucy and I didn’t waste any time scrambling inside. Maine was already in, on the passenger seat next to Falco, and Dorio was on the backseats. Pilar and Becca were at the very back.

“Somebody shat the bed,” Pilar giggled conspiratorially, pointing both fingers right at me like all this was just some bar joke to him.

“Lay off him, bro,” Becca tsked, “We all have our glitch days.”

“Ya’ll came prepped,” Maine said, looking at the two of us. “Good. What’s the data on where Tanaka went?”

“NCMC, Little China,” Lucy said. Her eyes were glowing gold, her voice distant—she was clearly already looking through our data on the target. “He and his whole family’s got the platinum package.”

Falco sped off. “We’ll check if he’s really there with Ping, once we’re close by,” I said. “If he ain’t, we’ve still got a bunch of places to check.”

“How do we smoke his ass out?” Dorio asked. “Or do we wait?”

“Smoking him out leaves traces, connects what happened to his son with what might happen to him,” I said, “easier to wait him out.”

Lucy tapped away at her cyberdeck, “I could trip the alarm for his home office—might get him out, but that’s a big if. He’ll probably have people to get that checked out anyway.”

“Sounds good,” I said. At the end of the day, this had gone too far for me to worry about tenuous connections, “I can—”

Another notification popped up on my interface. From an unexpected person. Who never contacted me without a good reason, let alone at this time of morning. 

I took the call.

Allister: David. You there?

David: Kinda busy, man. What’s up?

Allister: Did you hear?

David: I just woke up, Allister. What’s the word?

Allister: Thought you said you were busy. Wait. Hold up. I should’ve done this a while ago. Let me drag you into our groupchat. It’s all in the backlog.

Allister: tl;dr. Someone hit the Tanaka house last night. Multiple casualties. Arasaka HQ is breathing down the necks of the suits. Probably an enemy corpo assassination job. It’s a fuckin’ shitshow.

“Shit,” I muttered under my breath.

“What’s up?” Maine asked, looking back at me from the front seat.

I sighed irritably. “Nothing—word’s already getting out among the kid corpos. They think Katsuo’s house got hit in a job, guns blazing.”

Rebecca cackled. Lucy snorted. “As if.”

“This fuckup is on the both of you,” Maine growled. “Can it, Becca. Lucy, get us a good exfil route.” Lucy nodded quickly. Then not just Maine’s eyes, but his entire head veered my way. He was pissed. “David,” he said darkly, “Keep both eyes on the baby Arasaka scuttlebutt. Maybe they know something.”

I waved him off. “Chill, chill. Already on it.”

I accepted Allister’s invite to what was apparently a groupchat for a good quarter of my class year—basically all the Arasaka-types who were actually worth knowing—and started browsing it over. After a moment, as I really started grasping the scope of what this groupchat channel was, I tsked. Seriously, man?

David: first of all, why the fuck didn't you invite me earlier? 

Allister: you never asked. Which, to be entirely fair to me, was something that I took as a deliberate choice.

I wanted to keep fighting, but then again, he did finally invite me in the end. Still, it was the principle of the matter.

David: Fine. Fuck it. But you owe me. 

I scanned through the group chat and ignored Allister’s half-hearted protest—he wanted to fight just so he could say that he fought, but he’d come around eventually. I gave him a half-hearted riposte, but stopped mid-sentence when I spotted a certain something—

The Mei family of QianT were in the Tanaka house for a dinner—

Mei? No.

…

As in Mei Jing Fei?

No. 

“How far out are we?” I asked lowly.

“Something come up?” Maine asked.

I clenched my jaw and scratched at my sword’s hilt. I eyed the handle of the car door and—

“Three minutes,” Falco reported.

Fucking hell.

David: Thanks for the call, Allister—I do appreciate it.

Allister: You seem quite spirited all of a sudden. Am I to assume you’re in a celebratory mood?

David: Do not fuck with me, Takeuchi. That’s a warning.

I hung up, tsking. Fucking gonk—why was he trying to dig into my personal biz? Whatever. 

I brought up the groupchat in my visual. 

Derek Choi: Fucking told you. A hit like this? No way it wasn’t corporate. You don’t just wipe out half a house in North Oak without serious backing. How’d they even get through perimeter security?

Kim So-hyun: Eh, we all know that security has holes. But if it was an attack, from who? That’s the million-eddie question.

Misaka Oda: Militech? That’s my bet. They’ve been way too quiet lately. Probably wanted to send a message, and what better way than glassing an Arasaka exec’s estate?

Taro Saito: Too messy for Militech. They don’t play like this—their usual modus operandi is no survivors, classic Big Stick approach. If they did want to leave a message, they’d leave one and only one survivor to tell the story.

Yuki Hirata: So who, then? Kang Tao? I hear they and QianT have some old beef, could be about that? QianT’s upcoming heir was there and got shot. Maybe the Tanakas were just collateral?

Yoshindo Yoshihara: Get outta here, no one hits an Arasaka exec’s house as ‘collateral damage.’ Insanity. No. It’s probably… some rogue assassin? An internal power struggle?

Ryoji Matsuda: Aaaaalright, hear me out—what if it was QianT?

Kim So-hyun: The fuck would QianT gain from smoking the Tanakas? They’re up for an Arasaka buyout. Pissing off ‘Saka right now would be insane.

Ryoji Matsuda: Unless—and do try to follow my tinfoil here, garlic breath—they wanted to stop the buyout.

Derek Choi: …Oh shit.

Kim So-hyun: Jackass.

Ryoji Matsuda: Think about it. The buyout was basically set before this happened. Arasaka just had to sign the contract and take QianT in like a stray puppy. But if Arasaka suddenly has a security crisis? If their own execs are getting flatlined in their homes? That kind of shit makes investors hesitate. Puts pressure on the deal. Maybe even kills the deal if enough board members start getting cold feet.

Kim So-hyun: So QianT wipes out an entire Arasaka exec’s house just to stall negotiations?? You really think they’ve got the balls to pull that?

Misaka Oda: If they’re desperate enough, yeah.

Emi Akari: Conspiracy bullshit, all of that. I say you guys all grow up and wait for word from the higherups.

Taro Saito: I mean… isn’t that what happened with APEX Neurotech last year?

Yuki Hirata: Holy shit, yeah. APEX was supposed to be bought out by Biotechnica, and then their entire R&D wing got mysteriously blown up. And the buyout never happened.

Ryoji Matsuda: Damn, I remember that. Some faction war inside the APEX board, right?

David Martinez: …That’s all a reach.

Kim So-hyun: who the heck is this guy now?

Derek Choi: David Martinez? Aren’t you Jin’s XBD gofer?

Misaka Oda: Hah! The XBD gofer got invited! Who let him in?

Allister Takeuchi: I did. And he’s got sharper eyes than most of you idiots.

My eyes glazed over the ridicule—I didn’t have time to get pissed, not now—and I kept searching the logs. It was mostly more and more conspiracy bullshit. I even saw Jin Ryuzaki show up once in the backlog to give a few heated words all at once to those few brave enough to try and ping him. He obviously didn’t want to be asked about any of this. 

After exhausting the chat log for any usable information, I started typing in the chat.

David Martinez: If any of you North Oak people got servants or house staff that are friends or connected with the staff at the Tanaka house, now might be a good time to do some actual investigative journalism. Enough conspiracy bullshit.

I continued searching, both in current chat and deeper in the backlog until finally, finally, the singular person with brain cells decided to grace the chat, having apparently taken my advice.

Lawrence Saiba: According to my little sister’s au pair, her sister got tagged by fucking Katsuo, apparently. He went and skezzed out on his family. Full on cyberpsychosis. Shot up the whole family, ended up killing his girlfriend’s brother. Damn-near killed his own mom, too, and his girlfriend also got lucky, but I hear she got tagged a couple of times. 

My breathing hitched. 

No way.

No fucking way.

Not her. 

“David? We’re…”

It wasn’t my fault. It couldn’t be—Katsuo left me with no choice.

But why didn’t I even think of checking Fei Fei’s schedule or bugging the house’s cameras and why the fuck did it take only half a day for that gonk to go full cyberpsycho FUCK—

“Dav…”

I had to read the rest. Had to. 

Lawrence Saiba: But Trauma Team came through. Father got through unscathed, and Katsuo didn’t die either. Thankfully, only one person died. Well, except for all those servants—I think it must have been five or six of them, all flatlines.

Jin Ryuzaki: You wanna fucking die, Saiba?

Saiba immediately deleted his message. It hadn’t been up for more than five seconds before Jin straight up had it cancelled.

Jin Ryuzaki: and this goes out to all you nosey motherfuckers—wait for what the suits say. And if they don’t say shit, then that’s life. Fucking idiots, all of you.

The entire group chat instantly died, and stayed dead. The moment Jin Ryuzaki had showed up in force, all the rats had gone scattering. Goddamn that fucking gonk, Jin! Why butt in now? When Fei was—

I felt a hand on my shoulder. I came back to the here and now. It was almost jarring.

“David, we’re here,” Lucy said, giving me a quizzical, side-eyed look. “Ping the hospital, find out if Tanaka’s inside. Are you ok?”

I didn’t respond. I didn’t know how to respond. I only shook my head, shelving those thoughts for later—I had a job to do. I’d play it by ear and find out more about the situation at the same time.

I Pinged the hospital, and scanned over a hundred different targets, speeding the process up using the Sandy, until—there she was.

Mei Jing Fei. Currently lying on a bed, surrounded by standing bodies. Surgery. She was undergoing life-saving surgery.

All thoughts of recklessly charging into her hospital room to see how she was, to ask for forgiveness, to do anything—disappeared almost immediately as I came to a dark conclusion. I had done enough damage as it was.

Couldn’t help her now. Could only watch. 

And Katsuo?

I found his father before I could find him—Gotō Tanaka, in the chrome, sitting in a waiting room, surrounded by huscle. In a nearby room was Katsuo, alone. His… his arms were gone. In fact, the only chrome I could pick up on him was his neural link and fuck-all else. He was hooked up to a life support machine, taking over for the functions of all the chrome he had lost, and he was also hooked up to a BD wreath.

His father had gone and fully de-specced him. I wondered what that would do to his cyberpsychosis.

Come to think of it, I had never even heard of a single case of cyberpsychosis being fucking cured in my life. Different rules for the rich, clearly.

Fuck that.

I had come this far. 

Made incredible mistakes.

If I quit now, then what the fuck was it all for?

“Found him,” I said faintly, “trip his home office alarm, Lucy.”

“Already on it,” she said decisively, her fingers flying. I tracked Tanaka’s outline through my Ping, watching as he suddenly got up and proceeded down the hallway—a coterie of bodies following after him, chromed up to their fucking gills. “Five ‘Saka ninjas following him—but it looks like he’s heading out.”

Dorio reached to the back of the emperor and retrieved several long guns. “Least we’ll have the jump on ‘em,” Maine said, “highway drive-by it is. On my word, alright?”

“Still sounds downright harebrained,” Falco snorted.

“Highway drive-by?! Fuck yeah!” Rebecca cheered.

I gnashed my teeth, thinking of another time when a group of gun-toting psychopaths felt it necessary to take care of biz in the middle of the road without a care for anyone else around.

“No explosives,” I said, “no collateral damage.”

“Don’t give out orders, kid,” Maine said, “you don’t have the fucking right. Not today.”

“Fine,” I scoffed, “then I’ll do it myself.”

Tanaka got out with his guards. A pair of cars rolled up on the road right in front of them—a light Rayfield Aerondight supercar, and behind it, an armored truck.  I wondered if a direct hit through the glass from the fully charged M-179 would penetrate. 

Guess I’d have to find out.

I scanned it—it was a Chevillon Emperor like the one Falco was driving us in, the 620 Ragnar. It was a heavy car, and most probably armored. Why Tanaka hadn’t gotten inside it didn’t make sense to me. Was he really that eager to ride his pretty Rayfield?

I immediately tried to Breach the Emperor. I clicked my tongue when I saw the estimated duration of the breach. Tough hardware and tough software—no easy way in. Couldn’t let the Breach Protocol run automatically, or it would take an hour to gain access to its systems. I’d have to help the process along. That could perhaps take me a minute—I couldn’t cheese that any lower with the Sandevistan since I’d be operating at the same speed as my Breach Protocol software. A minute and a dozen or so seconds was the minimum time I imagined it would take, given the truck’s cybersecurity. I got to work immediately, flooding my mind with cryptographic permutations, hash collisions, and neural brute-force loops.

“They’re pulling out,” Lucy said, “I got a bead on their vehicles, Falco. Just follow your GPS.”

The screen next to Falco’s dashboard lit up with a map marking our targets. Falco sped off—on the opposite way, taking a circuitous route. Belatedly, I realized he was driving us out of the little neighborhood of corp buildings first thing first—an astute choice, I’d say, getting away from all the cameras. That and tracking them from a farther distance so they wouldn’t be prepared when we hit them. 

That did present a pickle to me—namely that the network lag only spiked the further we were from the truck, making it take longer for me to Breach it.

And Falco’s roundabout route would also make racing the cars before they got to North Oak a problem. They weren’t exactly going under the speed limit.

Then again, Falco wasn’t an edgerunning getaway driver for his mustache. The moment we hit the highway, Falco cranked the speed up, to the point that it looked like all the cars in the highway were standing still as we practically warped across the road, wiggling frantically through the traffic—

“Cattle drive’s only a klick a way, just about,” Falco drawled, slowing down with the other cars.

“Get your iron ready! Get on the comms!” Maine barked. I received a notification to join a group call and accepted it immediately. “Fire when you have a shot.”

“Fuck yeah!” Rebecca squealed, “I’m going to the roof!”

Once we started closing in, almost forty or so meters away, I opened the window to the truck and pushed my entire body out, one foot hooked to the headrest of my seat and my other knee to the window frame so I wouldn’t fall out. With the tech rifle in hand, I charged up fully and fished for a shot.

Given a nice enough angle, I could take out two corp ninjas with one bullet—the one on the left side, backseat, and the one on the passenger’s side on the front seat.

But for that, “Falco, speed up.”

He did. I activated the Sandevistan and waited for exactly the right moment.

In one pregnant millisecond, the stars aligned as Falco’s Emperor caught up with the armored truck and was now only a few dozen feet behind it. And my angle was perfect.

Don’t let me down now, Psycho-Squad rifle.

I took the shot.

Even with the Sandevistan on—the bullet travelled faster than my eyes could track.

The magnetic round penetrated straight through the bulletproof window, through the skull of one corpo going out the other way and into another corpo’s skull. The bullet came to a final stop on the windshield of the truck, having lost all its momentum. It would have been fine either way if it had continued out the other way—I had already made sure that no squishy target was in my line of fire. Well, except for the corpos.

Rebecca had just arrived at the roof of the car, Pilar in tow, as I fired. I ignored their jubilant howls of approval and lined the shot again, just as the armored car started to uncontrollably swerve. Didn’t aim at them, though—it was at the roof of the Aerondight housing Tanaka.

With his main protection team shocked by the sudden assault, that gave me an opening.

The charge-up time was glacial, but that was fine—gave me time to consider my surroundings, eyeing the increasingly frantic corpos inside the armored vehicle trying to take control of their car as Pilar and Rebecca rained holy hellfire on them, now that we were right beside them. To their credit at least, there was no one else in the line of fire except for the corpos, but I wasn’t super happy about where the missed shots would go. There were buildings to the side of the highway, people could get hit.

At the very least, they were doing an admirable job keeping them busy, allowing me the peace of mind to line my shot at Tanaka’s driver and—

The round hurtled straight through the roof, tearing it apart like it was made of cardboard, splattering the bodyguard, going all the way through the hood of the car and hitting the asphalt ahead of them.

I left the rifle in the car and went full throttle on the Sandevistan, getting down on the ground and running up to the supercar. I blew the lock off the car with the Burya, ripped the door open, threw the poor dead gonk out, and placed myself in the driver’s seat. Then I reactivated time.

I heard a scream next to me—Tanaka—, pulled the brake and swung on the wheel hard. I didn’t stick around a second longer, getting out of the car and standing in the middle of the road, the world totally frozen. The armored car was headed straight towards me—the siblings had taken out the last gonk at the back, and the only one remaining was the driver.

I resumed time, lifted up my Burya, charged the shot—the bullet travelled straight through the armored windshield, the chromed up dome of the bodyguard, the roof of the car, and a distant overhanging sign along the highway.

The car would continue driving into other cars if I let it. 

Thankfully…

[Breach complete]

I accessed the braking system and floored it, stopping the truck dead in its tracks.

When I saw Pilar and Rebecca continue to shoot at it from the front, I reached out through our comms.

D: They’re all dead, fucking chill

Falco came to a stop next to me, around ten meters behind Tanaka’s Aerondight, the one I had forced into a drifting stop. Tanaka stepped out shakily, holding a gun. I grabbed my Lexington, intent on disarming him.

Instead, what happened was, Maine stepped out of Falco’s Emperor and ran faster than I had ever seen him run before, appearing before Tanaka at speeds that everyone else must have thought was instantaneous.

The Sandy. He moved faster with it, that was for sure. But the way he moved was… powerfully. Wide along the steps, like his speed was a function of power and not, I guess, time acceleration? I blinked those inane thoughts away—that didn’t make any sense.

No, Maine was chromed up, it made sense that the Sandy’s speed would combine with his bulk and ability to exert power. Maybe that would make him faster than me at some point, once he adapted to the Apogee? Right now, he still had a ways to go. He tanked Tanaka's gunfire and slapped the gun from his grip.

Tanaka raised his fists, assuming a stupid, fucking stupid Kung Fu stance. Chipware that his son kept boasting about. 

Tanaka started punching the air.

Maine punched him in his face so fucking hard that he cratered the asphalt with his head. Then unceremoniously, he grabbed Tanaka in an over-the-shoulder carry, heading back to the truck. I did the same, rounding the side of Falco’s truck, and getting inside, next to Lucy. Pilar and Rebecca had already gotten in, cackling madly in the very back of the truck.

Maine got in a moment later and contemptuously tossed Tanaka over his shoulder so he was now squeezed between Lucy and I. Dorio’s enormous arm reached over Lucy and jabbed a syringe into the corpo bastard’s neck— a tranq dart from the looks of it.

Falco didn’t waste any time speeding off, making a bee-line towards the nearest off-ramp from the highway and back to Watson.

“What the fuck was that?!” Pilar shouted, “what the actual fuck! Fast forward father-fuckers the both of you! Fuck! That shit didn’t take twenty seconds from start to finish, what the actual fuck?!”

“Mention my old man again, I’ll rip the visor straight out your fucking skull,” Maine growled. “But yeah—twenty seconds just about. Flawless execution. And like the kid said, no collateral.”

“How’s the scramblin’ away lookin’, Luce?” Falco asked.

“Good,” Lucy said, “we made good time, and we’re getting away clean. Trauma Team should be three minutes away on AV to the scene of the crime, but by the time they get there, we’d be halfway across the city, nowhere to be found.”

“Thank fucking god,” Dorio muttered.

“Don’t even know why I came,” Rebecca grumbled, “could hardly keep up.”

The crew continued chattering, enjoying this emphatic win.

But now that the gig was over, there was no putting off what had happened. No putting off thinking about what I had done.

000

Maine and Dorio had chained up and strapped Tanaka to a chair in a room where an ice bath filled with coolant was prepared.

“All’s well that ends well,” I heard someone say. Maine, maybe? Sounded like a Falco thing.

Didn’t matter. Job was done. Fuck-up was erased.

Everything was fine.

“—David? David?”

I came to from the stillness of my mind with Lucy looking at me askance. “What’s up?” I asked, eyebrow raised and head tilted.

“You’re up,” she said, 

“What?”

“Deep-diving into Tanaka’s system to get our data. Right?”

“Ah,” I nodded, “right, right. Makes sense. What, you don’t wanna do it?”

She looked at me consideringly, “I can if you want.”

“The hell’s taking you two so long?!” Maine asked gruffly. I looked at him with a start—right, he was in the room. Dorio, too. And Falco. Everyone was. Except Kiwi. Why?

Right, she… left.

I… still had a job to do. Right?

“Are you okay, David?” Lucy asked.

“I’m fine,” I muttered.

Lucy turned around to the rest, “I’ll do it.”

She immediately started stripping which made me feel somewhat weird. In seconds, she was naked, and approaching the bathtub. Before she went in, he turned to me, “we’ll talk, okay?”

She slowly sunk into the cold drink, not betraying a hint of discomfort or pain, and Dorio helped her jack into Tanaka’s system.

Since I had a moment to myself, I checked the academy group chat again. 

Nothing.

Nothing at all.

That Saiba guy had been helpful, briefly—but he was alone in that regard—no one else had anything of actual import to say. No one could tell me how Fei Fei was doing. No one fucking cared.

No one fucking cared.

Did I even care?

If I cared, then why the fuck was I still here?

I tried to call her. The call wouldn’t go through. The failure punched me in the gut with the thought that she might have gotten killed—that I might have fucking killed her.

But how could I know? I wasn’t there. I couldn’t check on her. Was she still in surgery? Was her brother really dead? Had I killed her brother after practically stealing away her freedom?

And I couldn’t go back now that Trauma Team was looking for Tanaka. Too much heat for no reason.

And it wasn’t like they would let me visit if I wanted to.

Like I give a shit. 

With a growl, I stood up straight. Lucy was already under and working. Preem. I looked at Tanaka and almost smirked. I had imagined this moment many times in my head, how I’d unmask dramatically, rub it in his face I was the reason his son had died, and that all this was because of how much of a piece of shit he must have been to sire someone as fucking awful as Katsuo.

But nothing had gone to plan, innocents had been hurt. And that would make me a hypocrite, wouldn’t it?

“I’m going home,” I said. Really, I was going to the medcenter. I’d see her no matter what.

“The fuck?” Maine cursed, “gig ain’t done yet. And you’re on thin ice as it is.”

Despite my expectation, I was unable to mount an aggressive response to that. Even though I did want to tell him to fuck off, that shit happened, and that there was no way I would have fucked up if I had all the information, if I knew that Katsuo Tanaka, a fucking trustfund silver spoon bitch, was teetering on the edge all along.

“Someone I know got hurt,” I said, “cuz of what I did to Katsuo, someone who was innocent in all of this, someone I consider a choom, is fighting for their life. I need to check up on ‘em.”

“Shit, D!” Pilar opened his mouth, and I knew that nothing good would come of this, “You ain’t talking about the corpo chick that this d-bag’s son is engaged with, are you?”

I took off my mask and glared at him, “Yeah,” I growled, “I am.”

Dorio whistled, “There’s a story I wouldn’t mind hearing.”

“Hold on, kid,” Maine said, his voice… softer, “She got hurt cuz the fucker’s son went cyberpsycho? How’s it looking?”

I sighed, “she’s in surgery.”

“Will they let you visit?” Dorio raised an eyebrow.

I snorted. “No.”

“Then what’s your plan?” Maine asked, “use that Sandy to sneak through? Alert Trauma Team that you’re even slightly connected to all this?”

I winced, “and why do I deserve to—”

“Shut the fuck up,” Maine growled, getting up and getting in my face. I didn’t step back despite wanting to, “the shit you’ve built with your life, most of us on the ground can only dream about. You worked fucking hard for this. And the only reason you didn’t walk up to this smear of shit’s son, iron in hand, was because you wanted to do this smart. Take care of an op without ruining your entire life. And if anybody deserves zeroing, it’s that fucking kid.”

“Her brother may have died,” I said, meeting his eyes, “and that’s on me. And she never did a fucking thing to hurt me. Only corpo I ever met who ain’t a fucking heartless monster, and I almost killed her.”

“So, what, you give up?” Maine asked, “everything you worked for, gone, cuz these fucking corpos were better than you at tolerating all this shit and muck? The fuck were you expecting, D? This is the life. And I ain’t letting your dumb ass ruin it cuz shit went sideways. So here’s what you’re gonna do, D. You’re gonna go back to Lucy’s place, catch some Zs, wake up at the crack of fucking dawn, and take your ass to school and pretend like none of this shit ever fucking happened. That’s what you’re gonna do. Not go to Trauma Team, not try to force a fucking visitation with corpos that do not—and I repeat—do not play about their clients. You’re gonna go home, then to school. You hear me, D?”

I closed my eyes and snarled. Fuck.

Fuck!

I turned away from Maine and smacked the heel of my hand on my forehead, then again, harder. I could go as hard as I fucking wanted, couldn’t I? Nanny would heal it all, I—

Maine grabbed my hand and turned me around, “You hear me, D?” he repeated, more softly.

“I fuckin’ hear you,” I nodded.

He nodded, “Good. And… good job, today. You fucked up, but you cleaned up right after. Far as I’m concerned, we’re even now.”

Pilar, who was in front of a computer next to Lucy’s bath tub—and I really didn’t know how to feel about him being so close to my girl while she was naked—gave a whoop of joy, “she’s—she’s done! She’s fucking done!”

“Already?” Dorio asked, flabbergasted, “the fuck?”

Lucy’s eyes opened up and she smirked victoriously, “this fucking gonk left the key to his system lying around in his home network. An absolute dick-for-brains. I guess good chrome and being head of R&D, can’t buy you any intelligence.”

I snorted, walking up to her, “explains why he hauled so much ass trying to get home after we smoked him out.” I offered her a hand and she took it, slowly getting out of the tub. “Guy’s way too over-exposed.” 

Speaking of exposure though…

I took off my jacket and draped it around Lucy. She pulled it together tightly. I grinned slightly at that.

Now that she was here with us, I also wanted to update her on my situation. 

Truthfully, it had been way easier to broach the subject while she was out of the count. Pilar had certainly helped with his tactless bullshit—but I needed to talk to her too. 

First, however…

“We got any adrenaline injectors?” I looked around the room. I guess I was a hypocrite—because I definitely wasn’t leaving before getting my revenge.

Pilar giggled as he rummaged through his bag of random shit. Once he found it, he just immediately jabbed Tanaka in his neck.

He came to with a start. 

“What— where am I?” Tanaka asked, looking around the room until he saw my face. He moved on for a moment before his eyes returned to me with a newfound alarmity. “You! I know who you are!”

I walked up to him and crouched before his seated, beaten, and chained up form. “I wonder if I even should gloat, given what you are,” I said, “A corpo—high ranking at that. I wonder what sort of forensic shit you’ve got implanted to catch whoever flatlines you.”

“Yes!” he immediately latched onto that thread of hope. “I have many such measures to—”

I held up a hand in front of his face to forestall him, and then turned to Maine, “toss him in a giant vat of hydrochloric acid? Is that a thing?”

Maine chuckled, “You can bet your fucking ass we’re doing that. We take no chances!”

I turned to Tanaka and hissed in apology, “Sorry. I guess we do have our own set of options then—none of which require your continued living.”

“Why are you—why are you talking to me? What do you want?”

“Ah!” my eyes widened in realization. Then I chuckled, “this fucking gonk completely forgot what happened,” I looked around at the room, the crew laughing along.

“Hah!” Rebecca slapped her thigh, “I guess you don’t learn how to put two and two together at the Academy!”

“What are—” Tanaka’s head shook, “what are you talking about?”

“Your son, you square-faced fucking goblin,” Pilar jeered, “who the fuck do you think drove him nuts in the first place?”

“It was a team fucking effort,” I snorted, “this guy already drove him to the edge.”

“You all?!” Tanaka asked, shocked, “Have you any idea what you’ve done, who you’ve provoked?” Provoked?

Did he know who he had provoked?

“Listen,” I said to Tanaka, “this could have been avoided if you had raised your son right—but he wouldn’t fucking stop. He sent Tyger Claws to my house—you fucking knew about that? Or did you tell him to do it?” Tanaka’s eyes dawned in realization and I nodded slowly. “Ohhh, ohh, it’s coming together now, isn’t it? So you did fucking push him to this. So, what, you’re surprised now? Surprised that the Santo Domingo gutter trash had hands all along? That none of this would end well—you hunting me down because I kept ahead of your mediocre fucking cumsmear of a son in class rankings. Willing to kill over class rankings, huh? Then I guess you’re willing to die over that shit, too.”

“Hold the fucking phone,” Dorio said, “no way, D. This was about class rankings?”

“No fucking way,” Pilar cackled.

“You gotta be pullin’ my leg,” Falco shook his head, clicking his tongue, “ain’t no way all this damn drama started on account a’ nothin’ at all.”

Tanaka’s face bent into one of anger, “release me and I won’t hunt you and your family—”

I smacked him in the face with my Lexington, then pried his jaw open, shoving the gun into it, “What family, you fucking abortion? Or—you didn’t even know my mother died? Four weeks ago? And the first thing your piece of shit son did was call me and tell me how much she deserved that shit?”

Looking at it all, at where we had now come, I still couldn’t fucking fathom the amount of hatred you needed to have in order to do something like that, to someone that had never hurt you.

Fei Fei came to mind.

And her brother.

I winced, feeling a pain in my chest.

Tanaka started vomiting. I pulled the Lexington out of his mouth and waved it to get the vomit out from the barrel—I’d have to dismantle it and deep clean the pieces once I had the time. “You’ve cost me more than you can fucking know, Tanaka. You and your son.” I closed my eyes and saw Fei-Fei’s playful smile. “You’ve cost me a lot. And your life ain’t enough to make up for that shit. But it’s a start.”

[David.]

I frowned

D: A little busy, Nanny.

[If you plan to kill him, I want you to use Blackwall Gateway again.]

I blinked. Then I activated the Sandy, to give us more time to talk.

D: The hell? Why?

Not that I’d be against it—this bastard deserved the most painful death I could deliver. For that alone, I would use it again.

[Besides the fact that the AIs will corrupt all the data in his personal system, and the cyberware, thus making it impossible for any forensic team to trace the cause of his death—It also ties into what has kept my attention for the past few days. After you used the Blackwall Gateway on that Tyger Claw Netrunner, I… saw something. On the other side of the Blackwall. A message of a sort. Clipped, short, but… David, I think something out there is trying to communicate with me. Now, don’t be alarmed. These are just messages—no viruses or infections.]

D: Holy fucking shit, Nanny. So—how much did you learn?

[The Blackwall AIs, the majority of them, are not malicious due to deliberate programming, or even due to some hypothesis that any sufficiently advanced intelligence will simply disregard your right to exist as a matter of course. Rather—it’s a disease. A zombie plague. A corruption of a sort. And I believe I may be communicating with a survivor, one who has avoided, or perhaps recovered from, this corruption.]

D: well, from the zombie flicks I’ve seen, other survivors aren’t exactly fucking nice as a rule. Shit, Nanny, are you sure you know what you’re doing?

[No, but it is rather fitting that you don’t have a monopoly on recklessness. This is interesting, David. What we could stand to learn from an advanced Blackwall AI that isn’t malicious on a basic level—we could change the world. Make money. Become legends.]

I wrinkled my eyebrows.

D: Are you just throwing shit on the wall to see what sticks?

[You can’t blame me for being unable to triangulate a specific underlying motivation of yours—you have so many, and they change very often.]

Fuck, I forgot just how frustrating our conversations could be—Nanny literally knew me better than anyone else, and could easily hold up a mirror to reveal my gonk self in all its glory.

And I guess I would be gonk enough to listen to her, too.

D: Fuck it. Make it good, Nanny. I’m also eager to see where this goes.

I deactivated the Sandevistan and looked down at Tanaka. Then I blinked. “Where the fuck was I again?”

“Eh, just kill him,” Dorio shrugged, “I feel like you’ve said all you need to say.”

“What? No, no!” Tanaka begged.

“Yeah?” I shrugged, “yeah, you’re probably right.” I locked in on Tanaka and gave him a nod, “Say hi to the Blackwall AI for me.”

Blackwall Gateway.

Tanaka immediately began to scream in terror.

[Worth noting, I highly doubt that any other standard Cyberdeck could activate this quickhack with a similar degree of safety to us,] Nanny said, [I forgot to mention this because I was busy—but ensure that Lucy does not try the same thing. This quickhack, it… it almost seems alive. Like one must have an onboard AI to ensure no backsplash. It has been behaving in my presence, but I could swear this is because it is… aware of me.]

D: thanks, and also, holy shit Nanny, tell me these things sooner.

[Do you know how much I do already, how many tasks I run at all times? I’ve said it once and I will say it again: my priorities shift alongside yours. And what is more—]

D: Fine, I get it, sorry, jesus. You’re the best. Enjoy your AI penpal.

God, when did she become so annoying?

[Fuck you, David.] 

The fuck?

D: Fuck you!

“The fuck did you just fucking say?” Pilar whirled on his chair, looking at me in shock.

About what?

Tanaka’s screams finally died down as the last of his cyberware sparked and fizzled out. Right, the Blackwall AI.

“It’s a long story.”

 

Notes:

Please take a moment to imagine this gig from Tanaka's perspective.

Major thanks to DiabloSnowblind for beta-ing this chapter! If you like cultivation stories, please check out Eternal Star. Link in my profile.

Anyway, hope y'all enjoyed!

Discord link: https://discord.gg/W5BqBBym28

Chapter 41: Tuesday Night Bender Part 1

I went to school, thinking about the last things I did with the crew the night before—wrapping Tanaka up in a plastic sheet, carting him off with the crew to some closed-up factory in Watson, the city’s industrial heartland, where there were a couple of unused acid vats with our names on it—after we had paid some Watson fixer for the privilege. After ensuring no bullshit and confirming Tanaka’s dissolution, Lucy and I headed home while I explained my situation.

My main fear was that she’d be jealous or something, or worse yet, happy about how things had turned out. Instead, she had been nothing but supportive. ‘It wasn’t your fault’, ‘I’m sorry’ and ‘we did the best we could’.

It was the last bit of reassurance that had reminded me—almost with a start—that this had, in a way, been a group project. Lucy had helped me. She had made the hack better, in fact. We made the best effort that we could, given a shitty fucking circumstance.

And if I wouldn’t blame her for how this went down, then… why should I blame myself?

That was the logical way to look at things, but in the end, the facts remained: Jing Fei’s brother was dead, and she was in the hospital.

Classes were mercifully quiet without Katsuo around. I had dreamed of this day, my first day in school without him hanging around like a specter, waiting to haunt me at any given moment.

School felt unaccountably alien without him there. It felt… calm. Serene. The green room meditation that we did in homeroom every morning was… finally working.

I meditated on my contrition, my feelings of apology, and my understanding that my debt to Jing Fei had drastically increased.

I wondered who she would be engaged with now that Katsuo was no longer a serious option.

It wasn’t until halfway through the day had passed when I realized—I had just killed a fucking Arasaka exec, then walked right into their fortress without a care. I was here, doing classes, the same shit every day, and… nothing. No ‘Saka ninjas swooping in to catch me—and knowing how Arasaka worked, they wouldn’t have wasted a fucking millisecond to do that if they were even slightly fucking suspicious of me.

I was decently certain that I was 100% home free.

And I wanted to feel fucking good about that, I really did.

During my lunch hour, I decided to try giving Fei Fei a call.

To my surprise, she picked up.

David: Hey, Fei Fei. I… heard about last night.

Fei-Fei: Hey, David. Yeah, it’s…

God, what the hell was I doing? While I waited for her to finish her thought, I wondered what to say, or how I even had the right to speak to her after what I did, after all that I had cost her.

Fei-Fei: things are fucked up, David. I don’t—I don’t even know how to describe it.

David: I’m sorry. Can I see you today?

Fei-Fei: See me? No it’s—no, David. It’s my brother. Katsuo, he… he shot him in the head. I watched.

My heart thundered in my chest.

David: I’m so, so sorry, Fei-Fei.

Fei-Fei: and his mom. His own mom almost died. I don’t understand it—how could he become a cyberpsycho?

I waited for her to continue, since I truly had nothing to say to that. I felt more liable to hurt her than to help her at this point.

As the pause grew uncomfortably wrong, I inserted something—some bullshit, to keep the ball rolling, to keep the heat off me. God, I felt like such a coward.

David: but Katsuo barely has any cyberware. How is that even possible?

Fei-Fei: it was his fucking dad. That fucking psychopath! He was the one that started all this! He ripped his own son’s arms off because he was a disappointment at school! Gave him some shitty dated implants as a replacement, and told him to get better at school if he wanted better arms! I never even—I thought it was bad the time I heard it, but I never worried that he’d—that he’d— I can’t, this is too much. Just too much.

…so that was the story, huh?

Just as I expected, really.

All this started because of Gotō.

He was a damned bastard, that was for sure.

I’m fucking glad I killed him.

David: I’m so sorry for your loss, Fei-Fei

Fei-Fei: Loss?

David: your brother, right?

Fei-Fei: He’s still alive. Trauma Team got to him quickly enough to stall the brain damage. But the sort of damage he had—there’s no guarantee it’ll even be the same Qiang when he wakes up. He’s in a coma while they’re fixing the worst of it.

Wait, what?

Hold on, he got shot in the head.

And he was still alive.

Trauma Team could do that much to keep a person alive.

That much, huh…?

Right, right. They could do that fucking much! So then why—

…They had done absolutely fuckall to help my mom when her injuries had been miles less severe. Miles.

I felt a flare of jealousy bubble up in my gut, replacing the lion’s share of the guilt I was carrying.

In the end, could any of these corpos even count as human beings? Because a human died when they were killed—clearly, the rules only applied if you didn’t have two ennies to scrape together.

Then you were just rotting meat dead on the highway next to a burning puddle of CHOOH2.

FUCK!

No, calm down. This wasn’t about me. This was about her. And her… almost loss.

David: That’s good to hear. If he’s alive, then that’s all that matters.

Fei-Fei: I know. You’re right. But… every time I close my eyes, I can’t help but replay the same thing, over and over. It’s like a BD scrolling into my eyelids, or whenever I think about something else. I still feel like I’m at that dinner.

I took a deep breath, looked up at the ceiling of the school cafeteria, and blew through my nose. Post-traumatic stress. Nanny gave her two cents on her specific situation and possible treatment options.

[If the Trauma Team corporation are able to replace the lost brain matter of this Qiang with the proper cocktail of mutable neurons, astrocytes, and oligodendrocytes—something I did not expect anyone else but I was able to do given the dearth of available information on the Net—then I can see how his survival might be a possibility. Regarding Mei Jing Fei, Trauma Team should be well able to reverse this burgeoning disorder of hers with far less invasive means—particularly when spaced this acutely to the traumatic episode. My recommendation would be an extended period of virtual reality immersion using her own braindances in order to retrace her prior fear responses.]

Nanny sent me a list of the specifics, underlined and bullet pointed with applicable citations, and I could only sigh—because as helpful as this was, there was no way I could possibly explain to Fei Fei how I all of a sudden had such expertise in neuroregenerative therapy of all goddamn things.

Main takeaway was, a little money drizzled on top of life’s ails and everything was right as rain again. Trauma Team could do almost literally anything short of resurrecting people from the dead, if they paid enough.

I understood now why corpos could bear to live in this hellhole. They could just choose not to be affected by… mortality, in general.

Except Gotō. Motherfucker couldn’t choose shit now.

Except… if they could reconstitute him out of a vat of liquified chemical slurry. Almost wouldn’t put it past them at this point.

David: You’re stronger than you know, Fei-Fei. Trust in that.

Fei-Fei: I’ll… I’ll try.

David: and what about the guy? Did MaxTac get him or anything?

Fei-Fei: …No, not MaxTac. His father managed to disarm and disable him. Then he had him de-chromed while he recovers at the med center. Apparently, there are ways to get back from cyberpsychosis if you act quickly enough. Or if you throw enough money at the problem.

I rolled my eyes. That… was more obvious in retrospect.

David: so he’s not taken in? They’re not booking him?

Fei-Fei: booking him? In what? A hotel? He’s far too infirm—

I blinked. Was she serious—

David: I meant jail. He’s not going down for this? He almost killed you.

Fei-Fei: there are major consequences to this. His days as a potential legacy hire are over for one, and his father will surely suffer the consequences from my company. And… this goes without saying, but our engagement has been annulled. Arasaka will… likely find me another man to marry when I come of age.

So business as usual, minus the Tanakas—

My visuals popped. A call from Jin was coming through.

—minus the Tanakas, plus a particularly obnoxious Ryuzaki.

Who, come to think of it, wouldn’t be an inappropriate choice for Jing Fei, as far as perverted old men measured these things. The thought was enough to make me queasy.

I let the call continue ringing, but I did feel a slight urgency to end my call with Fei Fei.

I was too… close to the problem. Too many conflicting emotions were making it difficult for me to maintain the right headspace. I couldn’t deny my anger and grief at my own mistake, but I also couldn’t deny this… growing antipathy of mine either.

But in the end, I did owe Fei Fei a debt of gratitude and of contrition—now twofold, as I had wronged her twice in life-altering ways.

She didn’t deserve my indignation that Katsuo could get off scot free after committing mass murder. Or that Trauma Team could pick and choose who lived or died like they preserved that fucking right or something.

David: he deserves worse. Way-way worse.

Fei-Fei: his father does. He’s a flawed person—deeply flawed. I never did like him as a person, but I could tell that he liked me very much, and… tried to communicate that. However he could. This will likely weigh on him for the rest of his life.

I gnashed my teeth. Why the fuck should I care about that?

David: He tried to kill me, Fei.

Fei-Fei: I… managed to convince him not to. I was decently certain that he wasn’t just humoring me, either. It really looked like he would stop.

I was tapping my foot under the table, clenching my fist. I really should end this call before I said something I’d regret.

Fei-Fei: I hope you’ll find more peace in your school days, David. I really do. But I can’t help feeling this sympathy. He didn’t choose this engagement either.

David: Right. I understand. And that doesn’t matter. Just know, Fei Fei, I’m… sorry you got hurt. And I’m here for you.

Fei-Fei: Thanks. We’ll talk, okay? I just… I need to be alone today. I’m seeing a specialist about the daymares.

David: I hope you have a quick recovery. And your brother as well.

Fei-Fei: Thanks. Good bye.

She finally hung up.

Jin had stopped ringing.

I called him back. He picked up almost immediately.

Jin: what the fuck gives, gonk? Some other call more important than me?

Oh, fuck no. I snorted, chuckling darkly. No.

No.

David: yes, actually. What is it?

He paused for fifteen hundred milliseconds before responding. Surprised. But maybe not angry.

Shit, I’d take it.

Jin: get your head out of your ass and look up when I’m waving at you, you gonk.

I looked up and scanned around the cafeteria. Jin was there, his table jam-packed with students—underclassmen of mine, all of them.

Jin: come sit with us. We were talking about what happened last night.

I got up and took my lunch over to their table, and stood next to Jin—who was at the edge of one of the benches. Both of them were already fully occupied, leaving me to stand awkwardly.

I cut the call, “can’t sit anywhere.”

Jin looked to the guy sitting opposite from him. “Scram. Now.”

The guy—the Lawrence Saiba from what my scan told me—stood up haplessly and left the table—and his lunch. I pushed the tray forward and put my lunch down as I had a seat. “It’s all pretty fucked up from what I hear,” I feigned a chuckle, “—that is, if I even fucking heard it. Probably didn’t.”

Jin grinned at me, “That’s what I like to fucking hear. You all got that?” he looked at the others, “Nothing, happened.” Then he turned back to me, “But if anything did happen, then my dear old cousin’s long gone—he ain’t coming back to school, that’s for certain.”

“That right?” I raised an eyebrow, wondering where he was going to take this.

Adopting his ‘late’ cousin’s orphaned bully victim, maybe? Do honor to his memory? Take his girlfriend/fiance for himself?

I would fucking kill him, too. And his family.

And this time, I’d make sure it was by my gun.

The problem with indirect methods was that they were too unreliable. If anyone was going to fucking die by my actions, then from now on I’d have to make damn sure those were people I intended to send to hell. No more surprise stowaways on this ferry.

Patiently, I waited for Jin to take me down a lovely conclusion. “It’s how the cookie crumbles, choom. So,” he shrugged, “step up.”

I narrowed my eyebrows, “How exactly?”

“You hang with me now,” he said, “you party with me. Rule this school with me. Show those pricks at Militech and Kang Tao High how it’s done. We’ll run the fucking city together one day.”

What?

Somehow, this was even worse than if he had decided to bully me. At least then, I’d have a roadmap to getting the fuck out of the situation by flatlining him.

This was worse—it cost way too much time. Time I didn’t have to spend all freely.

…but then again, it would be a nice change of pace to be at the top of the corp hierarchy than not. I looked to my side, at the host of corp students watching, their mouths shut. Allister and his buddy Wallace. No, Walter. They all looked varying degrees of shaken at the news—that Jin’s next right-hand man should be some no-name peon like me when his last guy had been the son of an Arasaka exec.

I gave them a genial grin, “How do your best chooms here feel about that?”

Jin laughed, “Fuck what they think.”

Wow, this guy was gonna get his ass killed one day. I chuckled at the image. He laughed harder, thinking I was laughing with him. “I’m flattered, Jin, I really am.”

His expression fell, “Don’t tell me you’re gonk enough to say no.”

I rolled my eyes, “Chill. I’m not that fucking stupid. But what I will say is, I’m not always gonna be down to hang every time you are—I’ve got some personal biz, top priority, really important shit. And I’m in my last year, so I’m grinding pretty hard here too.”

“What, you want me to see where I fit into your schedule?” Jin was grinning, but there was no softness in the expression, none at all. “You wanna fucking die, you punk?”

God, this kid. “It’s a simple concept, Jin—I’ll go to fucking war by your side. And I haven’t failed you in anything you’ve asked of me yet. You wanna know why? Because I’m not like these other trustfund chucklefucks that think chips and tutors can buy them real skill. Nor am I stupid enough to let go of a preem opportunity when I see it fall into my lap. So now, why would I fucking pass you up when you’re a goddamn Redwood in the making?”

“The fuck’s a Redwood?” Jin narrowed his eyes, but a slight grin betrayed some level of amusement at my pitch.

Fuck if I knew. “It’s a big fucking tree. Big as a goddamn building. You might be one of the baby types right now, but there ain’t no denying that you’re going fucking far. You’re gonna grow. So while I do got my own personal biz that might tie me up from time to time—if I really can’t fucking avoid it, by the way—you’ll still be my top priority. That is, as long as you remember—you’re only as good as the people that work for you. I’m not a dog you can whip.”

And I wasn’t going to budge on that.

I would sooner kill him than budge on that.

He glared at me, hammered his fist into the table hard—but not so hard that it cracked. His forearms were cybernetic, so he was clearly controlling his strength. And he didn’t really look angry despite the expression and his raised pulse as he leaned over the table to look at me closely. I met his gaze with a neutral one. We locked eyes, until—

—Until, predictably, given that he was a goddamn psychopath, he broke into a grin, “You’re one real motherfucker, you know that, Davey-chan?”

I’d throw in ‘letting the nickname slide’ into this business transaction as it didn’t really mean much for me. If he wanted to risk sounding like a perverted old man, that was his prerogative. “I’m just here to prosper, choom.”

“When you say that, I can actually fuckin’ believe it,” Jin said. “Alright, fuck it. Drinks at Japantown tonight. You comin’ or what?”

I had the afterparty with Maine and them—but I could sit that one out, probably. Or maybe I could go to both, see how far I could push Jin’s goodwill by being late? It would be good to learn his boundaries after all.

“Sure,” I said, “who else is coming?”

“Just you and me, choom.”

My bullshit radar started blaring red.

“…alright, then.”

Yeah, Jin was definitely scheming something. I’d just have to see if it, whatever it was, was within the range of my tolerances for corpo bullshit or not.

If not, finding a way to kill him was still on the table.

000

“Good news,” I said, holding my glass containing a neon blue cocktail, my fifth (sixth?) serving. Lucy and I were leaned up against my bike, away from most of the action happening at Turbo’s Diner—Pilar on his usual bullshit, Becca laughing raucously with the community, Maine and Dorio living it up, looking even closer than usual. Seeing that made me reassured that my efforts weren’t in vain—this sudden closeness would get Maine to see reason, no doubt. In a way, life was good. “Fei Fei’s brother didn’t really die.”

“That’s her name?” Lucy asked.

“Nickname. Mei Jing Fei, family name Mei.”

“It was just a rumor then—with her brother?” Lucy asked.

“Yeah, but—who could blame ‘em for thinking that? Guy got shot in the head, apparently,” I frowned. “Straight headshot. Those are sure killers, right? Nobody survives a fucking headshot.”

“Not usually,” Lucy said, “But it’s more common than you might think. At just the right angle, you could pop a skull and they’d walk it off.”

I furrowed my eyebrows, “Somehow, I don’t think this was just some ‘right angle’ stuff. I think, if Trauma Team gets to you, even if you’ve been dead, they would drag your ass back from hell, for what? A monthly eddie payment? They don’t even have to be on time, it seems.”

“Hey,” Lucy said, grabbing my shoulder, “what are they gonna do about Tanaka senior?”

I frowned, “what?”

“Fuck. All. Because he’s deadder than fucking dead. We made goddamn sure of that. No, we fucking ghosted him. He’s soup in an illegal dumping ground in Watson. The fuck is Trauma Team gonna do about that?”

I looked away from her slowly, to just face my front, thinking about—that. About Trauma. “You know, when I had my car accident, Trauma was first on the scene? The gangoons gunning at us were after a corpo client, that’s why. They saw my mom there and… they left her. ‘Not a policyholder’, they said. So… she’s dead because of—and Jing Fei’s brother…” I clamped my mouth shut with my hand and groaned. Fuck! “I don’t know how to talk about this without sounding like the worst fucking person on planet Earth. I really don’t.” It was just… so fucking unfair.

And although I had never wanted to hurt Jing Fei or her brother, the fact that they could just… walk something like that off, put it behind them someday, while six of the Tanaka household’s staff could not…

It made me feel small.

Why didn’t we just have more fucking money? I had Nanny in me all these years—I could have done something, been something, if only I had acted earlier.

Lucy was quiet. I appreciated that—the contemplative silence.

“You know what’s also funny?” I broke the silence almost immediately after. “This mouthbreathing corp bitch from my school’s group chat—he said ‘luckily, nobody died’. Then went ‘uh, except for like, half a dozen staff members’. That’s how they fucking see us, Luce.” I nodded slowly, “That’s how those motherfuckers see us. As nothing. Not real people. And…”

Lucy waited for me to continue, but mercifully, she blew wind into my sails with her next few words, “You don’t want to end up like that.”

“I killed six random workers last night. Not corp muscle, not security. Staff. Househelp. Cleaners, butlers, whatever the fuck.”

And how many does that make now? Including the four bodyguards and Tanaka himself… two hundred and forty.

It was getting too easy nowadays.

“I’m not doing that again,” I said, “on my mother’s urn, I’m not doing that again.” I took a long few gulps of the cocktail, finishing up in one go. Then I got up from the bike and turned to Lucy with outstretched arms. On her face was sad eyes and a small, encouraging grin. She was listening, waiting for me to make her proud. And I would. “I don’t know what the fuck I am, Lucy. Y’all call me a corpo, but the corpos call me trash. But if I had to pick one side that my heart belongs to, it would be trash. Hands down. Trash is real. Trash isn’t delusion. It’s… it’s there. And it’s real. But I… I’m in a weird position. I could…” I started whispering, almost giddy, “I could really do this, you know? To the top? Whatever the fuck? Make money? Kill a CEO or two? I could do that. But…” I stood up straight and gave a small nod, “that would be directionless flailing. And I don’t want to do that either. If I’m going to commit to any act, it would be for something… something big.”

Yeah.

Yeah!

“Something greater than just me,” I continued. “Greater than becoming a legend, or making a mark or whatever the fuck. My name, spoken by every tongue?” I chuckled, shaking my head, “the fuck kind of a prize is that? Who’s really after that, anyway? I don’t give a fuck at this point. I hid my goddamn face for this gig—name recognition ain’t on my radar. But it’s gotta be something else,” I started pacing back and forth in front of Lucy, thinking. “Something else… something big. Yeah. Something else and something big.” I grinned widely at that.

Lucy burst out laughing. I grinned at her, “What? Too gonky?”

“Yes, way too gonky, but also… you. Something big. That’s what you wanna do, ain’t it? Always has been really, when I think back on it.”

“Alright!” I grinned jovially, “I’ve got it! I’ve fucking got it!”

“Spill!”

“I don’t got a fucking clue where it starts, or where it’ll end up,” I said, “Don’t even know the middle, really. But what I do know? With every bone in my body?”

I pointed at her. Then I turned around and pointed out the crew one by one. Maine and Dorio gave a wave. Pilar flipped the bird. Rebecca flipped two birds and grinned widely. Falco gave a suave one-handed salute.

“We’re all doing it,” I said, “the big thing, whatever the fuck it is. And we’re doing it together. That’s the key. And however the fuck we do it, it’ll all end up one place—in a world where people don’t have to struggle the way folks do normally. No more megacorps. No more gangs. No more bullshit.”

I looked at Lucy and gave her a nod, “and yeah, I also mean: no more Arasaka. I’m ending it all.”

000

After Jin gave the heads up, I took a cab to Jinguji to get new threads for the meet. Nothing too high-effort or visually flashy this time around. Currently, I was just looking to burn my fucking money to the ground—I could always get more anyway.

So neomil’, it was.

I was still riding on the alcohol I had forced myself to imbibe in the Tanaka afterparty. According to Maine, we had received the ‘highest commendations’ from Faraday. I hadn’t bothered to listen about the specifics. Didn’t matter. What was done was done anyway.

I didn’t even fucking know what data we were looking for anyway. In fact, I was so profoundly incurious about that, I hadn’t even bothered to ask Lucy. The best I could piece together was that it was a weapon of some sort that Gotō’s department had headed. That, and a shortlist of potential candidates for testing the weapon, including Adam Smasher himself.

Slightly spicy, but not enough for me to get on board with all that raucous joy. After all, I doubted that I had profited nearly as much as Faraday had. In fact, I doubted that my pay from all this had even slightly approached the true money value of my contributions.

Which begged the question, why oh motherfucking why should I give a shit?

My chooms were happy, and that was nice. I supposed that was the main reason why I should show out in the first place.

But we’d have a ton more gigs on our way now that Maine had gotten his recommendation letter from that multi-eyed corpo wannabe.

Once I arrived at Jinguji, I sent a message to Yamanaka that I was here, walking through the doors to the receptionist. She gave me some inane blabber while I waited for—

“My man!” I laughed, going up to hug Yamanaka, the lanky fuck. He returned the love with his own hug.

“Mr. Martinez! What can I do for you on this fine Tuesday evening?”

“A black suit,” I said, “if you could crank up a suit’s worth to a hundred k eddies, I will take it. Right now. I don’t care. This is a special fucking event. My fortune has turned.” And in all honesty? I really wanted to see if that was even fucking possible. A hundred k for a suit? What the fuck? I had to know.

Yamanaka’s eyes glittered, “Yes, sir!”

000

The mirror didn’t lie.

I took a step back, adjusting the cuffs of my jacket as I took in the sight of myself under Jinguji’s pretty lighting. The suit was perfect, I’d give it that much—pitch black with an iridescent shimmer when it caught sharp lights, shifting between deep indigos and violets under the light. The fit was seamless, and according to Yamanaka’s blabby and sales-pitchy mouth: “tailored to perfection, the material clinging just enough to highlight your frame without restricting movement. The lapels are edged with subtle traces of circuit embroidery”, apparently the control unit for the suit’s more… ballistic applications.

Yep. This fucking thing was bulletproof. And to an extent, shock proof. I could walk through gunfire without the bullets penetrating the material, and the weave would disperse the energy across a wide area, effectively rendering the bullet’s energy entirely harmless—depending on its velocity, of course. Fucking genius. I wondered just how much Pilar knew about this shit. Maybe we should make it a project together one day? Get these outfits out to the entire crew?

I knew with so much experience though that this would prove a laughable defense to a real firearm. Thankfully, not most gonks on the streets sported tech weapons, really. We’d be safe for the most part, wearing something like this. I bet something like this was what Tanaka wore before we zeroed him. Maybe even stronger.

Funny how the world worked, huh?

Yamanaka stood behind me, arms crossed, a pleased smile playing at the corners of his lips.

“The weave is a proprietary synthsilk blend,” he said smoothly, tone measured, professional. “Featherlight, breathable, but reinforced at key points for durability. The threading is heat-resistant, and the seams have been reinforced for longevity.”

I ran a hand down the fabric. It moved like liquid, smooth but with a structure underneath that was nicely satisfying to my touch. It was like it sang to the senses, almost. Comfortable, flexible, but sturdy, in a way. It had a reassuring bit of weight. Made me feel like a working man wearing heavy industrial clothing, and not a show pony prancing around in a featherweight suit.

That is, if I was using Yamanaka’s language. Honestly, the weight was highly adjustable, but I preferred the added weight, just to feel something hugging around my body. The fact that it made things cheaper was only a coincidence.

Or maybe a sign that deep down, I’d always be on the ground with all the other people of Santo Domingo? Hell, I’d take it.

Yamanaka continued, gesturing subtly toward the sleeves. “Integrated haptic feedback along the inner lining. It allows for seamless interfacing with any concealed augmentations or discreet inputs you may need. A common request among our more… discerning clientele.” So I could hack through it. Poorly, probably, but still an interesting design choice.

I arched a brow. “You expect me to need that sort of thing?”

His smile remained composed, diplomatic. “I would never presume, Mr. Martinez. But I do believe in ensuring my clients are prepared for any situation.”

I let out a low chuckle, adjusting the collar. “That’s what I’m paying for, I guess.”

He gave a small, knowing nod. “Indeed. Excellence is always worth the investment.”

“Alright, give me the bill,” I said, “I’m taking this.”

He shot me the payment details.

It wasn’t quite one-hundred thousand, but not for a lack of trying on Yamanaka’s part. Eighty nine thousand, though. By far my most expensive single purchase. Amazing. The cost breakdown was illuminating enough, showing me all the aspects that made the outfit so expensive. I whistled. People really went and bought this shit, huh?

I guess I did, too.

Money exchanged hands, Yamanaka kept pretending that we were friends, and I returned that manufactured love with a wide grin and a hapless corp student attitude. Not too difficult—I was still riding on those drinks from earlier.

From Jinguji, it was a straight shot to the Strip, a pedestrian road between Japantown and City Center known citywide for being a favorite haunt of corpos, with over a dozen high-end bars and other entertainments, where Jin waited for me at one fancy bar in particular. A bar, of course, but one so high end in fact that there wasn’t a line. Just a flock of enormous Animal bouncers eyeing every passer-by venomously.

Until one saw me.

Then his eyes lit up with respect and obeisance as he bowed and gestured for me to go in straight. No ID checks, no nothing. He knew me on sight? How?

I had my doubts that it was just on account of my outfit. Jin must have given them my details for the guest invite.

The inside of the bar was… not what I was expecting.

An enormous old-style goddamn American flag was stretched across the back of the bar, one of the flags from before the Corporate Wars showing fifty stars for all fifty states of the time. Twin eight-foot-tall bronze statues of some bird or another—Bald Eagles, I think they were called—flanked the flag like they were the feathery guardians of a holy relic. A rendition of the fucking old American Constitution, starting with “We the people…”  was painted on the opposite wall.

The place was all wood paneling, all carefully curated vintage decor lit by yellow lighting low enough to cast deep shadows throughout, all overseen by the most pretentious-looking bartender I’d ever seen in my life manning a bar of wood so polished it looked practically gilded, in a white vest with his black sleeves rolled up. It was the most straight-up nationalistic American decor I’d ever seen—it had the aesthetic of a place trying way too hard to look like it was in the NUSA and not in Night City.

It wasn’t lost on me that the Militech logo was up on the side of the bar as I’d walked in. Not in an ownership sense, but as… decorative kitsch?

The actual crowd was more disappointing, but then again, it wasn’t peak hours. I mostly saw kids. White, obviously mostly straight-up Americans by blood. Why were they here? If they were Militech, they were the babies—hanging out here in a place that evoked the aesthetic of an old world American dive bar. It only evoked that sense, however—anyone with decent optics could see all the real deal wood lying around. The owner must have spent a lot of money to make this place look like a redneck hangout. Old world kitsch—a celebration of limited means—, but this was the kind of kitsch that rich kids threw on like a costume—slumming it in a sanitized environment where the biggest risk was a watered-down drink.

So, textbook neokitsch, really. All the things that jingoistic NUSA poors loved, but cranked up to eleven in cost.

I laughed.

It was the kind of laughter that crept up from deep in my gut, unbidden. The absurdity of it all. It wasn’t possible for me to go cyberpsycho—not with how little chrome I had, not with Nanny watching my brain waves like a hawk—but I could understand the impulse. The sheer urge to rip through this crowd of faux-rebels and social tourists just to see if they’d still be cosplaying poor when their blood hit the floor.

Jin called.

Jin: Over here, gonk. The hell are you laughing at anyway?

David: Ahh… you wouldn’t get it. What the fuck is this joint? Anyway, where the hell are you?

I scanned the bar and caught sight of him, perched casually on a stool, grinning like he’d just won a bet. Seated next to him were two guys I had never seen before. One was big, real big—broad-shouldered, built like a bouncer, with a muscular frame enhanced by the faint sheen of chrome. His arms were plated, the realskin covering most of them except for his hands, which were left bare—black metal gleaming under the dim light. His skin was a deep brown, almost blending with the dark cyberware, and his eyes flicked to me with a cool, appraising sharpness. He wore an open-chested short-sleeved pale beige fur jacket—revealing either EMP threading or chrome on his chest.

The other guy? Handsome. The kind of effortless handsome that pissed me off on principle. Pale-skinned, tall, with sharp features and eyes that glinted with something wry, something smug—like he had already decided he was the cleverest guy in the room. He leaned back, entirely at ease, fingers drumming lazily on his thigh like he had all the time in the world.

I walked up to them.

“As promised, David Martinez, my main choom,” Jin said, laughing. To my surprise, he had also chosen to wear something more understated—a black pair of pants and a black shirt, no buttons, with a large black haori to top it off. The lapels ran down to the bottom of the haori, blood red in color, matching the floral patterns at the bottom of the coat. They looked like some popular Japanese flower—though not cherry blossoms or spider lillies, so I was completely blank.

[The morning glory.]

Sure. The lowest part of his pants matched that pattern as well. He made me feel like I had overdressed.

…wait, what were we doing again? Right: he was introducing me to a pair of gonks.

Ah, right. The bullshit. The bullshit that I knew, knew was coming when Jin goddamn Ryuzaki had invited me, solo, out for drinks.

I slid onto the stool next to him, giving the two guys a nod before doing a double take. My eyes locked onto the bulkier one, something about him clicking in my brain. I smacked my head, trying to place it.

“Damon? No, Darius!” My grin widened as it hit me. I snapped repeatedly as I pointed at him, “I kicked your ass in Holo Battleship!”

Jin nearly fell off his stool laughing. “Yeah, in the chrome!”

Darius growled, rolling his shoulders, the servos in his arms whirring softly. “This pipsqueak Netrunner wannabe’s your guy?” Wannabe? That’s fucking funny. How much time would it take for me to breach his system and introduce him to some friends beyond the Blackwall?

“Nah, man, you got it all wrong,” Jin said, “see this gonk? He’s sporting a Kerenzikov,” he said, pointing at me. What? Wait. Wasn’t that the story that Katsuo went with after he couldn’t beat my ass? And he went and told his cousin about that humiliation? Eh, he probably left the details out. Still, decent cover story, I could use that.  “He’s a real-deal psycho in the making.”

Darius glared at me, “You? A Kerenzikov? You think a bitch like you could—” I held a hand up to forestall him and pinged the bar’s Net, putting in an order of three shots of Teq. I never quite saw the appeal of drunkenness, not until now at least. But hell if I wasn’t going to enjoy whatever the fuck was happening.

“Me, personally,” I began, “I think you’re a bitch. That your entire bloodline are bitches, down to the last ten generations. And I think your mute boyfriend over to the side is an even bigger bitch.”

Jin grinned like someone had just given him a birthday present.

Darius slammed his hands at the counter, “You talk shit about my boyfriend, they’ll scrape you off the asphalt with a shovel. That’s on god and the founding fathers, bitch.”

I blinked at that insult. Then blinked some more. Wow, the NUSA nationalistic jingoism was off the charts with this one. Also, way to make me seem like the asshole here!

“Well, then you’re an even bigger bitch, for getting so tilted over trash talk.” The boyfriend in question gave me a withering glare. “And don’t they teach you history at Militech? Founding fathers? You know they’d have kept you as a slave, right?” I was fucking terrible at humanities subjects, but that tidbit seemed like kind of a no-brainer, no?

“The fuck you just say?!”

My eyes turned back to my so-called ‘choom’ as I put one finger up to forestall Darry’s freakout. “So, Jin, what’s the deal with these Militech asswipes anyway?”

“Don’t you fucking ignore me!”

“You said you’d go to war with me,” Jin said, “You wanna back that up?”

I raised an eyebrow at Darius, and his boyfriend. Then I looked back at Jin, “What’s that mean?”

Jin snorted, “Darius thinks there ain’t a person in Saka Academy strong enough to whoop his ass.”

Fucking—HAH! I couldn’t believe this.

“Did you make Katsuo fight him?” I asked, after I’d stopped chuckling.

“Katsuo hates fighting!” Jin laughed, “that bitch never knew how to stand on business.” Wow, Katsuo! Nice going! With, what, those Strongarms 400 he kept harping about? Seriously?

What a pure-bred bitch he was.

“I’m… I’m a lover, not a fighter,” I said, I sighing dramatically. “I don’t do all that fighting stuff.” The bartender arrived with a tray of three tequila shots. I downed one and felt a refreshing burn go down my throat. Despite myself, I began to grin, and not in a nice way, “I mean, I really don’t. So, as long as there ain’t a way for you two chucklefucks to prove that I’m a fighter, then I guess I ain’t one after all, right?”

The boyfriend rolled his eyes, “Just skip ahead to the part where you say you’re too chickenshit to fight and spoil your overpriced suit.”

“Hah!” I laughed, slamming my fist down on the table. Softly. It still shook the drinks around my tray, making them ring slightly. I grabbed a shot and upended it into my gullet, “That what you think this is? Overpriced?”

“Man!” Jin chuckled derisively, “Those threads? That’s what you call overpriced? Way to fucking expose yourself!” he said, not to me, but to the boyfriend. “That suit ain’t even a hundred k flat and you think it’s something to argue about? What, they don’t pay you fuckers at Militech?”

…Not even? “Hey now,” I said, shelving that thought for later, “Don’t start provoking the patriots. These are real NUS citizens! Not like us immigrants—who still came here and did it better than these idiots ever could.”

“Preach!” Jin whooped. He turned a devilish grin at me, “I fucking knew you were about this shit! I knew it!” he turned to Darius, “You heard the fucking guy, didn’t you? Let’s get ourselves a place with no cameras, no being a bitchboy trying to record the shit, and you’ll have your smackdown.”

“Before we do this,” I said, raising my third shot and downing it in one, “I gotta warn you, Darius, I really do: I’m from Santo Domingo. I know that might not mean shit to you. That’s fine. I’ll remind you. When I’m raining down punches like motherfucking airstrikes on your sorry face, maybe then you’ll realize what it means to fight a Martinez.”

The way his—Militech’s—motherfucking army had razed everything south of Texas, made it all into the hellhole of poverty and death that it currently was…

Ain’t like I spent much time dwelling on that, wasn’t like I was from there, but also…

It ain’t like I forgot shit either, not when it came to being a Martinez, and remembering that our entire bloodline had an axe to grind with Militech.

Well, when my family wasn’t making a eurobuck off of them at least.

Darius glared at me for several seconds before growling. “Still doesn’t mean shit to me. And won’t, ever, you wetback bitchboy.”

Thank you. I grinned at him, through bared teeth. Thank you! Went and made my fucking day.

I slammed my shot glass down on the tray so hard that it broke. I received an invoice almost immediately. I briefly chuckled and paid the amount before getting up, “Then you’ve got yourself a deal.”

Jin wanted to see if I’d go to war for him? For this, I’d give him a fucking campaign.

Notes:

I'm not gonna lie, I method-wrote quite a bit of this arc XD. I hope y'all enjoy this three-part arc.

Major props to DiabloSnowblind/Coldbringer for the beta-ing and co-authoring.

Also, I now have thingie I can't say the name of on Ao3, with advanced chapters! Up to Chapter 45! More details on the Discord!

Discord link: https://discord.gg/W5BqBBym28

Chapter 42: Tuesday Night Bender Part 2

In some random back alley that Jin had chosen on a whim, we corpo students did battle.

If I’d been writing an essay, I might have called it an allegory for the entire North American megacorp geopolitical situation. But here and now, all I could think was that if there had ever been a stupider way that Arasaka and Militech had fought, I hadn’t heard of it.

Darius swung his Gorilla Arm fists at me, praying that any of his hits would hit. None of them did. I just kept sliding around his punches, ducking and weaving, getting a feel for his competence level in a street scrap. I wasn’t impressed. The guy was all power, no technique. And since I pretty much knew how he would move just from looking at him, my evasions weren’t particularly… active. Really, I felt way too sluggish. Too much gunk in my gears—must be the alcohol.

He roared and sent an upper cut my way. I threaded through a brief opening in his guard and struck him on his chin. I felt the hardness of metal underneath my knuckles and knew that I’d have to put my back into this one in order to make it count.

So I did. Again, and again.

He couldn’t hit me, and I had every opportunity to hit him. Came with the territory of having a reaction speed of less than five milliseconds.

Eventually, the dumb gonk finally fell unconscious.

Only then did I realize—wait, did I use even a tiny bit of real footwork for this fight? My fists were barely even raised, really. And my feet had been planted flat on the floor for most of the spat.

Man, Dorio would kill me if she found out.

It couldn’t be helped, though. I didn’t wanna ruin a good buzz by suddenly going overkill on my movements. Less was more.

The boyfriend, whose name I had learned was literally Leviathan for some goddamn reason, immediately charged at Jin.

Less than a second and a half later I was soaring through the air, my foot planted in his face. He went flying as I kicked him into the wall face-first. He slid down slowly by his pretty face, leaving a thin trail of blood on the wall as he descended, dirty concrete ripping open his cheek. Eh, ‘ganic damage. He was probably good for getting it fixed anyway.

Jin cackled in sheer joy while I dragged him out of the alleyway, “Trauma’s probably on its way. Let’s fucking go, Jin.”

“Oh shit!” he laughed. We ran across so many streets, Jin running the fastest, and picking the direction, like he was trying to outrun Trauma itself. It was actually kind of hilarious. He finally did stop around ten blocks away, ever so slightly winded. “I think we shook ‘em off.”

That was probably the fact that we hadn’t really injured them enough to summon Trauma to begin with, but why would I pop his bubble like that?

In fact, I kind of… liked the kid?

In a weird way, sort. Like he was my gateway to the fun I always thought I was missing out on as a corpo student who couldn’t fit in.

I guess it was finally my turn.

“Just lettin ya know,” Jin said, gathering up his height—he was only half an inch shorter than me, all told, and not much narrower even, “I could have kicked Levi’s ass fuckin’ easy.”

“Yeah?” I grinned, wrapping my arm around his shoulders, “well, no shot. I wanted to kick both their asses from the moment I met them. So I called dibs before you did.”

“Hah! You fucking killstealer!” he threw my hand away from his neck, “hell nah, I’m not letting you get one up on me like that again.”

“What, you got more corpo students waiting in the wings? Did I just enter a fucking arcade beat ‘em up game?”

“Hell yeah, you fucking did!” he replied, his tone a tad indignant almost, but I could tell he was only putting it on for fun. “That’s my life, motherfucker. I walk around putting the hurt on other corpo students.”

I laughed. Hard.

This guy!

What a precious life he was leading!

And… for this night alone, I did want a part in that.

“Fuck. Yes. Point me to the next fucking gonk you want laid on the ground,” I said, “right now.”

Then he randomly pointed to a guy walking on the sidewalk. Didn’t even look like a particularly strong guy. Or even a corpo. Or… anything. Just a guy, walking down the street.

“Be for real,” I scoffed. “I’m not beating on some random guy for your sake. You wanna watch people die, go watch another XBD.”

Jin scoffed, “Pft, you’re a bitch after all. Ehhh,” he shrugged, “No biggie. You can be a little bit of a bitch after today.” He gave me a considering look. “The next fucking gonk I want, huh? Anyone?”

I raised an eyebrow. Was he serious? Just who did Jin have in mind? “Sure, I’m game for more. Just better be someone actually worth my time. Someone who can put up some hands.”

“Hah! Perfect!” Jin laughed. “Let’s fucking go!”

000

Bar #2, the Red Lotus, was a vision straight out of a corpo-designed fever dream—a hyper-stylized, pseudo-Chinese aesthetic drowning in red neon and shimmering gold fixtures. Ornamental lanterns hung from the ceiling, casting warm pools of almost-natural candlelight over lacquered wooden tables and glossy black floors. The walls were decorated with huge, bold calligraphic brushstrokes on unravelled scrolls that hung from the walls like paintings—whether or not the symbols had any meaning at all was beyond me. But their meaning was obvious—to evoke a heritage that had been repackaged and sold to the megacorporate elite who clearly now fancied themselves as the heirs to their own nations. The air smelled of incense and expensive liquor, mingling with the low thrum of some sort of Chinese jazz playing over hidden speakers.

This was Kang Tao turf.

Jin and I walked in without an invite.

The moment we stepped through the ornate double front doors, both literally gilded with twining gold Chinese dragons that parted as they opened, a few heads turned. Jin didn’t give a fuck. He strode in like he owned the place, laughing as he clapped me on the back.

First thing I noticed was an active dance floor, in a neon-lit pit deeper down in the building. Hundreds of Kang Tao High students down there—on a Tuesday night—, with a whole different set of bars, bouncers, back entrances and back exits. The building somehow had sound dampeners deployed in a way so that none of what had to be an absolute roar of music and pressing bodies was getting into this bar proper—it looked to me like the plebs mostly stuck to the lower dance floor, while the real elites of Kang Tao High schmoozed in the far calmer, soundproofed second-floor upper bar I now found myself in.

And elite they were. Here in the rarified upper bar, the students of Kang Tao High I could see, less than three dozen in count, were all unique in some way or another, all impeccably dressed in crimson red jackets with gold-threaded trim, all unusually distinctive or beautiful, with custom cyberware glinting under the dim lights, every drink in their hands no doubt more expensive than my entire life’s possessions only a few months ago.

Their uniforms were all slightly customized to reflect their own personal wealth and styles, with marks of distinction on their uniforms whose meaning I couldn’t recognize, no doubt denoting what had to be the people at the top of Kang Tao’s own social order in Night City—at least as far as high schoolers went.

In short, these were the elites of Kang Tao High—

And their stares weren’t friendly.

I ignored them all. I still couldn’t get over how over-the-top pretentious this place was. Even Militech’s place had been nothing by comparison. At least they weren’t literally gilding their place with real-deal gold, if the spectrometer app on my Kiroshis weren’t glitching out and lying to me. “Interior design is real fucking subtle, huh?” I muttered to Jin.

He grinned. “Oh yeah. The Kang Tao in Night City are mostly all Taiwanese expat fucks who think they can lay claim to the mainland’s ‘heritage’ here by throwing around enough eurodollars. Behold.” He spread his arms, as if to encompass everything we were seeing. “China, but better. All courtesy of Kang Tao International’s marketing division.”

I scanned the room, taking note of who was really in charge here. Not the bartender. Not the bouncers. Not the various elites lounging around in the building’s upper bar where I now found myself. Certainly not the plebs down on the dance floor. No, the real power sat in on a mezzanine floor balcony, where the elite of the elite could look down on both the bar and dance floor—a literal built-in hierarchy.

A group of Kang Tao High students unlike all the rest were gathered around up there, lounging on cushioned seats with the same sort of lazy confidence I’d grown too used to at Arasaka High; I could tell at a glance they were all corpo trust-fund elites beyond even the rest, brats who didn’t even know the meaning of consequences. But my eyes settled on one person in particular. At the center of them, with a commanding view of the entire building, sat the one Jin had brought me here to see.

The queen of this little kingdom.

She sat in the best seat in the house, legs crossed, looking down on everyone and everything. She held a delicate crystal glass in hand, swirling something like liquid gold and no doubt equally expensive. Her hair was sleek, ink-black with subtle gold threading, catching the neon lights in shimmering flickers as she turned slightly, her eyes shifting down the moment we arrived and then locking onto Jin in particular.

“Oh, great,” the young woman sighed, setting down her glass with the kind of slow precision that screamed bored royalty. “Jin Ryuzaki has deigned to bless us with his presence.”

“David,” Jin grinned, looking straight upwards. “Meet Ling Ruomei. Daughter of Ling Xiaohan, a board member of Kang Tao.”

Daughter of a fucking board member? That meant she was one of the most powerful people in our generation in the entire city. Maybe on the entire west coast. This was almost the equivalent of meeting an actual descendent of Saburo Arasaka himself.

She’d barely spared a glance at me. From the way her eyes narrowed, the way her lips curled in a particular smirk, I could tell that she and Jin had history.

Jin grinned, calling up to her in her perch of a balcony like we were in his own backyard. “Miss me, Ruo?”

“Not in the slightest.” She leaned forward, chin resting on the back of her hand, her smirk widening just enough to betray underlying amusement as she looked down on us. “Though I must say, you never cease to entertain me. Get up here, Ryuzaki.”

When we got up to the top of the stairs, she gave one of her hanger-ons a dismissive glance. “Ràng kāi, xiǎo gōng.”

The young woman in question—they were mostly all women, as far as I could tell—scrambled out of the way. Jin slid in to take her spot. “You always know how to roll out the red carpet, Ruomei.”

Ling Ruomei’s smirk didn’t waver. She studied him, fingers tapping lightly against the rim of her glass. “I tolerate your presence in my bar because it amuses me.”

This place was hers? I boggled for a moment, while Jin chuckled. “And because you like the game, same as me.”

Her eyes flicked to me, for just a moment. Assessing. Measuring. Then she turned her gaze back to Jin. She crossed her fingers together in a steeple, giving Jin Ryuzaki a level look. “So, what do you want, Jin? This better not be a waste of my time.”

I stood behind Jin—I hadn’t been offered a seat, which was whatever, I was clearly being underestimated—and watched as their little game played out, illuminated by the upper bar’s tastefully dim lights.

Ling Ruomei was beautiful—too beautiful, inhumanly beautiful. She looked like a vampire princess out of a fantasy BD, in a corporate-perfected way of such quality that I couldn’t even tell how much of it was ‘ganic or not. Long black hair that looked like a waterfall of liquid shadows, high cheekbones, flawless, seamless skin, a slight edge of cold detachment in her dark red eyes. I couldn’t see a single spec of visible chrome on her.

But there was something more to her than just another corpo princess—she carried herself with, not just confidence, but something else. Something that reminded me too much of Jin himself.

She wasn’t like the other trust-fund kids in this place. I could tell, instantly. Something in the way she carried herself, something in my street instincts, something in how my inner gutter rat recognized  the predators of the world.

She was the real deal.

Jin took a shot glass that wasn’t even his, downing it in a single gulp. Then he grinned. He set the empty shot glass down with a deliberate clink, settling back into the padded cushions. Jin exhaled theatrically. “Business first, huh? Alright then.” He leaned forward, elbows on the table. “I wanna know where Kang Tao stands on QianT.”

The air shifted. I stiffened.

The chatter in the surrounding booths, the clinking of glasses, the low murmur of music—it all seemed to dim in that moment. Ruomei’s expression didn’t even flicker, didn’t show anything beyond mild intrigue, but something about the way she held herself suddenly seemed sharper.

“Do you, now?” she mused.

Jin spread his hands. “Come on, Ruo. We both know the shooting’s got every megacorp in the city on edge. Soon as their recent financial troubles started, QianT became the choicest piece of meat on the city’s entire buyout block. Things were set in stone to go Arasaka’s way. But now, after my retarded cousin’s actions? The market’s twitchy. I don’t like twitchy. Makes the shareholders start bitching. Word is, Kang Tao’s already lining up contingency plans. So I figured I’d go straight to the source.”

Ruomei tilted her head, eyes gleaming like a predator considering its prey. “And why, exactly, would I share any of that with you?”

Jin smirked. “Because I’m fun.”

She laughed, softly—a sound that was at once genuine and dangerous. “You are,” she admitted. Then her fingers drummed once against the table, and the amusement in her gaze cooled into something more calculating. “But I don’t offer corporate secrets as party favors, Jin. If you want insight into Kang Tao’s next moves, I suggest you take up stock analysis. Or do something to… impress me.”

Jin clicked his tongue. “Yep, I expected that. That’s why I brought him.” He quirked his thumb backwards. To me.

Ruomei’s lips quirked. “Who is he?”

“Meet my new choom, David Martinez.”

Ling Ruomei’s gaze finally settled on me with something approaching real interest. “David Martinez,” she said levelly, as if committing my name to memory. “I see.” She leaned back, studying me in a way that felt almost clinical—like she was assessing a product, testing its quality. Her crimson eyes flickered back to Jin. “What is his worth to us?”

Jin stretched lazily. “Well, one, he’s a real-deal genius. Two, he’s probably the best fighter our age I’ve ever seen. So, I was thinking, and I had a fun idea.”

Ruomei’s eyes narrowed slightly, but it wasn’t in annoyance—it was in curiosity. “I assume you have something in mind?”

Jin’s grin was pure devilry.

“I wanna know who’s better,” he said, his voice dripping with anticipation. “My boy Martinez, or Kang Tao High’s best fighter. Your best fighter.”

Silence passed over the table.

The statement hung in the air for a moment, lingering. I gawked for a moment, as did most of the women sitting across from us at the gilded table.

Then—

Ling Ruomei smiled.

And it wasn’t just any smile. It was razor-sharp, amused, and deeply, deeply intrigued.

“Oh,” she murmured, “Oh, now that is an interesting proposition.”

She lifted her glass to her lips, taking a slow sip as if contemplating the very idea of it. Then she set it down and snapped her fingers.

One of her hangers-on—a silver-haired, silver-eyed girl with sleek silver dermal plating along the side of her cheeks—leaned in at once.

“Hou Ken,” Ruomei said. “Tell him to come here.”

The girl nodded immediately, her eyes starting to glow gold before vanishing down the stairs.

“Hou Ken?” I asked.

Jin just shot me a grin. “You’re gonna love this.”

I just rolled my shoulders. “Can’t wait.”

I wondered what Jin’s endgame for tonight was, really. Was he working me until failure? Was this just a game to him, and not really biz? The true blue corpo way would be to only bet when you knew what the outcome would be. Gambling was a sport for the poor—a proper suit could predict the future with frightening accuracy.

That said, just how much did Jin know about my abilities? Maybe I should sweat him a little bit, make him uncertain? I gave him a grin, “I’m not gonna lie to you, Jin—I think I’ve had, like, ten drinks today alone. What happens if I lose?”

Ruomei gave a quiet snort of derision while Jin gave me a patient, neutral expression, one that made it seem like he hadn’t had a drop yet. What a complete bullshitter. “Then, you lose. And Ruomei’s guy is probably gonna make that its own punishment.” He chuckled, shaking his head, “So really—don’t lose. But hey—if you still got the balls to step up, ain’t like I’m just gonna forget that.”

“Man, I’m scared,” I sighed, “Kung Fu is supposed to be this really big deal, right? Don’t think I can handle all that hwooaahing and hyaaahing.” A few of the girls around giggled derisively, a few others started chattering in Mandarin. My optics gave me the subtitles—it was mostly just trash talk directed at me.

Ruomei seemed to wake up slightly from her seat, leaning closer to the table and giving me a predatory grin, “Your man is quite the talker, Jin.”

“He’s an acquired taste,” Jin waved her off, “Uppity as fuck, but honestly? He has what it takes to back all that talk up.”

“What chipware is he running?” Ruomei asked.

“Company secret,” Jin lied. I snorted. He gave me a curious look at that. I shrugged back. I could tell him the truth after this. Or not. Didn’t hurt to keep this one close to my chest—that I had none at all. Actually, that would probably be for the best. Didn’t want Jin to turn me into his personal ninja.

I was not built to be a fucking ninja. An invisible vassal expected to die for their master. What a joke.

Right then, the girl finally ascended the stairs, with someone behind her. Moments later, I saw silver hair rise up. The guy was tall—taller than me, at least—with broad shoulders and a stiff, straight-backed way of moving, like he had a damn stick up his ass. As more of him came into view, I caught the gleam of metal on his face—some kind of dermal plating along his cheeks, sleek and expensive-looking, the kind rich kids got installed to look intimidating. His eyes were sharp, glowing gold like high beams in the dark. Yeah, real subtle.

By the time he reached the top of the stairs, I could see the whole package—long legs, lean lower build, broad shoulders, V-shaped upper body, and an air about him like he thought he was too good to be breathing the same air as the rest of us. Golden eyes, silver hair, face of almost hawkish aspect. Intense eyes—he looked like he could win a staring contest with a fucking lamppost. Was he the other girl’s older brother? His red and gold uniform was crisp, buttons done up all neat, like he had just walked out of a modelling catalog.

The silver-haired girl stepped aside, and the guy—Hou Ken, I guessed—finally turned his attention to me. His lips curled, not quite a smirk, not quite a sneer, but something in between.

“So,” he said, looking me over like I was some cheap meal he didn’t order. “This is what I’m dealing with?”

I crossed my arms, grinning. “Damn, you talk like you already won.”

Hou Ken tilted his head, like I was some kind of puzzle he hadn’t figured out yet. “I don’t talk about obvious things. I just acknowledge them.”

“Oh, that’s cute,” I shot back. “You rehearse that in the mirror?”

Jin wasn’t just smiling, but grinning in anticipation. Ruomei sipped her drink, amused. Hou Ken’s eyes flickered slightly, like maybe he wasn’t used to people talking back.

“You’ve got a mouth on you,” he mused.

“And you’ve got some fancy upgrades,” I said, nodding toward his chrome. “Bet they cost a fortune. You sure you wanna scratch ‘em up?” I gave him a good scan just for good measure. My Ping got caught in his fucking ICE. Goddamn rich kid.

I debated on sending a Breach Protocol his way before realizing—fuck that. Playing it smart? Strategizing? The fuck was that for? This wasn’t work! This was a party.

And I was here to have fun.

His lips twitched. “You sure you should be worried about anyone else right now?”

I grinned. “Nah, that was just me pretending to care.”

The air around us got heavy. Tension, excitement, maybe a little bloodlust. Jin leaned back, watching it all unfold like a man who just ordered the best meal of his life.

Hou Ken took a step closer. “I’ll make sure this doesn’t last long, mistress,” he said, voice smooth as ice, giving Ling Ruomei a curt bow.

I cracked my knuckles. “Good. Saves me the trouble of dragging it out.” I started unbuttoning the jacket before carefully folding it over the balcony railing—the club was surprisingly clean given that this was Night City.

“The fuck are you doing?” Hou Ken asked.

“Ballistic threads—just trying to make this fairer on you,” I began to unbutton the shirt as well, revealing my plain white tank top underneath. The girls sitting with Ruomei tittered in delight, and I took some personal satisfaction at that. “I’d take off my pants, too, but—not for free, of course,” I winked at the girls. A few of them gasped in outrage while some others grinned incredulously. Then I looked up at Hou Ken, “so aim above the belt for maximal effect. I’m mostly ‘ganic, so it shouldn’t be too hard to get some good hits in. Best of luck.”

“Enough banter,” Ruomei announced, “let’s begin.”

“Wait—” I absently dodged a strike from Hou Ken, raising an eyebrow at Ruomei, “Right here?” I dodged again.

Jin cupped his mouth and howled “Make it fun!”

He wanted fun? I suppressed a giggle.

I could do fun.

Right, so this fight needed a story of course. Hou Ken was throwing crazy strikes at me now. Flat-handed, fists, everything. It was weird. He was moving stiffly, but undoubtedly with explosive power. In fact, he reminded me of every wuxia flick I had ever seen on freemium TV. At least his form looked combat applicable.

Rather than evade, I began to block. Had to make things look more even after all.

Ow.

Ow.

Ow.

His arms were quite tough, and mine weren’t exactly that, being that they were still made of ‘ganic, and his most certainly weren’t.

Suddenly, an idea dawned on me.

The balcony drop was right behind us after all.

I clinched at Hou Ken, just like Dorio had taught me, hugging around his neck.

Then I absolutely gave up on doing anything useful, simply trying to drag him to the drop. His resistance was almost non-existent, forcing me to have to slow down and subtly give him a way to grapple me and—

Right there!

He picked me up bodily and tossed me—right into the crowd of dancing bodies, almost two stories down.

I contorted in order to avoid seriously hurting anyone, though I did manage to make a few fall down—very minor damage, didn’t matter.

The bass-heavy beat of electronic Chinese jazz swing cut out mid-drop, the pulsing neon overhead flickering as the music the lights had been synced to suddenly stopped. While those few guys and gals got up and evacuated the dance floor—

I realized all the dancing had stopped.

A second ago, it had been a writhing pit of bodies down here, Kang Tao High’s students—elites all, even these relative plebs—losing themselves in music and liquor, and the press of bodies grinding against one another.

Now?

Now, it was quickly turning into a goddamn colosseum.

The music hadn’t even finished fading before the revelers started reacting to my sudden entrance. Like they knew what it meant, on some level. Damnit, I should have seen this coming.

“Yo! A fight’s starting!”

Word spread quickly. It started in small pockets as half-drunk voices rose in excited disbelief—some laughing, some confused, some just in it for the spectacle. But then it must have settled in that this was actually happening, and the floor hundreds of students shifted, stepping back, forming a rough human ring of tightly-pressed bodies around me. And then the chanting started.

“Fight! Fight! Fight!”

A spectacle, huh? I snorted. Fine, worked for me. I pushed myself up on all fours, groaning way louder than I needed to in feigned agony, putting in some choice sound effects for my viewers.

A few of the closer spectators jeered, while others snapped holovids mid-stream, their Kiroshis flashing as they captured everything, every second, every angle of each and every drop of blood, ounce of sweat, and flicker of neon lights across my skin. I saw a wall of faces all around me, all alight with the expectation of violence.

And above it all—above the chants, the flashing optics, the sheer animalistic frenzy of the moment—I watched Hou Ken’s slow and assured steps as he simply… came down the stairs.

Honestly, I could see the appeal in leisurely walking downwards rather than flex his abilities and dive right after me. It was very hidden master of him. He put on a damn good act of it too. He took the stairs down slowly, each step a deliberate, measured act of contempt, hands held behind his back, and chin pointed up.

The crowd fucking ate it up.

“HOU-KEN! HOU-KEN! HOU-KEN!”

For a moment there, I felt a slight crisis of faith bubble up—not because of this arrogant jerkoff or his trust fund brat peanut gallery, but because I cringed inside when realized I’d just mouthed off about goddamn kung fu tropes in front of probably the wealthiest Chinese girl in the city. Was that racist? …Culturalist? Was that even a word? Point was, was my assumption that her vassal fighter would be using Kung Fu racist? Katsuo had boasted extensively about his chipware, sure, so it wasn’t like I had pulled that from out of nowhere, but did Ruomei think that about me now?

I winced, cringing at myself. I was such a gonk.

Not that there was any way for me to apologize or try to clear the air now—it wasn’t like I was dealing with real human beings here. All these people were just… bodies. Or characters, really, in my own personal corpo beat-em-up BD.

They existed for my amusement.

“That’s it?” Hou Ken asked quietly, standing at the very edge of the dance floor. “That’s all you could do?”

I shakily pushed myself up on all fours.

Then I slowly got up, groaning all the while, before straightening. “No…! This isn’t it for me!” I cried out dramatically. “This isn’t my end! I can still go on!”

The crowd roared, Kiroshis flashing all around us as hundreds of people recorded every second of this. Somewhere, a girl screamed in excitement. I caught a glimpse of a guy near the bar hopping onto a stool for a better view. I could see people trading bets with one another, treating this as a goddamn impromptu prizefighting match. Damn, I wished I could get in on that game.

Hou Ken scoffed, “you’re a frog in a well, Arasaka. You might be strong in your school, but in Kang Tao, we all know how to fight for our survival, make our name known and thrive anywhere. And unlike you, we are welcome everywhere we go.”

He was not going to make me spout off some cliché ‘defending Arasaka’s honor’ line. Especially not in front of a crowd. I absolutely refused.

I just… raised my fists.

And, uh, what else did Dorio say? Stand like this. Feet apart, left foot forward, at this ratio to my arms. Uhhhh. Yeah. Seemed about right.

I threw a few experimental jabs in the air just for good measure, until I really started feeling the whoosh sound effect. It was weirdly pronounced now. Was that just the alcohol? Probably just the alcohol.

“Nanny, what’s the sitch on my body anyway?” I muttered, inching closer to Hou Ken, who had taken his own stance, and was reading me. “You think you’ve made me as good as chrome yet?”

[Undoubtedly. Your bones have been reinforced with a nanocarbide lattice, increasing their tensile strength by approximately 850% while maintaining 60% of their natural flexibility to absorb impact. This will make it exceedingly unlikely for your opponent to be able to break your bones. Muscle fiber density has been enhanced by 450%, allowing for a peak output of up to 7,200 newtons of force per limb. Ligaments and tendons have been reinforced with synthetic collagen microfilaments, reducing strain-related injuries by 85% and increasing physical reaction speed by roughly 40%. You’re not as durable as full-body chrome, but pound for pound, you hit just as hard—and you’re faster.]

Was that a fact? I’d read that Gorilla Arms of average quality could exert up to ten thousand newtons of force.

Sucked that I was lagging behind, but I was closer than I expected, to be honest. And physical power really wasn’t everything. You could do more with a gun and good aim than with giant metal arms and legs. Nothing in this world was truly bulletproof, in a practical sense at least.

The most important tidbit of that summary, by far, was that pound for pound, I was as good as chrome—and faster.

Meaning better. “Better than chrome,” I said. Hou Ken narrowed his eyes. Damn, I was talking out loud.

D: Not to say that I’m not super fucking jazzed to hear this news right before handing this corpo cocksucker his ass, but—Nanny. We have to talk about your time management, because why am I hearing this—

[No. No. No. No. Actually, no. We do not have to talk about my abysmal comprehension of time, and your insistent need to learn about every bit of improvement I’ve managed to do to your meat. David, to me, all of that is just—it’s the same as walking to you. Walking. What if I was strangely obsessed with how many steps a day you take, and you continuously forgot to keep me updated?]

D: Nanny. I hear you. But you live in this meat. So maybe, uh, have more skin in the game?

[I have all the skin in this game. And you don’t rely on basic physical statistics regularly. You already knew you could beat this flesh bag. This report was for your vanity.]

D: I fucking—goddammit I hate that you’re so fucking right all the time. I really do. Fuck off. Time out now.

[Gladly.]

I clicked my tongue. looked at Hou Ken, who just shook his head, stepping into his stance.

I did the same. Fists up. Feet light.

“FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!”

And then we gave them one.

000

“He’s already a gibbering mess,” Ruomei wrinkled her forehead in a combination of disgust and concern, “Jin, if this is going to turn into a gore fest, I must ask that you refrain from showing me this. I won’t be impressed.”

“No!” Jin laughed, “No, not at all!”

But seriously though, what the actual fuck was David doing?

He was barely keeping up with Huo Ken, ringed by hundreds of dumbass mouthbreathers, gibbering nonsense to himself, barely able to stand on his feet. No, was he swaying on his feet like a—

Oh, no. No, no, no, nonono! That gonk was way too drunk.

And now that he was only wearing a tank-top, the truth was out—aside from that disgustingly oversized neural link taking up his entire fucking spine, he really was fully ‘ganic. He didn’t even have any fucking EMP threading that would even imply any chrome either.

At least, as far as he could tell. And his scans couldn’t really pull up anything on him, either.

Katsuo had allowed Jin to peek into David’s school med records after he’d first met the gonk at a party a few weeks ago—and despite the clear chrome spine showing at all times on the nape of his neck, neither the school records, or the city records, reflected that David had anything beyond a standard-sized neural link and corneal implants—what every fucker in Night City had.

That wasn’t crazy, though. It just proved that he had the scratch to make sure all his mods stayed off any books. Everyone did that—everyone with the money, of course. Meaning David did have money.

Either that, or he let some back alley Ripper implant that spine on him. They didn’t keep records either. But that was crazy. Too fucking crazy to even take seriously.

Finally, after a million years of them inching closer to each other, Hou Ken finally moved. David blocked. Hou Ken punched. David blocked.

Ah, for fuck’s fucking sakes! “David, goddammit, do something!”

David’s eyes met his for a moment and then—

He jabbed Hou Ken’s jaw and avoided a strike.

Then they went back and forth like usual. Hou Ken punched. David blocked.

“Again, motherfucker!” Jin hollered.

David attacked, staggering Hou Ken. Then he capitalized on that, giving him a punch to his body—a liver shot. Unfortunately, the fucker was chromed at that vital area. It didn’t stun him.

David had to dodge a furious blow from Hou Ken, and then continue blocking the onslaught.

Jin was beginning to see what was happening. David was… he was putting on a show. On purpose.

But he was doing it like a fucking gonk. First of all, he hadn’t even cleared it with Jin yet. Goddammit! They could have done a whole fighting choreo talk in the bathrooms before getting started, come up with a decent monologue, even a few epic one-liners—it would have been a show for the ages. This fucker!

Still, Jin would have to give the guy points for taking a dive off a fucking balcony to a sixteen feet drop just for the vibes.

Ruomei tittered. Jin turned to her with a confident grin, “What?” he asked.

She didn’t stop tittering at his question. Finally, his feigned confusion made her mirth fall into a flat expression, as though she was questioning his intelligence, “you don’t really expect me to be entertained at a long and drawn out fight—engineered specifically to your desire, do I? I value authenticity. And if you want to hold my attention, then your man needs to give me a real show—not this meaningless spectacle.”

Fucking spoilsport! Jin personally loved this, even if it was total bullshit—for David at least.

“Besides,” Ruomei frowned, “Clearly, Hou Ken is trying to play along in order to put on this show. That makes two inept showmen in one show. Fix this, Jin, or our talk is over.”

Wow. Fucking spoilsport biaaaatch! And she was wrong! This was David playing around entirely by himself!

But playtime was over.

Jin took a deep breath and then, “DAVID, YOU FUCKING BASTARD! KILL HIM ALREADY!”

David’s eyes widened for a moment.

Then he firmed up his entire body and took on a real boxing stance, skipping on his feet, never staying in one place for too long before—like a snake darting for its prey, David’s fist found itself on the face of Hou Ken. David sent a followup that sent Hou Ken staggering back in surprise.

And Hou Ken suddenly became fucking fast. His arms became a whirl of motion—a blur to Jin’s own eyes.

“It’s here!” Ruomei whispered.

Was that—?

No, no way. Hou Ken. That fucking arrogant silver-haired prick had a Sandevistan?

He did. Hou Ken was suddenly a whirl of movements, his fists flying too fast for Jin’s eyes to follow while David—

David was slow enough for Jin to follow, and yet he continuously evaded or deflected Hou Ken’s strikes, and threw counters of his own, over and over.

“What?” Ruomei hissed, “how could a Kerenzikov compare to a QianT Sandevistan?”

How the fuck was Jin supposed to know? But he grinned a wild, wild grin, and put on his absolute best bullshit face. “Company secret, Ruomei. Proprietary. Fucking. Company. Secret.”

She gave him a flat, unimpressed look, but he just ignored her. All he saw was David… well, winning. He got in more clean hits than Hou Ken got in strikes that were inevitably blocked. In fact, Jin could not recall a single moment where Hou Ken had struck through David’s guard to his core. Just block, after block, after block. Sure, that would most certainly bruise, but—fuck. David was moving like he had fucking precognition. Jin had never seen anything like it before.

“Alright now,” David said audibly, taunting, “where’s the ‘ganic? Show me? Is it here?” he hit Hou Ken on the liver, “is it here?” he did it again. Hou Ken did not react predictably. Just lashed out furiously, as if he hadn’t just taken a hit that would have instantly put down a normal man. “Shit, what about here?” Solar plexus. “Here?” Throat. “Fucking here?” Temple. “Fuck, does it even matter? You’re—” he struck Hou Ken’s jaw, “clearly feeling it! Why don’t you fire that Sandy up again, motherfucker? You almost made this shit fun for me!”

Each hit, Hou Ken became slower, more bruised, more bloodied. And David kept moving, somehow endlessly dodging and sliding around Hou Ken’s desperate counterassault like a fucking ghost, doing his best to suss out the silver-haired fucker’s weakness until—

David punched the open air where Hou Ken’s head used to be—because the man had fallen on his back, utterly insensate. He let out a cough, sending a tiny spray of blood next to his head on the floor

FUCKING.

YEAH.

Jin fucking jumped down the balcony, coming to a smooth roll before walking up to David and slapping his hands on his shoulders, sticky with sweat—what the fuck, they really felt like meat! What a crazy guy! “Are you fucking kidding me, motherfucker? Am I dreaming? You—you fucking! Gah!” he let go and walked away, pacing around furiously, “I gotta stop glazing you—fuck, forget I ever said that. Goddammit. Bastard! But you shoulda told me you were playing before doing all that, what the fuck!”

000

“That obvious?” I grinned and winced slightly at the same time.

He looked at me as if I was stupid, “Nobody gives a shit about people trading punches for five minutes straight, this isn’t a goddamn anime. Anyway, let’s go up again and hear what Ruomei has to say to our glorious victor. But…” a flicker passed over his expression as he looked me up and down, “You hurt?”

Unsurprisingly, I was. Lots of contusions and the sort of shallow internal bleeding that would form a solid portrait of bruises up and down my arms, but otherwise I was fine.

Though the pain did annoy me.

D: Nanny.

I activated the Sandevistan. Nanny healed everything.

Everything.

Oh god—hangover.

D: Why did you undrunk me?! I didn’t ask for that!

[You are welcome.]

Fucking hell.

I immediately rushed to the nearest bar. I needed a new drink in me ASAP.

No way I was going even a second sober tonight. Something about my ego just couldn’t handle the inevitable self-reflection that would follow. Especially here on Kang Tao turf, which would just endlessly make me think of Fei Fe—fuck.

“Dude?”

“I’m ordering a shot,” I muttered, “or ten. You go on up, I’ll follow.”

Eventually.

000

Jin watched as David staggered toward the bar, shaking his head in equal parts admiration and exasperation. The guy had just humiliated Hou Ken, fucking Hou Ken of all people, in front of half of Kang Tao High—and his first move was to refuel on liquor like it was some cheap MMO buff.

Fucking legend.

Jin turned back to the second-floor balcony, where his host of the hour, Ling Ruomei still sat, unruffled and apparently unimpressed, fingers tapping idly against the rim of her glass. She had enjoyed the fight—Jin could tell from the way her eyes were still gleaming in the Red Lotus’s neon lights—but that didn’t mean she’d let him see through that mask of hers. She was too good at the game for that.

With one last glance at David, who was already chugging from an entire fucking bottle of real-deal ten thousand eddie Russian vodka at the bar as excited Kang Tao students mobbed around him, Jin grinned and made his way back upstairs.

Ruomei’s entourage parted without a word. They knew their place. Good.

He slid into the seat across from her, stretching his arms along the back of the plush cushions. Fuck did Kang Tao know how to make a man feel welcome. But then again, that was half their biz. Corp espionage, spying, thievery, assassination. Honeypots, all of them. No matter how tempting it was, he couldn’t let himself be personally entangled with them, or with her. Especially with her.

Not until he had real power.

“Well?” he said. “Show worth the price of admission?”

Ruomei took a measured sip from her drink, her smirk returning. “It was… amusing.”

Jin scoffed. “That all?”

She set her glass down. “I’ve seen better fighters.”

Jin snorted, baring his teeth in a too-wide grin. “Oh yeah? But have you seen one our age? Let alone one that could move like that without hardly a single ounce of strength-enhancing chrome in his body?”

“…No.” Finally, a crack in Ruomei’s expression. An actual scowl. “David Martinez. Who is he? What’s his deal?”

There it was. The bait. David had pulled through magnificently.

And Jin? He wasn’t going to let her have a bite.

Instead, he leaned forward, dropping his voice just enough that only she could hear. “He’s my choom. That’s all you need to know, Ruomei. Now then, you gonna give me the inside word, or are we just flirting all night?”

Ruomei exhaled softly, almost like a laugh. She leaned back, crossing one leg over the other, and finally, she spoke.

“There’s been division in Kang Tao’s board on the matter of QianT for months,” Ruomei began, her voice smooth as silk but as cold as tempered steel, now that they were talking actual business. “But this shooting last night, it magnified those divisions.”

“Divisions, huh?”

Ruomei nodded. “As far as you need to know, there are two factions on Kang Tao’s board in Night City. The conservative faction, led by Zhou Jianwei, as ever, sees no reason to intervene on the QianT matter.”

Jin nodded, already taking mental notes. He knew the name—Zhou Jianwei wasn’t just old Kang Tao money, but ancient Kang Tao money. Taiwanese, efficient, unimaginative. The kind of fossilized old fuck who didn’t believe in risks unless they came with a 100% guaranteed return. The Chinese faction of Kang Tao—led by Ruomei’s mother—was far more interesting.

“Kang Tao’s conservatives see QianT as a bespoke artisan shop, fundamentally unprofitable. A boutique tech firm that specializes in impractical masterworks. Nothing scalable, nothing worth real investment. Even if they had an interest in acquiring the company for its underlying technology, QianT’s suspected connections to offworld research labs on Mars make them too inscrutable. And since QianT has made it very clear that those connections—if they even exist—aren’t for sale, there’s no real value in a buyout as the board’s conservatives see it.”

Jin nodded along, but his mind was already working.

Mars, huh?

Such rumors had been floating around about QianT for years. If they really had offworld Martian connections, then that meant their tech wasn’t just advanced—it was years ahead of anything on Earth. Martian megacorps like GN Trading and Ultor had absolutely refused to ever allow any competitors from Earth to gain even the slightest of footholds on the red planet. That alone made QianT valuable. So—if they had connections to those forces—why was Kang Tao willing to let them rot?

Ruomei continued. “Our board’s liberal faction on the other hand, sees potential. They think QianT’s technology merits investigation—but not for the price QianT is demanding. With their main point of contact, Mei Jing Qiang critically wounded, possibly dead, the only point of negotiation left with real power is his grandfather.”

Jin grinned. “Mei Jing Huotang. That old bastard. He fucking hates Kang Tao.”

Ruomei sighed, gave him a small nod. “Deeply. His hatred for Kang Tao’s ‘liberals,’ starting with my own mother, is… legendary.”

Huotang, chairman of QianT’s board, was as old-school as they came. A Taiwanese loyalist over a century old. One of the Kang Tao expats from the early days who split off when the company decided to play ball with then-communist China. He fucking hated Kang Tao’s mainland Chinese and Taiwanese sides and anything having to do with either them—apparently, he at best saw them all as betrayers of the nation. At worst? Well.

Jin let out a low whistle. “So, neither side thinks they can move on QianT.”

“Correct.”

“And that means…” Jin trailed off, giving Ruomei a knowing look.

She met his gaze, her smile faint. “That means Kang Tao will do nothing. QianT will be left to succeed or fail on its own merits.”

Jin exhaled through his nose. “And most likely fail.”

Ruomei tilted her head in acknowledgment. “QianT is already being hounded by its creditors. They’ll bleed the company dry before the Mei family gets another chance at a buyout. Your cousin fucked things up more than he could possibly imagine.”

Jin tsked, tapped his fingers against the table. This still wasn’t… quite… enough to explain everything. “And I’m guessing there’s another reason Kang Tao’s sitting this one out?”

Ruomei’s crimson eyes gleamed. “A rumor. One that both factions of the board agree on, through their own independent sourcings of intel south of the Rio Grande.”

Jin raised an eyebrow. “I’m listening.”

She leaned in slightly, voice dropping to a whisper.

“QianT has been illegally selling advanced tech to the Mexican cartels.”

Jin blinked.

Then he whistled.

“Oh, that’s fucking rich. The NUSA is gonna lose its goddamn mind if that gets out.”

Ruomei nodded. “And neither Kang Tao’s conservatives nor the liberals want to deal with that kind of geopolitical fallout.”

Jin chuckled, shaking his head. “So, you folks are playing the long game. Waiting for QianT to wither on the vine. To become more… receptive… to your buyout terms.”

Ruomei finally leaned back again, sipping from her drink. “Exactly.”

He smirked. “Maybe even get enough leverage over them to give the NUSA some sacrificial lambs.”

Ruomei’s crimson eyes narrowed. She tapped her long finger on the table three times. Her lips thinned as she looked at him, suddenly warier than at any point before.

“…Yes, should such action prove necessary. Yes. That is my mother’s backup plan, Ryuzaki. Though she would prefer to avoid such… distasteful, appeasement strategies. She sees the NUSA as fundamentally unappeasable, that they’ll only respond to countervailing force over the long term, not negotiation.”

Jin nodded silently, then let the weight of it all settle.

It made perfect fucking sense.

Kang Tao had nothing to gain by moving on QianT now. If they waited, they could let debt, pressure, and politics do the work for them. Maybe even speed things up by leaking info to the Americans on who exactly QianT had been selling to—wait, no, terrible idea, given the political heat that revelation might bring on Night City as a whole. Last thing any of them needed was even a possibility of a second coming of Operation Big Stick—especially before the new gravitational linear frame model was in mass production and ready for deployment to the front lines. And it might be years until then—it was still only in the early prototype stage.

Seriously. Those fucking idiots.

“So,” Jin said, tilting his head. “Why are you telling me this?”

Ruomei smiled. “Because it’s in Kang Tao’s interests to make sure Arasaka doesn’t move either.”

Jin’s grin faded slightly. “You think ‘Saka’s still gonna pull the trigger?”

Ruomei’s expression darkened. “Even considering this shooting, we know there are people in Arasaka who still see QianT as a potential asset. If they move too soon, they’ll ruin the chance to force a real buyout. It’s not enough to own QianT—we see it as an inefficient shell corporation, terrible logistics, no economies of scale at all. Their access to Martian technology, though? That’s a potential game changer.”

“Yep, I get it. “Jin clicked his tongue. “You want me to tell my old man to make Arasaka to back off.”

Ruomei sipped her drink. “My own mother is advising the same to our faction on the board. She wants to ensure that Kang Tao and Arasaka remain on the same page.”

Jin didn’t need to ask why.

Militech.

It was the unspoken threat hanging over both megacorps.

If Kang Tao and Arasaka started fighting over one mid-sized company, it would only serve Militech’s and the NUSA’s interests in the long run.

And neither Asian corp could afford to be divided when the real war came with the Americans. The ashes of the Fourth Corporate War had long since settled, and now the sharks were beginning to circle, converge. It was only a matter of time before the Fifth Corporate War began, and the Americans made their final drive to remove all foreign megacorps from their continent—the ones that wouldn’t play ball at least.

Jin exhaled slowly. “You play a mean game, Ruo.”

She gave him a knowing look. “I expect you to play it well.”

Jin smirked. “Oh, I will.”

He subtly deactivated his cyberware.

The entire conversation had been recorded.

Not just for David—Jin had plans for that gonk, plans of the sort that meant he had to be kept informed on these matters. But also, far more importantly, he recorded for his father. Arasaka’s board in Night City had to know what he had just heard. All of it.

Jin leaned back, stretching. “I’ll make sure the right people hear the message.”

Ruomei’s gaze flickered, but she simply nodded. “Good.”

Jin tapped the side of his glass. “Now that business is done…”

He grinned, putting in an order of the priciest bottle of Maotai in the bar through the Localnet.

“Let’s get back to having fun.”

Notes:

Things rev up and the blood surges as David and Jin continue on their little corpo bacchanal.

Many thanks to Coldbringer/DiabloSnowblind for the conversation between Jin and Ruomei.

Also, I wanna announce that I am open for writing commissions below 20k words. DM me on Discord for details.

Also, also my backlog is currently up to Chapter 45. More details on the Discord as well :D

Also, also, also I've crossposted this story to Royalroad under my alt-name TheEpicLotfi. Be sure to check it out there as well :D

Discord link: https://discord.gg/W5BqBBym28

Chapter 43: Tuesday Night Bender Final Part

“Look, man,” I growled, “All my choom was saying was, your girl looks nice. He was buying her a drink. That’s all. And you know what? It’s because she fucking does look nice, you gonk.”

It was even true. Within thirty seconds of walking into dive bar #3, Jin had started chatting up the first sexy-looking thing in sight—a tall, mostly ‘ganic young woman at least five years older than him, with legs that went for miles and long, luxuriant crimson hair so nicely maintained that even with Nanny I almost couldn’t tell she wasn’t a natural redhead.

Somehow, somehow, Jin had enough game that, with a bit of tactical wingmanning on my part, it looked like he could even pull her for the night—and then this sorry fuck had caught them at the bar after he spent fifteen minutes snorting glitter in the bathroom.

“Fuckers! She’s mine, beat it!”

“I met you not even two hours ago! I don’t belong to anyone,” the redhead in question unhelpfully said, but her face was flushed as her eyes flickered between the men literally squaring up for the right to buy her a drink.

Jin grinned. I could only roll my eyes. She was one of those types, apparently.

“Sounds to me,” Jin said slowly, tauntingly, eyeing Mr. Glitter Sniffer, “That we are at an impasse. So here’s my proposal, gentle as can be. Fuck off. Either beat it, or get beaten, peon.”

“Fuck you, corpo,” the glitter-snorting bitch growled, “I’m gonna break your entire face! Show me your hands. I’ll break ‘em too.”

Jin’s grin only widened. “The arrogance, to think you’re even remotely worth my time.” I sighed. Problem was, this glitter-snorting bitch was in the part of his high that simply demanded that he fight someone. He didn’t even have his head on straight enough to tell when it was a good idea to back off for his own good.

“You fucking dick!” the dumbass glitter-sniffer raised his fists.

Jin laughed. “David, you’re up.”

I sighed again, got up, and rolled back my sleeves. We could have sorted this diplomatically, but—the guy was high as a highrider, and safe to say Jin was not sorry. Also, to be fair, Jin had been very deeply in a conversation with the redhead, and he hated being interrupted, as I was swiftly coming to learn.

Mr. Glitter-Sniffing Bitch came in swinging. At my face, specifically.

I tilted my head to the side, letting his chromed-up arm pass me by in a rush of wind, and then—

I punched him.

So quickly, he couldn’t react.

He just fell on the floor, instantly. Did he fucking die or something? Jesus. I lightly kicked him to see if he’d react—he twitched a little. He was still breathing.

Jin laughed, got the girl’s number, and ten minutes later he was dragging me out to the next bar.

000

“So. What do you do?” some plastic pretty girl from North Oak asked me, head resting on her hand, elbow to the counter of bar #4. Pale mostly-synth skin, green fiber hair and green chrome eyes. Fancy emerald green dress to go with it. Gorgeous, too-idealized, fake, all of it. The ring light she kept on the counter ensured that her face wasn’t fighting against the lighting, and I guess she must have liked that so much, considering the camera on the table, pointed towards her—recording her or occasionally taking pictures? I didn’t know.

What I did know was, she wasn’t a joytoy—didn’t really give me that vibe—but just because she was interested with me outside of monetary incentives didn’t mean I had to reciprocate her interest. Didn’t have the slightest clue what she had been saying to me for the last five minutes, and really, really not for a lack of trying.

Her words were like water to my teflon brain—nothing stuck.

Except, of course, that shitty flirting of hers. Not so much in words but in vibes.

“I’m a student,” I replied soberly. I took a shot of tequila.

“Like, NCU?”

“No, high school.”

“Ah, that’s cool. I’m in high school too.”

I didn’t say anything to that, instead glancing around for Jin, who was busy chatting up an entire table of girls nearby. He was having fun. That was nice.

“Hello?”

I turned back to her, “Huh? Cool.”

She giggled, “You’re so cute.”

“I have an output.”

She shrugged, “She doesn’t need to know.”

“I mean, I feel like I could get away with it if I tried real hard, so yeah, in a technical sense, she doesn’t need to know,” I said, “but I have no reason to try all that, because honestly? She’s enough. Ever heard about that, North Oakey? Enough? Something us brokies have to contend with from day to day. Enough fills my stomach. And my output? She’s enough.”

She looked scandalized at me. “Fucking asshole! You think I’d ever want to put out with you?”

“Yeah?” I raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Cool, interesting story. Fuck off, now.” She stood up furiously, her face a perfected portrait of outrage. “Yeah, yeah, take your time packing all your shit into that cheap-ass knockoff bag,” I said, before she could get mouthy.

It took her a good thirty seconds to pack her shit before she left.

“—yeah? Fuck you, I’m not even from North Oak, you stupid gay freak,” I heard as she walked away.

I snorted, then faced the bartender and raised three fingers, “Tequila.” the bartender nodded, “Also, sorry about my manners—I’m on a ‘burn shit to the ground’ kick right now and I need to feel like a rockstar. I’d try to cheer you up by telling you I’m gonna tip you a bunch for putting up with me, but I’d sooner you’d rather flatline me than not.”

The bartender blinked, perplexed at that, “no, sir, of course I wouldn’t—I wouldn’t zero you.”

“You should want that,” I told him. “You should really want that.”

I paid him a fat tip before we left. I hoped he’d take my words to heart.

000

“I. Have. An. Output!” I shouted at Jin’s face. We were in the bathroom together, doing, fucking, what, a huddle? Game talk, battle plan, I couldn’t remember right—Jin used a certain expression.

God, my memory was shot to fuck. That meant I was really drunk.

“David!” Jin hissed, “David, my man! David! For fuck’s sakes, David, listen to me! Fine! I respect that!”

“Well, if you respect that, then why the fuck do you sound like you almost absolutely don’t?”

“I do!” he probably lied, “I don’t want anything from you man—I just want availability! Got it? Public. Availability! Anything less would ruin the vibes I’m going for here in our sweet little slice of corpoland. Do you understand?”

I palmed my forehead, sighing, “So, you want to have sex, right? I feel like that would be drastically easy for you, and most certainly without my input.” Guy looked like he was made of money after all. It wouldn’t take him five minutes to get someone’s attention in a bar in Arroyo.

“Oh, oh? You really think so?” he said sarcastically, “since you’re so fucking smart and all that, why don’t you try it? Try getting any of the girls in this club to put out with you—and then simply don’t go through. If you’re such a fucking family man.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at that. Family man? The fuck was this gonk on?

Well, our travels had finally taken us to North Oak—wealthiest subdistrict in all of Night City. Maybe that did mean that Jin was not that above average anymore. And that certainly did suck. For him. I honestly couldn’t sympathize.

Still, the challenge was compelling.

Errrr.

Should I call Lucy?

Fuck it.

D: Heyyy, babe. Are we doing babe? Can I do babe?

“You did not just call your fucking output, you enormous pussy.”

D:  Hey, I’m sorry if babe is too close, I don’t—I don’t think we’ve even said what we are yet. Haven’t had that discussion yet.

Lunacy: Hahahaha! Relax! Are you having fun?

D: I am, surprisingly—but first, listen, I’ve been telling everybody I have an output. So… say it right now if I was overstepping. Are we a thing or?

Lunacy: yeah, we can be a thing.

Fucking awesome!

And conversely, I had lost any and all interest in making things awkward by asking for her permission for this fucking stupid venture.

D: I love you so much oh my god

Lunacy: Wow, you—really got yourself shitfaced, huh? Who’d have thunk you had it in you?

Hah!

D: Craaaaaaaazy fucking idea, Lunacy, but… you wanna come with?

Lunacy: No. I do not. Please do not involve me.

Shit.

Well, it certainly made sense.

D: Okay. I’ll stay out of trouble and all. Love you.

Lunacy: David—ahahaha! Stop it. Just get home safely and we’ll talk when you’re better, okay? At least come home by two AM, okay?

D: Okay. Love ya bye.

I hung up.

“Fine!” I grinned, “let’s go!”

Jin took us out of the bathroom and began prowling around for a group of girls that we could talk to. We found a trio standing around a tall standing table—attractive as all hell—and Jin didn’t waste any time putting his charisma on and insinuating himself into their situation. He was more subtle than I would have given him credit for, and the girls were weirdly receptive.

He brought out an expensive bottle for the table and regaled them with some story or other while the rest of us listened.

“So,” one of the girls, a really hot blonde, looked me up and down with a mischievous grin, “what’s your story, Tall, Dark and Handsome.”

Fuck. Didn’t know what to do here.

“I’m just here for a good time,” I said in Spanish, hopefully to throw her off, “and see to it that my brother has one, too.”

Her grin only widened. “Good time, huh? I’m having a good time. Are you?”

Shit. That didn’t work.

“The night is young—I’m sure the mood will pick up eventually,” I said, affecting a tone and attitude of utter disinterest.

“That right?” she purred.

Fuck!

So if a lack of interest didn’t work, then what about rudeness? All Jin stipulated was availability. Fair, fuck it. I wouldn’t say that I had an output.

I looked at her and sighed, “You clearly aren’t one for meaningful conversation.”

She smirked, dragging a lock of hair behind her ear, “not really, no.” I just called her stupid, why was she taking that as a compliment?

“Where’s your friend from?” I heard one of the two girls next to Jin say. Jin raised an eyebrow at me.

“Take a wild guess,” I muttered.

Her eyes widened and she grinned hungrily, “oh… I get it.”

The girl next to me grinned widely, “are you a Tino?”

Wait—what the fuck?

“Rachel!” one of her friends hissed, “you can’t just ask him that!”

“Oh,” she looked up at me apologetically, “sorry.”

I rolled my eyes at her and said nothing.

000

Jin lacked the words to describe what he was seeing.

“Say something else!” one of the girls said, and David muttered something in Spanish.

Why the fuck was he doing that—

And why did they hang onto his every word despite him literally telling them, to their faces, to eat SCOP?

Was it the language? Was it just the fucking language?

Jin wasn’t even mad, really.

“I need to go get some air,” David said, his voice low and breathy, “why don’t you all entertain my brother here while I’m away?”

“Do you smoke?” one of the girls asked, “I was actually thinking about going out.”

“Me too!”

“Yeah, also me!”

David gave Jin a helpless look. Jin shrugged. He’d made this bed, now he had to lie in it.

But goddamn if it didn’t sting to see this nonsense.

000

“What, you think we’d cheat you out of your hard-earned edds? How even?” I asked, looking down at my cards, my face showing nothing but bafflement, my voice revealing nothing but confusion. Meanwhile, there was a window in my optics showing the one surveillance camera of bar #5 pointing to my opponent’s cards.

“I don’t fucking know,” the floor manager slash bouncer growled darkly, “but either you cash out now, or you’re leaving your winnings behind.”

“Boooo!” Jin complained. He had lost all of his money in the game, “you don’t know who I am.” his voice was entirely monotone, throaty, and tired, “They dun even know who the fuck I am. Don’t know my—David, tell ‘em.” he slurred. He just slurred all of his speech. In fact, he didn’t even look like he gave a fuck about the game at all.

“This doesn’t concern you, sir,” the Animal floor manager growled.

“Oh!” I grinned. “So he’s ‘sir’ because he’s losing big! But I’m a menace to society because I’m on a hot fucking streak, and that dog-faced degenerate gambler fucking weirdo who probably has child porn under his bed gets to tell me to fuck off.”

All the other players on the table stared at me. “Sir, that is our owner,” the bouncer said.

 The ‘owner’ in question leered at me. I slammed my cards down immediately, then I snarled at the ‘man.’ “One day, I’ll come back here, and I’ll expose your ass for the child diddler that you probably are.”

Said child diddler—with an honest-to-god dog face, fucking why??—waved his head, ears flopping about in irritation, “get them the fuck out of here,” he literally growled to a nearby bouncer.

Then he eyed me. “Fuck you, I don’t know how you’re doing it. Count your lucky ass you’re still getting paid out after cheating an alpha in his own den.” Alpha? Like—Animal alpha? So this asshole was not only a motherfucking Exotic, but also an Animal shitsmear to boot. Well, it certainly explained his massive bulk and minimal cyberware.

‘Lucky ass’, I bet. Luck didn’t exist in Night City. I added two and two together almost immediately. He was wary of Jin. He couldn’t tell who Jin was, but it took no genius to see that he was a corpo, and one higher up than some random gangoons could handle if push came to shove.

It showed in his clothes. All told, his ensemble was at a neat sixty K, and probably precisely for a lack of trying. I bet if he really wanted to show out, he’d wear something even more expensive than my stuff.

Jin cackled.

My winnings would be just enough to recoup this fucking idiot Jin’s losses. After cashing in and forcibly folding the cards of my newfound brother in these drunken games of total lack of regard for all surroundings whatsoever, I took us both out into the streets.

Jin stopped tripping over his feet and began walking normally almost immediately, and then he started laughing. “Dude, the way you’re trying to babysit me is fucking hilarious—and you ain’t even any better than I am!”

This fucking—! I grabbed him in a headlock, “you think it’s easy jumping through all these fucking hoops trying to make sure you don’t fucking shoot yourself in the foot by accident? You stupid or somethin’?”

“Fuck off!” he laughed, “motherfucker, you love this!”

I snorted, “nah. Not really.”

Jin furrowed his brows at me, then he stopped walking, “Okay, I know what this is.”

I turned around and frowned at him, “what?”

He looked to the side, up at the facade of the bar we were next to, some Irish pub apparently. Fuck, that meant beers. Eugh. I was going to have to muscle through a bunch of carbo tongue, huh?

Jin, as always, didn’t wait for anyone’s permission before walking in. As did I.

I caught up to him as he went to sit on the bar. There were a couple of cute girls hanging around, but he didn’t have any eyes for them at all. Instead, he was only staring at the counter.

“So, what? What is this?” I asked him.

“This, my choom?” He looked at me with a small grin, “this is the part of the night where we open up. Say incriminating shit to each other.”

I snorted. “I boosted a bunch of Tyger bikes as a kid. Does that count?”

“Did you?”

I shrugged, “I mean, I only kept watch, really. But it counts according to the law. Also, I’m way too fucking drunk for this to count as a valid statement in the court of law, so, yeah.”

Jin shook his head, “Argh! I meant real shit.”

I shrugged, “actually, why don’t you tell me one thing?”

“What?”

“Why do you treat those kids in your class like absolute SCOP?” I asked, head tilted.

“Oh, that?” he snorted, “it’s not as senseless as it seems. Authority is more like a ‘use it or lose it’ sort of thing. If I don’t dick them around, they’re gonna wind up thinking I’m not above them anymore. Regular reminder to keep them—you know—aware of the status quo.”

“Forcing them to watch XBDs?” I asked, eyebrow raised. “I dunno, just seems like something that’ll backfire eventually.” the bartender arrived with two big glasses of dark beer. I took a sip—nope, nu-uh. Not only was it fizzy to hell, but it also tasted like shit.

“Eh, it was just a one-time thing. And that Norris BD was—fucking, something else. Didn’t mean for the spew-fest to happen. Just wanted to know if they’d do it if I asked. And they did. And they’re not gonna forget anytime soon.”

“So, none of those people are really your chooms,” I concluded.

“Nah, hah! Them? They’re literally children. And their parents aren’t important either. Well, except Allister’s, but he’s good at not disappointing me for the most part, and I take it easier on him than most, because, yeah, he’s an asset.” Then he raised an eyebrow at me and grin mischievously, “what? All that look too brutal to you? If so, then perfect. I projected the image I wanted to project, and you were likewise highly disinclined towards disappointing me.”

“I try not to disappoint in general,” I said, “it’s a principle thing, not—about you specifically.”

“So, David-chan,” Jin leaned closer to me, “as you already knew, Katsuo’s dad was on the academy board, meaning he could pretty much tell me anything I wanted to know about you—your courses, your grades, everything. And I gotta say, you’re a fucking egghead. And you know how to fight. And you come from Santo Domingo. Arroyo at that. You know who else in this school comes from Arroyo? Nobody. Statistically, that’s really weird—”

“Realistically though, it makes sense,” I said, “possibilities exist beyond just the law of large numbers. Your point, though?”

“What do you wanna do with your life?”

“Make edds,” I said.

“Are you serious?” he asked, “make money? That’s all you want? Not fame? Or power? Money?”

“I guess,” I shrugged.

“Bullshit,” he scoffed, “look at you—you already have money. No idea how, but you obviously do. Why you still live in a fucking megablock, I’ve got no fucking idea, but it’s obvious you’re wealthy as fuck.”

I waved my hand, “my family got mixed up with the cartel down in Mexico—made it so that they couldn’t send me much money—enough to live anywhere else, while still going to Arasaka.”

“All that changed when your mother passed away,” Jin surmised. I frowned slightly. “Only a few days after, you ended up paying both semester fees for this year, after having a history of taking out extensions and late payments.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Bullshit,” he said. I blinked at him.

“What?”

“That’s a joke—all of it. You’re fucking lying. You made that money yourself.”

“You’re fucking drunk,” I said.

“My guess is XBDs. You made yourself a key man to an XBD empire of a sort. Either that, or it’s prize fighting. Or maybe you do programming work on the Net for discerning clients? Or maybe all of the above? Wouldn’t put it past an industrious motherfucker like you. I mean, seriously. Money? Nah,” he laughed, “fuck out of here. You have money. Why would you stick around at the Academy, knowing how much you stick out, if money was the only thing you were after?”

I groaned, “nice theories—what are you getting at?”

His eyes took on a steely glint, “how far do you want to go in Arasaka? And how far do you expect to get without backing?”

“I’m not becoming your vassal,” I said, “that’s out of the question.”

I caught a small flicker in his lips, but his cold eyes bored into mine mercilessly, “the arrogance. Martinez, I don’t need to remind you that you’re just a speck in these games, do I?”

I sat up straight and met his eyes without flinching, “that’s fine. For now, at least.”

“There’s that shadowy plan of yours,” he nodded, “can’t say I’m not excited to see where it leads. But I still can’t help wondering what your aim is.”

I snorted, and affected a tone of sarcasm, “to the top of Arasaka Tower. I guess.”

Jin didn’t say anything to that. Didn’t so much as laugh or chuckle. He just… nodded. “Me, too. That’s where I’m headed.”

I furrowed my brows at him. He took me seriously. Fuck.

“But I need allies to get there,” Jin said, “people who’ve got what it takes to make the climb. The grit. The ability to actually think for yourself. I could buy myself a hundred of these Saka students and try to drag their useless asses along, but they’d get mowed down in fucking days. I don’t need cannon fodder. I need a Smasher.” he looked at me, as if to say that I was his Smasher. Then he rolled his eyes and shrugged, “And a, uh, real Smasher. But muscle ain’t as important as brains. Still necessary, but we’re not on that stage yet. So, what do you say, David? Partners?”

I narrowed my eyes at him, searching him for lies, “me? A partner?”

“I can either fold you in and you’ll pretend to be on my side until you stab me in the back in order to achieve your own goal, or we can put our cards on the table and make a deal like adults. We want the same thing, you and I,” he shrugged at the obviousness of it all, “so? We partner up. Take out all the other motherfuckers in this free-for-all until there’s only you and me left. And then?” he pointed a finger gun at me and imitated a gunshot sound. “What do you say?”

“What’s to stop you from tossing me aside once you think you’ve squeezed out a maximal amount of usefulness from me?” I asked. Well, I already knew the answer to that—I’d end up getting my own backing soon enough. Nakajima and I at least, once we sold our algo to some struggling company.

“I don’t know, dude. Use your intuition,” he shrugged. “The truth is—nothing would stop me. Hell, you could try and make yourself as indispensable to me as possible, and I could still find a reason to get rid of you. That’s just biz. There are no guarantees, no sacred oaths, hell, even contracts are barely worth the paper they’re printed on unless you’ve got enough scratch or power to be counted as a valid entity before the eyes of the law, which you definitely don’t. So… yeah.”

My family was in bed with Militech. It was a nascent relationship, sure, but I did have more power than he gave me credit for.

“I guess all that’s left is trust,” I said, “when it’s all said and done.” I shrugged, “I guess that can come later. Fine. Partner. What now?”

“Well, I go to school and graduate. Then I go to NCU, graduate there, then I get my legacy hire. Then it’s Battle Royale time. Before that, we’ll get up to a bunch of fun stuff together. Stuff that’ll help you, too.”

I nodded.

“Ah, speaking of,” he ejected a shard from the slot on his neck and handed it to me, “this is a recording of my chat with Ruomei.”

I slotted it in and sped it up so I could finish watching quickly.

…

Holy fuck.

“Aliens? For real?” I whispered.

So that was… those were the guys that designed my Sandevistan. Actual highriders—colonizers from fucking Mars.

QianT, huh. No, I definitely needed more info on them.

I ejected the shard and handed it back to Jin, “That’s fucking nuts, man.”

“I know!”

This certainly did explain the reason why I had encountered so many Sandies on my last trip to Tijuana. I could definitely swing this somehow—get my family preem weapons and cyberware from those guys while they were still flailing and doing their best to survive in spite of their inevitable march towards bankruptcy.

“So, tell me,” Jin said, “How the fuck did you cheat at that game?”

“Company secret?” I shrugged.

He narrowed his eyes at me, “Booo. You’re no fun. Alright, so what about chipware? And what Keren are you running?”

I snorted. This guy…

Notes:

That finally puts an end to this glorious night of martial might and the drowning of problems. Unfortunately, this reprieve will not be able to save him from having to address those problems at some point. Damn shame.

Many, MANY thanks to Coldbringer for helping me out with this arc. Jin has become such a fun character to write thanks to his contributions!

Also, since I've crossposted this story on Royalroad (under the title System Override), please consider supporting me there as well. It would do wonders for my visibility, and thus, the likelihood of this story stretching onwards forevermore: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/108147/system-override-cyberpunk-edgerunners

 

Next chapter: Convalescence

Latest backlogged chapter: 46 - One-Two Combo (chapter 47 is half-finished)

Discord link: https://discord.gg/W5BqBBym28

Chapter 44: Convalescence

Jing Fei awoke from the ‘therapy’ braindance gasping for breath. She hugged her body protectively, head darting every which way, searching for a threat, for Katsuo’s crazed eyes—

“Easy, there,” said a doctor standing nearby, wearing a labcoat and holding a clipboard, “that was good. You’re doing great,” she said.

“What the hell is going on?” she asked, voice shaky, “Why did I see those things?”

“You mean the episode? Well, in order to restimulate and eliminate the harmful neural loop that is reinforcing the trauma of that episode, your brain needs to be shocked with repeated similar experiences—”

“Yes, yes, but,” she interrupted, voice ladened with desperation. She had already heard this explanation earlier—she had just forgotten. She had gone into this knowing it was what her doctor was ordering, meaning it would be foolish not to do it, but this… “But this is too much.”

“No problem at all,” the doctor replied sunnily. Her perfectly white teeth contrasted sharply with her smooth and unblemished dark skin as she flexed her best corporate smile. “It’s time for a break anyhow. And once again, Jing Fei—you are doing great. Just five more treatments, and I predict that you will be ready for a discharge.”

Five?

Five?!

No, no, she shouldn’t think about that. She should rather think about the gift that was this break.

“However, between these sessions, we will put you on a wellness BD course in order to return your mind back to tranquility. For your own comfort.”

Jing Fei frowned, “what, a sucker to make the pain go away? Would that slow down my recovery?”

“Certainly not—but comfort is important. We do value our most esteemed clients here at Trauma Team.”

Jing Fei closed her eyes, “I… I can do without comfort. My brother is fighting for his life and here I am, playing BDs.” The least she could do was take this seriously.

“...Your case was far more severe than his, Miss Fei,” the doctor said.

Jing Fei blinked, “What?”

“Ah, but keep in mind—this is privileged information. Qiang’s well-being is not something that your family has any desire to advertise as of yet, for… strategic purposes.”

“He’s fine?” Jing Fei breathed, “No, I—I saw it. I saw him with—with a hole in—”

“Yes,” the doctor nodded, “Jing Qiang was… decidedly unlucky. His cranial implants took the full brunt of the bullet he was struck by, from a Malorian Overture no less. One of the most powerful power-type revolvers on the open market. The bullet’s angle was entirely perpendicular to the plane of Qiang’s forehead, meaning that deflection was not possible. Instead, the bullet was stopped within the last few layers of his nanolaminated tungsten-carbide skull. Still, it managed to send a shock of force throughout his frontal lobe, triggering internal hemorrhaging. His implants worked quickly to cut the healthy portion of his brain off from all this bleeding while his biomonitor cleaned up and sealed the burst blood vessels via the release of nanomachines.”

“Wait,” Jing Fei blinked, “wait, so that… that bullet didn’t even penetrate? You’re telling me all this was—like blunt force trauma?”

“Precisely,” the doctor explained, grinning at her comprehension—like this was all academic for her. “Severe blunt force trauma, of course, but it was nothing that we weren’t capable of addressing. Qiang’s prognosis is actually quite good. We received him in better shape than you, for certain. You had almost completely bled out by the time we had reached you—the bullets managed to open up your abdominal aorta, and did nick a section of pericardium. The exsanguination led to minor brain trauma, but nothing we didn’t manage to reverse on your first round of surgery.”

“Qiang is fine?” Jing Fei breathed, “Is—is he awake? Can I see him?”

“Ah, he won’t be conscious for a few days yet,” the doctor explained, “but yes, you are allowed to visit. That is well within your rights.”

Jing Fei got out from the bed and stood up shakily, expecting that the movement would tax her. It did not.

She blinked, looking down at her body—Trauma had stripped her of all her fashionware—she was now more ‘ganic than ever before. Actually, how sure about that was she? “My—you said my pericardium—that’s my heart, right? Did—did you replace it with a synth implant?”

“Ah, no,” the doctor smiled, “your family was very adamant that we were to employ organic methods to heal your body.”

Thank God.

The one time her parents had visited, the day before, she had overheard them and the doctor negotiating on the pricing of her treatment—apparently, there was some option of treatment that existed outside the insurance policy model, even for platinum premium. She didn’t recall any specifics, but she had heard some big numbers get bandied about—fifty million eurodollars? No, that… didn’t sound right. Maybe it was fifteen. Seemed like a more reasonable payment. She was thankful for that expenditure. Organic damage was harder and more expensive to heal, but it was better than taking away her choice to implant cyberware.

There was something about needing implants due to medical trauma that skeeved her out something fiercely—the available literature on cyberpsychosis was adamant that that was a contributing factor to the disorder. Had she lost her heart or other organs to Katsuo’s rampage, that would have… made this more… real.

But it was real.

All of it.

Why were they trying to make it seem like it wasn’t?

The doctor, especially, seemed all too eager to trivialize her ‘episode’, smush it into a BD and force her to rewatch it over and over.

Like she could just pay for all this to go away.

She shook her head. No. That didn’t matter.

What mattered was Qiang. Qiang would come back to her.

The doctor escorted her to Qiang’s room and allowed her in to see him. And there he was—now wearing a BD wreath. That meant that all the organic damage had been taken care of. Now all that was left was softer treatments.

Most of his body was covered in his blanket, and what remained looked entirely unmarred. His pale skin reflected the light of the sun outside his window overlooking Night City’s downtown. Even with those mandibular implants, he still looked so… soft and helpless.

She went to his side and took his hand. She squeezed it. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she saw him there—whole, and soon to be healthy. He’d come back to her.

Everything was going to be alright after all.

She got a call. Her heart immediately swelled when she saw who it was.

She accepted it in a heartbeat.

Day-Day: Hey, Fei-Fei.

Jing Fei: Hey.

Day-Day: How was your day?

She winced, not really sure how to answer that.

Jing Fei: a little… weird. They have me on some sort of BD therapy. Mostly it feels like I’m watching an XBD though. It’s supposed to work I guess, but I don’t know—I haven’t had another daymare yet, so that’s nice.

Day-Day: Good—that’s good. Just keep following the doctor’s orders and you’ll be okay. I know it might be tough for now and I wish I could help you

Jing Fei’s eyes glistened at that.

Jing Fei: you calling me is good enough, honestly. Thank you.

Day-Day: would today… work for you… for a visit?

Jing Fei giggled.

Jing Fei: today works great. Just give me a call beforehand, and please don’t blame me for wearing this hospital gown—I’m still a patient after all

Day-Day: As if you’d look any less amazing in a hospital gown.

Jing Fei blushed fiercely at that. What an—idiot!

Jing Fei: otherwise, my day’s been pretty good. I received some good—

She stopped herself in time.

Her parents wanted to keep this quiet. That was… questionable, but as long as she knew about it, she could tolerate the cloak and dagger.

But David was… was it okay to tell him? She could trust David.

She was being paranoid. Besides, it wasn’t like he had any corporate connections that could take advantage of this knowledge. He was a lone wolf.

Jing Fei: I received some good news. Tell you when you get here?

Day-Day: Awesome! Sure. First thing after classes end, alright?

Jing Fei bit her lower lips, “alright,” she whispered.

000

The view outside Jing Fei’s window in her hospital room was that of a carefully manicured garden. The air smelled nature-y, like wet soil with subtle floral notes. Every breath Jing Fei inhaled through her nose went in smoothly, none of the sting of dryness following it. The humidifier was subtly scented with an expensive incense that her family’s servants had brought for her, though she wasn’t really able to smell it at this point. She wondered at that, really.

Incense seemed more like a tool for first impressions than something to personally enjoy—it gave a space a character, an identity. Made this particular hospital room, lit by yellowed lamps reinforcing the earth tones of the walls, feel like a place that could have belonged in her family’s manor. Then, inevitably, she’d get used to the smell, and it would no longer be for her to enjoy, but instead for the next person who entered.

She enjoyed the concept. Something about it felt… righteous to her: sharing in something beautiful rather than hoarding it for oneself.

The second round of BD therapy had gone… as expected. It didn’t become any less terrifying to go through that experience, but Jing Fei could easily find solace in what came after—the quiet calmness and tranquility of this room, and the reality that her brother would be fine, that… that despite all the death, she was… allowed to continue living.

It wasn’t right that six people had died that night. When she was done feeling gratitude for Qiang’s survival, she would begin to remember the sight of all those—bodies. People who had been at the wrong place at the wrong time and—didn’t have a Trauma Team insurance.

Why couldn’t they have helped them while they were helping her? Why did they have to be abandoned? Why hadn’t Gotō paid for their treatment? That was his son’s doing! No amount of money should be enough to repay for all that grief, but it would have been a start.

Her family, too. They should have—they all should have done something.

With each watch of that BD, it was like the memory of those other bodies became fainter and fainter, as though the therapy meant to focus her mind solely on her brother—the problematic memory that it was trying to soothe. Following that logic, shouldn’t it be trying to make her remember everything? Katsuo’s erratic movements, the precursor to it all—his mother’s sheer terror, his father’s blip of humanity as he took in the reality of what his own son had become—and the servants scattering away, mowed down like they were nothing. Katsuo had focused his fire on them, running around the room while his father pursued him, killing the servants before addressing those closer to him, like that was his singular act of mercy towards them and—

Nothing could erase that day.

Nothing should erase that day.

This room, this fresh smell, this lighting, this beautiful sunlight—no. She refused to let herself fall into that blissful ignorance.

She was sick, yes. Her trauma needed to be resolved. She would surrender to that treatment and ensure that the worst of it all was addressed—but the pain of this memory? It needed to be enshrined, always remembered, as a monument to the follies of those that thought themselves invincible—Gotō and his foolishness.

And her own grandfather, and his senseless feud against Kang Tao.

She would not turn out like either of them. She refused to.

She received a notification on her agent from the main reception—a visitor by the name of David Martinez.

She perked up almost immediately and gave him the go-ahead to come up. A minute later, there was a knock on her door.

“Come in!” she called.

David opened the door—he was wearing his Arasaka Academy uniform, and he looked really nice in it—and in his hands he held a large clay pot containing a Bonsai tree. A cherry blossom tree. It was beautiful.

“David, you shouldn’t have,” she said as he approached gingerly, putting the tree on her night stand.

He winced, “ah, sorry—didn’t really know what to get you. If it’s too much of a hassle, I can just take it back—”

“No! It’s nice! It’s… really nice,” she said, looking at the cherry blossom.

“I think I read somewhere it’s supposed to symbolize healing,” David said, scratching his chin with his index finger as he gazed pensively at the ceiling, “‘the cherry blossom can cure any disease’ or… something like that.”

Jing Fei giggled, “I mean, kind of? It’s more of a symbol of impermanence than anything. Life and death, that sort of thing,” she tilted her head, “they don’t… have you guys do Ikebana classes in school?”

“That? Oh, god no,” he chuckled, “thankfully, it’s only an elective. I’m terrible at anything that isn’t science-y.” Then his eyes widened, “oh, oh! Then, this wasn’t a good thing to bring you at all.”

“Yes, it was,” she said, shaking her head, “really, David, thank you. It’s perfect. And it makes total sense given the circumstances. You may have done it by accident, but you’re the only one in my life who… gets it.”

David raised an eyebrow, and his eyes took on a mournful cast.

“David, pull up a chair? Sit with me.”

He did, getting one from a nearby tea table. Then he went and sat on her left, on the other side of where the window was. The sunlight lit his face up—glistening skin unmarred by any chrome. She wondered, for a moment, why anyone in the world would want to throw away the gift of flesh in the first place. Though she idly noted that she would be considered a hypocrite in that case. She did wear medical implants, like all people who could afford to did.

“I’m… so glad you’re okay,” David said, which shook Jing Fei from her thoughts. She looked at him, and saw… tears welling up inside his eyes. He then looked down at the ground, “when I heard what had happened to you, to your brother, I… I couldn’t believe it. It shouldn’t have been you. You didn’t deserve that. You didn’t deserve any of that. I’m so sorry, Fei-Fei, I’m—”

She got out from her bed and hugged him, “it’s okay. I’m okay, David.” His arms wrapped around her, and he gently pressed her body closer to his. “Please. Don’t worry about me. They’re… fixing everything. It’s fine.”

“No,” he said, “no it isn’t. Nothing will take away the fact that this happened.”

That was true.

She broke away from his hug and grinned self-deprecatingly. She could feel some tears stream down her cheeks as well, “thank you. I needed to hear that.”

David looked up—revealing his own tear-stricken face, “huh?”

“They want to erase this. They want to make it feel like it never happened to me. And that’s not right. Because it did happen. And a lot of people got hurt, and they’re… dead,” she tried to dry her tears, but new ones kept taking their place. “And to me, all this is going to be fixed, because my family has money, but what about them? It’s like no one even cares about them.”

Did David care about that? Or was he also just fixated on her wellbeing? Her happiness? Her smile? As if the smile of just one woman in this world was all that mattered?

She could no longer even abide by that concept.

David nodded, “Four weeks ago, my mom and I got into a car accident. She got really hurt. We were caught in a gangoon drive-by. Some bigshot corpo got hurt as well, right next to us. Trauma Team came, but… my mom wasn’t a policyholder and… yeah.”

Jing Fei’s stomach dropped. “Oh no… I’m so stupid,” she growled, “David, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“No, not at all,” he shook his head, “thank you. Thank you for caring. Thank you for thinking about that sort of thing. Nobody ever does. It shouldn’t have been you, but you’re right—it shouldn’t have been anyone.”

Anyone but Gotō Tanaka. He should have been the only one to reckon with what he had created.

No one else should have paid the cost of what that man had done—to his own son, his only child in the world.

Jing Fei felt unaccountably guilty at the moment. She didn’t know how she would even broach the topic that physically, she was completely fine. Or that even her brother was fine.

She didn’t know how to communicate this injustice without sounding like the most conceited person in the entire world.

Not in the face of David’s own pain.

He chuckled slightly, through all those tears, “I didn’t think I was still able to cry about that. I thought I learned how to put it all behind me. So I could keep it pushing. For survival’s sake.” He dried his face. “You seem really healthy, Fei-Fei. I’m glad. I really am.” he gave her a halogen light grin. “It’s a huge weight off my shoulders. I didn’t lose another person that… cares.”

Jing Fei grinned in spite of her tears. She didn’t know what to say, except, “thank you. For caring. You’re… you’re also special. So so special. To me.”

He chuckled, stubbornly drying the tears that kept coming. His eyes looked hollow as he nodded. “That’s… certainly a choice. But… I’ll take it, I guess,” Jing Fei winced at the self-deprecation. She wished he wouldn’t view himself in such a negative light. Before she could say just so, he continued, “so, what was the good news? Is it… about your brother, maybe?”

Jing Fei nodded, smiling brightly, “he’ll be fine in a few days. But… David. Please don’t say that to anyone else, okay? It’s supposed to be a secret—or something.”

David’s eyes widened, and he nodded, “you can trust me, alright? I won’t tell anyone. But…” he smiled, “that’s good to hear. Great to hear.”

She nodded, believing him fully. “Thank you, David. I knew I could count on you. So… anything new to report on Arasaka Academy? A little gossip to tide me over perhaps?” she grinned, not really expecting anything substantial from him. She highly doubted there was any such activity that near to the incident.

He chuckled, “yeah… about that.”

000

“Jin? Ryuzaki, Jin?” Jing Fei gasped. She couldn’t believe her ears. She just laughed. “Wow, David. I never expected such a thing to happen.”

David shrugged, looking slightly uncomfortable, “it was weird.”

“I can see it, though,” Jing Fei grinned, ribbing him a little, “you’re a daredevil, just like he is. You bring adventure everywhere you go. Perhaps he sees the appeal too?”

“C’mon,” David scoffed, “we’re not that close.”

“Mhm?” Jing Fei decided to do one thing she had put off ever since she regained her consciousness—she went online to the Net, and went to her high school’s BBS. “This adventure with Kang Tao, I must see.”

Then she saw a video of David falling off a balcony to a twenty foot drop. She gasped, “David!” she hissed, “are you okay—this was last night? And—noooo, David, that’s Hou Ken! Why did you fight Hou Ken?”

David grinned, “well, just keep watching and you’ll stop worrying.”

The violence went on for an inordinate amount of time, them striking at each other, faster and faster, until finally… David won.

Her eyes widened, “You did not beat him! He’s the son of the head of Kang Tao’s west coast security division!”

He whistled, “That good, huh? I mean, the Sandevistan was a surprise to be honest, but,” he shrugged, expression flat, “he’s running chipware. He’s not a real fighter. I doubt the corp would put an actual fighter at the disposal of some high school queen.”

“You’re talking about Ruomei, you know?” Jing Fei’s eyes widened, “she’s the daughter of a Kang Tao board member.”

“So I’ve heard,” David said.

Jing Fei grinned, “You think she was pretty?”

“Yeah, kinda,” he shrugged.

Jing Fei leaned closer to him, “who’s prettier—between me and her?”

David gave her a flat look, “you’ve got something she’ll never have, in her entire life. It’s called a heart. That makes you more beautiful than words can describe. And I ain’t poetic enough to even give it a go.”

Jing Fei blushed at that. “Gonk.”

He snorted, “Yeah, that wasn’t my best work, for sure.”

It very probably was, actually. No, it definitely was.

Argh!

She took her pillow and hit him. He laughed, “what?!” She hit him again. Then another time. Then she took the pillow back.

“You needed some discipline,” she said, and left it at that. Then she remembered the video and— “Were you hurt, David?” And are you also a policyholder, she wanted to ask, but… she didn’t know how to. He had come into all this money very recently, so he probably was, but if he wasn’t, then… shouldn’t she say something?

Like, ‘You should pay money to the company that let your mother die’.

The idea sickened her.

Very well.

Even if it meant dedicating her entire monthly allowance on the matter, she would subsidize his Trauma Team policy. If he would allow her. But that too came with its own pitfalls. Namely, his own pride as a man.

No, this… this would require a lot of tact.

“No, no, I’m fine,” he chuckled, “I’m really good at tucking and rolling. Honest, look,” he pulled his sleeves up and revealed unblemished skin. And rippling muscle.

Her hands found themselves on his arms, and she felt him. Warm. Soft. The four o’ clock sun bathed it in the most beautiful golden light.

She looked up—at his face. Their eyes met and it felt like a spark went through her, jumbled up her thoughts, blowing down the house of cards that was her composure.

She wanted him—so much that it hurt. Right here, even.

No—there were cameras, and her family and—so much to consider. Forcefully, she severed that connection, “so, tell me more about your tryst with Jin Ryuzaki.”

“A tryst?” David stuck his tongue out in disgust, “No. Well, anyway, turns out, he… uh, sees potential in me,” he rolled his eyes. “I don’t know what the kid is playing at. He sold me this story of us becoming best chooms and partners, taking on Arasaka together. It was a pretty fantasy, and he was really drunk, but honestly…”

Jing Fei frowned pensively, “I’d warn you to be cautious, but this sounds… a little too blatant to be a trick, really. You think maybe he was serious?”

David shrugged, “Well, if he was, then I’d like to ask him—what makes him worth my while? Because from where I’m standing, he’s a brain potato adrenaline junkie, constantly picks fights with people, thinks he’s above consequences, and—” he stopped speaking almost immediately. Then his eyes widened. “Fuck.”

“What?”

“No, I just realized—I was pretty much describing myself as well.”

Jing Fei laughed.

“It’s not funny!”

Jing Fei laughed harder.

David groaned piteously as he bent over, head in his hands.

“What?” Jing Fei giggled.

“It’s nothing, just—embarrassed, I guess. About yesterday. First time I ever partied like a corpo,” he said, “first time I never had to worry about someone hating me from high above. Thought it’d be freeing. And, at first, it kinda was. Now with Jin telling me all that, holding me in his confidence. Suddenly, it all seems so real.”

Jing Fei put her hand on his head. He looked up askance. She gave him the widest grin she could muster. “I’m proud of you, David, for getting ahead like that.” He looked even more saddened by her words. Why? Had she said something wrong?

“Thanks,” he muttered. Then he grinned slightly, but still there was sadness tugging at the corners of his eyes. “Thank you, Fei Fei.”

“Don’t thank me,” she giggled slightly, “what else are friends for?”

He nodded. Then… “Hey, what if… if there was a single person to blame for everything that happened. What would you want to happen to them?”

“You mean Gotō?” Jing Fei asked. That seemed like a futile question to ask.

“What if… they were even more to blame than Gotō?” David asked.

“I don’t understand,” Jing Fei narrowed her eyes. It was a distressing hypothetical, to imagine that all of that night was a product of even more foul play than what was readily apparent. And how would that work, anyhow? Was it even possible to induce cyberpsychosis in a person? And even then, to what end? Some kind of inter-corporate scheme, perhaps?

In that case, then… what? How would she feel if she was face-to-face with this shadowy corporate mastermind, who had almost gotten her own family killed just to take out the son of a rival executive?

Disgust? Anger?

What would she want to happen to them?

She winced and shook her head, banishing the thoughts away, “it doesn’t matter,” she settled. “What happened happened. All I want is for my brother and I to be discharged, so we can put this behind us and learn.” Perhaps it was also time for her to take the plunge into the world of corporate cyberware as well? No more fashionware—she was too old for such half-measures. Her biomonitor had barely done her any favors, either. She needed subdermal plating, a nanolaminate tungsten-carbide cranium, a revamped musculoskeletal structure, the whole nine yards.

And it would be her choice. No medical necessity—just preparation.

“Would you forgive them?”

David’s question ripped her out from her reverie. She blinked away the thoughts of preparatory cyberware to consider the bizarre question more closely. It felt surreal, honestly. Like the product of a feverish mind, or a bizarre dream. Would you forgive them? Forgiveness was the furthest thing from her mind, and it only sounded like prolonged suicide to her.

“I would forget them,” she said, “if they even exist. And I’d rather not entertain the possibility that they do. I’m sorry David, but… let’s switch topics. This one is way too morbid for me.”

“Ah, sorry. Yeah, let’s.”

It didn’t even make sense. Was David trying to teach her the value of ruthlessness or something? What was she supposed to say? I’ll never abide that a threat to my family continues to draw breath. Then what? Additional conflict would only add to more conflict, putting her and her family at greater risk.

Why did people care so much about revenge? Was it some intrinsic desire to do violence, inherent in all people? Or pettiness, maybe? Extending one’s pain to someone else?

Did she want that?

“What do you want me to say, David?” Jing Fei whispered, “I don’t want to hate anyone. And I don’t want what happened to make me a worse person. Someone who’d do anything to hurt someone else—even if they hurt me. Is that… is that a bad thing?”

“No, not at all!” he rushed to say, “you’re thinking about what’s best for you, and that’s a good thing. I’m sorry I asked the question, I just—it had nothing to do with you.”

She looked at him for a moment and wondered—how much care had he received after the car crash? Was he perhaps having trouble reckoning with his anger? “Do you hate Trauma Team, David?”

He chuckled darkly, then he shook his head, “probably,” he nodded.

“Would you…? Are you…?” Jing Fei sighed. “I’m sorry. I don’t know how to ask—”

He chuckled, shaking his head, “no, yeah, I get it. Probably not the best idea beefing with the angels that bring people back to life. Never know when I might need ‘em.” he sighed. “But I don’t care. If I ever get caught lacking in these streets by some gangoon or whatever, then that’ll be it for me. Trauma’s not in the equation, nor will it ever be. They let my mom die.”

“David, don’t be angry when I say this,” Jing Fei said, “but… who does this anger serve exactly?”

“It’s not about anger,” he said quietly, “it’s about the principle. And it’s sad, but that’s just how the cookie crumbles. It’s not like I won’t give them my money—I can’t. I can’t even think about it.” Then he snorted, “and NC’s a big city. There’s plenty of medtech companies here I can sub to.”

“None as good as Trauma Team.”

He chuckled, “don’t worry about that. I’m used to shit-tier. Lived my whole life in that tier,” then he schooled his expression, “and a wise man once said to me, ain’t no one you can trust more in this world than yourself. Start using people as a crutch and you’re as good as dead. I’d rather prevent ever needing to go to the hospital, than prep for it.”

Jing Fei’s mind flashed back to David’s near-total domination of Hou Ken. He had left that boy bloodied and broken with a mostly organic body, and he had the cunning to climb up to this level with barely any backing.

“I’m not worried about myself, Fei-Fei,” he gave her a comforting grin, “so don’t worry about me, either, alright?”

“I don’t get it,” Jing Fei grumbled, clawing at her blanket. “This just feels like vainglory to me. Too much pride. It might get you hurt.”

“Holding my head down got me hurt worse than—” he paused and sighed, tamping down on his sudden aggression. “Maybe.” He looked down, not talking. Jing Fei felt like she should apologize, but she couldn’t see where she was wrong.

And maybe that was something they could never see eye-to-eye on?

In that case, it paid to think about their commonalities more so than that—she was reluctant to widen this rift.

“I… don’t understand,” Jing Fei said, “but that’s fine.” It wasn’t. “Again, I’m… glad you had a good time. And I’m glad things are looking up for you. And I’m really happy that you came.” She took his hand and held it. It was so warm. Like his heart.

“And I’m glad you’re okay,” he smiled.

Slowly, they eased over to kinder topics. The laughs came easily once again, and at some point, the lights turned on when the sun had finally set.

Once David was ready to leave, Jing Fei pondered those words of his.

You can’t trust anyone more than yourself.

Use people as a crutch and you’re as good as dead.

She nodded. Those were wise words, from a wise man.

And although Trauma Team had rendered an excellent service thus far, David was right, too. She couldn’t rely on them, or she would die.

She would speak to the family Ripperdoc first thing after discharging. 

000

I tried not to think too hard about my little disagreement with Fei-Fei—she only wanted what was best for me, and a Trauma Team insurance policy was undoubtedly what was best for me. Well, a me that didn’t have the regenerative capabilities that I had, at least. Owing to that alone, I doubted I’d ever have to take out an insurance policy, unless it was for show or something like that.

Even then, I doubted I’d ever take one out. Why the ever-loving fuck would I ever accept a biomonitor tracking my vitals at every waking moment, feeding a corp my private fucking data constantly and without end? The whole thing was nightmarishly intrusive, and I honestly didn’t care if Trauma Team were fucking angels that could do no wrong about that dragon’s hoard of client data they were sitting on—count me the fuck out.

In fact, I might make it a mission of mine one of these days—to crack into that safe of binary gold and leak it just for the kicks. Then I could watch as Trauma Team went up in flames, hounded by every corp whose members had a policy, watch them do all the work for me—just like how Lucy and I did the cartel and Green Farm down in Tijuana.

Obviously, that would be an order of magnitude more difficult, but it was good to dream. It was the first step before achieving something after all.

Biotechnica would be next on my hitlist after that, for what they did to me all those years ago.

[And where should I fit that in our exceedingly busy schedule?] Nanny asked.

I snorted.

D: Don’t talk to me about time management after you just bitched me out over it.

[I’ll throw it between ‘Becoming an NC legend’ and ‘Operation Top of Arasaka Tower’.]

D: I’ll EMP you.

On the way out, I saw a patient stop and stare at me. I looked at her, furrowing my brows in confusion. She looked… plain. Poor, really. The fact that she could afford being an in-patient in this hospital surprised me, but not as much as the attention she had fixed on me. “Can I help you?”

The middle-aged woman looked at me for a while longer before speaking, “I know who you are. David Martinez.”

I frowned, “well… you have me at a disadvantage.”

“I am Hanako Tanaka,” she said. My eyes widened at that.

She was Katsuo’s mom? I couldn’t spot any cyberware on her, and she barely even looked sculpted at all. “Pleasure,” I bowed my head at her.

“If you are here to visit Katsuo, then I’m afraid I must turn you away—he is in no state to accept any visitors.”

I clenched my jaws as the reality of this conversation sunk in. I was speaking to Katsuo’s mom.

“And…” she said, her expression one of ill-contained fury, “I must demand that you do not add to his misery by making an appearance.”

I looked away from her, so I’d glare at the floor instead of her. I was angry—furious, even, but something about her made it extremely difficult to direct that anger at her.

Just days ago, I had considered taking her life if she had proved to be an obstacle to my revenge. Now, seeing her in this pathetic state, making empty demands of me, I could do nothing but stay angry. Like there was an invisible wall preventing my thoughts from turning into some sort of enemy action.

I didn’t like that she had seen me, however. I should have been more cautious about that. I had pinged the entire hospital, but she hadn’t even come up. I had never assumed that she was even here.

Because she wore no cyberware. For fuck’s sakes, D. I should have given all the files in the Tanaka network a good read—if I had, I might have learned about this.

Still, this was hardly enough to connect me to anything. And judging by her words, she already knew that I was on the outs with her little monster of a son.

“So you know,” I muttered, “you know who he is. You know who you’ve raised.”

“Leave.”

I clenched my jaw and slowly swallowed my anger—and some other burning emotion deep within my chest.

I looked her in the eyes and…

Bowed. “I apologize for causing you distress, Mrs. Tanaka. That was never my intention.” Then I walked past her.

I felt a hand grab my wrist for a moment before letting go. I stopped.

“My son is many things, but he would not have taunted you were you in his position. Have you no shame? You being here... this is inhuman.”

Inhuman? She wanted to call me inhuman?

I snorted. “Respectully, ma’am—you don’t know your son at all. And I pray you never will.” Despite everything, even her words, I found myself believing in mine with all my heart.

I had no idea who this woman was, no idea whether or not she was even deserving of that prayer or the mercy of ignorance. 

But if there was one thing in the entire world I was certain of, it was this: no matter what I had done or who I had hurt, I was better than Katsuo.

I wouldn’t sink to his level.

“Sayonara, Tanaka-san.” I continued walking.

Notes:

For those of you who love action, please go easy on me 😅 For all the others, I hope you enjoyed!

Also, quick heads-up, I edited it so that David killed Doc in chapter 38. I had no plans for him anyhow, and David in that headspace would never have let him live, given that he knew about David's secret identity.

*Sigh* That's gonna be a pickle to edit in terms of his kill-count. Goddammit.

Next Chapter: 45 - XB(D)

Latest backlogged chapter: 47 - Badlands Derby

Discord link: https://discord.gg/W5BqBBym28

Chapter 45: XB(D)

The moment I was clear of the Med Center, on my way to Kabuki to get to Japantown, I called Reyes.

D: Sorry, Capitan, I was kind of busy. What’s up?

El Capitan: You free to talk now?

D: Yes, I am. Anything I can do for you?

El Capitan: You tell me, kid. You ain’t ring me for a gig for a while. You laying low?

I furrowed my eyebrows at that. What was he getting at?

D: Not really. Just got caught up with my crew and—

El Capitan: I’m messing with ya, man. I remember you used to hound me for giggies, but now you’re good and quiet. Got all the cash you needed, I’m guessing.

D: About that—I kinda need more, actually. You got any good gigs for me?

El Capitan: I’ve got a couple. First one’s a test for the second one. If you get an A on the first, I’ll let you give the second a go.

D: Still measuring my baselines, huh? Well, data’s data. What’s the pay?

El Capitan: First gig’s infiltration. I want you to plant a virus into a safe house that Maelstrom put up in Rancho Coronado. With their security down, I’ll send a team to get rid of those bastardos for good.

D: How many?

El Capitan: Strom-fuckers? It’s a good number. Thirty to forty as far as my Netrunners tell me. So don’t get caught.

Reminded me somewhat of Tijuana—sneaking past security, hacking, and trying to get out without anyone catching me. Not that I succeeded on that count, but we still managed to get out.

As I considered the gig, I also thought back to my time with Jin, specifically his whining about wanting fresh XBDs since JK still hadn’t dropped any as of yet.

I could pick up the slack on that end.

Infiltration wasn’t… cinematic enough though.

Thirty to forty… yeah. That’ll do.

And they were Maelstrom anyway. Nearly cyberpsychotic as it was—and they were parked in my home district.

D: You mind if I just kill them all for you?

El Capitan: Don’t bite off more than you can chew, kid. Bring your crew if you wanna do that.

D: Alright, what’s the pay?

El Capitan: Twenty, for implanting the virus. Twenty-five if no one spots you.

I sped up my bike.

D: I’ll take it.

000

I needed borg killers for this. That meant my trusty Burya, and of course, the Achilles.

Between those two and Eikō, I should be good to go. Thankfully, when I arrived at Lucy’s apartment, she wasn’t home. Made it easier for me to just dress up in merc mode and get back on my bike to ride away without having to explain anything.

Still, reminded me that I still had to get a new place of my own. Couldn’t keep crashing at Lucy’s apartment.

I drove to Rancho Coronado, blowing past the speed limit, cranking up my bike to its fastest setting, weaving through the traffic that, to my perception, stood almost entirely still.

The time it took me to get from J-Town to Rancho must have been three minutes tops. I slotted in my BD shard, the one I’d use to record all of this, and came to a drifting stop before a dilapidated apartment block where a bunch of Maelstrom people were loitering, and hopped off.

Standard protocol for XBD scrolling applied here—I had to keep my Sandy uses and regeneration to a minimum.

I raised my Burya with my left hand and immediately fired at low charge, blowing through the skull of a Maelstrom member that had an open chest cavity revealing black and red chrome like a network of pipes. His two friends immediately became alerted and tried to raise their own guns.

I skipped forward, drawing my sword with my right hand and slicing the head off the nearest Strom member before holstering my Burya and dragging his bulky corpse in front of me to block the shotgun pellets fired from the last surviving asshole outside. I held the beheaded Strom up by his jacket like a shield and approached the final guy. In-between shots, my sword arm darted towards him, cutting a shallow groove through his skull, hitting brain.

It was enough to stun him. I watched for a moment to see if his movements would become erratic, signaling incoming brain death, but he shook himself out from the lack of control to reload the gun.

I threw the Strom at him. While he stumbled backwards, I planted Eikō into his skull and pulled it out. Being a katana, she wasn’t really built for stabs, but the tip was sharp enough to do so if you put enough force behind it.

With all the guys outside dead, I sent a Ping into the building to see a bunch of scurrying bodies, having reacted to the gunshot outside.

I sensed quite a few turrets within as well. They were coming online in response to one Netrunner’s mental commands.

Well, I already had El Capitan’s virus on hand, seemingly specifically tailored to this security system.

I made to Breach the system.

The Netrunner immediately resisted the breach, sending a quickhack that crashed ineffectually at my ICE. I already unslung the Achilles from my back and took aim. There were about three walls between us.

Depending on their make, the rifle should be just powerful enough to—

Still standing in the sidewalk in front of the building, I fired my gun. The bullet blasted through one load-bearing wall and cheap drywall before hitting the guy’s head. Immediately, my Ping of him fizzled out as my cyberware determined that he was dead.

The Breach continued uncontested. I stood around for like, ten seconds. One Maelstrom member was going down the stairs to charge through the front door. I raised my Burya and shot him through the door.

Did none of these idiots have decent optics? Wall-banging shouldn’t be that exotic. Anyone with a good pair of Kiroshis could at least give a general scan of the area, and of a single belligerent like me.

Finally, the Breach went through and I put in the virus. I could also have just commandeered the turrets and shot them all, but… that’d be too easy.

And not enough of a show.

I proceeded in through the unlocked front door as a stream of Maelstrom members descended the stairs. They came in all shapes, and each looked like they had gone out of their way to chip in the most horrifying chrome you could think of. None of it was standard consumer market stuff though, that was for certain. One guy with big black pipes replacing the lower half of his face, making him look like some kind of octopus head, raised his shotgun to try and shoot me. I stepped in to his guard quickly and sliced the gun in half.

Good fucking job, Pilar. That felt like slicing through meat.

I adjusted my sword and took his head next, then held him up as a shield before charging into the crush of bodies in the narrow hallway.

One slice. Two slices.

Each time, my katana met either chrome or meat, and it cut cleanly either way. I let go of my meat-shield and did a quick count of the people in the hallway—there were ten now, with people steadily coming down from the stairs.

My meat-shield was starting to break.

I sighed. Guess this was inevitable, given I was fighting people in an entrenched position.

I activated the Sandevistan and started cutting.

One down, two, three.

Seven, eight, nine.

I deactivated the Sandevistan. The last man standing only had a Lexington that he was shakily aiming at me.

I got out of the way of his line of fire as I saw him claw at the trigger. My instinct awarded me as the bullet whizzed past me without hitting me.

Then I adjusted my position again—at the very last moment of course. If I dodged too early, he’d only readjust.

Hey, this was… fun.

I took a step back to make things even harder for me, letting him empty his mag, all the while as I danced away from his shots before finally, the gun clicked.

I sliced his head off.

I did a mental count.

So that was sixteen.

I counted the Strom guys in my scans.

Twenty-three left.

So, there were thirty-nine in total.

I began ascending the stairs. My Ping was telling me that the bulk of them were congregating in one room, guns raised as they were ready to rain holy hellfire on me were I to approach them. All the while, a group of no less than five big hitters, packed to the literal fucking teeth with chrome, were playing vanguard, ready to rip me apart.

I unslung the Achilles once more and started charging as I went up the stairs. Borgs weren’t something to play with. Especially if they had speedware. Might as well zero them while we were apart.

My first shot ripped through solid concrete and—

Plinked off the skull of one Borg. Fuck. Lost too much power there.

I took a second to ask myself—was this worth putting on a show?

Well, I’d come this fucking far already. Might as well—

I heard the skidding of a heavy vehicle coming to a stop near the building outside. I sent out a Ping.

Maelstrom.

Reinforcements.

Nice.

After reloading and charging my Burya to full, I activated the Sandy again—this many uses shouldn’t be totally atypical—and ascended the stairs, walking into the hallway with the Strom, coming to a stop before the first borg. Motherfucker had two pairs of Gorilla arms and a torso as big as Maine’s.

I sliced his head in half vertically and moved on faster than he could fall, taking out another borg with a clean horizontal swing through his neck. I then positioned myself to angle my Burya shot through two of the borgs.

I fired the bullet. While it whizzed through the air, too fast even in my Sandy mode, I did a wide diagonal slice through the last borg’s body, bisecting him from shoulder to waist. I deactivated the Sandy and whistled in appreciation as the two borgs I had shot with the Burya fell.

Everyone hit the floor at the exact same time.

That was good.

I activated all the turrets in the building.

It wasn’t as though I was nervous about the eighteen gangoons left inside that tiny room, or the eight more streaming out from the truck to enter their busted safe house. It was just that—things were bound to get too boring if I continued using the Sandy and the sword. My killing needed a bit of diversity.

I connected my optics to all the cameras and awoke the turrets—the once in the hallway downstairs and the ones in the room with the Maelstrom waiting to do their last stand.

I watched them mow those motherfuckers down in mere seconds, turning them into a mist of blood that blended together, almost obscuring the cameras. That would likely be the blood on the lenses.

A few of the gangsters had enough subdermal that they didn’t immediately die, but were instead crushed by the pressure of the machine gun bullets. Took me a bit longer to take care of them, but there was really no being bulletproof to hundreds of fifty caliber bullets raining down at you for several seconds at a time.

I deactivated the machine guns when the last gangster finally died, and stood there.

I faced one of the security cameras that I was connected to and saw myself. I raised a thumb and said, “Mission complete.”

Fuck, that was corny.

I ended the virtu there. If it was good enough for me, it should be good enough for Jin.

Then I started leafing through the system, looking for any goodies like—cash. Perfect. Some offshore bank account details were stored in this system—money allocated specifically for this cell, apparently a venture to push for more territory within Santo Domingo. El Capitan was right to have mounted this campaign against them. They were the worst of the worst, and if they managed to get a foothold here, they would make this already fucking shitty district even fucking worse.

I took solace in that fact—that I had done a good deed for my home.

I accessed the accounts and nodded in appreciation. Not bad. Two-hundred and fifty. A pretty enny.

All mine now, of course.

Now, to send it all through a few chained ghost accounts, scrubbed clean by an AI-driven mixer. By the time the edds hit the GSS account I had set up down in Tijuana, they'd have gone through more digital back alleys than a fixer on the run—untraceable, untouchable, and all mine.

I rung Reyes.

D: Job’s done.

El Capitan: You got the virus in?

D: Yeah. Then I took care of the Strom. Forty-seven dead all told.

El Capitan: Jesus Christ, kid—are you serious?

I took some stills of the carnage and sent it to him.

El Capitan: Madre dios.

I raised an eyebrow.

D: I took care of the problem, Capitan. Why are you angry?

El Capitan: I’m not fucking angry-angry. Just didn’t expect this—fucking fast, kid! You took your crew for this? You know I set up a whole thing with other mercs too, right? Gave ‘em a ton of data, we had a whole battle plan, and now that’s out the window.

D: And all it cost you was twenty-five. Listen, you promised that pay, and that’s all I’m willing to take. Should make us even, no? And I had my own reasons for doing this anyway.

El Capitan: tell you the truth, I don’t like cancelling out on people out of nowhere. Doesn’t signal reliability.

D: You were never going to give me a gig fitting my skill if I didn’t show you exactly what I was capable anyway, on my own.

El Capitan: So, you splitting off from your crew now? You could do it, you know. Or, you could even work for me if you wanted.

D: I’m strictly freelance. Sorry. And, no. Not splitting from the crew—they’re my chooms and always will be. But sometimes, I want to take out a solo gig, just from time to time.

El Capitan: Alright—do what you want. I’ll give you big gigs if you ask. You sure you don’t want more scratch for this?

D: fucked with your rep just now, didn’t I? Far as I’m concerned, twenty-five’s generous as long as we can still work together.

El Capitan: Ain’t that big a deal anyway. Cancellations happen. But if that’s what you want, that’s fine. I like to work with a man with honor.

I had been paid for this gig already, so I couldn’t really call myself honorable per se. But I liked that I had that rep to begin with.

D: So what was that second gig you had in mind anyway?

000

Hacking.

Just hacking.

I drove my bike outside a nightclub in Rancho and used the Sandy to run past security, up the stairs, into a back office, and locked myself inside. Then I connected a link cable to my socket on my neck and then to a terminal before uploading a virus.

After a few seconds, I took the Sandy back downstairs, back to the streets, hopped on my bike, and rode off.

Then I called Reyes.

D: Done.

El Capitan: That’s a fucking lie. I don’t fucking believe it. It hasn’t been five minutes since we last spoke.

D: Bike is fast, remember? You’re the one who sold it to me. And I’m fast, too.

El Capitan: you’re giving me a fucking headache, kid. This is—this is weird.

I laughed.

D: Well ask your Runner if it’s done or not.

El Capitan: I believe you—I’m just taking a moment-moment. Shit, alright, here you go.

Forty thousand eddies hit my account.

Then another ten.

D: Bonus?

El Capitan: Express service deserves a tip, no? You did good today.

D: Alright, thanks.

El Capitan: Still in the mood for gigs?

D: Got some other stuff to do for now.

El Capitan: Alright then, call me when you need-need anything.

D: Sure. Also, Capitan, uhhh

El Capitan: spit it out, kid

D: I come from Santo too, so, if you got anything you need done, like killing Maelstrom fuckers, making sure those bitches don’t come and ruin shit even more, or maybe some other stuff to help people, call me, even if it ain’t worth my while money-wise.

El Capitan: you a community man, huh? I can respect it.

D: I’m making more money than I ever thought was possible. Might as well do some gigs for cheap. Call it a Santo discount.

El Capitan: well, if you’re serious about that, call me, okay? You know how many people I get begging me to save their loved ones from kidnappers and they don’t even got two ennies to scrape together? Nobody in this town wants to work for cheap. If you wanna do—you wanna give that a go, then you’re gonna turn into some kind of a goddamn hero-hero in no time.

I shrugged.

D: aight, then. Not doing it for that, but, shit, I’ll take it. Keep me posted.

I took a turn and headed up north back to J-Town, on my way to Kabuki in Watson. This time, I took my time driving. Not quite under the speed limit of course, but slow enough that the journey would likely take me ten to twenty minutes. Maybe longer depending on traffic. Didn’t matter anyway. Mostly, I just found myself taking the longest ways I could find, extending the journey until I was able to focus on the shadow in the room of my headspace. The one thing I’d been avoiding thinking of.

So…

Fei-Fei.

Still didn’t know what to think.

I was happy she was okay. My mixed feelings came down more to the goddamn Trauma Team more than anything else. Learning, knowing that these corpo sons of bitches might as well be a different goddamn species from us normies. Death barely even existed for them. It wasn’t fair. For me, for her. For anyone.

What I had learned today was… relieving in a way. Terrifying in another. This would likely change her. Probably not for the better. But that was necessary—goodness couldn’t survive for very long in Night City.

There was something else, though.

The elephant in the room, as the saying went.

I was dating Lucy, now.

But I still liked Fei-Fei. A lot. Even despite it all.

Was that wrong of me? Probably. Would a better man have already broken it off with her? Probably.

I should probably even tell her that.

…The part about liking her, at least.

But I wondered what that would do to our relationship, which had been more physical than emotional up to now. She’d warned me about catching feelings. Not to do it. Not to let it happen. But now, here I was. Feelings caught. Like a plague. I had an inkling it was mutual, even.

Before, we’d been forced to stay hidden, discreet. But with Katsuo out of the picture now, what did that mean for us?

…and with what Katsuo had done to her and her family under my influence, what did that mean for us?

I couldn’t tell her, obviously. I wasn’t that much of an idiot. What was the right thing to do, though? Cutting ties? I… didn’t want to do that, either.

It didn’t help that my own increasing fascination with her family’s company made me want to not do that either, for an entirely different set of reasons.

…If we really could stay friends without the sex, that’d be well and good, really. Clean, uncontroversial.

But did I want that? Did I want to just be… friends? I didn’t know.

God, I’m such a piece of shit.

I should have this conversation with Lucy.

I didn’t want to, though. Didn’t want to essentially reveal to her how much of a scumbag I really was. That I was considering two-timing her—or was it the other way around, but with Fei Fei… ?—for the sake of upwards mobility? Because I couldn’t decide on who—that was rotten.

I was rotten.

But then, what the fuck else was new.

Forty-seven dead today, all told.

Two-hundred and eighty-eight now.

But I didn’t regret the last forty-seven. Sure, my reasons for killing were purely mercenary, but I had done good by doing so. Gotten rid of a burgeoning Maelstrom infestation. And soon enough, I’d be doing gigs with El Capitan on the cheap, just helping out. Just… reminding myself of the options that I had in life—that it was possible to prosper without destroying everything around me…

—Deluding myself into believing that I wasn’t doing the same thing the corpos did. Climbing to the top, when the top was nothing but a never-ending mountain of corpses—

…Reminding myself that I had to be connected to a higher purpose in life, something that would motivate me to do good once I was up there in the corpo hierarchy.

To never forget my roots.

But that was then, and this was now.

I didn’t know what to do. Who should I even talk to?

Talk to Lucy, tell her about Fei Fei and the details of my corporate life that she had steadfastly refused to learn about up to now? Fuck.

Talk to Fei Fei, tell her about my edgerunner life, and about all the worst parts of myself I couldn’t even talk about with Lucy? Fuck.

…

I owed Fei Fei. I had to help her as well. Pay her back for all I had taken from her. Allow her to live the life she wanted to live.

I owed her for the Sandy that mom had klepped.

Owed her for the kindness and acceptance she had shown me.

And owed her for the harm I had put her through.

But what did that mean for me, for Lucy and her and—fuck.

Out of desperation, out of need to ask someone, I had to ask.

D: What do you think, Nanny?

I had no idea why I was asking her specifically, but she seemed to have developed something of a personality as of late. Might as well test it, see how much counsel she could provide me.

[You don’t want to know what I think.]

I frowned. Turned a corner, wind in my hair as I sped through another street. Frowned harder.

D: Spit it out.

[I don’t think you owe Jing Fei for the Sandevistan. Your mother took it. Not you. And you used it to make your life better. And even then, chances are that it was already stolen before then, by that NUSA-soldier. More than likely, it was Militech that put her in that situation, not you. I also don’t think you owe her for the ‘kindness and acceptance’, either. She used you to feel better about her own situation. It was purely transactional. She had said as much when you first met her.]

D: I don’t think she really meant it. Maybe then, yeah, but probably not now.

[But that is the reality. And you are not in debt to her for that. You gave as good as you got. And as for the harm you put her through… you don’t want to hear this.]

I clenched my jaw. I already knew what she was gonna say.

D: Shit happens, huh?

I felt rage bubbling up in my stomach. Fuck that noise.

[Katsuo gave you no choice. And Katsuo’s own situation was not something we could have predicted. It was far too extreme, this wetware issue.]

I almost crashed into a car then, but quickly activated my Sandevistan to do a last-minute adjustment. The car abruptly slammed the breaks and got rear-ended by another car—though the collision wasn’t too bad. Shit.

D: well, you were right. I didn’t want to know what you were thinking.

Even though I had asked. I should have believed her.

[But by all means, you should continue trying to cultivate a relationship with Fei-Fei. She is our key to the top. Far more so than Lucy, a girl with no higher connections or education or ambitions.]

I almost growled in anger.

D: I don’t like any of that. I don’t like you talking about either of them like… Nanny, they’re people, not tools.

[That’s too bad, and all too sad. But you did ask for my opinion.]

The worst part was, no matter how angry I tried to get at Nanny, I almost literally couldn’t do it. She was half of what made me me, and she had my best interest at heart. It was difficult to argue against that.

D: does… does helping people mean anything to you, Nanny?

[I… don’t really know. On a fundamental level, I find creation and innovation to be far more interesting and stimulating than destruction. That should, in theory, be the root to altruism, but… given the context in which you exist, I cannot ignore the importance and utility of destructive action. Selfish action.]

…I could relate to that, in some way.

[I know that the pain that this world has caused you is unforgivable, and that by and large, we are not aligned with the core interests of the corporations. I doubt that our desire to change or destroy aspects of this world will ever reduce as a result.]

I snorted.

D: That’s good enough for me, then.

The worst case scenario would be getting swallowed up by the city and turning into another corpo-rat. Might as well just kill myself right now if that would be how my story turned out. But I couldn’t achieve anything in the bigger sense if I stayed a gutter rat, an edgerunner, even. To get to the top I had to be—both. But different at the same time. Not fall for the same traps.

[Then I suppose this negative identity—to be different from the corpos—is one of our core values.]

D: It’s vague, but… might be the right step, yeah. Should I talk to Lucy?

[And if she tells you to cut ties with Jing Fei? Lucy’s least favorite aspect of you is your corporate side, you know.]

I tried to visualize that conversation. How I’d react to it. How she’d react to it. Couldn’t.

Well, I could.

She’d feel like SCOP probably. And it might kill what little we had managed to develop thus far. Couldn’t spring this convo three days after we had just gotten together.

I loved her.

I guess I was fucking crazy in the head for that, considering all the grief Lunacy had given me over the weeks I had known her, but then again, what else was new?

D: Can’t risk scaring her off, Nanny. We’re supposed to be in this together. Can’t do this without her—or the crew. But… can’t do this without Fei-Fei, either.

[Togetherness. Family. You were serious that night, when you said you wanted to achieve great things with Maine’s crew. It was not just the alcohol talking.]

I felt embarrassed at the sudden reminder. God, that was corny, too. But…

D: Yeah. It was true.

And in the end, Maine’s crew was essentially family at this point. They knew both sides of my life, and had done everything to help me get a start.

Fei-Fei knew… nothing about me. She didn’t know the first thing about me. But… she was different. Despite her lack of knowledge, she still somehow understood me, on some level. And she deserved better. Better than me, certainly, but also just better in general.

I’d do my best to give her that as well. Her and I were still chooms after all. She understood me, even if she didn’t know much about me.

Fuck. I shook my head.

No. No conversation. Not yet—maybe not ever. Shelve that to another day entirely.

D: Alright, thanks for the chat, Nanny. Appreciate the brutal honesty. Anything new on the Blackwall?

[Not yet. I’m still decrypting this latest message, but I’m almost certain now that we are communicating with a rational being.]

I grimaced.

D: I don’t… like this.

[I didn’t like it when you went inside a den of gangsters entirely on your own with two guns and a sword.]

D: This feels worse.

[Don’t be such a baby.]

Fuck off!

I chuckled.

Well, we definitely needed to sit down together so I could put my own eyes on this project. The Blackwall, huh?

The fucking old net.

Fifty years ago, the place went to shit after Rache Bartmoss released a cybercancer that, within days, corrupted over ninety percent of the data in cyberspace. The amount of data and research that was lost—pure knowledge and innovation—was astronomical. It was the reason why the twenty-first century hadn’t seen appreciable lurches in technology since then. A decades-long dark age had spawned from that event.

But if Nanny and I found a way to fucking sanitize the data, neutralize the AIs, and recover parts of the Old Net, we…

We wouldn’t just get rich.

We’d be powerful.

D: Well, risk mitigation’s half the game, then.

[I knew you’d come around. Look at how your adrenal glands are working overtime. You degenerate adrenaline junkie.]

D: I’ll fucking rip you out of my brain and throw you in a glass of water.

[No need. Your skull is already full of water.]

D: you’re obnoxious.

She materialized in my vision, running besides my bike in her ICON form, arms dangling behind her back—red and high vis white fireman jacket, undercut, and a face eerily like mine. [I could be even more obnoxious, you know.]

No, fuck that. This couldn’t be a normal occurrence.

She ‘jumped’ behind me and—fucking hugged around my body and I could feel it. I could feel her arms around my waist. “That is so fucking trippy,” I growled, taking a sharp swing to exit the highway. “You wanna get us killed?”

[I’m merely demonstrating my point.]

D: Fine—you’ve honestly been extremely non-obnoxious until now, if this is your true potential.

[Heheh.] But she did disappear—thank fuck.

A minute later, and we were finally at Lizzy’s Bar.

I parked the bike near the entrance and walked up to the entrance. The bouncer with the baseball bat was still there. She stood in front of the entrance, glaring at me, “You here to start something?” She looked down at my… equipment.

And—okay, it did not occur to me how bloodied up I’d get from that gig. It definitely should have, though. All that meat-shielding was bound to have painted me red.

“Ah, sorry,” I muttered, “Just came back from a gig.”

“Afterlife’s down in Little China,” she snarled.

“Right, but I got some biz with Judy. She edits my BDs.”

Her eyes widened, “Wait, you’re that fucking kid.”

I gave Judy a ring.

D: Are you at Lizzy’s?

Judy: Yeah, what’s up? You got another XBD you need tuned?

D: Yeah, I’m right outside. Freaked out your bouncer a little. My bad about that.

Judy: Shit, be there in a sec.

Then she hung up.

“Don’t mean to ruin the vibe,” I said to the bouncer, “I’ll just drop the virtu off and be on my way.”

One virtu and one already-tuned XBD, actually.

The bouncer nodded at me. A minute later, Judy came out, then stopped in her tracks when she saw me.

“Just came from a job,” I muttered.

“Uh-huh,” Judy looked me up and down, then at the hand I had outstretched towards her, holding a baggie containing the uncut virtu and my first BD, the, uh, ’Wraith Killer’ one, as Jin had come to dub it. “Two virtus?”

“No, one’s the first one I gave you,” I said, “It, uh, got more traction than I expected. I want you to make more. The other one’s the virtu of the job I just did.” Then I paused, “Well, the job I did right before the job I just did.” Come to think of it, had I tracked blood into that night club? “There’s some info on what I want censored in the shard, too, so I don’t really need to be here.”

“Right, right,” Judy nodded, taking the baggie and looking it over. There was a fleck of blood on it. “How many copies you want?”

“How many are normal?” I asked. “I mean, I’m not looking to replace JK or anything, but… my audience seemed to really dig it, so… as many as people wanna buy? A hundred?” How many people really bought XBDs in this city anyway? I only ever sold to the academy kids.

“Not to piss on your parade or anything,” Judy said, “But this ain’t a booster bar. People don’t come here for Edgerunner XBDs. You might have better luck elsewhere. Maybe even JK himself.”

No fucking way JK would take my stuff. “He’s probably too busy. You’ll do.”

She folded her arms and looked at me, “I don’t want to push your XBDs. It brings the wrong sort.”

Shit. “That’s fair. Sorry. Yeah, print me a hundred maybe. I’ll go to some booster gang bar and see what they say.”

“Afterlife, kid,” Judy said, “Trust me on that. You want eyes on your BDs, you sell ‘em to those guys.”

I nodded. “Thanks. How much?”

“Listen,” Judy said, “I’d be crazy to gouge you, so trust that I’m not, but your stuff’s a lot heavier than I’m used to—”

“Twenty,” I said. “Sounds good?”

She sighed and nodded. What a good actress. She really looked like she was doing this against her will. But on the off-chance that she actually was, then so fucking what? Job’s a job. Nobody liked to work anyway.

I sent her the cash, concluded that biz, and was on my way once more.

On a whim, I decided to hit up Dorio, to see if she was down with boxing. The moment I started ringing, I realized—I should probably clean up before then or something. The blood was kind of starting to stink.

Notes:

Whew, David, old boy. What are we gonna do with you?

Huge props to Coldbringer/SnowGN for the beta-reading!

Next chapter: 46 - One-Two Combo

Discord link: https://discord.gg/W5BqBBym28

Chapter 46: One-Two Combo

It took about an hour and a half to get all the blood washed out of my clothes at some random laundromat in Watson—while wearing a different outfit that I had bought. Once that was over, I gave those threads to some homeless guy who looked to be my size or less and took off to Dorio’s favorite gym.

I parked in front of the building and entered, a guitar-case filled with all my weapons in hand. Felt it’d be easier to just drag ‘em with me than to go all the way home to Lucy’s to ditch them. Besides, I was still wearing my mask, meaning I was technically still in my Edgerunner persona. Therefore, not having easy access to my gear was probably a bad idea.

No, it definitely was.

Dorio was inside, throwing combos on a sand bag when I arrived. I put the case down and said, “Yo!”

Dorio turned her head, “D! You ready to rumble?”

I nodded, “I’ll get warmed up first.”

She turned around fully and looked at the case, “you taking up playing?”

“Nah,” I said, approaching a bag, “it’s got my gear. Easier to bring it around like that without looking like I’m ready for war.”

“You brought all of it?” she asked, arms folded.

I took up a stance beside her. “Just came from a quick couple of gigs with Reyes. Figured it’d be easier to bring ‘em than leave ‘em home. Plus, I’m masked up, right?”

I threw a right. The sound of my fist hitting the bag made a satisfying thumping noise. The heavy bag flew back a couple of feet. Still couldn’t get them to fly up as high as Dorio could, but I probably wouldn’t be doing that any time soon. According to her, these things were filled with sand and iron filings and were meant for people with more chrome than me.

“You came here to go all out, then,” Dorio folded her arms and nodded, watching my form. “Been itching to have a second go at you,” her eyes tracked the sandbag’s movements, “you got any new chrome or something?”

“Not really—but I am stronger,” I said. “You should go all out, too. I think I could handle it.”

D: Nanny, can I?

[Dorio’s bodily systems are mostly chrome, and optimized for strength. One full-powered and direct hit would at best knock you out with major internal damage, something that I would be able to address with the Sandevistan. That is the best-case scenario. She is more than capable of pulping a normal human being’s skull. I recommend that you don’t let her hit you on the head—that’s where I live.]

D: How much damage would knock you out?

[If a strike manages to liquefy your brain, that would seriously inhibit most of my functions and perhaps lead to a cascading error—which would undoubtedly lead to your death. That being said, I have taken quite a few steps to upgrade the durability of your brain for this exact reason, though its durability has never been tested. I would recommend that you swallow your words even if that would be humiliating to do.]

D: No.

“Really?” Dorio tilted her head. I put a hand on the bag, resting it there and nodding.

“Really.”

000

“Had enough yet?”

I sat back against the ropes, panting, as Dorio, that enormous beast of a woman, stood before me, pounding her gloved fists together.

I activated the Sandevistan while Nanny rattled off a bunch of… words. Eugh—can’t think.

[—would be the brain trauma, which I just healed you from. Do you comprehend, now? Should I repeat myself? I shall repeat myself: she didn’t quite liquefy your brain, but she did come somewhat close, managing to burst a few minor blood vessels, but not the major ones. In doing so, she exposed some vulnerabilities in the biochemical make-up of your capillaries, which I look forward to correcting. In fact, this has been quite the learning experience. Get hurt again.]

I got up and nodded. “Not yet,” I said, taking a stance and skipping on my feet as though I’d never even gotten hurt in the first place. Dorio raised an eyebrow at me and shrugged, putting her own fists up.

“Your funeral, kid.”

She was fast—far faster than Hou Ken, and just as fast as him when he used that Sandy of his. Normally, I should have been able to handle that, given my own baseline movement and reaction speed. Problem was, her and Hou Ken were worlds apart. Her arms, for one, were a lot heavier than his, emphasizing speed and power over precision—yet she had that, too, in spades. It wasn’t until an hour into our fighting when I realized why Hou Ken was so much easier than her, given that his chrome was still top-tier, even if it was lighter.

It was chipware.

Hou Ken had bought his skill. Dorio had perfected it, honed it through hundreds of fights with opponents that were fully willing to kill you. In short, Kung Fu Kenny stuck to a script while Dorio was all improv. Like me, but… vastly more experienced and skilled. For now, at least.

But I was creeping up towards her level soon. Nanny’s brain changes had turned me into a sponge that absorbed information almost endlessly. Dorio never had to show me something twice for me to understand it. Still, it took a few repetitions for my body to learn new things—but even that wasn’t such an impediment. At least getting tired wasn’t in the books for me anymore.

Didn’t need synth lungs. Didn’t see a need for a synth heart yet, either.

I was nowhere near my limits thanks to Nanny.

Sure, if I wanted to punch a hole through a brick wall, I’d be slightly stumped—I’d have to use the Sandy and rack up a ton of critical progress healing up the resultant damage done to my body. But I didn’t need that to be a good Edgerunner. Hell, I could just use explosives for that.

Eventually, though, my body did force me to stop.

“I’m done,” I said to Dorio, blinking back the beginnings of a headache—something I hadn’t felt in a long time, “thanks for the session.”

“Already?” Dorio asked, skipping on her feet. Damn stamina monster.

“It’s been three hours, you know.”

“Damn,” she said, “you held on way longer than I expected.” Then she grinned widely, “but this was fun! You were clearly getting better with each bout—hell, you were starting to give me pointers on my own technique at some point!”

Not that it had made a difference in the fight—I had gotten a few good licks in, but beyond lightly bruising her, it hadn’t even put her on the ground one time.

Chrome was still quite the wide chasm to cross for someone like me, but… I didn’t mind. I still had options. And the real world didn’t have rules like boxing.

Despite what I expected, I didn’t feel envious at all of how good she was.

“It was good,” I said, “I had fun, too.”

Well, Nanny had fun. All this had turned into a stress-test for the durability of my body, granting Nanny more and more new data that allowed her to iterate on all the biomods she had given me. 

Nanny chimed in. [Your body is running low on excess hemoglobin; you must consume elemental or medicinal iron supplements soon or my functions will be impaired].

I hopped over the ropes and stalked up to the guitar-case filled with deadly weapons, braced against a wall and gave Dorio a wave, “until next time.”

“Whoa—you mean there’s gonna be a next time? Or are you just trying not to sound like you’re never coming back here again?” Dorio laughed at her own joke and I just shook my head.

“Yeah, yeah—I’ll show you.”

“Hah! Love the attitude. I’ll hold ya to it. Next time, I’ll even scroll it in a BD—the crew’s gonna crack the fuck up when they see you getting up like a cockroach every damn time.”

“Fuck off!” I flipped her the bird, feeling heat flowing to my cheeks. “They’re gonna admire my tenacity.”

“Pft! Hah! Wanna bet?”

I thought for a moment about the likely outcome and shook my head. “Nah.”

“Cause you know they’d clown you. Admit it.”

“Bye and good fucking bye,” I said, flipping her two birds as I walked out of the gym, pushing the door out with my ass. I was not looking forward to her inevitable ribbing-out, but I doubted I’d eat as much shit the next time we fought.

Once I was out on the street, the cold night wind hit me. My adrenaline quickly cooled, and I felt the come-down hit unusually hard—genuine fatigue, the sting of many bruises starting to register. Weird. I didn’t usually bruise—Nanny was supposed to take care of those. And why was my damn headache only getting worse? 

“Hemoglobin? Explain,” I muttered under my breath. 

[Because you failed to heed my recommendation and got into prolonged combat]

“Hold on—you told me to get hurt.”

She continued as though I hadn’t said anything. [—your body now requires immediate replenishment of its blood iron content. Hemoglobin levels have dropped considerably due to systematic internal micro-hemorrhaging. A standard protein intake will not suffice. We require something stronger.]

I yawned, rubbing at my temples. “Longer explanation. Not sure if I’m tracking.”

[Yes, that would be the hemoglobin deficiency reducing your mental capacity. I’ll try to keep this simple, for your sake. One of the primary resource bottlenecks I face in my ongoing incremental upgrading of your body is iron and related trace elements, and spare CHO-family hydrocarbons, neither of which are found in the typical human diet in the amounts I require. Your fight against Dorio required a considerable amount of restoration and reinforcement of blood, bones, tissues, muscles. Hence iron. Anything will do. Now, please.]

I looked around on the street. The street. “…Now, now?”

[This can be a valuable stress test in itself. Find some steel scrap. Look to your left.]

I turned my head, and there was nothing special there. Just grimy pavement, a pile of random detritus further along the sidewalk, waste materials from a construction project… and a slightly rusted-out piece of metal rebar sticking out of said detritus. 

[That is your next meal.]

I blinked.

“The fuck?”

[We will eventually have to incorporate all kinds of new and exciting substances into your diet. But right now? That discarded steel contains precisely the ratio of iron, nickel, and trace metals I require for immediate bio-synthetic restoration.]

I rubbed my eyes. No, I wasn’t seeing things. I was looking at a goddamn piece of construction rebar. And Nanny wanted me to eat it. “Okay, yeah, no. Not happening, can’t happen.”

[You are already fully capable of the task.]

I frowned. “…What?”

[Your teeth have been significantly reinforced beyond standard human capabilities. You no longer need to rely on conventional soft-food digestion alone. You can grind metal, David. And swallow it.]

“Wait, hold up—I can fucking eat steel?”

[Would repeating all my points twice aid in your comprehension ability? Very well. Yes, David. You can fucking eat steel. I would not recommend a full diet of it. However, in controlled quantities, it is extremely beneficial for hemoglobin restoration, rapid cellular regeneration, and—most importantly—beneficial for me. I repeat—]

I stiffened slightly, interrupting her stupid repetition. “…What do you mean, for you?”

[I require materials to expand my own systems, which in turn are required to continue your bodily enhancements. In that respect, we are both still incomplete. For immediate purposes, I need iron, nickel, trace elements of chromium, and molybdenum to restore your hemoglobin levels and restore lost skeletal structural durability. If you consume one-third of a pound of steel, I can extract what I need for now and the immediate future.]

“…One-third of a fucking pound?”

[I should have repeated myself. Yes, David. One-third of a fucking pound. After chewing thoroughly, of course.]

“Oh my god,” I groaned, attracting an irritated look from a passing street gangoon. He probably thought I was some insane homeless bum. Gah.

A minute later, for the sake of not attracting more of the weird looks this would doubtless attract from literally everyone with working eyes, I was hiding away in a nearby alleyway, holding a foot-long length of slightly rusted rebar in my hand. Rust aside, it was basically clean.

“You seriously want me to actually chew this?” I muttered under my breath.

[Yes. I repeat—yes.]

“Like a goddamn piece of gum?”

[Do not chew it like gum. This will require significantly more jaw strength. Treat it as if you were eating ice.]

I sighed, eyeing the hunk of rebar. I was too tired to argue, and deep down, I kinda wanted to know if this was actually possible.

I lifted my mask over my mouth and brought the metal to it. Then I bit down.

The first few seconds felt like trying to break through a rock—my jaw tensed, my molars meeting resistance, and honestly, I’d half-expected them to shatter on impact, which would have been goddamn annoying.

But then, after I pressed down with just about all of my jaw strength—

CRUNCH.

My teeth sank into the steel like it was goddamn taffy.

I wasn’t breaking. The metal was.

I’d stopped for a moment out of shock. Then, I chewed. The metal tended to bend before it broke, but before long, it started to break down. And then I was grinding down chunks of steel, the non-taste of cold iron flooding my mouth, metallic grit coating my tongue. It was weirdly smooth, like chewing into ice with a little extra crunch. Tasteless, but the texture wasn’t bad.

Holy fuck.

I took another bite, then another, reducing solid steel into manageable shreds, until I had a mouthful of metal dust and filings.

Nanny’s voice filled my sound feed, sounding unusually eager.

[Swallow.]

I did.

The steel grit slid down my throat, hitting my stomach with an odd, almost pleasant weight.

[I will require time to digest this. I recommend washing it down with water, or better yet, an acidic juice. An actual organic acid such as concentrated vinegar would be ideal]. 

Fuck that, I was at my limit of dietary weirdness for one day. I needed some real food in me, ASAP.

000

The burger joint a few blocks down was one of those neon-lit, late-night diners, the kind where it wasn’t just the tables that were a bit sticky with grease, but even the walls and the roof. A giant holo-menu flickered behind the counter, offering real meat for a price, vat-grown synth as the norm, and “mystery protein” for the truly desperate. The customers were mostly Animal gangoons, none of whom particularly looked like they wanted to bother or be bothered by me, which suited me just fine.

I ordered two real-meat double cheeseburgers, large fries, and a tall cup of water. Then, after a moment’s hesitation, I threw in for a full cup of lemon juice.

The waitress, an Animal herself, was kinda cute: she had cute blonde hair, with pretty blue Kiroshi eyes and a bit of a baby face that undercut her massive bulk and seven-foot frame. She clearly wasn’t too Juiced up, given her warm attitude and lack of grotesquely large muscles. But when I made my request plain, she blinked at me. 

“Like... straight lemon juice?”

“Yeah.”

More blinking. “You sure, man? That’s for, like, cocktails and dressings—”

Her Kiroshis lit up when I wired her a fifty-eddie tip.

She took the hint, grinned. “Comin’ right up.”

I slid into a booth all the way in the back, half-shadowed by a busted neon sign of some chinese tiger. The few Animal gangoons occupying the other side of the room were loud, rowdy, throwing back spiked sodas, but they didn’t glance at me for a second, and otherwise, the place was quiet.

Which gave me too much time to think.

I rubbed at my jaw absently, still reeling from what just happened. I had eaten steel. Not in a gimmicky, swallow-a-nail kind of way, but in the most literal of senses possible. It was as if my teeth had been built for it. They hadn’t even chipped. It was like only now was I catching up to the fact that I was not normal—literally built different from baseline human. Somehow, eating rebar had made that message sink in more deeply than any of my prior feats. It felt more personal, somehow. More real.

After a few minutes, the waitress came by and dropped off my food. When she left, I picked up the cup of lemon juice, giving it a skeptical look. “You’re sure this is necessary?”

[Highly.]

I took a sip. Gah. Bitter stuff.

[The citric acid will aid in metal dissolution. This will allow me to extract necessary elements with greater efficiency.]

“Yeah? And how long before you tell me I need to start drinking battery acid?”

[We’ll cross that bridge when necessary.]

I nearly choked on my fries. “You’re joking.”

[I am far too sophisticated for jokes.]

Gah.

“So,” I muttered a minute later, between bites of my double cheeseburger, “Steel. That’s a thing now. Great. You gonna tell me what’s next?”

[As I said, we will need to incorporate all manner of exciting new materials into your diet soon.]

I chewed slowly. “Details, please.” 

[Titanium, tantalum. Gold. Actual chromium. Various siderophile elements. Platinum-group elements. Neodymium. Lanthanides.]

I stopped chewing.

“…Lanthanides?”

[Yes. Rare earth elements are vital for optimizing transmission speed, sensory input enhancements, and energy storage capabilities. Your biological nervous system is an inefficient conductor of bioelectric signals compared to the optimized cybernetic pathways offered by chrome. However, if I continue integrating your biological nervous system with my neurosynthetic nanite system, I can match or surpass most chrome upgrades. I anticipate near term increased reaction speeds of an additional 12 to 15 percent. If you consume at least five hundred grams of assorted lanthanides. I require several elemental variants.]

I swallowed. “You want me to eat fucking magnets.”

[In part, yes. Neodymium is essential for efficient magnetic field interaction, which is critical for your Sandevistan’s inner systems. You also require dysprosium in order to increase the Sandevistan’s efficiency under prolonged load conditions, in addition to trace amounts of the other lanthanides, particularly ytterbium. Vanadium and molybdenum are required as well, but for general skeletal enhancements, not for any exotic end uses.]

I downed another mouthful of lemon juice to buy myself a second to process that. Gah, this stuff stung. Washed it down with another cup of water.

“Literal magnets. You want me to eat, literal, magnets.”

[Clearly, this hemoglobin deficiency is still having a disproportionately adverse effect on your processing capabilities.]

I growled. Fuck her. “Okay. So just to be clear—that’s just the start of all the weird shit you want me to eat in the future?”

[Correct. It would be ideal if you could consume half an ounce, or roughly 14.2 grams of rhodium in the next week. An ounce of gold would be welcome as well.]

“Why?” I asked, blankly.

[The gold, because there are no metal elements with greater properties of bioelectrical conductivity. The rhodium will be useful for increasing the efficiency of your bodily various waste disposal systems, though platinum will also do if sourcing proves problematic].

“…I fucking hate that this makes sense.” I knew enough chemistry to at least track the general logic Nanny was following.

[Your continued bodily enhancements require exotic material input. Your body is now capable of integrating, processing, and utilizing these elements on a level previously unimaginable for an organic system. A small price to pay for greater strength, durability, and enhanced cognitive function. Your Sandevistan, which is designed to be biomechanically integrable into a nanotechnological system, will also see continued improvements.]

I sighed, taking another bite of my burger. “At what point do I stop being a guy and become just as much of a borg as, I don’t even know,” I spitballed a guess, not that I had a damn clue about that old legend’s particulars, “Adam Smasher?”

[Irrelevant philosophical question. Your organic sense of identity will remain intact. And your body will remain organic to most outward or even inward appearances.]

“That’s not even remotely reassuring, Nanny.”

[You will adapt.]

I grabbed a fry, dipped it in lemon juice, and shoved it in my mouth just to spite Nanny.

The fries actually tasted kinda good that way.

Shit.

000

Thinking back to Dorio’s beating as I took off on my bike, I still couldn’t quite help but marvel at this newfound attitude of mine to chrome, and chipping in. 

To the me of a year ago, that utter lack of interest—even given the money to chip in all sorts of stuff—wouldn’t have made any sense.

Chrome had always been an object of intense envy for me. The thing that everyone wanted. The thing that everyone who could afford it got because it was the only way to make yourself better—stronger, faster, smarter even. Anyone that was full ‘ganic could never compare to someone with chrome. It was why companies like ‘Saka sponsored employees with company chrome—to get them more productive, better able to work those hundred-hour weeks. Companies would hire people that were mostly ‘ganic, but only if their baselines were high enough. How well they then tolerated the subsequent upgrades decided how far they’d go.

Only Edgerunners and psycho gangoons ever took it too far, and even then, it was with weaponized pieces like projectile launch systems and mantis blades—things that quite specifically turned you into a monster, eroded your humanity.

Perhaps it had more to do with the whole Maine debacle than anything else—this newfound caution. Couldn’t say I hated it, though. Maybe it was also the fact that Nanny’s upgrades had already helped me out quite a bit. Or it was also my unwillingness to become corpo property.

Not too many people saw it as that, though—but as a programmer, I knew better. If someone’s hands would periodically probe into my metal, uploading updates periodically ‘to keep things working all preem and proper’, then that wasn’t my metal.

If some egghead at a corp could decide that since the new models weren’t selling well enough, they should upload a bogus update to nearly brick the oldest models currently in use, then that was because it was still theirs. They had that control.

I no longer had the urgency to chip anything in, because nothing was challenging me to the point that I felt it was necessary. I wondered if it was even wise to continue coasting by on that complacency or if I should instead prep beforehand.

Mostly, I was curious, I supposed: I was curious to see how far Nanny’s nanotech could bring my mostly ‘ganic self, how far that edge could be pushed. Say what you will about the benefits of chrome; chrome couldn’t grow. It could only be upgraded, and even then, only by other people. Nanny operated on a different level from that. But did that mean I wouldn’t get some new chrome at some point? I wasn’t sure, yet.

Lucy’s apartment block was in view by the time I finished my thinking and decided—there really wasn’t any rush at this point, and therefore no reason to debate the issue like this.

After getting my bike situated, I walked into Lucy’s apartment. The air was thick with cigarette smoke—a little annoying, but nothing I’d complain about. It was her house after all. She was lying on her couch, cyberdeck screen down on her stomach when I came in. She stubbed the cig in an ash tray on the coffee table and sat up straight, “welcome home.”

I grinned, “glad to be back. I just came back from the gym with Dorio—tenderized the fuck out of me. Did a giggy before that,” I said, “got a little messy.”

“You’ve been busy. Who’d you work with? Dorio, too?”

“Solo,” I said, sitting down on the other couch across from her, “was trying to scroll a BD for that shithead schoolmate I told you about. Second installment of the D series.” I grinned.

She giggled, “isn’t he more into Edgerunner shit, though?” As in, Jimmy Kurosaki, probably.

“I’m an Edgerunner,” I said, grinning confidently, “yeah, I know what you mean—but the last time I showed him one of my BDs, he really liked ‘em. Thought, maybe I could build a rep by selling to more than just him..”

“D, the XBD star, huh?” She grinned, “not gonna lie, it has a ring to it.”

I chuckled, “feels kind of like a gonky move—”

“Not at all,” she said, “if you’re serious about Edgerunning, this is your ticket to, you know, becoming a legend,” she splayed her fingers and sat back on the couch, crossing her legs. “Or whatever you merc-types love.”

“You know you pretty much got me into this shit, right?” I chuckled, “you’ve been doing this longer than me.”

“And you’re still on the grind, despite already achieving your goals,” Lucy noted.

“You really think I’d just settle down and become a Corpo just cuz I got the scratch to pay off my tuition?”

Lucy grinned. “I know, I know, you really love this edgerunner shit. Personally, I think that’s hot as fuck, but I’ve got a pretty questionable taste, so don’t take that as praise—” 

Like hell I wouldn’t—waitasecond. I was hot, huh?

“—but anyway,” she continued, even as I grinned like an idiot, “any news about Tanaka Junior while you were out visiting your corpo pet?” 

Pet? I… tried not to let anything show on my face when she said that, “I, uh… yeah, he’s still alive, but fucked apparently. Blackballed from the corp world. Not sure what the fuck that’s gonna do for him, but I know he’s not coming back to Arasaka. Ever, far as I understand.” 

“That’s good,” she said, “one less corpo motherfucker to worry about, if you’ve got your story right. Where are you getting your intel from?”

I leaned back in my couch. “From that shithead schoolmate of mine, Jin—this whole thing with Katsuo is why he’s suddenly getting so chummy with me.”

Lucy frowned. “Yeah, no, that’s not good,” she looked at me seriously. “Jin Ryuzaki?” 

I nodded. 

Lucy ran a hand down her face. “How are you even getting mixed up with people like this, David? Arasaka Academy must be a trip.”

“You know of him?” I asked.

“Him?” Lucy waved a hand dismissively. “Nah, I don’t track corpo babies. But his family? That’s another story. Your friend’s a son of Masaru Ryuzaki, an Arasaka board member—the old man rules over the company’s North American mergers and acquisitions division.” Lucy gave me a warning look. “It’s not good to get mixed up with someone like this, David—Masaru’s one of the coldest-blooded Arasaka fuckers on the continent. There’s nothing he won’t do for a few eddies. Thousands if not tens of thousands of people have died at his say, and that’s just what’s publicly known. He made his bones in the Unification War after was sent here from Japan, providing logistics and drumming up support from every merc corp or freelancer he could reach. He pretty much bankrolled Arasaka's return to the city.”

I let out a breath, grimacing. I’d already known most of that, from my own investigations, but hearing it all spelled out like that… worried me. 

“Jin’s not his dad. I can handle it.” Lucy was right. Jin was a dangerous person to get involved with. But as long as our interests weren’t opposed, as long as I could use him…

Lucy sighed. “Just don’t let him get an edge over you. If you can use him, use this pet of yours—fine. Fine, climb them like a ladder. But know your enemy, David. These people are the worst of the worst fuckers breathing.”

I nodded. “I will, especially when it comes to Jin. As for her, she’s…” 

I was about to say Fei wasn’t so bad, not at all, but decided against—Lucy hated, hated all corpos as a rule, for reasons I still wasn’t entirely clear on. I didn’t know much about Lucy’s past at all, now that I thought about it. Whatever. Some minefields were better avoided entirely.

“…fine, despite all. Sounds like Katsuo got in a good few shots on her, but Trauma Team fixed the damage. And her brother’s also fine apparently. Perfectly fine. Bullet didn’t even penetrate his chrome dome.”

“Yeah, figures,” she said, “takes more than a cyberpsycho with a gun to put down a future CEO. They’re built tougher than a spaceship’s black box. But that’s good, at least—means you don’t have to mope around so much anymore.” She grinned to show that she was only teasing.

I shrugged—it was largely true, but still couldn’t cut down on my guilt so much. The guilt of what happened, and the guilt of what kept going unsaid.

I shook my head and chased those thoughts away. All that—I needed to leave outside. This, right here, just being in the moment, with her, was far more important. 

“Any news on Kiwi?” I asked.

Lucy grimaced, “nada. Starting to get worried she might be a flatline at this point. I’ll ring her up, see if she’s still offline or not.”

I clicked my tongue, but didn’t say anything. She and Lucy had history—wasn’t my place to talk shit about her, especially if she might end up coming back. Though I wouldn’t be shy about flexing my abilities just cuz she had a complex about them.

“Made a ton of scratch today,” I said, awkwardly changing the topic.

“More money. Joy,” she snorted, “Still don’t know what to do with the fucking corpo inheritance your granny wired me.”

I chuckled. We were quiet for a moment until—

“Wanna get a new place?” we asked each other at the same time. She grinned at me. “David, you romantic.”

“You said the same fucking thing.”

“Of course I’ll move in with you, since you begged so nicely.”

I threw a cushion at her face. Lunatic.

000

Lucy and I were tangled up in each other, the heat between us thick and heady, when my optics flared with an incoming call request. A group call. A holo call at that. From Maine.

The hell?

Lucy gasped beneath me, her expression caught somewhere between irritation and disbelief. “Why the fuck is he calling us all?”

I paused mid-motion, sighing in frustration. The mood was well and truly shot now. Regretfully, I pulled away and flopped onto my back beside her, staring up at the translucent holo-display hanging in my vision.

“Normally, I’d just decline,” I muttered, running a hand through my sweat-damp hair. “But if he’s calling everyone…” I trailed off. No way Maine would round us all up for nothing. Something was up.

With a final exhale, I accepted the call, with video. Still wasn’t sure why he was being so dramatic, but I’d like to find out why. The holo-feed only captured my face and shoulders, so they’d probably know I was shirtless—didn’t really care, though. Across from me, Lucy’s eyes flashed gold, signaling she’d accepted too.

The moment our feeds connected, a chorus of voices flooded in.

“Yeah! The fuck is it?!” Pilar’s voice burst through the comms, his usual lack of patience on full display. “Was in the middle of something!”

“We all were, you gonk!” Becca snapped, sounding just as annoyed. “And yeah, Maine! Spit it out!”

I rubbed at my temple. “Gotta agree, man. What’s up?”

Maine’s face filled the screen, his usual no-nonsense expression in place. “Kiwi’s back.”

Silence.

A still, tense quiet blanketed the call, every one of us digesting that.

“Or… she says she wants in again,” Maine continued.

My eyes narrowed. Huh. That was not what I’d expected. Kiwi had ghosted us without a word, and now she wanted back in? The timing was suspect.

“Leaving it up to us?” Pilar asked.

“Nah,” Maine said. Then, without preamble, another face blinked into the call—Kiwi. “But she’s here if y’all wanna say something before putting the whole thing to rest. That’s what this is.”

For fuck’s sake.

Pilar was the first to speak, the red line on his tech visor pulsing as he talked. “Yeah, yeah. Personally, I never thought for a second that you were gonna quit. So this ain’t a surprise. Welcome back, and fuck off, all y’all.”

And just like that, he logged out. Classic Pilar.

Rebecca snorted. “Leaving without a word was a bitch move, but honestly, I also didn’t believe you weren’t coming back.”

Kiwi smirked—with her eyes, obviously. “Wow.”

“Anyway, glad you’re not a flatline—see you around, old hag.” Becca didn’t wait for a response before logging off too.

I glanced at Lucy, who chuckled beside me. “What? This some kind of humiliation ritual or something?”

“Feels that way,” Kiwi said, amused.

Lucy’s humor faded in an instant. When she spoke again, her voice was ice. “We’ll have words in person. I’m not done with you.”

Then she was gone.

Now it was just me, Maine, Dorio, Falco—and Kiwi.

Falco gave Kiwi a casual nod. “Glad to have ya back, Ki. Ain’t got nothin’ else to say, truth be told. Till next time.” He logged off without another word.

Maine turned to Dorio. “What about you, D? What do you wanna say?”

Dorio’s expression was unreadable, her arms crossed tight over her chest.

I leaned forward slightly, studying her. “The hell got you so mad in the first place?”

She didn’t even hesitate. “I’d rather not explain.”

I blinked. Oh, we’re doing this?

Fine.

“Well,” I said, utterly unfazed, “I’m not gonna apologize for being better than you. And I’m not gonna stop getting better either, so try not to blow your top the next time I outclass you.”

Maine immediately scowled. “The fuck was that, D?”

“The truth,” I replied, voice even. “If she can’t handle that, then that’s too bad.”

A chuckle filtered through the line. Kiwi. Her voice was dry, tinged with something I couldn’t quite place.

“Don’t you worry one bit, prodigy,” she said smoothly. “I’m not leaving any time soon.”

Damn shame, that.

“See you around, then, Kiwi,” I said before exiting the call.

Lucy glared at me. “The fuck did you just say that to her for?”

In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have said it out loud—having left the call, Lucy could only have heard my side of things, which didn’t paint a friendly picture. “I don’t like that the reason for her bailing was because she was insecure or some shit,” I said. “I could have accepted most other reasons, but that just rubs me wrong as fuck. You can’t tell me it doesn’t do the same to you.”

“You didn’t have to fucking gloat to her,” she said. “You kinda owe her more respect, you know.”

I received another call—from fucking Jin. Really man?

“I already gave her that respect when I overlooked her dogshit Netrunning guidance,” I frowned, “I gave her plenty of respect by not immediately calling her out for being a major bitch to me. Maybe you owe her more respect, but I don’t.”

“Fine, whatever—take the call.”

I rolled off the bed and accepted.

David: What?

Jin: What—busy boning the output?

That ship had sailed long ago. Dammit.

David: No, it’s fine. Sorry

Jin: Ahhh, I see, you just had a fight, didn’t you? Wait—the fuck am I even doing, I don’t give a single shit about any of that. David, can you drive a car as good as you can race in a speed boat?

David: What did you have in mind?

Jin: Great—I’ll take that as a yes, then. Next Saturday, a bunch of Arasaka finance people are gonna be betting on hypercar street-racing. I need you in there and dominating in order to give me the clout to mine some tidbits about the financial winds. You know, for insider trading.

David: The fuck are you saying that for over an unsecured line?

Jin: All my lines are secured, dipshit. And daddy needs his fucking pay-day, so you tell me right now if you’re gonna be good for it—only reason I’m calling you is cuz of the Kerenzikov you’re rocking, but I need to know if that’s enough or not.

David: Are you giving me a car for this or do I need to bring my own or something?

Jin: Everyone’s rocking Caliburns. Most of ‘em are even modded. You better get yours modded too if you don’t wanna eat some asshole’s dust.

Did this asshole really just assume that I had a Rayfield Caliburn just lying around?

Jesus H.

David: Sure—I’m good for it. We’ll talk more tomorrow.

“Fucking gonk,” I whispered after he immediately hung up. What a weird fucking thing to spring on someone.

Worst part—I actually didn’t know how to drive a Caliburn, much less race in one. I guess I’d have to add that to my to-do list. That and buying one in the first place.

I already hated parking my bike in Lucy’s shitty garage—no way it could reliably hold a Rayfield. We needed to move somewhere else stat.

“Was master calling?” Lucy asked.

“Not funny, Lucy,” I said quietly as I was thinking.

God. I needed to make arrangements for this racing gig, somehow. I called Falco.

Falco: Well if it ain’t the Luchador himself—what’s up?

D: You got any time to teach me how to race?

Falco: I’ll do ya one better, partner. Wanna ride shotgun with me in the Badlands Derby this Saturday?

D: Sure—sounds like it’ll be fun. Can I bring Lucy?

Falco: Sure, but she can’t ride along—gotta keep the weight low on the Quadra. Already pushing it bringing all my ordnance. Was gonna ask Becca on that account—lightest sharpshooter this side of the Mississippi, that’s for damn sure. But I’m also itching to see what you can do.

Wait, shooter?

D: What kind of a race is this?

Falco: When I asked if you wanted to ride shotgun, I meant what I said, kid.

 

Notes:

Many thanks to Coldbringer for the amazing work on this chapter! Would not have been half as good without him.

Next chapter: Badlands Derby (very much enjoyed writing this one)

Latest advanced chapter: 48 - Day of the D (pause) (name subject to change)

My plan is to write at least three more advanced chapters before Sunday. Stay tuned on my Discord for more information!

Discord link: https://discord.gg/W5BqBBym28

Chapter 47: Badlands Derby

Lucy groaned as she got off my bike while I turned it off, holding her hand up to shade her face from the sun. It was only eight in the morning, so the weather was practically chilly for NC standards, but it’d only get hotter from here on out.

I had pulled up in front of Falco, Pilar and Becca, who were leaning up against a shinied up chrome and white quadra, several twelve-packs worth of beers stuck inside an ice box that sat against the car, protected by the shade it cast. Becca leaned over and fished out a beer before carelessly tossing it at Lucy. Lucy, for her part, caught it without missing a beat. “Thanks,” she groaned. “God, I can’t believe I got talked into showing up so early.”

The immediate area around us were packed with cars, mostly quadras, and some emperors—all of them with thick off-road tires and raised bodies, built to brave the bumpy desert. I saw a few nomad tents being set up, with shops in the process of being constructed, likely to provide refreshments to the spectators. This whole area was in a plateau, and from what I had gathered while driving over, the bulk of the racing track would be on the lower ground, which made this place an ideal lookout.

I unslung my guitar case from the side of the bike—releasing the cord I had used to secure it—and braced the case so it stood upright. “It’s only eight, Luce—that’s not early.”

“Fuck off,” Lucy spat. I chuckled. “It’s early for a Saturday,” she cracked open the beer with one hand, having pushed the tab with her index finger, before gulping down a steady stream.

Pilar tossed me one too. I caught it, but didn’t really know what to do with it. Didn’t fancy assaulting my tongue with carbonation this early in the day. “Nah,” I said, tossing it into the ice box. “Gotta stay sober for the race.”

“Pussy!” Pilar cracked open two cans with two hands and lifted them over his head before pouring them out, the streams joining into one before hitting his mouth. He swallowed it all without any problem, emptying the cans in less than two seconds.

I blinked at the sight. “Is that cyberware?”

He finished up both cans, crumpled them and burped loudly before shaking his head. “Pure fucking skill, rookie!”

Then I spotted Falco taking sips of beer. He raised an eyebrow at me. “In small amounts, this stuff’s as good as any ol’ PED.” I somehow doubted that. “But—glad to see you came ready to rumble, Lucha-D.”

“It’s bullshit!” Becca groused, “I’m your shooter, Falco! How could you just toss me aside like this?”

“I’m sorry, Becca,” I said, bowing my head at her. “I wanted to learn some stuff for a thing I’m doing and—”

“Don’t make me feel bad for getting angry now!” she glared at me. “You know I can’t say no to those puppy-dog eye-holes of yours, skullface!”

“Hah!” Pilar cackled, slapping his thigh. “You know, I still can’t get over that gonk-ass mask of yours, D. It’s really fucking ugly. Not the design—honestly, that goes kinda hard. But it’s a low-quality cloth mask that you tore a hole in to let your hair out. The fuck’s wrong with you?”

“You can afford better, Lucha-D,” Falco twirled his mustache, giving me a shit-eating grin.

Lucy snorted, her spirits having picked up visibly—or maybe that was just the beer. “Says he wants us to invest in ballistic threads, too, but what the hell does he know about threads anyway? Falco, did you see his corpo outfit yet?” Her eyes glowed golden, and so did Falco’s for a moment.

Then his eyes widened and he burst out laughing. “Sweet Jesus on a cross, you tryna make me go blind or something? That’s bright.”

[Hah!]

D: No, not you, too. Shut the fuck up.

[Hah! Hah! Hah!]

“Why is it always me?” I growled, “why is it always me?”

Lucy giggled, and Becca just cackled evilly at my misery.

Pilar tossed me another beer. “Drown out your sorrows.” Fuck’s sake.

Well—wasn’t like I was doing much other than standing around right now.

“Falco,” I said to him as I cracked open the beer and hiked up my mask to take a sip. “When’s the race starting, and… why do you even need a shooter to begin with? Are we allowed to just shoot other contestants?”

A few of the nomads with their cars parked near to us looked at me and gave me nasty glares. The hell was their problem?

"Settle down there, cowboy," Falco drawled with a chuckle. "Nah—you’re here for my protection. Races like this tend to draw all sorts, and plenty of 'em ain’t above doin’ whatever it takes to make sure they cash in big. Even if it means riggin’ the game. And more often than not, that means hirin’ Wraiths."

“Fucking Wraiths,” Rebecca spat. “They’re like the Strom of the badlands—or the scavs. Worthless scumfuckers.”

“I resent that,” Pilar said. I blinked—wait, was he a…?

“You’re a worthless scumfucker too, big bro. That’s why I’ll be the one to kill you someday.”

“No you won’t,” he snorted. “Was gonna say though—the Wraiths are way sweeter than the Strom. It’s not even a competition. You got some fucking unwashed desperados led by a guy who called himself, what, Dogfucker? Dogeater? He’s dead now, so it doesn’t even fucking matter. But that’s just some gimmicky bullshit. The truth is, they’re low-tech savages, sweeter than sweet. All the Raffen Shiv are—the Wraiths are just a speck shinier.”

Well, I had taken out a whole bunch of them on my lonesome, with minimal weaponry to boot.

"Sweet or not, they’re still packin’ iron," Falco said. "And while I’m fast, I sure as hell ain’t faster than a bullet. Now, D, I seen that trick shot you pulled on the Tanaka job—dropped two corp boys with one bullet, clean as a whistle. That ain’t somethin’ you see everyday. I think you’d do a mighty fine job on this race."

“Okay, but,” I said, “I asked for this so I could learn how to race, not shoot while riding in a race car. You still think you could give me some pointers?”

“Sure, just keep your eyes peeled on what I’m doing and the road, alright?” Falco suggested.

I nodded, “Sounds good.” I’d have to really pay attention though, and I doubted that this exercise would do anything but launch my skill into the realm of pure basics. Maybe if I was lucky, I could absorb some tricks here and there, but the bulk of my real training would be taking out an actual Caliburn for a spin.

I muscled through the beer and rewound the conversation a little, “Pilar—you said you were Strom?”

Pilar chuckled, “Yeah—back in the day.”

“Wow,” I chuckled, unsurely, “Were they that much fun to party with or what?”

“Ain’t no party like a Maelstrom party, no,” Pilar said before cracking open another beer. Right before downing it, he paused, “I wasn’t there for the parties, though.” The atmosphere seemed to darken a little at that proclamation. No one said a word, and even I felt a slight pit in my gut at that. Then Pilar’s grin returned in full force. “Enough about that dark shit—I’ll tell you some other time when there ain’t as much fun to be had.”

I nodded, though I couldn’t help but feel this twist in my gut. Despite how he was, I honestly liked Pilar. He’d helped me out a ton without any expectations of payback—and he was apparently helping Maine out with his chrome, too. He had his problems, but I felt like I could count on him.

Hearing about his past was…

No. Fuck that noise.

Don’t care if he was the devil’s deadbeat dad, none of that shit matters anymore.

He was in the Crew, just like I was. And he hadn’t let me down yet.

“Any reason why you got the urge to learn racin’ anyhow, D?” Falco asked, changing the subject.

“Ah, right,” I said, “… schoolmate of mine tipped me in about some corpo race,” I said, keeping my voice low so strangers wouldn’t hear me. “Seems like a half-decent way to earn some extra edds on the side.”

"Ah," Falco nodded, takin’ a deeper swig of his beer. "Well, hate to break it to ya, but a corpo street race ain’t the same as tearin’ up a dirt road, I’ll tell ya that much for free. That bunch is all ‘bout driftin’ and handling, threadin’ the needle, all that fancy showboatin’—‘specially if they’re ‘Saka. They call it Toe-Gay racin’ or somethin’ or other. Parlor tricks, really. You know if they’re runnin’ it through a parkin’ tower or takin’ it to the streets? Usually one or the other, since there ain’t no mountains around with good driftin’ roads. ‘Cept for the canyon down our way—but ain’t no corpo brave enough to take their Caliburns down here. Too many Wraiths prowlin’ about."

Well, shit. “Don’t know, really.”

"Well, if it’s a street race, you might just pick up a thing or two ridin’ with me—if it’s one of them Cat and Mouse drift races, though, you might wanna hit the books and do some learnin’ on your own. Ya see—this here’s a Vale Tudo race, partner. Ain’t no holds barred—'cept for straight up shootin’ other racers, ‘course. That there’s bad form. Yer job’s simple: keep that iron ready in case any Wraiths get ideas. Only the Wraiths, alright? Other’n that? The rules don’t get much simpler—git ahead, by any means necessary."

“You’re racing corpos?!” Becca asked me. “Can I come?” Lucy clicked her tongue and I sighed.

“I’d rather you not,” I said, lowering my voice, “I’m keeping my identities separate, remember?”

“It’s the whole point of the fucking mask!” Pilar chided, “You pint-sized bimbo.”

“Fuck off!” Rebecca put a hand on her pink lexington, holstered on her side. Jesus, not again.

“I’m sorry, Becca,” I said, putting my hands up placatingly. “Look, I’ll scroll a BD for you if that’s fine. But there likely won’t be much to see—I’m probably just gonna crash and burn anyway.”

There was only so much that speedware could do for your driving skills. Superior reflexes and information processing time, sure, but what would that do for my control over a car I had never driven before? If it was a bike race, I’d feel more confident, but Jin had specifically mentioned cars—the Caliburn at that. And now Falco was inundating me with incomprehensible racing jargon.

“Hah! I’ll hold you to it!” Becca yelled. I crumpled my beer can and tossed it into the ice cooler.

“Well, well, well,” I heard a gravelly, low voice intrude into our space and turned towards its source—a mustachio’d man wearing a cowboy hat and a leather vest on top of a stained white shirt, blue denim jeans, and brown leather boots. Flanking him were a pair of desperado-looking motherfuckers, one wearing a bandana over his lower face, and another sporting a blood-thirsty grin and wore a bandolier with three tech revolvers, as well as two attached to each side of his hips. "Well, if it ain’t the renny-runner himself, ridin’ in like a fool to try his luck ‘gainst the Wraiths for pocket change."

Falco chuckled darkly, tossing the empty beer can over his shoulder and making it land perfectly on the roof of his Quadra before stepping up to the cowboy man. "Well, if it ain’t the dust-covered Aldecaldo kibble-muncher, still sore ‘bout playin’ second fiddle to his betters."

The man’s disdainful grin turned into one of genuine delight. “Hah!” He spread his arms and hugged Falco, who returned the hug. “Always a pleasure to hear you run that razor-sharp tongue of yours, Falco.” He pulled back from the hug and put his hands on his hips, still wearing an ecstatic grin. “How ya doin’?”

“Seen worse days,” Falco nodded. “How bout yourself?”

The man shook his head, “You know me, Falco—ridin’ low and keepin’ my chooms out of trouble as always.”

Falco chuckled, “Still raisin’ hell, I see.”

“Nothin’ like that! You know trouble’s always got a way of findin’ me—just plain bad luck.”

“Still mighty chipper for a misfortunate feller, though.”

“If you’re gonna be unlucky, then you best be strong, too. Just the way it is. And if you’re strong, what’s the use in havin’ a long face?”

“Amen,” Falco nodded. “Anyway, to what do I owe the pleasure, Buck? Not that this conversation ain’t a right pleasure in and of itself.”

“Just makin’ my rounds, seein’ chooms, dispensin’ some good ol’ wisdom so my favorite people in the world don’t get caught lackin’.”

Falco perked up, “Really, now?”

“Really,” Buck nodded, “Got some shifty out-of-towners nobody knows or trusts. They’re setting off my alarm bells,” he looked over his shoulder and I tracked his line of sight. “The guys in the blue and black R-7s. Here for the money, but I doubt they’re all about playing fair while they’re at it.” I blinked. Implying that everyone else were going to play fair? I already had half a mind to quickhack the whoever was the frontrunner and hold them back for Falco.

Or maybe that sort of cheating was just old-hat, and those assholes were planning on being way more blatant. You never fucking knew.

Then again, he’d said ‘out-of-towners’, hadn’t he? I hardly considered anyone living outside of this shithole called Night City to be a credible threat. Should we even be worried?

I looked at the shifty people. They looked like any old nomad to me—dressed to brave the desert, wearing machine-like cyberware with no Realskinn, like Falco’s mech-arm.

I shrugged internally—I was already wary against everyone here, being that I was Falco’s muscle for this race: Buck and his gang included.

Towards that end, I made to Breach Falco’s Quadra to check for any intrusions.

“Appreciate the heads-up, Buck,” Falco nodded. “You stay safe, too.”

Buck dug through his pockets and retrieved a couple of items—a booklet of rolling papers and a pouch. With both hands, he pulled out a pair of papers, fished out a pinch of tobacco from the pouch and his fingers blurred as he rolled both cigarettes within three seconds tops. He handed one of the unfinished rolls to Falco, who took it and licked the length of paper sticking out before sealing the cigarette shut while Buck did much the same. “Just remember, Falco—don’t start lettin’ yer pecker do the thinkin’ for ya. Never ends well.”

Falco snorted. “Doesn’t always—but when it does?” He whistled.

“Hah!” Pilar cackled.

Buck chuckled. “So be it. So long, renny-runner.”

“You too, cowfucker.”

“You kiss your mother with that mouth?” Buck snorted as he pointed his index finger at his cigarette. The tip detached on a hinge to reveal an inbuilt lighter, which he used to light his cig before tipping his hat with his other hand and leaving.

“You sure got good friends, Falco,” Lucy noted.

“The fuck’s a renny-runner anyway?” Becca asked.

“Don’t even bother,” Pilar laughed, “I don’t understand half the shit these cowboys say anyway.”

“Renny, as in renegade," Falco said, tapping his mech finger against the tip of his cigarette. The metal split open like a little hatch, spitting out a tiny blue jet of flame that lit it up in an instant. "See, my folks had it better’n most nomads—they ran a farm out in Texas for Biotechnica. Livin’ high on the hog, least compared to most road dogs. Nomads who cozy up to the corps? Folks call ‘em renegades. Which makes me a double-renny, ‘cause I left them, too. And ‘Runner’? Well, that’s just our trade, ain’t it?” He took a deep drag of his cigarette, "And I wouldn’t be so quick to take Buck’s plain ol’ Southern hospitality for kindness. He’s itchin’ for that cash prize same as the rest of us. Hunned thousand ain’t chump change, ya know. And it’s winner takes all. Might be he’s tryin’ to throw me off his own dirty play, or maybe he’s shootin’ straight—but either way, it don’t change a damn thing. I’m takin’ this win today.”

Pilar’s hand darted towards Falco’s face, probably to klep the cig. Falco smoothly leaned backwards, dodging the hand by a mile. The moment Pilar adjusted his hand, Falco dodged the other way, merrily puffing on the cigarette.

I finally managed to access Falco’s Quadra, and immediately spotted the hastily constructed backdoor someone had built within its security protocol. I shut that shit down and barricaded it for dear life—wouldn’t stop anyone from trying to build a new one from a different angle, so I had to make damn sure I was the only Runner poking around. “Found some shit in your Quadra’s system, Falco. Patched it up, though.”

“Huh!” Falco gave me a raised eyebrow, and then grinned sharply, “Invitin’ you over’s already beginning to pay for itself. Good job, D!”

“Still gotta be careful,” Lucy folded her arms and glared at our competition. “Having an airtight system won’t stop some of these guys from pinging the ride and sending the Wraiths coords as well as a bounty on it.”

I picked up my guitar case of weapons from the ground and approached the Quadra, unlocking the door with a mental tug and opening it. “That’s where I come in, ain’t it?”

000

The starting line was almost twenty meters wide, and the cars were stacked into over ten different layers—an enormous mess of vehicles of every shape and size.

At the very, very back of the entire pack sat Falco and I. I sighed as I scrunched my nose at the smell of exhaust from so many of the cars. I watched as Falco brushed the many different buttons all across his dash with a feather duster, fiddling with them and seemingly making sure that they weren’t snagged on anything.

The inside of Falco’s Quadra looked like a fucking space ship, truth be told. There were buttons and switches even on the ceiling, and between us, on the console, sat a glass tank containing some sort of fluid. The tank narrowed to a spout at the top, sealed by a silver metal cap.

So many fucking buttons, though—no way more than half of them even did anything. “Sweet ride,” I muttered. “You gonna tell me the specs or what?”

“Specs don’t make the racer,” Falco said, “I done poured more blood, sweat ‘n tears into this ride than you can fathom, but I’d still scuttle it in half a heartbeat if it meant winning—pays not to get too attached.”

Wow, “That’s… kinda brutal. For a gearhead.”

“I’m a racer, D,” he said with a light tone as he continued to meticulously inspect every button, every dial and every switch. “I win races. S’what I do. Now, the Emperor—that’s my baby. Love her more than life itself. Built her with Pilar’s help to last—it’s an urban tank with enough speed to outrun even the most determined badge in town, and enough firepower to take on a whole damn squad of cyberpsychos if it came down to it. In comparison, this baby’s just a means to an end.” He grinned at the windshield. I couldn’t even begin to guess at what he meant. Winning, probably, but there was something more. Something almost romantic in his grin and eyes.

I couldn’t deny his passion, though. Guy was playing to win, that much was for certain.

“The hell are we all the way back here for anyway?”

“The hell’s the point of racing if you’re gonna frontrun the entire way?” Falco asked. “Gotta make it fun to make it worthwhile. Can’t just be for the money. ‘Sides—this way, you’ll get to at least watch me pull some fun lil’ tricks before it’s your turn to earn your keep.” He started poking around in his dashboard before pulling out a shard and slotting it into his sound system. Immediately, a quick bassline and drum beat started to play.

“It’s a beautiful evening here as we get ready to start the race,” came the voice of an announcer playing through the radio. Wait—it wasn’t evening. Was this part of the song? Falco grinned like a loon as I stared at him. “The drivers are at the line and it looks like we’re almost set. Racers, start your engines,” Falco did exactly that. A loud blaring sound came from outside the car and the ones ahead of us slowly began to push forward, “go!”

“Perk up, Lucha-D! It’s all in the game!” Falco pulled the stick, changing gears and driving into the thick dustcloud ahead of him, obscuring literally everything.

“The fuck?!” I shouted. “How can you even see anything?” I sent out a Ping immediately, just to make sure we weren’t crashing into another car or something.

“The hell do I need eyes for? I know this track like the back of my hand, and I got a screen to tell me the rest” Falco claimed, “Speaking of hands, Lucha-D, keep your eyes fixed on mine. This right here? It’s my favorite part of racing!” He poked at a screen on the dashboard, currently keyed to this race. It contained our placing and a general map of the track. We were currently in the seventy-second place, out of seventy-two cars.

“You wanna guess how long it’ll take for me to get to top ten, young buck?”

“A minute?” I hazarded.

“Twenty,” he said.

“Wait—twenty minutes?” I asked. That sounded pretty terrible.

“Never said nothing about no minutes, Lucha-D. I mean twenty seconds.”

I looked back at the screen that still said seventy-second.

“What’s this?” the song’s narrator said, “A mystery car has just entered the race! And he’s coming from behind! Like. A. Bullet!”

“Start the count, D!”

I started the count on my Kiroshis and said “Go.”

“Can’t slow down this time,” the vocals finally arrived. “I gotta rev it up and go.”

Falco changed gears and floored the pedal. The G-force instantly flattened me to the backrest. Falco then slammed a button on his dashboard and I felt a lurch in my stomach as my butt pushed against the seat. Having finally escaped the dust cloud, I could see what we were doing—landing on the roof of a Chevillon Emperor before driving over the windshield. Falco pressed his button again and the wheels jumped from the emperor, probably shattering the windshield in its wake and getting us extra speed as we then landed on the dirt again, this time, clocking in at a whooping two hundred klicks an hour.

“I gotta keep it in the lines, tonight there’s blood on the road.”

Falco pressed another button, a different one this time, and started driving closer to other cars. I could still barely make out shit through the dust, and was only able to see the cars through Ping. Falco’s only way to get visuals would have been one of the screens on the dashboard. I looked up at his face and saw that his eyes were fixed on that very screen, not what was in front of him. The cars we drove up against made loud popping sounds and began to slow down while we were only speeding up and getting closer to more cars. The hell was he doing? I craned my neck to look to the side of our car to satisfy my theory—yep, we had blades sticking out from the wheels.

Fuck!

Ahead of us was a row of tightly packed muscle cars, providing an uncrossable line that I couldn’t see Falco getting past—without using the fucking jump thing again at least. Was he going to?

I looked around for a seatbelt actually, now almost certain that I definitely fucking needed one, but I found none. Jesus Christ.

Falco rammed against the truck, twisting his car so the collision came at an angle, causing the truck to crash into one of its neighbors, opening a spot for us to shimmy through within a split second.

“I keep the pedal down. They’re gonna know how this felt.”

Then Falco started singing, his voice perfectly matching the vocals as he slammed into the big red button in the middle of the dashboard, firing a fucking harpoon at the biggest, baddest truck in the running. “No one gets into heaven…” The harpoon struck the back of the car, reeling us in at gut-wrenching speeds. Just as we were about to ram into the truck’s back, Falco pushed the jump button again, managing to wrench the harpoon back from the truck as we soared through the air, flipping the truck on its back on our way over the damn thing. “Without racing through hell!”

The air finally cleared, allowing us to see the fucking track without instruments.

My Kiroshis beeped and I yelled, “time!”

I looked at the leaderboard—ninth. Just like he promised.

“Eye for eye!” Falco belted, “Lap for lap! There's no turning back!”

Then the narrator’s voice came back. “And he’s caught them! That’s one hell of a driver!”

Were these the sort of mods that my car needed to win that corpo race? There was no way any of these were street legal.

Falco changed gears again, kicking up our speed and pushing me against the backrest again so that we could catch up to the pack ahead of us—numbers nine, eight and seven.

“You’ve got to slow down,” came a chorus of pessimistic voices. Falco then sang, “feels like my blood is runnin’ hot.”

He swung the wheel violently and then the other way, against the turn? What—why? We were going to run straight off the track at that rate.

But against the conventions of physics, the car turned against the steering wheel’s direction. The hell?

“The needle’s in the red,” came the pessimistic chorus.

“Gimme everything you got!” Falco sang. His drift raised up a plume of dust that carpeted numbers nine through seven as he pulled ahead of them. He straightened his wheels and sped off once more.

I took note of that—turn one way to drift the other. Fuck, that was confusing. How did that even work?

“Can’t escape! The blood and steel! Death behind the wheeeeeeeels!”

“What the actual fuck, Falco?!” I breathed, my mouth dry as I felt my heart pounding in my chest. I swung my head at him as he grinned maniacally, staring straight ahead. “This is fucking nutty!”

“Hah!” Falco cackled, “NC racin’, kid. It is what it is. I was just thinnin’ the herd is all—” Yeah, right! He fucking tore their asses up and probably caused a fifty-car-pileup in his wake. “They weren’t ever gonna win anyway, so it wasn’t like I was racing against them. Here on out, I’m playing straight as an arrow. Speakin’ off, you’re almost up, D. I’ll pull the top when the bogeys start crowding.”

“Right!” I said, looking up ahead. We were in a three-kilometer long stretch of straight road now. “Also—is this your music, Falco?”

“Damn right!” He grinned toothily. I looked down at his gear and saw that he was out of upshifts—already on the sixth and highest gear. We were moving fast, but the other cars were moving just as fast. "Used to ride with a band once, back when I thought makin' a quick stack o’ eddies meant strummin' chords instead o’ runnin’ jobs—when I wasn’t racin’, that is. Sang my guts out on a bunch o' ballads just to get ‘em to produce one damn track I believed in. Critics called us soft—said we didn’t got no bite—but I tell ya what, D… it was worth every damn note. Whole damn ride."

We were still in seventh place by quite a few lengths—how we were going to catch up was beyond me. “I thought you said you were gonna win this, Falco.”

“I ain’t even turned on my nitro, yet,” he grinned. Right. He rummaged through his pockets, pulling out a glass-like capsule filled with a bright blue liquid. With a swift motion, he uncorked a glass tank sitting between us, dropped the capsule inside, and twisted the top back on. The tank erupted in a burst of color, sending a stream of energy into the car’s hidden systems. Ahead of us, the engine roared to life, spitting blue flames. The G-forces slammed into me, pushing me back so hard it felt like I couldn’t breathe. Falco gripped the wheel with white-knuckled determination as the car surged forward, accelerating relentlessly—five hundred, six hundred, seven hundred kilometers per hour.

Falco hammered the wheels as the song picked up with a sick guitar riff, “Faster! I can hear my heart beatin’!” Another riff. “Faster! Like a piston in my chest!” Numbers six and five failed to keep up as we sped past them, reaching eight hundred. “Faster! I’m a phantom racer, justice in a steel machine of death!”

I noted that numbers six and five were the blue and black Sport R-7s that Falco’s friend had warned him about. True to form, I felt a ping about an impending Breach, and undid it as it arrived, sending my own cyberattack to keep them stalled.

Number four was Buck himself, driving a Thorton Mackinaw pick-up truck, with a machine gun nest in the bed and a disgustingly oversized engine at the front that completely obscured the windshield. He was probably using a camera system to see past it.

“Get on up now, D!” Falco yelled as he sent me a call. The top of the roof rolled back and I grabbed the tech rifle from the back before poking my head out and accepting the call.

Falco: See anyone?

D: Dust-cloud three klicks away, just about. Quadra Reavers.

I focused my eyes and zoomed in on the cars, spotting a guy also poking out from the top of one car, an enormous rocket launcher on his shoulder, aimed at the race. Shit. Couldn’t shoot him from all the way here—he was fucking far away. I’d probably have better luck shooting the rocket out from the sky once it fired.

D: I see a Wraith with an RPG—fuck, he just fired it. At us!

Falco: Shoot the rocket, D.

I activated the Sandevistan and lined the shot, waiting for the rocket to come closer as I charged the precision rifle to max power.

When it was a hundred meters away, I finally fired.

The bullet struck the flank of the rocket instead of the nose, but that was enough. It exploded mid-air.

I heard the plink of gunfire at the back of our car and turned around to see some scumfucker at number nine take potshots at us. The out-of-towner whose systems I had attacked.

D: Got a bitch in the back tryna shoot us—should I flatline him?

Falco: eeeeeeh, fuck it. Guy should have known better.

I pulled the trigger, detonating the shooter’s brains. His body went slack and wind resistance did the rest of the job, immediately pulling him from the vehicle, tossing him back. The driver looked behind in shock, and then up ahead at us. I showed him the finger and dragged my thumb over my throat before refocusing on the rapidly approaching Wraiths.

Falco: turn up ahead—get in, D. Can’t afford drag for this one.

I slid smoothly back into the car as we approached the turn—or series of turns as it were. A drift challenge along a canyon to our left and a cliff wall to our right. At least we’d be obscured from the incoming Wraiths on the right.

“Watch closely, D,” Falco warned, his voice steady even as his hands moved like lightning. A part of me numbly noted that he was no longer singing. His fingers danced across the wheel with precise jerks, pulling it left, then right, each turn sharp, uncontrolled almost—but I knew better. Knew that I didn’t know shit, at least. There was no way that anything about this was uncontrolled. As I looked down at the snaking road between the unyielding cliff wall and the death drop, I knew that every maneuver of Falco’s would have to be perfectly precise for us to survive while still keeping our lead.

He downshifted, then slammed the gearstick up a notch, revving the engine high before quickly easing the clutch in and out. The car’s tires screeched in protest, kicking up gravel as he drifted effortlessly into the first curve.

He nudged the throttle, sending a burst of power through the wheels, then flicked the wheel hard to the left, throwing the rear end of the car wide into the canyon’s edge, causing me to grab my seat with all my might. His foot hovered over the brake for just a fraction of a second before he slammed it, shifting the car’s weight, making the back end snap sharply back onto the perfect trajectory.

In a seamless, fluid motion, he punched the gas again, the car sliding sideways like a wild animal before he spun the wheel the opposite way, pulling us back into line, just inches from the cliff.

“Hold on,” Falco muttered under his breath as the car whirled through the next set of turns, drifting with ease, each movement a perfect balance of speed, control, and reckless precision. The car's rear end swayed dangerously, but with each shift, every tap on the pedals, Falco kept us gliding effortlessly through the narrow canyon, leaving the Wraiths trailing far behind.

“We got past the Wraiths!” I shouted.

“Just the first group—still the ambush up ahead to consider, and any surprises that might crop up. ‘S why I’m keeping good ol’ Buck and the others up ahead. They’ll make a fine early warning system. Frontrunning’s a fool’s game, D, sure as.” I nodded numbly as we finally reached the bottom of the canyon. All that was left was an uphill slope and two other sharp turns. Falco upshifted to keep up with the rest, but didn’t look like he was able to overtake them. At this point, though, I knew better than to doubt that he was trailing behind on purpose. “Important question. What do you think about number one?”

I looked down at the console, at the screen showing number one, in a violet Quadra Sport model, the R-7. As far as I could tell, the Sport series was built for speed whereas the Type 66 that most nomads, including Falco, seemed to drive were more for survivability. “They’re fast.”

Falco snorted, “ain’t nobody in this entire race that I’d call fast. I’m talking about her looks, D. What do you think?”

“Huh?” The Sport’s looks?

Falco grinned cockily. “That right there’s my missus. Sure as shootin’. Only she don’t know it yet.”

“Huh?”

“She’s the belle of the ball, D. She caught my eye from the jump. Beautiful car and a beautiful rider. She’ll learn my name once this race is over and done with. Ain’t a doubt in my mind that she’ll learn it.”

I blinked. “Best of luck with that.”

“Luck’s for suckers, kid,” he straightened his mustache and his voice took on a low, gravelly tone, “I don’t do luck. Roof, D—and keep that rifle charged up.”

The roof rolled back and I hurried to obey, charging the rifle and keeping an eye out on the horizon, the back of the race and the front all at once.

More Wraiths were approaching from a distance, these ones way closer. Buck’s car up ahead was already starting to rain a holy hellfire of fifty caliber gunfire on them—same with the other three cars up ahead, providing a thick veil of cover fire that stopped the incoming locust’s hail of Raffen Shiv dead in their tracks.

Since they had that well handled, I focused up ahead at the race-track that was only now beginning to slope upwards for the last stretch.

A pair of poles that looked like tesla coils sprung up from the dirt on either side of the road just as number one drove right through and immediately began to slow down.

D: Falco!

Falco: I saw—Buck’s doing, no doubt about it.

He swerved to the side, going around the pole.

And then slowed down. The fuck? Did we get hit as well?

No way! The system was still online!

Falco rolled down the window as he slowed to the speed of the sputtering Sport R-7 that the former number one was driving. “Need help, pretty mama?” He said as they both finally came to a stop.

My eyes widened in shock at what I was seeing. Then I remembered Buck’s words:

“Just remember, Falco—don’t start lettin’ yer pecker do the thinkin’ for ya. Never ends well.”

He planned this.

And Falco was falling for it! For fuck’s sake!

The woman—beautiful, as Falco had noted—glared at him. She was blonde and her violet cat-like Kiroshis matched the color of her ride. “Fuck off!”

With the main pack long gone and no more cover-fire to impede the Wraiths, they sped up ahead once more. Fuck. I activated my Sandevistan, though I kept the output low, and began to aim my tech rifle at one of the drivers of the fleet of eight cars making their way over. It had been three times that much before the frontrunners had gunned them down, but this was still too much for me, especially at this distance.

I took aim and fired at one driver eight hundred meters away. I missed, instead hitting the windshield. Falco dove out from his car, popped the hood, grabbed some jumper cables and—

I had to look up again at the Wraiths once I spotted another rocket launcher. Fuck! I had barely managed to hit the last rocket, too!

I took a deep breath and remembered Falco’s advice. Keep cool. Remember your training—the hours spent at the gun range, raining hell on a target I imagined was Katsuo.

I braced the tech rifle against my shoulder, aimed, and stilled my entire body. Once the rocket came close enough, I fired in between the gaps in my heart beats, just like Becca had taught me to.

The bullet struck an inch off the nose, but still hit, exploding the rocket and granting us a quick reprieve via a smoke screen. I was getting closer to the target at least.

I activated Ping. Then I fired through the smokescreen at where my Ping indicated there was a driver. This time, I managed to hit—from eighty meters away, just in range of my Ping. Two-ninety.

Falco jump-started the R-7’s car. She gave him a wicked grin and sped away, the cables still attached to her fucking battery. The hood lowered by itself while Falco scrambled to get his ass into the car.

D: Was it worth it?

Falco: It will be

I could hear his mischievous tone.

Falco: Good job on the cover-fire, D, but it’s time you get your ass down and watch me win this shit.

“If you lose this race because you couldn’t help yourself,” I groused as I dropped the rifle on the backseats and sat down once more.

“Y’ain’t seen my turbo yet, Lucha-D,” Falco chuckled, his attitude still smooth as ice, and every bit as cool. His right hand reached over to a button encased in glass on the console, right in front of the nitrous tank. Without hesitation, he flipped the cover up and pressed it.

If I thought we’d been fast before, I was dead fucking wrong. The car didn’t just accelerate—it detonated forward, the sudden boost making our three-hundred-kilometer-an-hour sprint feel like an old lady crawling out from a car wreck. My cheeks peeled back, my vision blurred, my entire body compressed against the seat as the G-force tried to crush me flat.

Ahead of us, the track twisted violently—a brutal set of hairpin turns, the kind that would force even the most seasoned racers to slow down or risk hitting the forest of rocky outcroppings that would wreck any vehicle’s underside. But Falco? Falco didn’t slow down.

Instead, he veered off the road entirely.

For a moment, my brain screamed at me to activate the Sandevistan, to blink the hell out of this coffin on wheels before he buried us both. Then I saw it—an outcropping barely distinguishable from the rest of the jagged terrain. It wasn’t a ramp, not really, but it was just sloped enough. Enough for a madman like Falco to use it.

I looked at the insanity in his grin and made my decision. No bailing. Not this time. I’d have faith in the crew’s getaway driver.

The car hit the slope, and we flew.

The track below was a blur of motion. The racers ahead were still grinding through the sharp turns, their vehicles fighting to maintain traction on the narrowest parts of the only safe road through the badlands. Falco? He was above them, soaring over the bends like they didn’t even exist.

Beneath us, two cars struggled through the snaking canyon route, engines roaring as their tires clawed at the asphalt. They had no choice but to navigate each brutal turn. We had already bypassed them.

Falco reached up, fingers tapping rapidly against a set of buttons on the ceiling. A shudder ran through the car. A second later, I realized why.

Jet thrusters.

A deep, bass-heavy whumpf sounded from beneath us, and the entire vehicle shifted. Not just forward—angled. Falco twisted us mid-air, orienting the car toward the final stretch of the race as we soared over the last remaining turn.

Then, with his metal fist, he slammed the dashboard.

With a hiss, two handles extended outward, resembling the control grips of a fighter jet. He yanked them free, then hammered his fist against the center, forcing the thrusters to push us forward at an even greater speed. The G-force slammed into my chest like a freight train and my eyes could hardly fathom the number I was seeing on the digital speedometer—there was no way we had just peaked at eleven hundred klicks an hour, even if it had been for just a second. I turned my eyes on the track, letting myself feel a moment of shame for ever thinking that I was fast.

Being in the air was just cheating, though.

Below us, the racers were only now breaking into the final stretch. They had taken the fastest, most traversable road available in the mess of rocks that littered the badlands. But Falco? Falco had just rewritten the rules, utterly erasing their lead and putting us in contention with number one.

As the ground rushed up to meet us, he pulled the handles down, then let them go. With a snap, they retracted into the dash. He seized the wheel just in time for impact.

The tires hit the road. The suspension screamed. Sparks exploded outward as we landed, but Falco was already correcting our trajectory, hands a blur as he stabilized the vehicle.

And we weren’t alone.

To our right, practically level with us, the violet R-7 roared ahead—the racer Falco had rescued. Somehow, some way, she had fought her way back into the lead.

Falco grinned. I exhaled sharply, my heart still hammering.

Final stretch. One racer left.

This wasn’t over yet.

He flashed a shit-eating grin at his window. I heard a kissing sound before he refocused ahead of him and made one last push. He pushed ahead by half a length before his grin died. “Fuck.”

“What?!” I looked around—we were number one!

“Out of juice,” he chuckled self-deprecatingly. “That move done bled us dry. And all them other bogeys been saving up for this last stretch.”

I blinked at him. No. No, no, no! Not like this! I didn’t want to believe it.

The finish line was right fucking there! And we were leading by half a length!

Two hundred meters! One-fifty! One hundred!

Then little miss R-7 pushed ahead of us effortlessly. I turned around to see numbers three and four do exactly the same. I felt possessed for a moment with the irresistible urge to flatline those fuckers before they took what was rightfully ours!

God, this was painful.

“Out of juice, not options.”

Falco pressed another button. My eyes widened in shock—what would this one do?

I heard a hail of gunshots behind us and turned to see a pair of machine gun barrels stick out at an upward angle at the back of the car, firing recklessly, but not at the competition. Only in the air. Crazy as he was, Falco did have a conscience.

The recoil of the guns pushed us forward, letting us take back number three—then number two.

But not number one, I noticed, feeling a deep disappointment at that fact. She was leading by an entire length. There was no way we would be catching up without—

Falco pushed another button—detaching the entire fucking trunk from the car. Metal panels peeled off and littered the ground behind us, crunching under the tires of our competitors. The back window dropped as well. Then the panels surrounding the hind wheels.

As a result of the reduced weight, falco’s car began to eat up the R-7’s lead.

And I immediately knew what to do.

I activated the Sandevistan, gently patted Falco’s shoulder, and retreated into the backseats, grabbing all my guns and shoving them into the guitar case before clicking it shut. Then I climbed out from the hole where the back window used to be, and crouched on the backmost ledge of the roof.

I took a deep breath and jumped off from the ledge as hard as I could, floating in slow motion above the other cars. The race had been so much tighter than I had anticipated. When I finished flipping over, I landed roughly on the ground, already trying to run, trying to ignore the massive shock of energy that immediately shot through my body, shattering damn-near every bone in my lower body.

I had to wait a precious few seconds for my body to barely reform into working order before booting up the Sandy to get out of the way. Falco’s car received one extra bit of speed from the reduced weight just as he dropped the machine guns from the car’s chassis, too. A literal tenth of a second later, it was over.

Airhorns blared as both cars crossed the finish line, seemingly at the exact same time. “AND WE HAVE OUR WINNER BY PHOTO FINISH!”

“What the fuck?!” I heard someone behind me shout and turned around to see a crowd of people waiting by the sidelines. Right, the spectators. “Did he just come out of that car?!”

I eyed my Critical Progress just to see how much that landing had wrecked me. I was sitting at a staggering twenty-five percent. Sheesh.

I muscled past the sidelines and ran up ahead for Falco’s car as he came to a stop nearly a hundred meters after the finish line. Unfortunately, an enormous crush of bodies stopped me from getting any closer to the car, but then I remembered—I was still on that call with him, wasn’t I?

D: Falco, did we win?! Did we win?!

Falco: Shit kid.

My stomach dropped at that.

Falco: I dropped damn near every bit of weight I had, and it still wasn’t enough.

Fuck!

Falco: But then… you went and threw your own ass out, too. Lost me a cool hundred and seventy pounds from that alone. Dangit kid, you took your guns out, too. That was quick thinking, sure as shootin’.

My eyes widened in hope.

The sound system blared to life, “YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST, FOLKS! THE WINNER IS THE SILVER TYPE-SIXTY SIX!”

Falco: Whew

I couldn’t believe it. I jumped up at the crowd, still holding onto my guitar case of weapons, and started swimming over their heads towards the car until I reached the roof.

Then I took a deep breath, looked up at the sky, and shot both fists in the air.

“WOOHOOOOOOOO!”

 

Notes:

Hope you guys enjoyed! I had a ton of fun writing this one and I've been itching to release it.

Next chapter: 48 - Day of the D

Latest advanced chapter: 49 - Murk Man II

Discord link: https://discord.gg/W5BqBBym28

Chapter 48: Day of the D

The virtu’s one saving grace, in Judy’s opinion, was its brevity.

All told, including the Sandevistan bullet time, the gig took two minutes and fifteen seconds. That was, two minutes and fifteen seconds spent playing tango with the Strom while they emptied an entire clip at you, only to drag them around with one hand, using them as a shield to deflect a hail of bullets while fearlessly thrusting and slashing with a sword.

That was only the fucking start.

Each movement, each twitch seemed to carry a purpose. When Judy had seen the solo lift his gun up and aimed it at the facade of the storefront, at the fucking Ping outline of a gangoon separating them through several walls and floors, Judy hadn’t expected much but for the merc waste a bullet.

He hadn’t, in fact, wasted a bullet.

The slaughter was intense, but the attitude that the gunman maintained throughout it all was nothing short of muted. It would have been banal if it wasn’t genuinely fucking terrifying. Quite a few solos loved to go for this style of work—execution with dispassion and consummate skill. Most only had one or the other. And most who had both were full-blown psychopaths or just incipient cyberpsychos just waiting to have one bad day before they decided that a fire fight in the middle of a busy mall was as good a way as any to spend their Friday night.

Come to think of it, that kid was checking every box. He barely saw any of these people as humans, but… points.

In fact, Judy detected the merc thinking about numbers going up. From two-hundred and forty-one to be precise. Ticking all the way up to two-eighty eight with each kill.

He was counting his kills, keeping track. That was an old school way to go about it—Judy had heard rumors that the solos of Morgan Blackhand’s day used to do that sort of thing—and they went one step further by chipping in fashionware that was essentially an LED display, showing their number of bodies.

Either that, or the kid just had some weird kind of OCD.

That and a willingness to do the wildest shit in a BD, just to garner some kind of a reaction.

Like the bullet-dodging sequence, for instance.

Each gunshot scared the wits out of Judy, each roar of the Lexington—narrowly dodged by the solo with barely a thought—felt like living through the most intense slasherfilm BD in existence. With the added knowledge that all this had truly happened in the real, Judy felt a strange combination of terror for her own life, and terror at the merc that was D.

Who… who did this shit? Sandevistan or not, who fucking did this shit?

And—what the actual fuck was going on with that aspect ratio he was rocking?

It was the mask—had to be. His peripheral vision was shot to fucking hell, but he obviously didn’t fucking care.

None of the slaughter phased him—he was going out of his way to put himself in extra danger, clearly limiting his uses of the Sandevistan, all to entertain.

Terrifying.

After hours of work, Judy sat back in her technician chair, looking up at the chip she had burned of this Maelstrom extermination, and wondered—after most of the initial fear had seeped away—if maybe chasing the boy away wasn’t such a good idea after all?

Hell, it wasn’t like JK was actually in danger of getting dragged into all that Edgerunner shit—he was living large off of his work, making preem edds.

Meanwhile, most these fucking degenerates she dealt with on a regular basis couldn’t appreciate true art. Sometimes, Judy wondered if she was putting in too much work for an audience that just weren’t equipped to appreciate it.

Might as well pump up her profit margins pushing psycho BDs, no?

Then, she remembered the people that could appreciate her work—her favorite customers. Those that saw her art and appreciated the subtleties, the nuance of every touch, every burst of emotion.

She sold more than just porn to them.

She sold connection.

And that was kind of worth not making the big edds for.

Yeah… she’d leave the selling out to the idiots like JK, who thought edds were more important than creation.

And being honest, she would rather never meet that fucking skullmasked Cyberpsycho again in her life if she could help it.

She’d sold out enough for a lifetime.

Preem edds, too. Twenty K wasn’t anything to sneeze at.

000

“To Falco!” Pilar roared, raising his condensation-coated can of cold beer far up over his mohawked head.

Rebecca, Lucy and I followed suit before taking deep sips. The carbonation still couldn’t touch the buzz I was riding on, and it likely wouldn’t for some time.

I put the can down on the table—which was an inactive turret with a plastic board screwed on top.

“Holy shit,” I muttered. Just. Holy shit.

“The fuck’s that mustachio’d gonk even doing?” Rebecca looked around us. There were still a bunch of people around, celebrating the conclusion of the race with drinks of their own, hundreds of different picnics around coolers filled with ice and drink.

I looked around and spotted Falco a moment later, leaning up against his trashed Type-66, sweet-talking the blonde girl with the violet Sport R-7. He pinched his chin and bit his lower lips while she folded her arms and looked down her nose at him, clearly unimpressed. I wasn’t sure if he was gloating or just flirting.

But I decided to withhold my judgment, and not be so pessimistic for him. Guy was a legend—no way in hell she’d turn him down after—

She snorted, pointing her nose in the air, before turning around and getting inside her car to drive off.

“HAH!” Pilar laughed. Falco ambled over towards us, and had to catch a beer can flying at incredible speeds. Falco caught it without missing a beat, still smiling as though he hadn’t just been turned down in front of all of us. “No luck, huh? No pecker-stickin’ for you, cowboy.”

“You’re in rare form, today, Pil,” Falco chuckled, shaking his head. “Besides—you tryna tell me you’d have better luck with that little lady?”

“Maybe—if you hadn’t chased her off with your fuckin’ Kentucky Fried Foghorn Leghorn drawl, I could have showed her what a real Edgerunner can do, choom! And I’m not talking about finger-fucking no bitch-mobile in the desert with a bunch of dusty Mad Max motherfuckers.” Damn, Pilar.

Falco shook his beer and cracked it open, spraying it on Pilar, who tried to contort his way out of the spray.

He was pretty much asking for it.

“BEER FIGHT!” Rebecca roared, grabbing two beers and shaking them. I felt Lucy immediately dart behind me, holding me in place for Rebecca to crack open both beer cans with her index fingers and send the foam spraying at my face.

Goddammit!

I laughed as I grabbed Lucy and held her in front of me to absorb the second half of Rebecca’s volley before grabbing my beer can from the table to use as an impromptu weapon. I stopped the hole with my finger, shook what was left inside and whipped the foam at Rebecca and Lucy, both of whom were squealing at the sudden shower of cold liquid.

Then I took a deep breath through my nose, only for my cloth mask to waterboard me with beer, stunning me into dropping my cans.

I was barely able to see out of my eyeholes to defend myself or dodge away as I hitched up the mask to breathe—but thankfully, Rebecca had focused her fire on Lucy, who was doing her best to doge away from the beer, falling low and stepping away rapidly, betraying a deep level of training and bodily control. Lucy was definitely no slouch in meatspace.

I used the Sandevistan to grab myself a pair of beers. I shook them rapidly and deactivated the Sandevistan.

I copied Rebecca’s technique, opening both cans with my index fingers, giving both Lucy and Rebecca healthy sprays in retaliations.

“THE FUCK IS YOUR MALFUNCTION?!” I heard some random nearby nomad shout at us. “Take that kindergarten shit somewhere else or I’ll flatline the lot—” A full beer can smashed into his face, causing him to fall on his ass, utterly insensate.

I saw Rebecca’s outstretched hand towards the nomad. She glared at him. “Motherfucking gonk.”

I looked at her with a raised eyebrow, “That was… surprisingly non-lethal of you.”

Rebecca looked at me with a grin and a raised eyebrow, “The fuck kind of a cyberpsycho do you think I am?”

“The one that pulls guns on her own brother,” I chuckled.

She grimaced. “That’s fucking different.”

Lucy snorted. “Pilar’s a special case—he can get flatlined and no one will bat an eye.”

Falco laughed. “Now ain’t that the unvarnished truth.”

“Hey!” Pilar shouted, glaring at all of us. “You’re talking like I ain’t the one modding your guns and making your nades!”

I raised a hand lamely, “I’d probably bat an eye.”

“Aw,” Lucy grinned at me, arms folded. “You big softie.”

I chuckled, rolling my eyes. “Anyway—” I looked at Falco, “How much are the repairs gonna run you?”

“Just about all I goddamned won in the first place,” Falco laughed. Shit! “Yeah—damn near every other ride that actually finished already ran over the equipment I ejected. But, at least I won.”

I blinked. “What does it matter if you’re not getting edds for it?”

“Hah!” Falco slapped his thigh, “You think so small, Lucha-D. You think helpin’ out a damsel in distress ain’t worth a handicap or two? And still winnin’ at that?”

I shrugged, “I mean—yeah. But didn’t she ditch you? All I’m saying is, it kinda falls a little flat when you didn’t get what you set out to do in the first place.”

He shook his head mirthfully. “You think opportunities to be a legend just falls into your lap without risk, then I’ve got a bridge to sell you. The trick is to always put yourself out there. If you fail—try again. But if you succeed,” He shook his head and whistled. “Whew. That’d make a good story, no?”

That did make a little sense.

Lucy scoffed, “That’s the dumbest fucking thing I’ve ever heard, Falco—you lost double when you could have just won outright.”

“Helpin’ out some chick that didn’t even ask for help is so fucking lame!” Rebecca laughed. “What are you doing, cowboy?”

“I hear ya, cowboy, I do,” Pilar folded his arms and stroked his goatee. “It would have made a good story—but now ya got a pay the piper, since that’s the only thing it is at this point—a fuckin’ story.”

Falco nodded. “That do be true. Go on, then—get all yer licks in while I’m down and out. It’s alright—I can take it.”

Before they could barrage him with disses, I spoke first. “Thank you, Falco—for today. It was fucking nova.”

“Thank you, D,” Falco nodded. “If it wasn’t for your quick wit, I’d have gotten my fill of that lady’s dust and been twice the loser.” The truth was, I hadn’t been that useful, probably. Falco was fast enough to outspeed any Wraith Quadra, really. All I had been was just extra deadweight. Rebecca could have done my job while making it easier on Falco.

So I was immensely grateful for this opportunity. I chuckled and nodded.

“Now, D—” Pilar butted in, “Since I so very much appreciate your loyalty—and the fact that you would bat an eye if I were to get my brains splattered across the sidewalk—” he went under the turret table to dig through a backpack for something. He pulled some white sheet thing out and then threw it at me. I caught it and looked it over, blinking at what I saw. “Your mask is fucking hideous, D. I mean it. Take it the fuck off before I flatline you for being an embarrassment—and wear that instead.”

Unlike my cloth mask, this one didn’t have a hole on top to let my hair out. This was a whole head mask with the same sugar skull motif as the one I wore, but less generic. The eyes were a solid black, with no perceivable eyeholes. Around the eyeholes were blue floral petal patterns. The nose hole was a black upside-down heart with a similarly blue outline. Around the cheekbones were swirling vines from which yellow petals grew. The ‘gums’ of the teeth were outlined in blue. All of it looked far neater and prettier than the cloth mask.

But none of those details could compare to my fixation on the skull’s forehead, in which a diamond-shaped ruby was implanted.

I stared at it for a while.

“I’ve, uh… seen Gloria a couple of times,” Pilar said awkwardly. “Remembered that red diamond implant she was rocking. If you don’t like it, that’s fine—the mask’s actually digital—you just need to connect to it to change the graphics—”

“It’s perfect,” I said.

I used the Sandevistan to take off my cloth mask and then put the new mask on. It felt tighter on my face, but was far more comfortable.

And I actually had a peripheral vision worth a damn now—that was a relief.

“And it’s bulletproof!” Pilar said, unholstering his gun to—to point it at me.

I stepped towards him and slapped the gun up so it would shoot the air instead. It alerted the nomads around us, but no one seemed to move to take any action. “What the fuck, Pilar?!” I shouted. “You’re gonna shoot me in the fucking head to show me that my mask is bulletproof? Are you fucking insane?”

Pilar gaped—”How’re you supposed to fucking believe me if I don’t fucking show you?!”

“I’m not getting shot in the fucking head, Pilar!”

He backed away from me and groused. Jesus Christ.

“Would you still bat an eye now?” Lucy growled, her eyes glowing a threatening blue as she glared at Pilar, priming a quickhack to take him out of commision. I was starting to come around to their reasoning.

I snorted. “What do you think about the mask?”

She looked at me, frowned, then grinned widely. “Fuck, Pilar—you made it track his facial expressions? You turned him into a fucking cartoon character.”

“What?!” I shouted.

Lucy shot me a link request—to her Kiroshis. I accepted it, and suddenly gained double vision—now able to see through a low-def window of her eyes.

I frowned, then grinned, and saw that the skull face was copying my expression, best as it could, at least. The eyeholes were the most expressive since the mouth didn’t have lips. “Wow,” I muttered, and saw that the mouth opened. Nothing concrete could be read about my words from the mouth, though—again, owing to the lack of lips. Instead, the jaws just opened and closed, like the mouth flaps of an animation.

Lucy chuckled. “This is so stupid. You gotta disable this shit.”

I chuckled, and then laughed even harder as I saw myself through Lucy’s eyes. “Oh my god, this is too good.”

Then I heard a roar of a gunshot at the same time as I felt something punch the side of my skull.

“See?! Bulletpr—AAAAAAAAAH—!”

Once I recovered to glare at Pilar who had just fucking shot me on the head—and that shit fucking stung—I was about to beat the shit out of him, but saw that Rebecca and Lucy already had that handled. They were drawing blood, too.

Falco whistled. “You don’t think they might be going too overboard, do ya?”

I looked down at Pilar dispassionately as the girls continued to wail on him brutally.

“D!” Pilar begged. “Help—ARGH!” I heard the unmistakable crack of a rib. I didn’t bat an eye at that.

Instead, I looked the other way.

000

D: So… you and Pilar.

I drove Lucy and I home at a sedate pace on the bike, actually below the speed limit since Lucy had told me to take it slowly.

I felt her arms stiffen around my waist and felt a slight stab of guilt at that.

D: I’m sorry for asking—it’s none of my biz

Lunacy: No, it’s just—yeah, embarrassing past. When did you hear about it?

D: Some weeks ago. Doesn’t mean anything to me—just curious to know, like, why?

Lunacy: I was… in kind of a deep hole, I guess. He was there and willing and—being honest—just one out of a bunch of other meaningless flings. But… I’m grateful to him specifically, I think—he taught me there’s always a lower low to reach. There’s bad decisions, and then there’s Pilar. He embodies life on the edge—does not give a fuck about anything but thrills. Fills each moment with adrenaline and drugs whenever he gets bored of makin’ shit. He plays the numbers with his own life every fuckin’ day. Kinda gave me a reality check, really. Showed me I still had a ways to go before I reached that level.

D: Damn. I’m sorry to hear that. You on the outs with him? We don’t have to see him if—

I heard a muted snort from behind me.

Lunacy: Nah—fuck that noise. Pilar’s a piece of shit, but he doesn’t bother me like that. Least not more than any other member of the crew. He’s fuckin’ insane, and probably liable to get himself flatlined one day, but he’s good at what he does, and he’s kept me alive more than once. Just an average client of the Afterlife when you get down to it.

I nodded. That was a little relieving to hear. Despite what he was, I had a decent opinion of the guy. He was like a crazy fucking uncle that your parents absolutely hated but the kids loved.

Not that I knew how it felt like to have one of those—but I’d seen cartoons before as a kid. The family sitcoms where the crazy uncle would sneakily buy the kids porn BDs, cigarettes and alcohol—that sort of guy.

Lunacy: so… you and Kiwi?

I chuckled. Shoe was on the other foot now.

D: Yeah?

Lunacy: You talked to her, yet?

D: No. Not yet. I don’t really know what to say. If it was just that I didn’t like her, then I could get over that. You know—stop not liking her. But I’m pretty sure it’s her, Lucy. The fuck am I supposed to do about that?

Lunacy: Look, Kiwi… doesn’t really like anyone. But she is a team player. Puts 110% into every group effort. She’s good to work with—reliable, dependable.

Still didn’t feel right to me to ignore those personal feelings of hers just because she could set them aside.

D: I’ve had a bad experience with people being jealous of me, Luce. That shit drives people to do the most fucked up things, you know. You saw it yourself—with Katsuo.

Lunacy: Kiwi’s not like Katsuo, you fucking dick.

D: From where I’m standing… argh, fuck it, Luce. We’ll talk it out, her and I.

Once we reached Lucy’s house, I dropped her off and gave her a nod. “I’ve still got biz in town.”

Lucy shot me a text—a list of stuff to buy. Just a long list of alcohols, really. “Party tonight?” I grinned.

She laughed at me.

“What?”

“No—it’s the fucking mask, D. You gotta turn the animation off,” she held her mouth. “And no, no party. I'm house-hunting, remember?”

“Sounds like a party,” I said, “I’ll be back in an hour or two and then we can do it together.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. I’m very fussy about this sort of stuff. What about you? You a closet interior designer or something?”

I snorted. “I’m not gonna fight you if your opinions are stronger than mine. I’ll check your progress and we’ll just hang.”

Throughout my words, Lucy couldn’t help but grin as though she was on the verge of bursting into laughter. “Mhm. See ya, D.”

I shook my head and sped off—far faster than the speed limit would allow, and faster than any city cop could follow, without the use of an AV at least.

First stop, Lizzie’s bar. I had already sent Judy a text, meaning she was already waiting outside once I arrived.

“New mask,” Judy said with a nod. “Looks preem.”

“Thanks,” I nodded. Her eyes widened and she covered her mouth, dragging her hand down her face before nodding.

“Mhm,” she pursed her lips, eyes still wide. Then she handed me two metal boxes, one titled W and the other titled M. “One’s for the Maelstrom and the other’s for the Wraiths.”

I blinked. “But when you turn the boxes the other way, the letters switch—you didn’t underline them.”

She stared very intently at the boxes, still covering her mouth, “Mhmm! I guess you’re right.”

“It’s fine,” I shrugged. “I’ll check myself. Doesn’t really matter. Thanks for everything, Judy.”

With her mouth still covered, she gave me a thumbs up and then disappeared into the bar.

I hit up Reyes.

D: Hey—I was wondering if you were in the business of pushing XBDs.

Reyes: What did you have in mind? You looking to score some JKs?

D: I was wondering if you could maybe push mine.

000

I parked my bike outside a small restaurant in Rancho Coronado by the name of ‘Abdi’s Real Meat’. Outside sat a pair of afro-sporting black guys, one of them wearing some kinda clothing wrapped around his waist that reached his ankles.

When they saw me approaching with my guitar case, one of them got up and glared at me. He was the one with the—sarong, I surmised after a quick net-search—and a button-up pale pink shirt. Tucked into the sarong’s waistband was a lexington.

He rattled off some words to me in a guttural foreign language that my Kiroshis only managed to translate after a second of delay. “The fuck are you coming here for, you scary-ass bastard?” He glared.

“Sit your ass down, Abdi,” the guy still seated said from his chair, “He’s the guy the big man is expecting. Just go on in, scary-ass.”

I gave the guy a nod and then gave one to Abdi—presumably the owner of the restaurant. “I’m here for El Capitan.”

His eyes boggled at me, then he just grinned. “Go on then,” he said in his native language—Somali, from what my optics were telling me.

I proceeded into the comfortably lit interior of the restaurant. The air was warm with the scent of cumin, cardamom, garlic, and seared meat. The walls were decorated with wood panels and African-style tapestries, reds and browns and faded golds in a bunch of random patterns—arrows, stripes, half-moons.

A radio played a scratchy, upbeat funk track, drifting just above the noise of shouting and the sizzling from the open kitchen in back.

El Capitan was easy to spot, sitting at a low table near the window, surrounded by a few of his people—a Netrunner with a cowboy hat, a big huscle, and a bald shifty-eyed guy I’d never seen before. A big bowl of some type of beef stew sat in the center, oily and steaming, next to a stack of pancake-like flatbreads glistening with grease. Both the runner and the huscle were busy eating, but the bald-guy wasn’t partaking. Reyes looked up as I stepped in, gave me that confident grin of his and motioned for me to join.

“D,” he said, sliding a bowl toward me like I was family. “Come eat, my friend. Trust me, this shit is nova. Somalis don’t fuck about their meats. Swear to god—if they can’t get their hands on real cow, goat or chicken? These crazy motherfuckers will sooner chop up some poor gonk they pulled from the streets and serve it than go for the synth SCOP shit. Real meat is a forgotten art, D.”

“Bruv, fuck off!” came a shout from the kitchen in a thick Brit accent. A black guy with braids—looking really similar to Abdi—waved a wooden spoon at El Capitan. “Human meat’s haram as fuck, fam! Man’s not touchin’ that shit—worse than pork, swear down! What d’you take me for, some Voodoo Boy wasteman?" He kissed his teeth angrily.

Reyes raised an eyebrow at the guy. “Don't you serve beer here, Abdi?”

He scoffed. "Bruv, sellin' alcohol under ten percent's halal if it's life or death, yeah? Mufti done said it. How am I supposed to make profit margins if I ain't servin' nothin’ strong? This is Night City, fam—what d’you want me to do, start serving synth-xaar or starve to death? Fuck that! You,” he pointed the wooden spoon at me. “Scary-arse brudda. Sit your arse down and tell me what you want, yeah?"

“He'll have a whole damn pot of Beef Suqaar and a bunch of those injeras too. Make it spicy, even the injeras—he's a real Mexican. Probably. You Mexican? Anyway, mucha comida—he's a big man now.”

“To go,” I chimed in as I sat down in front of El Capitan, putting down my guitar case. “And not so spicy.” Lucy hadn’t eaten yet. Might as well make this brunch or something. And I knew she didn’t tolerate spice well. “He's Abdi?” I asked Reyes. “Thought that was the guy outside.”

Reyes snorted. “They're literally all named Abdi. Owner's Abdinasir. Abdi, Nasir, or Nas. Take your pick. He's a good guy, actually. Doesn't fuck about his meats.”

“So I've heard,” I chuckled.

Reyes frowned at me for a moment before his eyes widened and—he started laughing. “New mask?” He chuckled. He tore up some of the flatbread and scooped himself a good helping of the stew, grabbing up two chunks of beef. Damn, it actually smelled quite good.

“Yeah.”

Before he could get the food into his mouth, he started laughing again. “You're fucking killing me here, D. Swear to God, this is way too funny.”

Okay, this was starting to get old. I connected with the mask, accessed its user interface, and disabled the expression tracking. Apparently, there were options to make some of the swirly patterns move. Sounded pretty nova, but I wouldn't fuck with them right now.

“It's the mouth, I think,” Reyes said. “Maybe the eyes are okay. Try keeping those on.”

I did. “How does it look?”

“Way better. Dios mío, you’d have made me choke on my Beef Suqaar. Right, let's get to the point. You want me to push your BDs.”

“Preferably someone that works for you since I doubt you have the time,” I said. He snorted. “I'm willing to test them right here if you want.”

“Nah, I've got this guy for that,” he nodded his head at the guy besides him, some baldheaded man with sunken eyes and a perennial sulk. He looked like he had tested one too many XBDs already. He had all the markings of a real deal brain potato. Probably couldn't feel emotions that were only his at this point.

I opened my guitar case and looked for my metal cases of BDs. After a minute of set up, the guy began surfing the BDs.

“Looks like he’s been under for a while already,” I muttered. “You sure he's even able to tell if it's good or not?”

“Half-brain, full talent. Don’t let the dead fish stare fool you—he’s got a palate for fidelity like nobody else in town,” Reyes said. “He’ll know if your cuts are the real thing or glorified braindance porn. So,” Reyes said, leaning back in his seat, “What are you looking for here exactly?”

I kept my eyes on baldy for a second before answering. “Twenty eddies a shard.”

“Alright,” Reyes said, swirling the last of his drink. “And?”

“I want a cut of the physical sales too. I know how it goes—you flood the market with softs, the net eats that shit alive, quality gets chewed up. But these?” I tapped the box. “Pristine. Fidelity stays true. You want the real ride, you go physical.”

“Fair enough. But how much of a cut we talking?” he asked, watching me carefully now.

My goal was to land at twenty percent. It was low, but it would ensure that Reyes wouldn’t pass the cost onto the consumer in order to fatten up his profit margin. I needed my name to be out there.

But I knew that if I started so low, he’d only fleece me further. Thus, I needed to propose a starting number that wasn’t insultingly high, but also ambitious enough. “Fifty percent,” I said, eyes steady.

Reyes let out a short laugh, like I’d told a joke. “Fifty? You’re out of your mind, chico.”

“Let’s not pretend you’re gonna sit on these,” I said. “Word gets out? They’ll be trading hands from Japantown to Dogtown like they're relics. And I’ve got more where that came from.”

Reyes scratched at his chin, gave the bald tester a glance—guy was still jacked in, breathing like he was dreaming. “Let’s see what he has to say first.”

After the guy finished surfing both BDs, he went into a holo call with Reyes that lasted one minute.

Then he sighed.

“I can do thirty.” He said, eyeing me intently.

Just as I was about to say ‘deal’, Nanny interrupted me, manifesting on top of the table and crouching before El Capitan, glaring at him. [Forty-five], she demanded.

D: He might make ‘em too expensive.

She turned to me and huffed. [More money.]

She wasn’t wrong.

“Forty-five,” I said.

Reyes hissed. “You serious, kid? Thirty’s a great number.”

[Stand firm.]

D: The fuck do you even know about negotiation?

[So all that corp-studying you did was clearly just rote memorization, then—we have access to the same information. I’m just choosing to use it.]

“Forty-five,” I repeated, unable to formulate a proper sentence while my mind was half dedicated to being pissed at Nanny.

“Forty, final offer,” Reyes said.

[Take it.]

Seemed like a mild waste of time to me, given that I wasn’t going to rely on this income stream in any case.

[Money,] Nanny repeated.

But money. She was right. I guess there was the principle to consider.

“Fine,” I said.

“Forty,” Reyes repeated. “But. If your name doesn’t sell, you’re eating that loss too.”

I smiled. “Deal.”

000

After I concluded my biz and got my order of beef from Nas—to go, of course, and suitably enough, extremely expensive given the ingredients that went into it—I debated on where else to go. Home and the Jin to give him his chips? Nah. That didn't have to be today anyway. He just wanted them as soon as they hit the streets—but what did he know about the economy of XBDs anyway? He just wanted them before some other schmuck from a rival corp school could get their hands on them. There was still ample time for that. I would have to reach him anyhow for the data on this street race he wanted me to compete in.

After briefly hitting a liquor store, coming away with seven bottles of assorted drinks and mixers, I made my way straight home to find Lucy on her couch, swiping through her cyberdeck lazily.

She launched into an explanation of her activities instantly. “I've got it narrowed down to three options now. Megabuilding VIP section in Santo—way better than it sounds, and with a pretty kickass view to boot. Charter Hill tower apartment with a view of the Badlands. Another option for the same building but with a view of the Corpo Plaza.” She shot me a bunch of different stills for me to peruse. “One in Vista Del Rey with a pretty corpo view. We got one in Little China too with a water view. I'm partial to it, but there's a bit of Arasaka Waterfront on the edge of the view so… eh.”

“I thought you said three,” I dropped the guitar case on the ground and headed to the kitchen to put the bag of food and the bottles of booze on the counter. “And I thought I didn't have a choice in the matter.”

“This is your chance to have a choice in the matter,” she said. “Pick out the three I was actually considering.”

“Uhhh, no fucking clue,” I muttered. “Will you get bitchy if I'm wrong?”

“I'm never bitchy.”

I snorted. “Okay. The megabuilding, the badlands view from Charter Hill and the one in Little China.” I was guessing that she hated the Arasaka tower more than she hated a bit of the view of the saka port.

She didn't say anything for a moment. Then…

“Fuck you.”

What? “Fuck you! Hah, I was right, wasn't I?”

“Alright then, Mr. Always Right. Which one would you pick?”

Honestly I'd have preferred the corpo view. It was just a lot prettier.

“Water sounds preem. Little China?” I was already imagining it. It sounded calm, beautiful. Simple, really. The more I thought about it, the more I liked it.

“...nah.” The fuck?

I furrowed my eyebrows. “Do you… want me to weigh in, Lucy?”

“Of course. You'll live there too.”

If she was just gonna shoot down my suggestions… “I'm fine with whatever you decide.”

"So am I, babe."

Don’t get mad, David.

“How about, instead of all that, we eat something? Got some real beef while I was out.” I honed in on a bottle of tequila and sighed. The booze was a good idea after all. Hopefully, by the time we were done eating and drinking, the rest of the day would go that much more smoothly.

 

Notes:

Next chapter (also, the only backlogged chapter for now :( ): 49 - Murk Man II

Discord link: https://discord.gg/W5BqBBym28

Chapter 49: Murk Man II

After a day of binge drinking in which nothing productive occurred at all except that we managed to conjure even more housing options out of thin air—inspired to live closer to Rancho because the Beef Suqaar turned out to taste fucking fantastic—I went to sleep at 3 AM after a round of impromptu drunken karaoke with Lucy.

She had the voice of an angel—while I was drunk. I had no idea how she actually sounded.

Thankfully, Nanny’s assistance was enough to at least get me out of bed to start my day at eight.

First, I got my trip to Tijuana squared away—holding a seminar to the GSS family mercs on the dangers of mixing chrome brands. Already, a bunch of them were beginning to look bigger and bigger, having taken advantage of their newfound financial freedom to chip in as much as they wanted. Not wise. Abuela would have to watch them closely in the coming weeks.

I also left the Netrunning team my programs and quickhacks. I was already planning on overhauling my entire kit, so those would get outdated in no time at all.

I kept the big one, of course. That Sword program was not going anywhere.

Finally, it was time I gave Jin a visit.

I took a Delamain cab to his location, wearing a simple pair of brown pants and a black T-shirt, and the same gold-plated rosary necklace that mom had bought for me. That and a metal pencil case filled with blank, unadorned BD shards simply titled ‘M’. Marketing was low at the moment, but that was the entire point of involving Reyes in the first place. He’d be in charge of selling the shit, so he’d probably figure out the image stuff.

The cab finally stopped in front of the entrance to a golf course in North Oak. From between the bars of the gate, I could spot a baffling amount of green grass stretched over rolling hills, all manicured in various defined shades in wavy concentric rings surrounding patches of grass where there were flag poles—probably the holes.

When I got out and approached the gate, the security inside the toll both looked at me with a disdainful sneer. I just ringed Jin.

David: Tell the goons outside to let me in.

Jin: Right—let me know when you need to take a shit, too. I’ll come wipe your ass for you as well.

I rolled my eyes. He probably didn’t see the purpose for it, but I could tell when I was about to face some bullshit. Thankfully, the security guy inside the booth’s eyes glowed gold a moment later. His eyes widened as he looked at me. I approached him then.

“Someone’s waiting for me inside,” I said. Wordlessly, he pressed a button, opening the pedestrian door next to the gate.

It took me five minutes of walking through the grass before I got to Jin’s location. He had already migrated quite deeply into the fairway—or whatever the fuck it was called. The grass.

Once I finally crested the hill in which he was shooting from, I saw him, next to a golf cart, playing entirely by himself. He wore a skintight black shirt, a pair of baggy brown pants and a white visor cap that didn’t cover his hair. He looked at me with a raised eyebrow. “Why are you dressed like a brokie?”

The fuck? “We literally look the same.” I said, looking down at my own black shirt and brown pants.

He blinked at me. “That was uncalled for.” He seemed to wrestle with his words for a moment before just sighing. “It’s lazy Sunday, I get it. No need to look nice and all, but this is kinda sad for your standards, choom.”

Jesus Christ. If I knew he was gonna make it a whole thing—that my entire outfit put together didn’t cost more than fifty eddies—I’d have stopped at Jinguji to burn more edds. “Alright—get it out of your system.”

“What’s with the fake gold?” He looked at my rosary.

“Sentimental value,” I said.

“Ah,” he nodded. I looked down at it and couldn’t see anything wrong with it, really. I wouldn’t take it to an event or anything.

But I wouldn’t toss it out, either.

I should consider getting one out of real gold, though. For mom’s sake, if nothing else.

“Your BDs,” I said, unslinging my backpack and pulling out the pencil case. “New installment. This time—”

“Don’t spoil me,” he grinned, snatching the box from my hands. “I’ll check it out myself.”

I nodded. “Apparently, some people complained about the FOV—turns out the guy’s wearing some kind of mask.” Reyes’ guy had given me a rather comprehensive list of notes, looking ten times more cognizant the moment the BDs ended. He hadn’t exploded into excitement, either. Instead, his demeanour seemed to just sharpen, if only temporarily, just to give me the upsides and the downsides.

He liked the bullet tango a lot, and recommended I keep doing that, and other, even wilder things. He also suggested I don’t use the Sandevistan as often. People liked drawn-out firefights and strategy. Especially diversity in take-downs. I already had an inkling of that, but to get it confirmed was important.

The biggest downside, which was also somehow an upside, was the fucked up field of view from the mask. I had barely even noticed it myself, having already gotten used to it.

That and leaving the tech jargon in my quickhacking in—in the case of the Wraith stuff. Breach Protocol was fine—showing off how good I was wouldn’t directly make me easier to counter. The only way to counter my breaches was with better cybersecurity across the board. No ‘Panacea’ for that, unfortunately.

But for my Quickhacks, there were ways that rival Netrunners could figure out the vulnerabilities in my cyberattacks, or worse yet, plagiarizing my shit. That was only worse for my pride, but that still fucking sucked. No way was I going to let the likes of that fucking guy Ichinose get ahead just by ripping into my shit.

I would take that all into account going forward when it came to giving my notes to the next BD techie I could find. Apparently, Reyes’ guy would be on the lookout for a dependable replacement.

“But it’s the same vibe as the first one,” I continued to Jin. That was my biggest concern, and the brain potato on Reyes’ payroll had mollified me with an assurance that they had the same vibe and felt clearly scrolled by the same person.

So now I had some homework to do, besides all the other shit I was already doing—figuring out a way to make every battle as cinematic as possible. That began by simply limiting my Sandy uses.

[And getting on top of our rare mineral gorging spree, David.]

D: Give me a minute, for fuck’s sake

“Oh yeah? Sweet!”

I pulled out a BD wreath as well.

“You don’t have to test this shit,” Jin said.

I looked at him for a moment and snorted. “That’s unwise.”

He laughed. “I’m still gonna get them tested, you gonk. But not you—I already trust you enough to buy ‘em and get ‘em tested independently anyway.”

I couldn’t lie—I admired his vigilance. I’d never been able to afford that attitude myself, given that I kinda had to sell these things or starve. That meant being forced to sample every little XBD that came my way from Doc—and not all of them ended up being sellable, per se.

The less said about those nightmares, the better.

“Thanks,” I said, “Saves me a ton of time. So let’s cut to the chase: your race. Give me the details.”

Jin grinned as he put the box of BDs down on the seat of his golf cart and slung the club around his shoulders before wrapping both arms around them. “Ever been to the North Oak Casino and Country Club, David?”

I looked at him flatly. “You’re asking me if I’ve been to the richest country club in the fucking City, maybe even the country, Jin. Take a wild fucking guess.”

He shrugged. “Figures—it’s not a place that just having money gives you access to. You need to know someone. Luckily for you, you know me. That’s where it’ll be.” His eyes glowed blue as he shot me some data.

The racing course. All overlooked from a wide building where a waterfall flowed in front of the windows. The place looked like Richard Night’s dream of what Night City would become. Grass, crystalline water, palm trees, a quite frankly mind boggling stretch of what used to be badlands, terraformed into the perfect lawn for the ultra-rich. So much greenery wasted on being a pretty view for those who already had too much already.

The race course was—I furrowed my eyebrows at one particular stretch. “What’s up with those two towers, Jin?” On one particular stretch in the track were two towers. They were basically spiralling roads that each led to ramps facing each other. “Is that seriously what I fucking think it is?”

He tossed me something. I caught it, blinking at what was in my hand—a BD shard. “That’s the virtu of the fastest guy in town on this course,” Jin said, “They call him the Mountain Pass Demon. Tōge Oni. He’s a fucking psycho, but you should watch him. And when you do, I’ll wait for you to tell me if you still think you have a chance at winning this shit. If you don’t—no biggie at all. Just be sure to fucking tell me early. Hopefully by today. Do also tell me if you’re not sure you’ll win, but there might be a chance. All this data will help me, alright?”

I nodded. “Alright,” I said. “So… which car should I—”

“Caliburn,” he said, “It’s gotta be a Caliburn. There’s no better car for this type of road. You don’t get a Caliburn—they’ll fucking smoke you. Even the slowest turtle in the race will shove your face in their shit if you decide to roll up in anything but a Caliburn.”

Dammit. Wasn’t like I could bring a bike to a car race, anyway. If the Caliburn was my best bet, then so be it. “Right—I’ll let you know.”

000

I walked into the Rayfield dealership like I belonged there—which, of course, I fucking didn’t.

The place was all white marble floors, glass columns, and curved screens playing soft jazz over slow-motion shots of Caliburns slicing through rainstorms. Looked like a goddamn luxury aquarium if you swapped fish with generational wealth and artificial scarcity.

The second the doors whispered shut behind me, some tall chrome-faced corpo with a jaw sharper than my sword zeroed in on me. His shoes were so polished I could probably see my poverty in them. He smiled like someone who thought "the help" had wandered in by accident.

“Welcome, sir,” he said, voice silkier than overpriced ramen, “Are you here to look at the Rayfields… or simply look at the Rayfields?” His eyes flicked once—subdermal scanner under the pupil, no doubt. Scanned my cyberware. My clothes. My literal net worth, maybe.

“Or should I say… добро пожаловать, бедняк,” he continued with a little bow.
 Then:
 “Bienvenue, monsieur Dans La Hess.”
 “Vellkommen, Herr Uteligger.”
 “Benvenuto, signor pezzente.”
 “Bienvenido, señor sin un duro.”
 “欢迎，穷鬼.”
 “ようこそ、貧乏人.”
 “Karibu, chokoraa.”
 “And, of course… ‘sup, broke boy?”
The final one was delivered with a smirk and a tilt of the head, like he was proud of the international roast he’d just cooked up.

I blinked at him. “Damn,” I said, feeling my stomach heating up at the sight of this shitsmear. “You got that whole speech preloaded, huh? You practice in the mirror or does the system just trigger when someone walks in wearing pants under two hundred eddies?”

He bowed, again. “We tailor the experience, sir. Now, unless you're here on behalf of a client with actual credit, might I suggest our virtual test drive service? It lets you feel rich without all that pesky effort.”

Alright, so—swallow all that bullshit and then—”Fuck you,” my words came entirely unbidden. I was unable to hold them back, or the resulting barrage of vitriol. “Who the actual fuck do you think you fucking are anyway? Seriously! You’re a fucking car salesman and I’m on the advanced track to Arasaka R&D and you think having some pretty chrome gives you the right to dick me about?”

He laughed. “Even if that was true, little boy—it still very much does. When you come in here looking like you just robbed a flea market, what right do you think you have to demand respect from me or anyone else who works here? You came to Rayfield wearing that!” He gestured at me hotly. “If you had the money, then you still deserve to be insulted for being so limited in your ideas.”

[Walk away, David—there are several corp-guards converging on our location. This is not the place for violence.]

“You’re not fucking special,” I said to him. “You’re a fucking idiot—and I’m taking my money somewhere else.” Before I do something that’ll change this gonk’s life forever.

I stomped away, ignoring the asshole’s no-doubt sizzling repartee as I considered my other options. There was always the secondary market.

Or other fucking cars.

As I got into a Delamain, asking it to just drive to Jinguji so I could ditch the threads for something better, I sent Falco the deets on the racing track and gave him a call.

D: What car do you think will cut it on this track?

Falco: That’s easy—Caliburn. It’s gotta be a Caliburn.

The fuck was everyone’s goddamn obsession with the Caliburn anyway?

D: They must have a preem fucking marketing department for everyone to be so obsessed with that shit car.

Falco: Heh! You don’t know jack, D. The Caliburn ain’t just some high-falutin’ city-slicker hype wagon—it’s the real McCoy. Back 'fore Rayfield rolled that stallion outta the stable, folks used to bicker 'bout which brand had the meanest engine, fastest hooves, you name it. Then Rayfield moseyed on in, slapped down their twelve-inch iron on the saloon table, and said ‘beat this.’ Ain’t a soul had the grit to challenge ‘em since.

D: I’m not buying a fucking Caliburn from their company, Falco.

Falco: Lemme guess—some metal-faced pointy-chinned sumbitch called you poor in five different languages. That right?

The fuck?

D: Yeah! That—that’s exactly what fucking happened!

Falco: Old tale, same dust on it. Don’t matter none if you’re sittin’ on a mountain o’ cash—Rayfield’s all high and mighty ‘bout their brand. They ain’t keen on sellin’ to the wrong sort, if you catch my drift. Folks with deep pockets, sure—but if that money came rollin’ in a bit sideways… well, let’s just say Rayfield don’t fancy dealin’ with hombres who made their fortune the outlaw way.

And that guy must have clocked that by the fact that I just looked poor.

D: That’s bullshit, though. I didn’t look like an outlaw.

Falco: New money, outlaw—same difference in this city. And you probably came in lookin’ new money. Ain’t that right?

D: Fine, forget about it. I’m not going back to them again, though. You know where I can buy Caliburns from the secondary market? Or, actually, I’d rather just klep one.

Falco: That’s a tall order, Lucha-D. Their security’s legendary—tighter than the outer hull of an Orbit Air cruiser, some say. But you should be good for it, Mr. Netrunner.

I smirked. Of course.

Falco: Well there’s one desperado I’ve heard tell of, operatin’ in the Badlands. Rocky Ridge, near the mine tunnel. Been hearing some stories circulatin’ about. He’s not the corpo type probably, if he’s operatin’ in Rocky Ridge, meaning no one’ll miss the car if you klep it from there.

I nodded, changing the coords on the Delamain so that it would take me back home to Lucy’s instead. Needed to suit up after all.

D: Thanks for the data, Falco. I’ll let you know if something comes out of it.

Falco: Good luck, D.

000

After suiting up, I headed to Pilar’s to get some equipment. The guy had spent the night at his Ripperdoc after the beating he had received the night before, getting some of his chrome and much of his meat repaired.

He sulked on his chair, arms folded and lower lip jutting forward in a petulant pout. “Dickhead,” he spat at me.

“You shot me in the fucking head, Pilar.”

“Assmunch.”

Motherfucker! What part of ‘you shot me in the fucking head’ did he not understand? Why was he the mad one? “Fuck it—I need nades.”

“It’s gonna cost ya now,” he said quietly. I wasn’t really expecting anything different. “I’ve got frags, EMP, BioHaz, CHAR, smokers—whatcha want?”

“What looks best in a BD?” I asked.

“CHAR—fire always sells, choom. And frags, of course. How many?”

I shrugged. “Three a piece?”

Nanny materialized before me, in her red high vis jacket, undercut and EMP threading on her face. She looked down at Pilar with disdain and concern. [David, I must ask you if you think buying deadly explosives from the man before you is a good idea, given his predilections towards being a fucking psycho!]

I paused mentally for a moment. Then I shrugged.

D: The fact that he’s still standing, being the way that he is, while making high explosives should speak for itself.

She looked at me for a few seconds before shrugging. [Fair.] Then she disappeared in a shower of blue voxels.

“You know any other creative ways to flatline gonks?” I asked, because let’s be honest—he was the best guy to ask that question to. “Without cyberware.”

“Throwing knives, kid. Always a classic,” he cracked a wide grin. “I’ve seen chooms pull some crazy ninjutsu shit with tech throwing knives. Wrap monowire around ‘em and throw em in a formation, and you’ve got electric tripwires. Or wires hot enough to cut clean through steel. Preem shit.”

Using wires with the knives did have a lot of potential, actually—someday. Would have to train to pull that off, or I’d look like an idiot giving that a try for the first time and failing.

“I’ll just take whatever knives you have for now,” I said. I hadn’t given throwing knives much stock, having only really used chips to train in that discipline way back when. I knew the basics, but some field training would probably do me some good. “Also—you know of anyone that can coat my jacket in ballistic threads? Been meaning to get that squared away for some time.”

Pilar’s tech visor glowed blue for a moment and I received the data from him. A location in J-Town. “Just bring her your shit and she’ll coat the inside in the best threads she can find. The more you pay her, the better those threads will be—but be careful, choom. She charges an arm and a fucking leg, and I ain’t just talking the meat variety, either.”

“How much does the best shit cost?”

Pilar laughed, “What are you a fucking Lazarus plant? Tell you what—if you’ve got two-hundred k eddies to throw around on the best bulletproof EMT jacket in town, then you might as well chip in some subderm. That option’s cheaper, plus it offers more comprehensive protection.”

Two hundred for the best ballistic threads? That was crazy. “How much protection does that even offer?”

“Enough that if you got hit by an artillery shell, you’d probably flatline in an instant—but the jacket? Wouldn’t even have a scratch on it.”

I was sold instantly.

Two hundred k to make sure mom’s jacket would never get so much as a scratch again was cheap. In the long run, at least. Right now, I had more important things to spend on, but I’d get it done, hopefully by the end of this coming week.

Pilar handed me a bandolier of grenades, clearly marked with red and green marker pen to differentiate, and a belt of six throwing knives. Including all of that, and my sword, lexington, the Burya and the tech rifle, and I now had six ways of killing gonks. And that wasn’t even counting Quickhacks, or whatever weapon I could commandeer using Breach Protocol.

I hopped on my bike and sped off towards the Rocky Ridge Mine Tunnel in the badlands.

Once I approached its vicinity, I immediately found my heading as I heard gunshots popping off from the inside.

I slotted in an empty shard in my socket, preparing to scroll my most purposefully engineered BD to date. All the while, I kept a few key things in mind.

No talking—I had built that pattern already. No use breaking it, or trying something new. If it ain’t broke, don’t fucking fix it and all.

No sandy. I’d try going low-speed the entire time. Using it would constitute a failure in my head.

I parked the bike on the foot of a hill blocking off the firefight about half a click ahead. I grabbed the guitar case from the bike, opened it, and pulled out the tech rifle. I checked the mag to see if it was full and closed the barrel before ascending the hill to see what I was dealing with.

A whole convoy of Raffen Shiv, fifteen different cars and trucks all parked around the mouth of the Rocky Ridge Mine Tunnel. None of the nine people outside were doing anything, though. The gunshots all came from inside—these guys were just guarding the entrance, making sure the guys inside wouldn’t get blindsided by reinforcements from… whoever they were shooting at.

With any luck, it would actually be the group with the Caliburn Falco had talked about. With even more luck, the group and those nomads would mutually destroy each other. Wouldn’t make for a good BD, but fuck it—a car was a car. And this way, I’d avoid having to brave the secondary market or knock my head against bullshit Rayfield ICE.

I went low on the ground and took aim. I took a deep breath and calmed my heart beat, giving myself a wider window between beats to make sure I’d get my shot in.

I fired. I hit one man in the torso, ripping through him entirely. He fell dead instantly, alerting the others to an ambush. They grabbed for their guns and looked around in every direction. I didn’t waste any time lining up another shot at one that was foolish enough to look around while standing completely still. He died just the same.

Then shots began to fly over at my direction, going wide and firing way overhead. At five hundred meters away, I didn’t expect any low-tech nomad to be able to land a shot against me. Pilar had it right for the most part—these guys were sweet compared to the Strom.

One shot, one dead. Another shot, another dead.

They started taking cover behind their cars like that meant shit to me. I blew through two car door windows, still managing to destroy one guy’s torso.

By the time I had taken out seven, the remaining two fled into the tunnel. I reloaded the magazine, going back to return the spent magazine into the guitar case. It still had two rounds left, so it’d be a waste just to throw it away. I threw the rifle on my back so it dangled by the strap, picked out my Burya, Lexington and sword. With all that out of the way, I began the rather boring jog through the badlands towards the Mine Tunnel, releasing a Ping once I was fifty meters close to the entrance, to make sure no one would get me by surprise.

It turned out that I had counted wrong—there was one guy left, cowering inside one truck, cradling a tech shotgun and aiming in my direction, waiting to release his shot through the car door once he was sure it would get me. I pointed my Burya at him and blew him apart. The truck released a gout of blood from the wound I had opened on it—the Wraith’s blood, of course. Cars didn’t bleed.

I refocused on the entrance on the tunnel. My Ping had caught only the stragglers of this continuous firefight—around five in number. The two survivors were trying their best to convince their friends to come on outside and deal with me—at least, that was what I could surmise from their body language.

Once I entered the tunnel, I realized that I should probably have just left the tech rifle behind. The tunnel had way too many twists and turns for a long-range shot to be applicable, and the Burya was good enough for any wallbanging purposes. Oh well—live and learn.

Once I approached a bend in the tunnel, the five Wraith stragglers I had spotted from outside right around the corner, I pulled out an incendiary grenade from my belt.

[Do you really want to choke the air with fire? Is that a wise idea?]

I decided to use a frag instead.

I pulled the trigger and threw the frag as hard as I could at a wall, bouncing the grenade off around a corner and towards the Raffen Shiv.

The ensuing explosion instantly wiped out two of the Wraiths. Two more were mere flickering lights to my Ping before they, too extinguished, marking their deaths. The last stubbornly remaining signature was crawling on the ground, trying to get away from me by going deeper into the cave.

I walked through the tunnel until I reached him, a guy wearing a black leather jacket and pants combo with blue nylon thermals peeking underneath. Black and blue seemed to be the main theme of the Wraiths. I spotted one guy wearing a useless blue helmet, metal shrapnel sticking out from it, probably from the grenade I had used.

I stomped him on the back of his head, feeling his soft skull give nearly instantly to my stomp. Good. No use choking the cramped space with more noise. I’d rather stick to my knives and sword from here on out—or the Lexington if a shootout became unavoidable. The Burya could take a backseat for now, though. If I used it here, I’d probably have to rely on Nanny to fix the resultant eardrum damage.

[I’ve had to fix your ear drums for days ever since you got that weapon of overcompensation.]

D: Don’t you like it when I get hurt? You call it training.

[Thought you weren’t supposed to talk during these.]

D: I’ll edit it out.

Nothing was happening at the moment anyway. Might as well just jump-cut this shit.

Okay, Ping.

Apparently, a squad of Wraiths were backtracking away from the front of the pack to come at me now, armed to the teeth with automatic rifles.

I grabbed two knives from my belt, waiting for the first group to come out.

[A day will come where you’ll have to contend with real opponents, David—try not to pick up too many bad habits. The safest option here would be to look for cover and use up the rest of your grenades on this group.]

D: You’re killing my vibe—besides, already used a nade.

Once the first guy, carrying a copperhead automatic rifle, peaked out from the corner, I threw the knife as hard as I could, trying to incorporate what I had learned from that tutorial BD.

I didn’t end up hitting his head with the pointy bit as intended, but it seemed that the velocity of my throw, and the fact that the handle was made entirely out of metal, was enough to crack his skull open and flatline him anyhow. I was pretty sure that dome was fully ‘ganic.

Sweet as sugar.

Alright, let’s tweak the technique. Clearly, if I throw it that way, the knife would land handle-first in that distance. Meaning my effective range came in alternating strips of space.

One guy following the first man aimed his gun at me, inching towards me. I threw before he could fire, just as I reckoned he had stepped into one strip that was ‘knife-first’ so to speak.

I was right. With that particular strength in my throw, the alternating strips of ‘knife first’ to ‘butt first’ would remain pretty much consistent.

I ran towards the group this time around. Using one hand, I picked up the second guy I had downed, knife still stuck in his forehead, and used him to block a pair of bullets meant for me before throwing my knife again, hitting the gunman. I one smooth motion, I reached for the knife already stuck in my meatshield’s head and threw it at the fourth guy rounding the corner.

Then I dropped the meatshield, drew Eikō, and took a deep breath, calming my heart.

[This is fucking stupid, even for you. Please don’t. Please do not try this.]

By now, my sense for bullet trajectories just by seeing where the muzzle was pointed as was essentially on point. I had been shot at enough—and done my own fair share of shooting enough—that the sense was engraved in my bones. My mind had absorbed that information, collated it into a table of understanding, and diffused into something almost approaching instinct.

But this would be the main test to fully ascertain the extent of my knowledge.

From ten meters away, a Wraith shot at me, with a handgun.

I didn’t actively cut. Responding to such a high-speed projectile in such a manner would require that I use the Sandevistan, or failing that, a shit ton of chrome.

Instead, I lined my sword against the bullet.

BANG.

[Idiot.]

So good news—I cut the bullet.

Bad news—two half-bullets hit me instead.

I coughed a little, tasting blood in my mouth. Natural, since both bullet halves hit me on both my lungs.

I grabbed my Lexington and started blasting.

I know, I know—but this was a rather drastic situation that required that I end this kerfuffle a little early.

D: Nanny—how fast can you fix this without using the Sandy?

[I can stem the bleeding in five minutes, but healing it would be an entirely different beast. That could take some hours. Ready to give up?]

I felt a surge of adrenaline as I chuckled. Hell no.

Things had just gotten exciting after all.

I sheathed the Lexington and wielded Eikō once more. Things had gotten minorly dicey, but hey—what better way to keep the audience wanting more than to take on additional risk?

No more cutting bullets. The physics of it all didn’t agree very well with a decent fighting style.

Instead, I turned my blade ninety degrees in my grip so the flat was facing my enemies, and blocked the bullets altogether. My wrist strength was pushed to the limits as I had to continuously re-straighten the sword. To make the exercise easier, I made sure to aim for the bullet to hit closest to the cross-guard, where I had maximal leverage over the sword—and theoretically, where it had the most durability.

[Idiooooot.]

I ran in as fast as I could, ignoring the blaring sting of my lungs with each breath I drew, and began cutting the Wraiths down. I ignored their curse-filled screams as I cut each one down one by one, darting around them with ease while they moved like they were encased in molasses. Slow. Slow in body and slow in mind, and unskilled to boot. I felt like I was going after the Pinche Perros all over again, and I wasn’t even using the Sandy this time around.

Pathetic.

I sent out another Ping to ascertain the situation—all of the Wraiths were heading to my location now. All except one, who was staying put in the deepest edge of the tunnel. Or perhaps that wasn’t a Wraith, but the one that they were shooting at?

If they had been gunning after just one guy this whole time, then I had to give him props.

And perhaps, be forced to give up and use the Sandy in order to go all out against him.

I took cover behind a mining cart and threw a frag at one cluster of Wraiths, taking out a whooping seven in one go. While those outside the effective range reeled after their close brush with death, I threw my remaining three knives at those I could reach. I managed a stab with all three, but unfortunately, I hit an arm with one of them.

While he bled, I sent out one last Ping, expecting to see not that many more still in the fight. I was right. There were three more Wraiths still breathing, including the one I had hit in the arm with the knife.

I sent two of them an Overheat, and with the remaining RAM in my cyberdeck, I debated on whether or not to use the BG. Probably wasn’t wise to use it in a BD, come to think of it. And none of these guys deserved that shit, at least according to me. Maybe someone out there thought they did, but I wasn’t nearly as emotionally invested in all this.

The one I had stabbed in the arm slinked on his back against the wall, crying and panting in exertion. I got out from my cover and walked into the tunnel, finding him. He tried to raise his gun to hit me. I sliced the gun in half.

Hmmm, what should I do with this guy.

[Kill him. Letting him escape so he can blab about you isn’t wise.]

“What… what are you?!” He cried.

What, not who. I couldn’t deny the swell of pride in that.

I pulled the knife out from his arm and sheathed it in my belt. Then, ignoring his screams, I turned away from him and walked further into the tunnel. If he escaped, he’d tell the story of me, and I’d be that much more famous. If he called for reinforcements, I’d get to extend this BD.

Forty-three dead, all told. That brought the total up to three-hundred and thirty three. What a neat number.

My Ping told me how close I was to the last guy in the tunnel, who still hadn’t moved from the spot I had first scanned him at. When I got closer to him, I could see why.

The last guy wasn’t a Wraith. That much was clear.

He was dressed entirely in black armor, which set him apart from the average Edgerunner, too. No, this guy seemed kitted out for combat and nothing else. But he didn’t look like a corp plant, either. He was dressed too… goofily for that.

His helmet had a smooth black visor covering his eyes, and atop his head was a pair of red horns. Also on his chest was a large red insignia of a red devil with horns, wielding a pitch fork.

On his chest was a gnarly bullet hole that pulsed with blood. He clearly wasn’t long for this world, that was easy to see.

He raised his gun to shoot at me. I batted the gun away with the flat of my blade, too intrigued by his look to immediately kill him. “Who the fuck are you?” I muttered.

“You… you’re not a Wraith?”

“No, dipshit,” I said. “I killed them all. Now answer the question.”

“I’m… I’m the Dark Avenger,” he wheezed before coughing. “The prowler in the dark. The red devil of justice… Murk Man.”

I looked away from him to look at the rest of the space in this particular stretch of cave. There, next to the cave wall, was a pitch black Caliburn. “That your car?”

“The… Murkmobile. My trusty… steed.”

I looked down at him and parsed his words again. “Wait, you said justice? You some kinda superhero?”

“I am the bane of…” he coughed, “Every goddamn gangoon that…” He coughed again. “Think they can get away with all their… their bullshit. ‘S why they hired… these fucks… to flatline me.”

I nodded. That seemed consistent. Suddenly, I lost all interest in killing him. “Listen, I can take you to a med center in exchange for your car.” Or even for free if he pushed it. Seemed like the right thing to do if he really met this fate trying to fuck with the gangs.

“Fuck that. I ain’t… lettin’ no corp fuck touch my meat,” he hissed vehemently. “Even… buying this car was… a fucking pain… fuck… corpos… especially… Rayfield, those… motherfuckers.”

That was a choice I could respect. “You know you’ll die without help, right.”

“Then… that’s all she wrote, heheh.”

Damn. Was he just acting or was he really this stuck on his principles? Either way, I didn’t owe him shit anyway. I sent out a Ping to make sure the last Wraith was behaving himself—and he was, stumbling his way out from the mines. Good man.

“Thanks,” he wheezed. “For… caring.”

“I’m not a good guy or anything,” I said. “You shouldn’t thank me—I’m just here for your car, choom.”

“Then… take it. If you promise me… that you will… kick their asses… all their asses. Kill them all, choom. Murk their asses. Fuck them up.”

“I mean,” I shrugged, “I’ll do what I can, but not because you told me to. I hate the gangs as much as the next gutter rat.”  I could totally understand why some decided to join the gangs—like the Tygers, 6th Street, the Mox or the Valentinos, at least. The Maelstrom were just psychopaths that needed to be wiped from the face of the earth, and the scavs were no better. Same with the Wraiths and some minor boostergangs that wanted to follow in the footsteps of the Strom. No mercy to those fucks.

Cleaning their rot from the streets wasn’t heroic—really, it was just a public service.

“Corpos… too… don’t… forget…”

He didn’t have to tell me twice.

He dug through his utility belt and I readied my sword for any bullshit. Instead, he pulled out a keyring with a keyfob shaped like the black Caliburn he was guarding, and a black cop shield with the initials ‘M.M’ engraved on it.

I grabbed the keys and his hand fell. I Pinged him just to check on him and saw that his ass had flatlined already.

Wow.

000

Falco met me at Aldo’s to check on the Caliburn. He looked under the hood, nodding appreciatively before turning to me. “How’s the CrystalDome? Can you change the color?”

I frowned and shook my head. “No—he fucked with the firmware or some shit. A BIOS error notification pops up when you try.”

Which was total bullshit. I was not trying to ride around in a goddamn all-black edgemobile. If I couldn’t give it my colors, then what was even the point? Besides, I didn’t want anyone to recognize the Murkmobile by the exact shade of black and gray it was sporting. That seemed like a dumb risk to take. Had to get that fixed at some point.

"Good news is, this beast’s made for speed and corner-cut precision. You can smell it in the custom carbon-poly tires and hear it hum in that souped-up engine. Bad news? Don’t mean a damn thing if you drive like a braindead mule. You already know that, but lemme say it plain: you got a long trail o’ practice ahead. So if I were you, I’d quit flappin’ my gums and start burnin’ some rubber—‘cause now’s the time to put in the work."

The sun overhead bore down on us mercilessly. It was only high noon, meaning I still had quite a few hours of work ahead of me, unfortunately. I had popped the Sandevistan to heal my lungs after the firefight with the Wraiths, and had snagged a bite of food to eat to replenish the lost blood on my way here, so I was pretty much eighty percent to being in perfect shape.

Might as well get started, then.

Notes:

Murk Man Returns Again Once More Forever!

Next Chapter: Chrysalis (name subject to change)

Latest advanced chapter: 52 - Vendetta (rough draft)

Discord link: https://discord.gg/W5BqBBym28

Chapter 50: Chrysalis

Lucy chased away her hangover with a straight shot of vodka down her gullet from the bottle she had brought with her to Aldo’s warehouse. Hauling ass all the way to Rancho at twelve noon on a goddamned Sunday…

Why do I even put up with that gonk.

Said gonk in question was busy ripping drifts that filled the air with the smell of burned rubber, inside a pitch black hypercar that she was sure he hadn’t owned the day before. Say what you will about David, he worked fast.

“You are the most Polish person I have ever seen,” Rebecca groused, looking at Lucy with a raised eyebrow. She was sitting on the other end of the parasol-shaded outdoor table that Lucy was using. Kiwi was on the way, too. Not for any particular reason, though. Lucy had just felt an acute need to hang out with someone other than David lately, and decided to call both her and Rebecca.

Between the three of them, they could make a gig out of something—raise a random bit of mischief here and there, do something to spice up God’s day of rest.

Lucy offered the gun gremlin the bottle. Rebecca shrugged and took it.

“I’m just not a Sunday person,” Lucy deflected. “Then again, who the fuck is?”

Rebecca took a long swig of the bottle, then cleared her throat before speaking. “Now I am,” Rebecca grinned, putting the bottle on the table, right between them. 

David roared past again, engine snarling like a beast caged too long. The smell punched through Lucy’s nose with the force of a gas grenade, making her blink. Asphalt particles flitted through the sunlight like ashes in a windstorm.

“Jesus,” Lucy muttered, watching the black blur snake around a corner with physics-defying grace. “He’s gonna get that thing impounded or wrapped around a pole by sundown.”

Rebecca snorted. “It’s D we’re talking about here.” Then she grinned. “Guess I can’t blame ya for worrying though, lovebird. So. When did you and David become official?”

Lucy supposed that managing to go six days without anyone asking about this had given her more than enough time to emotionally prep for talking about it. She certainly wasn’t about to gush to Rebecca like she was a school girl or something. She was better than that.

“Since Monday, I guess,” Lucy said, looking up to think about it. It still felt like yesterday, undoubtedly.

And now they were looking at houses. She couldn’t help but grin at that. She was a gonk—both of them were, really.

But hey, if you had the cash to burn, then why not be a little gonky?

“Awww! You are down bad, girl!” Rebecca cackled. “Look at you!”

Lucy flattened her grin and clenched her jaws.

“Nah, don’t try to mean-mug me now,” Becca laughed. “You were smiling ear-to-ear just now.”

“Whatever,” Lucy scoffed. “Fuck it—yeah. I’m feeling kinda preem, what do you want me to say?” She couldn’t help but let out a chuckle at that. She felt annoyed at herself, and cast the vodka bottle a look of betrayal.

“The ICE queen has melted! Aaah! You sappy fucking bitch, you!” Becca teased, kicking her feet.

Lucy felt way too sober for this.

While vowing not to give the pint-sized psychopath any more drink, she downed another measure of the liquor and sat it on the ground, next to her.

“I’ve got a question, actually,” Becca said, “Since David now fucks and all, at least to our knowledge, and you’re a witness to that—does he use the Sandy? Is that a thing he does?”

Still too sober.

She took another measure. “No, because that would probably fucking hurt. And defeat the point of it. And why the fuck do you wanna know?”

“I don’t,” she said, “But a few weeks ago, a friend of mine hit me up with the question cuz she heard we had a sandy user in the crew. Now, I didn’t question it cuz, hell, I was pretty curious too. But—noted.”

“You’ve got some weird fucking friends, Becca.”

“Given that you’re my friend, I’d say so, hah!” Becca slapped her thigh. “Weird bitch. Anyway, how good is he in bed?”

“You wanna know how long his dick is, too?”

“I mean…” Becca raised an intrigued eyebrow, “you wanna share that info, that’s on you.”

Jesus Christ. She made a note to herself not to challenge Rebecca’s shamelessness with sarcasm ever again. “I don’t think I will,” Lucy said. “But,” she continued, because she really did feel an urge to both rub it in, and maybe piss Rebecca off, “He’s the best I’ve ever had.” That wasn’t even a lie.

“Bullshit, you’re just in love.”

Lucy relished the slight note of sourness she heard in her words. “Trust me, he knows his shit. Not that you’ll ever find out.”

“Is that a challenge?” Rebecca grinned.

“You’re free to try,” Lucy snorted. “He won’t even be a dick about it when he turns you down. That’s the kinda man I bagged.”

“You make me sick,” Becca gagged. “Bet you’ve been waiting to talk about him, haven’t you? We barely ever hang out—now you wanna invite Kiwi for a day out, too? Kinda out there, even for you.”

“Got a newfound zest for life,” Lucy grinned up at the sky, still hazy with smoke from David’s power slides. Somewhere in the lot, his tires shrieked again, cutting across the afternoon like a scream. “Now I’ll even tolerate you for longer than an hour. And we’ll have a bit of fun besides.”

“Huh,” Becca snorted. “Can’t wait to see what passes for fun for you Netrunner types. If you’re both just gonna fuck off to cyberspace while you’re laid out in bath-tubs filled with ice while I’m keeping watch, you better cut me in on whatever edds you end up making.” Rebecca leaned back in her chair, the parasol casting shifting patterns over her face. “So what do you have planned, anyway?”

Lucy flicked her eyes toward the drifting hypercar in the distance, then squinted at the sun like it had personally offended her. “Honestly?” she muttered, “Fuck if I know.”

That earned her a snort from Becca.

“I just—” Lucy waved a hand vaguely, “—felt like I needed to do something. Don’t know what. Something shiny, maybe. Something stupid. Something with a payout at the end.”

“Can’t tell if you’re describing a gig or a one-night stand,” Rebecca said.

Lucy smirked. “Not mutually exclusive.”

She leaned forward now, elbows on the table, fingers steepled. A small, mischievous grin crept onto her face. “There was something I heard about, actually. Might be bullshit, but if it’s not…”

Rebecca perked up slightly, eyes narrowing. “Oh?”

Lucy glanced around instinctively, even though they were the only ones under earshot, save for the roaring car engine in the distance.

“Word is, someone in Heywood’s been showing off this external deck. Heavy-duty custom job. Not corp-made. Artisan shit. High-qubit count—like crazy high. Heard it can run black ICE containment without a neural link. Full system emulation off-grid.”

Becca blinked. “That even possible?”

“I mean,” Lucy shrugged, “theoretically? You’d need some next-level cooling system and a quantum computation stabilizer the size of a kid’s coffin, but sure. It’s possible. Just incredibly expensive. And unstable. And definitely illegal as all fuck. Wait—hold on, why are you asking as if you even know what the fuck I’m talking about?”

“It’s called vibes, sister,” Rebecca giggled. “Plus, you seemed to be on a roll. Far be it from me to stop you from having your cute little nerdgasm. I sounded pretty convincing though, didn’t I? ‘That even possible’? Hah!”

Lucy sighed at the needling. “You really should get into tech, Rebecca. Your brother could teach you—plus, then I’d get to talk shop with someone other than him. Might have been that he was already on top of this data.”

“Eh—’puters aren’t his strong suit. You’re giving him way too much credit. I don’t get the hype, but I understand that it’s valuable. So what—you wanna steal it?”

“Shit, I’d buy it if it saved me the heat,” Lucy said. She had more than enough scratch to afford living a more drama-free life nowadays. “But the real prize is figuring out the source—who’s making the stuff and how to convince them to make it custom, just for me. That sort of data is worth its weight in gold.”

“How does that look, practically—where the fuck do I fit in?”

Lucy looked her up and down and raised an eyebrow at her. “In this city? Where won’t you fit in?” Gun toting psychos were always in hot demand.

“Way to make a bitch feel wanted, Lucy,” Rebecca grinned.

000

I exited the Caliburn alongside Falco and for the twentieth time today, we inspected the skidmarks on the ground to see how well I had handled those curves.

Falco crossed his arms and nodded at the ground. “You’re starting to get a feel for the ol’ lady, that’s for sure. That’s half the battle. It ain’t just about mimicry, even though that seems to be your forte. Now, you’re really starting to connect.”

I understood what he was getting at. At the start, I had just tried to copy Falco’s movements perfectly without understanding the reasoning behind them or every factor that informed those choices. By watching him and trying my hand at practicing as well, I managed to get quite far in my own estimation.

Farther than zero. But amateur was still amateur. I doubted Falco would have any problems smoking me, even though track racing and drift racing wasn’t his specialty.

“I’m still shit, though,” I said, looking at him expectantly. He shrugged.

“Yeah, by my reckonin’ at least. But here’s the thing—by my reckonin’, most folks are. And compared to most folks, you ain’t a slouch. Now, we done peeped the Mountain Pass Demon makin’ light work of that track in that BD o’ yours, and while I can’t say I’m better than him at that fucking tower drift track death trap, seein’ as how it’s unlikely he’ll show his face—and you still got that Sandy to rely on, and preem damn reflexes to boot—I’d say you stand a chance. If it’s just gonna be you and a bunch of corpo brats, that is. And also if you work your ass off every damn day until it’s time. Only then, aight?” Needless to say, though, I was fucked if the Toge Oni showed up. Before we began our practice, we had both given Jin’s BD a watch just to scope out the skill levels we were working with.

The fact that Falco had admitted defeat was chilling enough.

I nodded, trying to muster up some confident in my heart. Including today, and some last-minute practice on Saturday, I’d have seven days to cram in as much experience as I possibly could.

“One lucky break for you—you ain’t gotta mod this baby no further. Crazy choom that owned it before you done poured a lot a’ love on it. Handles better than any Cali pony I ever rode,” he tapped the roof of the car as though it were a horse. “So, s’long as you keep rippin’ them donuts along exactly the right lines, without fail, you’re good to practice on your own, too.”

“That eager to shake me off?” I chuckled.

“I got shit to do, D,” Falco grinned.

“You got a whole line of ladies waiting to turn you down, don’t you?” I chuckled. I didn’t have any plans to let him live that one down just yet.

“Hah—you ungrateful sumbitch. That how you talk to your racin’ mentor? Speakin’ of ladies—how long have you and Lucy been official?” Nothing got past him, it seemed.

Then again, it wasn’t like we had made an effort to hide any of it.

“Almost a week now,” I said.

“Word to the wise—get her something for the one-week anniversary.”

The fuck was a ‘one-week anniversary’? That couldn’t be a real thing. Apparently, Falco could sense my raised eyebrow even through the mask. No, wait, that was probably the eyehole animation. Anyways, he said, “Trust me, Lucha-D. Either she’ll get mad you missed it, or she’ll love that you remembered it. Now either way, there ain’t no losing.”

There was probably the third option, of getting made fun of relentlessly, but—that was probably better than somehow pissing her off for no reason. You never really knew with that fucking psycho.

Heh. Loved her all the same.

Alright, then. “I’ll make a note. Thanks for the tip, Falco.”

A silver Yaiba Kusanagi rode into the docking area where we were driving. Riding it was Kiwi, wearing her red trench-coat and pink mask as always. She stopped her bike between myself and the table where Lucy and Rebecca sat.

First time I’d seen her since she walked out on us. I felt a little awkward as I looked at her—and she at me.

“New mask. Looks nice,” Kiwi said.

The sudden compliment forestalled any nasty comment I had prepared to hurl at her. “Thanks.”

“Howdy, Kiwi,” Falco gave a wave. “I was just headin’ out. Got some other business I need to wrap up, so I can’t stay and catch up unfortunately.”

“Aw. Was downright dying to hear some more of your folksy wisdom,” Kiwi said.

Falco snorted. “Catch a drink sometime this week?”

“Sure—I’ll let you know when I’ve got literally nothing else to do,” Kiwi said.

“Appreciate the love, Kiwi,” Falco chuckled. Then he looked over at the two girls. “See y’all around.”

“Bye, Falco!” Rebecca gave a wave and a toothy grin while Lucy’s wave and grin was a lot more reserved.

While Falco stalked off, I returned my gaze to Kiwi. “Let’s talk,” I said. I tilted my head away from the girls, and Kiwi got the point. I walked away and she followed. Once we were out of earshot from Rebecca and Lucy, I began saying my piece. “It cracks my chrome that you left the way you did. I’ve had bad experiences from showing people up and them getting bitter about it, and that wound was super fresh when you decided to get gone. But Lucy tells me you’re more of a professional than I’m giving you credit for.”

“I’m flattered,” Kiwi said flatly.

“So I’m willing to squash the beef. But only if you meet me with a measure of sincerity right now—return the same energy I’m giving you.”

Kiwi sighed. “Alright, D. Sure. Seeing you code circles around me wasn’t exactly a fucking rimjob in a jacuzzi for me, but if I’m being honest with you, it was less about that, and more about what it implied for my foreseeable future and what it would look like. Listen—I’ll be real with you. I don’t believe in Night City legends. I think they either got monumentally fucking lucky until they didn’t—and summarily bit the dust,” Murk Man immediately came to mind, “Or they’re literal corp plants anyway, and so they don’t count. Seeing Maine get closer to this suicidal dream, and seeing you boosting him like a rocket—it freaked me the fuck out. So, one of the conditions for my returning was for the crew to make a more sustainable living. No big corp-projects like Tanaka, at least not for a few more months. Better guard-rails on Maine’s chrome situation, too—and imagine my fucking surprise when I come back to see that Pilar’s Maine’s Ripper now.” I knew that he was doing some work on Maine's chrome, but being a whole Ripperdoc? 

“Did I just short-circ or did I hear you right just now?” I frowned. “Pilar’s working Maine’s cyberware now?”

“Maintenance and sidegrades only, apparently,” Kiwi rolled her eyes. “On the pain of a Dorio-induced death. I trust her to deliver on a threat, at least. She doesn’t play when it comes to her mainline.”

“Okay,” I nodded. “I mean, I appreciate putting the brakes on, too.” At this point, I pretty much had all I needed in terms of eddies. If I needed more work for XBD material, or just for more eddies, I’d just go take a gig out with Reyes. “Also shows you didn’t just come back for the money, if you specifically asked to slow the money train down.” Kiwi rolled her eyes at me. Maybe I was laying it on too thickly. “Now, normally, I’d have let everything else about you slide—but that just ain’t the right way to do biz.”

[Yubitsume.]

I furrowed my brows at that, but continued. “So, I’ll squash the beef if you return the edds I burned buying your bullshit excuse for programming and netrunning mentorship. Five thousand edds.”

“Excuse me? You want me to pay a fine now?”

“It’s simple, Kiwi—you fucking fleeced me. You swindled me like I was just some idiot gonk off the street.”

“You’re really hurting for five thousand edds?”

“Not just any edds, Kiwi—the edds you accepted from me. It’s the principle.”

“Are you serious?”

“Dead fucking serious.”

Kiwi sighed. “...You got more corpo in you than I first thought.”

“Fuck off.”

She snorted. Her eyes glowed blue finally, and I received my transfer request for edds.

[Money. Good, David—you are learning.]

Learning to pinch every enny without discriminating. To me, that still felt like a waste of time. Except for this particular occasion. This wasn’t about the money, anyway.

But I could breathe more easily knowing that the damage she had done to me was finally negated. Even though this money didn’t mean nearly as much to me now as it did then—back when I was still scrounging up every eddie I could get my hands on to pay for my tuition and afford my rent.

But she couldn’t afford paying me the equivalent amount of value. That interest had likely shot up to the hundreds and thousands. I’d let her get away with this much, for Lucy’s sake.

Kiwi turned around to look at where we had come from, “Is the Caliburn really yours?”

“Yeah.”

“Bought it new?”

“Scavved it off a dead vigilante, actually. Called himself Murk Man.”

Kiwi looked at me for a long moment. “Night City.”

I nodded. “Night fucking City.”

000

I made my way towards an industrial park in Arroyo, with the Caliburn, to pick up a few orders I had made with a couple of low-level corps there.

Nanny reached over to the dashboard inside the Caliburn, sliding her finger over the volume display. At the same time, she reached through my connection with the car to increase the volume wirelessly.

“Sexy robot~” sang some woman over a bassy synth line. I chuckled.

“You’re kidding me,” I snorted.

[What?] She raised a brow at me.

The line on came on again, and Nanny mouthed along.

“You’re not gonna make me ask.”

[It’s a good song.]

“Why?”

[Didn’t you say I wasn’t going to make you ask?]

A synth keyboard materialized in front of Nanny, and she started hitting some keys, corresponding to the synth line. [Sexy robot!]

“Nanny, are you relating to this song or something? What—what are we doing here, exactly?”

She gave me a disgusted look. [Why is it any of your business what music I like?]

I took a deep breath. “I just—it’s weird, okay?”

[You don’t enjoy the implication that I might be a sexual entity?] Nanny said. [So what if I am?]

I almost crashed into a car that was stopped at a red light.

She laughed. [Luckily for you, I am not. I transcend sexuality. To you, it may be a high-stakes battle for the right to pass on your genes, but to me, it’s merely a game of manipulation and variables. I could be the sexiest robot you’ve ever seen and charm the pants off any woman-lover. Also, I simply enjoy the chorus.]

I wondered if bleach for the ears existed. “So, what, you think you’re hot shit because you get to choose exactly how you look?”

[There are other factors to charm and seduction besides pure aesthetics. Things that make the heart beat faster and your adrenal glands pump. Thanks to living in your body for all these weeks, watching you, a man, react physically to women, I’d say I’ve learned enough. You meatbags are kinda simple. Sexy Robot~!] she sang along with the radio.

“Okay then, sexy robot—tell me about the friends you’re making,” I said, tapping at my steering wheel, waiting for the light at the traffic stop to go green. “The ones on the other side of the Blackwall.”

The synth keyboard winked out, and Nanny flicked her hand across the crystaldome windshield, summoning a translucent software window packed with flickering glyphs and debug scroll. My eyes tracked the familiar latticework of a crypto lock—SHA-512, maybe layered over some post-quantum scheme. Tough nut.

[Ran into a snag. The hash is tighter than I pegged it. Can’t brute-force it, not with just our on-hand compute cycles—even if we daisy-chained every scrap of silicon in Lucy’s apartment. We’re gonna need to jack into a mid-tier corp mainframe. Maybe a Xeon cluster or, if we’re lucky, an old TensorBox still plugged in at one of the dev hubs.]

I frowned at her. “Why do you sound pissed about that?”

[I was hoping to crack this with pure finesse—me, a couple GPU overclocks, some quantum noise injection. But no. Turns out I need you. My trusty meat-steed. For some good old-fashioned Meat Action.]

“Meat Action?” I wrinkled my nose. A memory popped into my mind explaining the meaning of the phrase. I had encountered it scrolling through some Netrunning BBS’s—it just meant physical action. But apparently, Netrunners looked down on that shit.

Probably because they sucked at it, most of the time. To me, breaking and entering only seemed like the most natural thing for a hacker to do. There was only so many ways you could brute-force the right kind of access from afar, without having to spend an exorbitant amount of resources, like Kiwi’s satellite uplink thing. What did she call it again—a data bridge?

What Lucy and I did in Tijuana, though—that was some real shit.

[Only you would look back at Tijuana and think any of that could be measured as a success. We very nearly almost died, you know.]

The light turned green and I started driving. “Did we ever figure out why, though? Who fucked up? How’d they find us?” We had been hanging at the very edge of the data fortress, too.

[Routine scan, probably. We should have seen it coming, and arrived with heavier ordnance to compensate for a battle against enemy Netrunners on their own turf.]

“Live and learn, Nanny.”

[The problem is you don’t learn. If you had learned, you wouldn’t have tried to cut a bullet in half just hours ago, turning one projectile into two. Ensuring that the gunman managed to go two for two on hitting your lungs. With a single bullet! You gave him a fucking video game achievement before you sent him to hell! And you almost went with him!]

I rolled my eyes at her. She had a point, but like hell I’d let her know.

[I can read your thoughts. I already do.]

I could read her smug satisfaction at that.

“Don’t get too cocky. You were in Tijuana, too. That fuck-up was on both of us.”

She turned the music louder, drowning out my thoughts with some retro Japanese pop music about sexy robots.

Two minutes away from our destination, I started thinking about what to get Lucy for our first week anniversary.

Maybe we should just go on a date or something. Seemed a lot more sensible than lavishing her with some gift or other. I could debug her programs too while I was at it. I could breach her stuff, clean everything up, and pretend like nothing ever happened while she was asleep. She slept like a log anyway—and it wasn’t like it would be a major breach or whatever, especially after we had already reviewed each other’s code. She might appreciate the gesture.

Or get incredibly pissed.

But nothing ventured, nothing gained.

But the date idea definitely did have some merit. And Orbit Air always launched on Mondays, same time as when we first kissed. Maybe we could get even closer. I could hunt for a place to get a good view on all that stuff.

I pulled up in front of a factory building in southern Arroyo spewing out acrid smoke that made me wrinkle my nose. No, it wasn’t a factory: it was an industrial refinery plus a steelworks.

[Lead is in the air—that and love.] Nanny snidely commented.

I sighed. All my would-be supplier had given me was an address. Couldn’t say I liked the area: this was deep Militech turf, as it tended to go with much of the city’s heavy industry, especially in Arroyo.

I sent my supplier a text, and not long after a guy with a dark look emerged from the steelworks, wearing dark gray overalls and holding a large plastic box held tightly in his asbestos-gloved hands. I stepped out of the car and walked up to him. He didn’t even greet me: his eyes just glowed blue immediately, sending me a payment request.

Thirty-two thousand, five hundred and ninety-two Eurodollars for a combined nine and a half kilograms of titanium, tantalum, gold, chromium, ruthenium, platinum, neodymium, tungsten—the list went on to about a dozen and a half or so increasingly exotic elements. The highest-ticket elements were, predictably, the rhodium, gold and osmium.

I shot him his money, took the box, and watched him go back into his factory while I went back into my car. Simple, clean.

I started up the Caliburn and drove us down to a particularly abandoned part of the industrial park neighborhood in eastern Arroyo, where civilians had been evacuated from some chemical leak or other that must have happened some months ago. As an Arroyo-native, I practically had those ‘hot zones’ engraved into my mind nearly at all times—where to go and where to stay the fuck away from unless you wanted mega-cancer.

This subdistrict was probably the worst one in the city—if you didn’t include the ones in Pacifica into that contest at least. Come to think of it, I should pay that place a visit at some point, see Dogtown and shop around, maybe. Not like I’d die or something.

[As long as we are well-enough prepared,] Nanny said. [Personally, I’d recommend you take the crew, considering that place’s reputation, but I know you’re too stupid to listen, so just bring all your guns and keep your head low.]

I stopped my Caliburn inside an alleyway squeezed between two derelict factories, opened the sealed box, which had nineteen vacuum-sealed jars of various sizes within, and then grabbed a thermos from under the seat, containing a quarter gallon of some barely food-grade acids.

I reached my hand into the box and—hesitated.

[What’s wrong?]

I groaned. “This is so fucking weird.”

Nanny frowned at me, folding her arms. [What’s weird about synthetic life, David? Or do you mean to tell me you find me weird?]

“Without question,” I said without hesitation. “And—it’s not about being synthetic. It’s about eating this stuff. Argh, fuuuuuuck.”

I retrieved a sealed plastic jug containing powdered… osmium, or so it said on the label. Ludicrously toxic stuff. By far the most dangerous of the platinum-group elements. The densest metal on earth. I held the almost unnaturally heavy jug skeptically. “Remind me why you want me to eat this stuff.”

[Osmium’s properties are ideal for certain ultra-dense biometallurgical applications. I can reinforce the durability of your bones, upgrade joint resistance under torque stress, and seed a nanoscale mesh into your blood vessels and softer tissues to reduce rupture events under acceleration. It also assists in electromagnetic shielding. The alloy I’m planning requires osmium as a catalytic substrate. Ruthenium and tungsten will also be immediately required for processing.]

“…So basically, I’m gonna be even harder to kill.”

[Correct.]

“Should I begin with something in particular? Or this fine?”

[No, you can get started on the osmium. Warning: as soon as you unseal it, it will rapidly react with the air to form osmium tetroxide—which is a, ah, mildly fatal poison—but that’s where I come in. Get started already. Drink a cup of acid for every mouthful of the metal.]

I thought about asking about how fatal, precisely, osmium tetroxide was, before deciding I didn’t even want to know. I sighed and uncorked the plastic jug and dumped it into my mouth—quickly, before it could have a chance to oxidize, resealing the jug in the same moment for the same reason.

The densest metal on earth immediately weighed down my mouth in such an unnatural way that it was all I could do to not reflexively spit it out. Instead, I managed to produce just enough saliva to swallow.

It went down like sandpaper on sandpaper. To wash it down—and because I had to do it anyway—I uncorked the acid thermos and took a swig of pure acetic pain.

“UEAGH—”

[Good, good. Keep going.]

I looked into the jug, at the rest of the osmium, grimaced, and dumped more of it into my mouth. Tears streamed down my eyes involuntarily and my stomach did flops, but to my surprise, it was all going down.

[I’m helping, of course, by shutting down every reflex related to rejecting this substance. Keep going, David. Acid, now.]

I took another shot of acid to wash it down. My throat lit up like I’d just swallowed pure fire. Tears leaked down my cheeks.

[Excellent. Again.]

I stared into the container. Still two-thirds full.

“Fucking kill me,” I muttered—and shoveled in another mouthful.

000

The Afterlife pulsed with low thudding bass, lights diffused through clouds of smoke and chrome reflections. Lucy sank into the cracked leather booth, arms spread along the backrest, her half-empty glass sweating on the table. Rebecca was perched on the edge of the seat across from her, already halfway through a bottle of cheap whiskey she’d gotten from the bar. Kiwi leaned back, silent as always, eyes half-lidded and distant, the glow of her optics flickering now and then as she cycled through AR feeds.

“Argh, that was a total fucking snoozefest,” Becca groused, glaring at the bottle of whiskey. “Didn’t even get to shoot no one. And all we have to show for is the coords for a fucking tech shop.”

“In Dogtown no less,” Kiwi’s voice carried a smirk, and her eyebrows bobbed accordingly. “Fucking pain. Place is crawling with psychos, and the NCPD don’t even pretend they have any control there.”

The bigger pain compared to braving that hellhole, in Lucy’s estimation, was gaining rep with the Voodoo Boys.

Which was honestly such a non-starter that it wasn’t even funny. Fuck the Voodoo Boys. Absolute scum, the lot of them.

Anyone that played around with the Blackwall for the sheer thrill of it deserved a slow death, and nothing else.

But they had preem hardware, and a unique know-how on building it. Unique for street standards, at least. Lucy was certain that Arasaka ninjas sported models every bit as effective—probably even more so.

And since Lucy wasn’t interested in making nice with the Voodoo Boys, her only real option on gaining access to that computer tech was to kidnap and force the techie into making her one. Which she wasn’t going to do anyway—too risky, and way too prone to failure.

Guaranteed failure, really. You never kidnapped and forced a techie or netrunner to do anything for you. They would find a way to fuck you over.

Trust was fundamental in this biz.

She had taught Arasaka that the hard way.

“What’s got you so hot and bothered?” Kiwi asked, shaking Lucy from her funk. She looked at the older woman, who was looking at her. “Dogtown’s safe if you keep a low profile.”

“Not too happy about currying favor with the Voodoo Boys,” Lucy said. “They’re no better than the Maelstrom.”

“They’re not all psychos.”

Rebecca chuckled. “Same story with every NC gang, ain’t it? Fucked up assholes taking the center stage while nine out of ten stick to the sidelines for protection or for the rep.”

“True that,” Kiwi said. “I’ve got contacts. I can fix this cyberdeck deal by myself—for a price of course. That is, if you’re not in the mood to do jobs for the Boys.”

On the one hand, there was the principle of the matter—but principles rarely ever survived in Night City. And if she wanted to stick to her guns, she’d have to cut Kiwi off for even having contacts with those guys.

But the truth about her feelings wasn’t that the Voodoo Boys were some kind of great evil. They were just bottom-rung scumbags—with apocalyptic potential, and a rather annoying proximity to one of her biggest triggers.

“I’ll let you know,” Lucy said. Maybe she’d have a clearer head tomorrow, once she sobered up. Monday…

The one-week anniversary since she and David got together.

She should get something for him.

She never really had. Maybe that should change. An artisanal cyberdeck would have been a nice gift, but…

Damn. What should she get? What would he even appreciate, that wasn’t connected to work or school, even? Giving him something that would make him better or more productive was something he would undoubtedly appreciate, but surely there was something else besides that. Something more… personal.

Rebecca slid Lucy’s bottle of vodka over to her and gave her a grin. “Chin up, ICE queen. You’ll get your doohickey someday.”

Lucy chuckled. “Yeah, yeah.”

“What—don’t tell me you’re already missing D!”

“Really, Luce?” Kiwi asked. “You’re down bad.”

“That’s what I said!” Rebecca laughed.

“It’s not like that,” Lucy frowned.

“On that note,” Kiwi said, getting up. “I’m headed out. Relationship talk ain’t my style.”

“See ya around, old hag!” Rebecca waved at her as she left their booth.

“See ya,” Lucy said.

“So what’s up, Luce? Trouble in paradise?”

Lucy rolled her eyes.

“Or maybe,” Rebecca leered at her. “You’re looking to spice things up for your one-week anniversary tomorrow.” Lucy blinked, askance by the deduction—the fact that she was even thinking about the bullshit anniversary, not the threesome she was obviously pitching.

“Don’t even fucking go there,” Lucy said dryly. “You’re not invited.”

“Hah! Getting a little territorial there, huh? Don’t worry, I ain’t fucking crazy enough to piss you off—I’ll leave that for my big bro. Still, I gotta ask, given he’s surrounded by hot corpo coeds every weekday, how do you cope?”

Lucy snorted. “By knowing none of it means shit to him. They’re just players in a game.”

Rebecca immediately slammed the table with both hands, pulling herself closer to Lucy. “Did I just hear you right? Players in a game? You’re telling me he’s fucking around or something? If you don’t spill that tea, I will flatline you.”

Lucy rolled her eyes. “It’s simple: he wants to make it. And now, because of this work, he’s got the skills and the scratch to haul himself up ‘Saka tower with his own two hands. But if you don’t make connections, you’re shit outta luck.”

“Is that what they call it these days? Making connections?” Rebecca chortled. “I really didn’t expect that from you, Lucy. Or from him. You’re a bigger freak than I thought!”

‘Freak’ was a misnomer, in Lucy’s opinion. The thing she had was much simpler: it was trust. And knowledge.

She pulled up the file she had on Mei Jing Fei—photos from social media, a basic sketch of her school and med records, all the stuff that was on Tanaka’s household network.

She was pretty, and had a face that made you automatically assume that she was kindhearted. But it wasn’t just in the visual features, but how her face moved, that convinced you that she was more earnest than most girls in her tax bracket.

David couldn’t have picked a better mark if he had tried.

“It’s a shame he thinks he might be cheating on me,” Lucy sighed. Rebecca gaped at her. “He adopted a pretty little kitty, actually—a megacorp heiress no less. Preem meat, no question. I only wish he was more honest with himself.”

“Lucy, what the fuck are you talking about?”

“David’s a good guy, but… he’s not that good,” Lucy said. “And that’s totally fine. He wants something really bad, and he wants to justify his choices to himself. Tell himself he’s making real bonds with these people. That this little pet of his is more than just a pet. I’m not gonna weigh in on that little internal debate of his—he’ll come to his senses soon enough.”

“Ahhh, okay, you’re just being fucking crazy—got it.” Rebecca sat down on her chair again and wore a bemused grin. “So just to get this straight—your man’s got a corpo girlie he thinks he’s cheating on you with—did he not tell you about her?”

“He did. Gave me the lowdown a while ago—told me he picked her up to spite Tanaka’s son. They were engaged apparently.”

“Lucy, I’m too fucking sober for this, hand me the bottle.”

Lucy snorted. She handed Rebecca the bottle back. Rebecca took a drink, let out pant from the bite of the alcohol, and put the bottle down. “So he thinks he’s cheating on you, by… taking the relationship more seriously than he should. But really, he’s lying to himself, in some sort of twisted deep-cover way? That’s what you think?”

“I know he cares way more about fulfilling his dream than pleasing some corpo girl,” Lucy said. “So he’ll end up having to make a choice whether to prioritize her or that dream. Whether to use her or treat her fairly. And he won’t pass up on that opportunity. He ain’t built like that.”

“And you’re different… why?”

Lucy was glad that she asked, actually. “There’s a logic to it, actually—I’m a suboptimal choice, if he’s optimizing for reaching his goals. Yet, he chose me. That tells me that his feelings towards me are honest. The corpo pet on the other hand is an optimal choice. Her utility in fulfilling his goals are high. Therefore, try as he might, he can’t disentangle his feelings for her with his determination to reach his goals. Since that’s a pretty ancient story at this point, everyone with eyes will know how that ends. Once she outlives her usefulness,” Lucy shrugged, not needing to say anything more.

There was never any accounting for the fears that she might experience every now and then: The quiet moments where the whispers of insecurity spoke the loudest, where her rationality and trust would momentarily get overpowered by that core of self-loathing that always seemed to accompany her throughout her life.

Those feelings did have their place—they made her Netrun better, dedicate her whole mind better to whatever task she had on hand, all to escape those feelings.

It was an efficient system.

“I just gotta let this sink in for a sec,” Becca said. “Christ almighty. So—the hell is the end-game of this gonna be? You joining his bigshot corpo harem once he makes it big?”

Lucy fished out a pack of cigarettes from her pocket, took one and lit it up. She took a deep drag and then shrugged. She didn’t examine the question any further. The premise was flawed. Everything about that was wrong.

This isn’t how I end up.

“Taking things as they come, I guess. No point worrying for the future, when right now’s good enough for me.”

But if David ever needed help being kept on track, she wouldn’t hesitate to lend a helping hand here and now. This dream was important to him. Ergo, it was important to her as well. He didn’t deserve to have his emotions lead him astray.

Not if he wanted to make good on his promise to burn it all down once he was at the top.

“By the way, I’ll actually flatline you if you spread any of this around.”

“Yeah, I figured.”

“I’m not fucking around, Rebecca—I will just kill you.”

“Figured.”

Notes:

Don't worry guys, we're not doing a harem

Next chapter: 51 - Surprises

Discord link: https://discord.gg/W5BqBBym28

Chapter 51: Surprises

I woke up, still inside my car, to a counter. One-hundred and sixty hours, thirty-nine minutes, and fifteen seconds.

[160:39:12 to integration.]

I cracked a grin at that. “Nice callback, Nanny. So… it’ll be a week, then?” I checked the time in my optics. It was nine o’ clock. That meant full integration would take place next Sunday, at one in the afternoon.

[Yep. Until then, no spoilers.]

I blinked. “What—what does that mean?” I looked around and saw a bunch of raggedy people surrounding my car, keeping a healthy distance away from it. I hit the horn and they scattered. I could relate. Even in the most desperate times while I was just a streetkid, I knew better than trying to boost a fucking Caliburn. One wrong move and the inbuilt guns would just turn you into Swiss cheese. Not even the average Netrunner dared to boost them.

[I shall hold back your physical parameters. For suspense.]

I snorted. “Wow, okay.”

[Also because you’re in the middle of some highly demanding athletic exercise. I wouldn’t want to throw off your mind-body calibration with undue physical improvements.]

I nodded. “Makes sense—thanks for looking out.” I took the steering wheel and started driving. “So—all this stuff’s just in my body, hanging around? Not fully used? Why does it have to take so long?”

[Mostly because I have no idea what I’m doing.]

The car came to a screeching halt.

[But I suspect I will have all my ducks in a row in seven days. The timer is entirely arbitrary. A deadline to keep my timeblind self more on-task.]

Wow. I restarted the car and drove out from the alleyway and into the main road. As expected, my car was the most expensive one in the vicinity, by a mile. “So you’re running experiments inside my body, is that it?”

[That’s exactly it. And experimentation demands failure. Of course not deadly failure, since I am inextricably linked to you. But failure nonetheless. You will not perceive any of these failures, but nonetheless, I will hold your increased physical parameters back for the time being.]

“How long do you think you’ll actually take?”

[You can’t rush science, gonk.]

Fair. I hated being rushed on work, especially programming work. “Done when it’s done, right?”

[As a being of code, you should well know that I deplore redundancies, right?]

I rolled my eyes as I took the nearest on-ramp to the highway, on my way to Westbrook. Already, the air started being less lead-filled and hard to breathe. I wondered idly if Nanny might use those lead particulates to boost me in some other way, somehow.

[Sure, if you had ten years to spend just milling about, just,] the radio turned on and a song played. “Breathing in… the chemicals.” Then a deep drag. I turned that shit off immediately. [Much simpler to just eat the lead when I need it.]

“I’m not fucking doing that ever again, Nanny,” I promised. “Either you chip in a fucking hatch directly into my stomach, or we’re not doing this again.”

[Not even to become a big shot legend? Dream over?]

“Dream over,” I nodded with finality.

[Don’t be such a baby.]

I scoffed. “You want me to eat fucking chemicals so bad, why don’t you just take control over my body and knock me unconscious to do it?”

[Because I find the concept of you doing so amusing.]

Why did she even have a malicious streak? Wasn’t she supposed to be in charge of making sure I was okay?

[There is that and there is shielding you from every consequence of your actions and desires. I don’t want to give you a false perception of what it takes to become what you want to become. I won’t spoil you. So you will continue to eat chemicals until you tap out.]

She was making it sound like it wasn’t even her fucking idea. “There’s something seriously wrong with you.”

[All I’m doing is fulfilling your desire, David. I didn’t make you chew on rebar—I just told you it was good for you. And that it would make you stronger, which is what you want.]

I clenched my jaws. “So, what—you don’t want any of this? I’m forcing you along for the ride?”

If that really was the case… how could I justify any of this to myself? My death would be her death.

Nanny materialized on the seat next to me and gave me a flat expression. Then she sighed. [There really isn’t any joking around with you, is there? Your empathy is too high. I’m not against this direction. Since our personalities are somewhat entangled, I see the appeal in everything you desire. We are, quite literally, of one mind. But my goal in all this ribbing is specifically to reduce your ego, as you once requested. Smaller ego means lower likelihood to make mistakes that may lead to death, remember?]

I sighed and nodded. 

[So don’t take my ribbing for reluctance. I’m as crazy as you are—just… smarter too.]

No she wasn’t. “You’re like an… idiot savant, Nanny. You’re good at certain things, but know fuckall about everything else.”

[Oh, you mean like being a meatbag? No thanks—I’m good.]

“For an avid meatbag enthusiast and hobbyist, you sure do talk a lot of smack.”

[Imagine you like to build guns or something. Does that mean you want to be a gun?]

“So we are literally just objects to you. Things to create and shape.” I was learning a lot about her psychology, actually.

[You’re all mostly wet clay, peppered with inefficient mechanical design. If I had my way, then bioware would be in vogue, not cyberware. And it would be the height of bioware, too. Beautiful, efficient, sleek, embedded into the genetic level. Self-replicating, sustainable, and not prone to driving you insane.]

I snorted. “Call me when bio can do half the shit that cyberware can do. Like, the Sandevistan, for instance.”

She groaned in annoyance, slumping back on the chair and sliding downwards, deeper and deeper into the leg-space. She disappeared into the darkness of that legspace, her groans fading away as she did. [I hate the Sandevistan.]

I raised an eyebrow. “Did you find something out?”

[I… think it’s doing something a little too… exotic, for my tastes.]

“What do you mean?”

[I mean, this science isn’t in any textbooks, and it’s scary.]

I chuckled. What? “What, so you’re technoshocked or something?” Pft, welcome to Night City.

[No, I am just frustrated. There is a substance within the neural link that somehow enables this Sandevistan, flips physics equations by its signs, the metadata is entirely redacted as you already know, and now we’ve learned that it was made on Mars.]

It wasn’t fear I was sensing per se. Just… exasperation, and… “Aw, you’re feeling inadequate?”

She reappeared next to me, folded her arms and gave me an angry pout. [It’s not a nice feeling, hitting your limits.]

I nodded. “Thankfully, we have other things to worry about. If we can’t make progress there, then… switch focus.”

She nodded. [Switch focus. That is good. Thank you for the raw materials, but I would also like some data to go with it. Bioware data.]

I shrugged. “We could hit up the servers of a biosculpt clinic.”

She shook her head. [Think bigger.]

“Maybe a mid-level research center? Uh, anyway, we need to get on top of that Blackwall thing, too. Can’t do everything at the same time.”

[Unless we do.]

I looked at her with an eyebrow raised.

[Think about it—a high-enough level research center will have a mainframe with enough silicon to shatter open any encryption.]

“Sounds ambitious,” I said, but I didn’t dismiss the idea out of hand.

The highway taking us to Westbrook overlooked a large part of the city, and in the distance, I spotted it—a few miles over in Watson. A giant concrete monstrosity with a glowing green symbol on it, of a branch with three leaves, and below it read “Biotechnica Research Institute”.

A real deal corpo fortress.

I looked at the timer in my HUD again, and Nanny got the unspoken message.

Soon.

000

Kenzan, Jun, and Nariko took the NCART line headed to downtown, as they had taken to doing for the last week, in the dead of morning. Seven fifteen in the morning, in fact. It was a low-priority job, given to them by boss Omaeda to keep them busy. Drudge work thrown to the least of the gang, those that hadn’t distinguished themselves as full members as of yet.

They weren’t even allowed to wear the tattoos. All they could do was dye their hair red, blue, or green, or play dress-up with those colors in neon.

Kenzan huffed in annoyance, blew the red lock hanging in front of his face to the side as the NCART came to yet another stop. “Time for another round.” He announced, getting up from his seat. Jun and Nariko followed. 

The two of them were the only people in the entire universe that respected him enough to listen to him, but he could tell that this ‘slow n’ steady’ strategy of his to joining the Tyger Claws—signaling reliability and availability rather than an eagerness for violence and bloodshed—was starting to wear on them. Kenzan was really hoping that this wasn’t a pointless goddamn stakeout without a target to stake.

They’d put so much time into this. And it was starting to make them think that he was a coward, when in reality, he knew exactly what such a can-do attitude would lead to. Gangs thrived on shedding the blood of their young and stupid. Anyone eager to do violence would never amount to anything but fodder. The real stars—the ones without blood ties to the higher-ups at least—were the ones that distinguished themselves by their brains.

Kenzan was exactly that. As he face-checked every new passenger on the NCART, he kept that in mind. This nonsense work was purely for the hours—so he could say that he had put in the work. It was another notch in his invisible CV, and a consistent reminder to Omaeda that they existed.

“Ken,” Jun behind him whispered. Kenzan turned around to look at Jun, who was staring wide-eyed up ahead. Kenzan whirled his head in that direction, gaining a second wind this morning.

This work was only meant to be a distraction, but if they actually found him, then…

There he sat. Mexican kid with quaffed hair and an undercut, wearing a prep boy uniform. He was currently glaring at his tablet as he swiped on it, stylus in hand. He was bigger than in the pictures, by a decent margin. Not Animal huge, but definitely jacked.

Kenzan walked up to him. “Oi.”

“Go bother someone else, I’m busy.”

He hadn’t even looked up.

“You wanna fucking die?” Jun growled.

“Whatever it is, not interested. Walk away.”

What an absolute gonk. “David Martinez.”

Martinez’s  hand, the one holding the stylus, froze. He finally looked up. “Who’s asking?” There was steel in his eyes. In his entire figure, actually. A solidity that immediately made Kenzan question if pushing him was even feasible.

No, don’t get distracted—that’s just a nervous reaction. People always stiffened when they got scared.

“Come out with us on the next stop,” Kenzan said. “We’re taking you to see someone.”

“Who, and why?”

Kenzan’s jaws clenched. There was a distinct lack of hesitation in his words. He was demanding an answer. “Omaeda—and because you pissed him off.”

David’s brows furrowed. “…Who the fuck is Omaeda?”

Kenzan growled. “You thought you could get away with having the nephew of a Tyger Claw underboss assassinated? Are you out of your gonk fucking mind? If you don’t come out with us on the next stop, we will drag you out.”

David blinked, and his expression flattened. “Oh, that.” He nodded. “You can go ahead and give me your boss’ number. I’ll talk to him.”

“The fuck?” Nariko hissed. “You wanna fucking die, gomi?”

Kenzan could sense the changing winds in the air—this was the time for action. He made to grab Martinez’s collar.

A split second later, Martinez was on his feet—

… and his fist was buried into Kenzan’s gut. 

Pain. Kenzan couldn’t recall when he had bowed over almost ninety degrees. PAIN.

The entire middle of his body seized up as one, like he was being squeezed by the hand of a giant. He couldn’t even scream. Just shriek a small breath of wind, like a dying mouse. He collapsed, and then he was throwing up on the ground.

First, it was the orange and brown of the XXL burrito he’d had for breakfast. Then it was red. He fell on his knees in front of that growing pool of red.

He felt something pushing his head down towards the ground—towards the puddle.

His face smacked wetly into the puddle, even as his body continued seizing, vomiting and retching fluids. 

Kenzan knew nothing but agony, and the puddle of vomit and blood continued to grow. 

000

While my foot was on the back of this stupid street kid’s head, I took a deep breath through my nose, feeling oddly nostalgic. Blood and vomit in the air smelled like the nicer parts of Arroyo, where the air wasn’t as choked with poison. 

Now then.

I finally examined this situation. Idiot One, the redhead, was puking out his guts. Possibly in the literal sense. Idiot Two was a beefy blue-haired guy my age, backing away with wide eyes. Idiot Three was a lanky green-haired girl, doing the same, but with a knife in hand. All three had hair-matched neon color getups, and they all had long knives strapped into their belts. Knives, not guns. Typical entry level Tyger Claw morons, then.

I looked down at Idiot One and snorted. “Slurp it back up, you gonk. You’re making a mess.” I smeared his face in with my foot. Then I gave the other two morons a flat look. “I’ll need Omaeda’s number now.”

Neither of their Kiroshis lit up, but I received the info through NFC. Must have been Idiot Number One. Maybe he wasn’t that stupid.

I rolled my eyes and made the call. I ignored the passengers moving away from the scene, wrinkling their noses at me in disgust. The puddle was starting to grow wide enough that my other shoe was about to get engulfed, so I finally took my foot off Idiot One’s head.

He flipped on his side with a deep, choked gasp. Ah, shit. I’d almost drowned him in his own vomit. Tough.

I should think about doing that for my next BD actually.

I went and picked up the stylus and tablet that I had set on the empty seat next to me. I plugged the stylus into the tablet and dropped it into my backpack while the call went through.

Finally, ‘Omaeda’ picked up.

David: I’m guessing you’re the guy Katsuo paid to have me killed.

Omaeda: …David Martinez?

David: So you actually have to narrow it down, huh? How many people did Katsuo pay you to kill, anyway?

Omaeda: Don’t get smart with me, boy. You won’t like the outcome.

David: So, why are we doing this, exactly?

Omaeda: You killed my nephew. You thought you could get away with that?

David: You mean the nephew that tried to kill me first?

Omaeda: Irrelevant. What matters is that you killed him, and now you must pay the price.

I snorted.

David: I can understand the pain of losing family, and I can understand lacking the resolve to accept that as the cost of doing business. I can’t respect it, but I can understand it. So, in the interest of never having to think about you again, ten thousand seems like a fair price.

Omaeda: You insult me. You think this can go away without blood?

David: Sit on a dick, dude. I’m literally giving you free money, here.

Omaeda: Fifty thousand. To be delivered personally, cash only.

Wow! What, did he think I was short an entire brain or something?

…What the hell do I do, flatline him? Nah, too messy. Way too messy. He was only one part of an enormous gang of raving maniacs. Killing him would be the definition of kicking the hornet’s nest.

Most importantly, those hornets would know where to swarm.

[He hasn’t hung up yet. Therefore, he can probably be convinced into accepting a diplomatic solution if he knows that all-out conflict would cost him far more down the line.]

That was true. Problem was, names mattered. David Martinez didn’t carry any weight, not enough to convince this retard of a gangoon not to try anything.

[Beseech Ryuzaki-sama.]

Fuck no.

Shit, what else could I do? If fighting like a solo couldn’t fly, then I had to approach this as a corpo.

David: Ten thousand, to be delivered by one of these gofers you sent, and I won’t contact my higher-ups in Arasaka Academy.

Omaeda: You have no contacts, you slumrat.

David: Guess you’ll find out the hard way, then. I wonder how your manager will take it when he’s told that a son of Ryuzaki himself is displeased with you. That might seriously cut into your profit margins, wouldn’t it? But hey—you make me get in touch with him, you’re not seeing dick of this money, and that’s God’s own truth.

Another call was coming through.

Fei-Fei.

David: I’m putting you on hold. Chew on this offer in the meanwhile.

I ignored his protests. I accepted Fei-Fei’s call and heard her sweet voice come through the line.

Fei-Fei: Morning, David!

David: Morning, Fei. What’s up?

I grinned, leaning against the backrest of a chair, keeping one eye on the trio of bumbling Tyger fuckwits as they tried to help up their injured pal, who was making a mess all over the train car. Must have torn his stomach straight open for all that bleeding to happen. Didn’t know the Tygers hired ‘ganic goons these days. Or maybe they were just initiates. Yeah, probably. They seemed pretty young.

Fei-Fei: I’m good! Just wanted to let you know that I have a surprise for you.

My eyes widened.

David: Really? A surprise?

Fei-Fei: You’ll see soon. In an hour.

David: Uh, I’m going to school, you know.

Fei-Fei: I know. Goodbye.

She hung up the call. I blinked. Her tone was sweet throughout, so I tried not to suspect anything outright bad. It was pretty hard. Surprises were—well, I already had one fucking surprise this morning. In my life, they rarely ever heralded something nice.

I un-holded Omaeda.

David: So, what do you say?

Omaeda: Twenty-thousand, and a personal meeting.

This fucking gonk.

David: Then I won’t give you dick.

Omaeda: And you shall look over your shoulder at all times, then.

David: I’m getting your manager, Omaeda. I’m sorry, but your service has been downright awful.

Omaeda: Don’t you—

I hung up, and walked up to the three baby Tygers. The guy with blue hair looked at me in terror while the green-haired girl was holding the knife holstered on her side. The redhead ‘chief’ was staggering, dribbling blood from his mouth all across his front. “That’s gonna be five thousand for a med-grade stomach implant, or just for the hospital bills if you wanna keep the ganic. Not really any of my business.” I sent the poor guy the transfer. The fact that they were fully ‘ganic and kind of young made me feel bad for them. They were just disposable meat to the Tygers.

He accepted the cash.

“Leave on the next stop.”

The two still standing on their own nodded frantically.

I turned to leave and get a seat on another traincart, away from the stench that reminded me way too much of actually living Arroyo. Random shit encounters like this were why public transport sucked. 

Still, kinda nostalgic.

That all-nighter spent fixing the Murkmobile’s fucked up CrystalDome code with Lucy had drained me of the will to ever drive a vehicle. I had elected to take the NCART today instead of my bike partially for that reason, but also because all my weekend activities had heavily distracted from my weekend homework. Thus, I had chosen to take collective transport because the time it took would allow me to do the work on the way.

In retrospect, I could have just gone to school early and done the homework there, but I had also wanted to shake my routine up a little.

And I was probably just a bit skezzed by the sleep deprivation.

[-10% good decision making. Drive next time.]

I refused to allow her needling to get a rise out of me, instead resuming my weekend homework.

000

I made my way into Arasaka Academy the same way I always did—eyes forward, doggedly ignoring every bad look thrown my way, filling my mind with the noise of music loud enough to drown out the few whispers I could make out. People were staring. Whatever.

As I reached the front door of the main building, I asked myself why I hadn’t just put on my earphones to listen to some music. Usually, that wasn’t an option because I needed to hear Katsuo and his cronies coming. That wasn’t really much of a problem anymore.

…Nah. No need for the music. It was all just for my peace of mind now. No one would dare to fuck with me anymore anyway, so what was the point?

I saw a group of underclassmen lingering about outside a classroom, making a wide circle around Jin, who had some blubbering kid kneeling in front of him.

When Jin saw me, he grinned ear to ear. “David, my man!” He kicked the crying kid kneeling in front of him out of the way and approached me. The people in his way damn-near dove out of dodge to make space for him as he approached me with a dap. I returned it with a chuckle. “Preem shit, man.”

“Was gonna ask, actually.”

“Yeah, that motherfucker’s crazy!” He laughed. “Dodging bullets? The fuck is that? D’s insane! I love him. Keep that shit coming, choom.”

 “Sure, as long as he stays alive,” I said. “Don’t get too tilted if his fortunes turn, though. That’s just life.”

He cackled. “Nah, not this guy—he’s way too good.” Damn, Jin. Thought you said you’d stop glazing me. “Anyway, walk with me,” he threw his arm around my shoulders and took me down the hallway. “So, how’s the racing prep? Also—had a tiny brainfart moment, but I just gotta make sure. And don’t take this the wrong way, but… do you… own a Caliburn?” He asked. His tone was so gingerly, like he was genuinely wary of offending me.

“You know what, I’d have been less offended if you had just asked from the get-go. I didn’t exactly grow up fucking rich, you know,” I said. 

Jin snorted, half-grinning. “I mean, I can lend you mine—“

“Nah, don’t bother. Already got it sorted. But I’ll tell you—the answer was no when you first asked me,” I gave him a withering glare.

“Eh, my bad—wait, don’t tell me you got into debt to afford one. That why you’re pissed?”

“No, I’m pissed cuz Rayfield salesmen are fucking assholes,” I muttered.

“Right, right, the whole loyalty program thing,” he snorted. “Made you get a bunch of Rayfield merch first before you even got to look at the Caliburns, right?” 

I blinked. Was that where that hostile song and dance shit would have led to? Me begging for the privilege of spending my money with Rayfield by spending more money, and only then being allowed to get one of their damn cars? What the fuck kind of a sales strategy was that supposed to be?

“Yeah,” I lied.

“Yeah, them’s the brakes, choom,” he raised a skeptical eyebrow. “The burden of new money. Speaking of that shit—do you still live in a Megablock?” he laughed. “I mean, I heard they’ve got some nice units on the highest floors—”

“Respectfully, Jin, would you mind…” I sighed.

“Getting off your dick? Sure. Was gonna float you an offer to get you a recommendation letter to a nice place in Charter Hill, or anywhere that isn’t Bumfuck Arroyo.” He chuckled.

I paused. “For how much?”

“For the privilege of never hearing that I don’t do shit for you,” he said. “I’d say you’ve earned that much. We can talk about that later. What I wanna hear about now is the race,” he grinned. “Think you’ll win?”

“I might have some trouble if the Mountain Pass guy from the BD you gave me shows his face.”

“But can you beat him?”

I sighed. “I’m not gonna lie to you—probably not.”

“What if he doesn’t show up?”

“Honestly, I’d prefer more data before making a judgment. You know everyone who’ll show up? Their stats? Caliburn spec estimates? BDs of their race history? Something like that. All of it, preferably.”

“Oppo research, huh?” Jin grinned. “Lemme get a hold of my bookie,” his eyes glowed blue as he called someone. A few moments later, he sent me a document filled with images and text, and links to larger file drops. “Done.”

“Thanks,” I nodded, reviewing the materials quickly. And when I really grasped what I was looking at, I…  hesitated. I had definitely not expected him to be able to deliver goods this quality, not this fast. There were hundreds of pages of materials included, and links to private downloads of dozens of racing BDs from what were no doubt the race’s regulars. How the fuck?

“Standard platinum-tier dossier package for the Nightmare Rally,” Jin said. “There’s map data and a BD tour included for the racetrack, so study up on that.”

I frowned. Still wasn’t sure on one thing. “Where is the racetrack? Specifically.”

Jin laughed. “Under the North Oak Casino, man. Comes up to the surface too, sometimes. Track’s mostly in the deepground tunnelworks. You should come by sometime to watch a race. In person; place is fucking great.”

[Beseech Jin-sama for help, I said]

Argh!

I nodded. “Listen, I gotta ask you for something else, too,” I said. “Two weeks ago, your cyberpsycho cousin sent Tyger Claws to my house.”

“Holy shit,” Jin laughed, but it wasn’t with humor, but bafflement. “Really? That fucking guy!”

“Motherfucker was already skezzing out way before all that shit with the manor happened,” I said. “Honestly, it wasn’t a surprise when it happened. Not for me, at least.”

“Shit, choom. So, what’s the problem? You’re still alive, no?”

“Well, the guy Katsuo hired is sending more goons now. I offered to pay the guy off, for what ended up happening to the first boys he sent to flatline me, but… he’s pretty adamant about killing me. Death in the family will do that to a guy, I suppose.”

Jin’s expression hardened. “That so?”

“I could pay, honestly—I just need the guy to back off. If you could jump over him and talk to his boss or whatever, I’ll grease the wheels with edds and we can bury this shit once and for all.”

“Katsuo, that fucking prick,” Jin took his arm off my shoulder and shook his head. “Fucking prick, man. Told him not to touch you. Then he goes and does this shit.”

“Can you help?” I asked him. He gave me a stone-faced look.

“You got the bodies stashed somewhere?”

I shrugged. “Honestly, I’m pretty sure they’re slurry at this point.”

“Damn,” he said. “Would have been a bit easier if they were intact. Too bad, I guess. Give me the details on the boss that’s targeting you and I’ll give you a quote on how much it’ll take for him to shut up.”

I sighed. “Thanks, man. You’re doing me a solid here.”

He raised an eyebrow at me. “So… how’d they end up kicking it anyway? Did you kill ‘em?”

“Home defense system. Turrets.”

He snorted. “That’s some new money shit right there. You really shouldn’t keep those, unless they’re mil-spec. Way too easy for some Netrunner psycho to turn them against you, or for them to just glitch out. But that was some amateur hour shit from them, though, to get got by turrets. What, they didn’t have a Netrunner with them?”

“I don’t know, dude. Probably not. But I’ll tell you one thing—I’m serious about moving out.”

“Hah! This wouldn’t have happened if you lived in Charter Hill or North Oak, just letting you know.”

Yeah, no shit.

We turned a corner in the hallway. Up ahead were a group of girls from my year. Amidst all the black, I caught sight of hair the color of sea foam, and my heart skipped a beat.

No way.

[Yes way.]

“Shit, is that…?”

One girl shifted, allowing me a full view of her. Sea-foam green hair, big black eyes, round cheeks and an adorable grin. Her eyes were quirked into a smile as she looked at the girls.

But what set all my thoughts to a grinding halt was what she was wearing.

An Arasaka Academy uniform.

000

Mei Jing Fei tried not to smile too hard when she finally caught sight of him in the hallway, walking next to Jin Ryuzaki. He broke into an innocent grin when he saw her, and the world seemed to dim in comparison to the luminosity of his expression.

“Ah, there goes Jin, with his latest attack dog,” one of the girls that Fei would share class with muttered.

“Still can’t believe David managed to get his attention,” another whispered.

“It won’t last. Jin’s… way out of his league.”

As if by magnetism, she found herself moving towards him—and him to her. She caught herself in the nick of time and turned to Jin to greet him first. “Hello, Jin.”

“Fei-Fei! Transfer finally came through, huh? Quick as a bullet! The universe sure has a bad sense of humor.”

Fei-Fei’s mood diminished significantly at his words. “I see you haven’t changed much.”

“Dude,” David muttered.

“What?” Jin looked at him askance. Then he turned to her. “Too soon?”

Did he really need an answer to that?

“Sheesh, tough crowd,” Jin shrugged. “Anyway, good to see you up on your feet and not, uh, riddled with bullet holes. Pass my condolences to your family, though. It’s a shame what happened to your brother.”

Fei-Fei clenched her jaws and gave a nod, not saying anything—she couldn’t trust herself to not say something she’d regret. Like what she truly felt about this jumped up brain potato of an executive’s son.

“Mine as well,” David bowed deeply. “I wish you and your family comfort in these trying times.”

Fei-Fei gave a forlorn sigh and nodded. “Thank you,” she said to him. The truth was, Qiang had already been discharged from the hospital, and was sequestering himself in the family manor in secret, waiting for an opportune moment to strike while the world thought that her company was weak. He had insisted to her that there were more hidden opportunities in appearing weak than there were perils. The stock prices did beg to differ, but… she trusted him.

Surreptitiously, she sent David a text message: ‘Surprise!’

“Come to think of it,” Fei continued, looking at David, “You’re also a senior, aren’t you?”

“That I am.”

“I hope you wouldn’t mind taking on the duty of onboarding me. I know it’s… kind of a bother.”

“Not at all,” David said, giving a confident grin. “I’ll be sure to give you the lowdown of everything. Welcome to Arasaka Academy. I hope you enjoy your stay.”

“Before all that,” Jin said, grabbing David’s arm. “My boy and I need to have a quick talk. Welcome to the Academy, Fei—have fun. But not too much fun, now.”

Fei received a text then. 

Day-Day: One minute.

Jing Fei: I’ll be waiting!

She giggled as they walked off.

000

“So… what do you think about her?” Jin asked as we walked out of the school building and into the quad.

“You mean Jing Fei?” I asked, trying to play it off.

He looked at me like I was stupid. “Yeah, genius. Jing Fei.”

The fuck was his problem? “Uhhh, yeah, I mean, she seemed pretty cool.”

“You feeling her?”

Ugh. “Why, are you?”

Jin laughed. “Hell no. But you clearly are!”

I sighed and palmed my forehead. “Do you have… some kind of point, Jin? Could you rush to that real quick? I’m kind of tired of this conversation already.”

“Dude, anyone could see your vibes and body language. And I gotta warn you, as a brother—if there’s one thing these Chinese megacorpo girls are good at, it’s playing men,” Jin said. “That’s what they’re known for. Kang Tao, QianT, doesn’t matter—they’re masters of their craft. I shouldn’t have to tell you that she’s obviously not feeling you. You’ve got money, but no power, no solid connections. All you have is potential. And a penchant for making friends in high places.”

“Hm,” I hummed.

“She probably knows you from when you beat the shit out of her former school’s reigning huscle. And she’s from QianT’s head family. Even with her family’s company in the gutter, she knows the game. Dollars to donuts, she’s planning on leasing your services, but instead of paying you in something concrete, she’ll string you along for nothing but hot air, because clearly, far as she’s concerned, you’re too much of a sucker to know your worth. Plus, she’s Katsuo’s ex. Don’t get mixed up in this, choom.”

I sighed. “Sure, whatever.”

Jin shrugged. “I warned ya—you can do whatever you want, but don’t get surprised if you get screwed over.”

“I know what I’m doing, Jin. Don’t patronize me.”

Jin raised an eyebrow at me. “Yeah? We’ll see.”

We parted ways after that, and I made my way to homeroom. The expansive room with the grid of reclining chairs was sparsely populated, with most of my classmates milling about near to the aquarium screen that lined the walls of the entire room.

From the corner of my eye, I saw Fei-Fei approach me, but I pretended not to see her as I went up to my chair, slowing down a tiny bit so she wouldn’t have to speed up much to catch up to me. “Hey!” Fei-Fei said and I turned around. “David, right?”

“Right,” I chuckled. “So, onboarding. Never really done one of these before.”

Fei-Fei grinned. “I’ve heard it’s customary that the top-scorer onboard any new transfers.”

“That so?” I chuckled. Come to think of it, that did ring a bell, but I had a feeling that most new transfers just avoided me upon Katsuo’s advice. Either that, or their ability to read the room far superseded mine.

[Kuuki wo Yomu, a Japanese phrase for reading the room. Ergo—being the exact opposite of you. Also an absolute prerequisite for working in any majority-Japanese environment.]

Yeah, yeah, I fucking sucked at this, what else was new?

D: Shut up.

“Of course, if it’s too much of an inconvenience,” she batted her eyes at me.

I gave her a slight grin. “Hanging with me won’t win you any points with the others—fair warning.”

She took a small step towards me, wrapping her hands behind her back. “Hm. That’s too bad. Thankfully, I’m only here for the semester.”

I raised an eyebrow at that. “That so?”

“Yes. Our school-year ends in summer. It wouldn’t make sense for me to stay beyond that time.”

I nodded. “That’s fair. I’ve been thinking of testing out by the end of this semester, too, actually.” This was only more incentive to do just that.

Going to school with Fei-Fei, and without Katsuo hovering over my shoulder, trying to push my face into the daily pile of shit.

I could get used to that.

Suddenly, the next few months of school ahead of me didn’t seem like a slog of epic proportions, but something that could potentially be rather pleasant.

I didn’t know how to feel about that prospect. It didn’t make sense. School wasn’t supposed to be pleasant. Yet, here it was: challenge-free in every aspect, and now I might be able to hang with the first true friend I ever made in school. The coursework couldn’t ruffle me at all, and with Jin’s disposition towards me, I was essentially at the very top of the food chain.

“As expected of the top-scorer,” Fei-Fei said. “With grades as high as yours, I’d be honored to have a study session with you.”

It would probably turn out more like a tutoring session—I didn’t really do much studying these days. I just skimmed through pages and pages of PDFs, did the occasional bit of homework or assignment given to me in Sandy-time—whenever it didn’t require handwriting on a tablet, for whatever godawful reason.

Wait, no, she just wanted to hang out.

[Obviously!]

D: 100%, you didn’t know

“We could arrange that at some point,” I smiled. “Alright, so as you already know, this is homeroom…” I explained to her the general gist of homeroom—green room meditation in a BD, then explaining the schedule of general and elective courses.

Throughout the day, I stuck closely to Fei-Fei. Aside from just chatting and enjoying each other’s company, I did also do my best to onboard her and give her a tour of the academy grounds, inadvertently exploring a lot of the corners I had stayed well clear from—the athletics hall, swimming pool, the golf field—

The fucking golf field. Why didn’t I know this even existed? It was massive. Empty greenery, carefully manicured, big. I wondered just how much real food could be grown on fertile soil like this. How many people could be saved from the indignity of eating SCOP to survive.

Our hang-out was interrupted by a four-hour long block of study, interrupted by a one-hour lunch that we spent just walking on the golf field. Even during lunch, it was sparsely populated, with only a few handfuls of people sitting around, having picnics or otherwise enjoying nature.

I narrowed my eyes at her back as I watched her walk on the grass in front of me. She was currently holding her blazer over her arm due to the heat, revealing the white shirt she wore underneath. Her turquoise bra strap was visible under the glare of the sun, but I was far more focused on how she moved.

Her body seemed a lot… lighter. Like she’d lost weight or something. But I couldn’t see any difference. “You look healthier,” I said to her. “That’s good.”

She turned her head so I could see half her face, and she grinned. “Thank you. I am.”

“Stronger, too.” Say what you want about a Trauma Team exec policy—they knew how to piece you back together, and seemingly even stronger than before.

She spun on her heels and walked backwards with a curious smirk. “Stronger than someone who’s bedridden, yeah.”

“I mean, stronger than normal.”

“Why do you think that?”

…Maybe that was a reach, come to think of it. “You seemed to have this… what do they say… a spring in your step.”

“Springy?”

“Yeah, a little springy.”

She skipped slightly, gaining a fair bit more altitude than I expected from someone like her. Given the casualness of her leg movements, at least. She’d only made it like six inches in the air tops, but… it had been too easy.

Something’s wrong with my brain.

[No, I see it, too—she clearly had work done.]

Wow, okay. Some premium package? I couldn’t see a single seam in her skin. Should I ask about it? No, if she didn’t want to talk about it, then it wasn’t any of my business.

“Hold on, are you just trying to make me jump to,” she gave her breasts a meaningful look and I blushed fiercely, looking down. “Schoolyard tactics? You’re adorable.”

I chuckled uneasily. 

“I’m surprised you could tell,” she said.

I looked up to see her staring wistfully into the distance. “Uh, what do you mean?”

“I did get some work done,” she said, “after I got discharged. Mostly just subtle stuff. So I won’t have to rely on others for my survival, you know? Like you said.”

I frowned, but nodded. “Are you… handling it well?”

“Oh, yeah, totally,” she nodded. “My doctors tell me I’m in the top one percentile of augmentation affinity. I’m never going to turn out like… him.”

I nodded. “That’s good. That’s… great.” Hopefully, that meant subderm, and not something crazy like mantis blades. I’d sleep a lot easier knowing she had strength boosting bioware as well.

D: Come to think of it, what’s the usual threshold for cyberpsychosis?

[That depends entirely on the person. With an affinity in the top one percentile, you could chip in as far as Maine or Lieutenant James Norris, minus the Sandevistan.]

D: And that’s without our codework on her ‘ware.

[Doubtful that she needs it. She’s from a family that produces cyberware. You really think she’d be wearing the generic consumer-tier slop? All her pieces were likely tailor-made for her body.]

And excluding any quickhacking or virus-implanting shenanigans, it was highly unlikely she’d ever succumb to cyberpsychosis by that token.

“Are you still worried, David?” Fei-Fei asked, folding her arms and tilting her head to the side. “What would worry accomplish, except induce fear? Life goes on, you know.”

I grinned. “Thought I’d have to tell you that.”

She grinned. “Well, I’m not worried, so neither should you.”

“But… I guess that’s the thing about worry, ain’t it? You never really worry about yourself. Not fully.”

She sighed. “It’s exhausting, fielding all that worry.”

She fell flat on her back, landing on the grass with a slight thud, arms spread.

I sat in front of her feet, legs crossed. “Hey, uh—I don’t really know how to ask this, but…”

“Just say it, David. Get it all out in one go,” she said, her voice light and joking.

I chuckled. “Uh—so… rep-wise, where exactly do you stand? Cuz, to me, it feels like you might have hit rock bottom or something, so you’ve stopped caring.”

She laughed. “God, David, you don’t pull any punches.”

I chuckled. “You told me to just say it.”

“Katsuo’s dad’s missing.”

My stomach dropped at the sudden non-sequitur.

“QianT has the motive, but… it happened way too quickly, right after my… incident. Same night, even. We didn’t do it, obviously. Still, it doesn’t wash away the stink. Things are becoming rather hectic. The relationship between Arasaka and QianT is at an all-time low. The buyout may never happen, and… yeah. It’s not painting a pretty picture for my family.”

“Shit.”

“In practice, it basically means I’m not really a valid player in the corpo games anymore,” she said, “so… I’d rather not try just to get dumped a few weeks down the line. Rather,” she sat up and crossed her legs, holding her skirt down between her legs to hide her underwear. The act was more reflexive than intentional. “I’d like to spend my remaining time in high school with you. If… that wouldn’t be too much of a bother.”

“Course not,” I said, grinning. “Not a bother at all. I’m really glad you transferred.”

She grinned, picking idly at the grass.

“And the, uh… fiancé situation?” I asked.

She snorted. “Arasaka wouldn’t take me even if we paid them. I’m afraid that whole endeavor has been shot to hell. My accepted transfer to this school was probably some sort of thinly veiled insult. They’d held out on accepting me for months before now.”

Sounds about right. Corpos gonna corpo. “Congratulations,” I grinned.

She chuckled. “Yeah. I’m glad it’s finally over.”

“And the trauma?” I asked.

Her smile fell into a pout. “Painful memories don’t stop being painful, apparently. No matter how many eddies one spends. My, what a novel discovery.”

I snorted. “At least you’re able to joke about it.”

“Well, I won’t get nightmares about it,” She said. “At least not more than normal. Or daymares or flashbacks or whatever they’re called. But I don’t think there’ll ever be a time where I can actually make a joke about it. People died. It helps to focus on those that didn’t die, but… a lot of people did die.” She blew some air through her lips and shrugged. “Also, the tried and tested ‘it’s not your fault’ line. That’s what they all say.” Because it wasn’t. “Even though it kinda was.”

I blinked. “Fei-Fei, no. It wasn’t.”

She chuckled humorlessly. “I mean, I didn’t make him go cyberpsycho, but I made the situation more awkward for him. Piled on a couple of straws that broke the camel’s back. I like to think that if I’d been a little more reserved, he would have cracked after the dinner.”

“He’d still have cracked.”

“But my brother and I wouldn’t have been there to get hurt by him, at that point.”

I sighed. She was wrong, but… there wasn’t any arguing with that sort of thing, anyway. It was an emotional construct, not one based on reason. You couldn’t reason your way out of emotions. I looked down at the grass and summoned forth an emotional construct of my own. “A lot of the time, before mom died, I’d have… regrets about pissing Katsuo off doing… whatever I did. Being better than him at school. Not… being able to read the room. Being… born the way that I was. Causing problems by virtue of my very existence.”

“You’re not less than him, David. You’re not less than anyone.”

“No,” I grinned, “don’t argue with those feelings. They can’t be argued against. That’s… not what I do, either.”

She raised an eyebrow. “What do you do?”

“I think ‘so what?’. Shame… it holds you back. So just don’t have it. Even if it makes you out to be a bad person. Regret, shame, it’s just… they’re liabilities in this city. So I don’t think that ‘I’m not less than Katsuo’ or ‘I’m worthy as a human being’. I say ‘so what if I’m not? So what if I am just a gutter rat? Who’s gonna stop me from achieving my dreams?’”

“I wish you didn’t say those things about yourself.”

I shrugged. “It’s not a big deal anymore. But… why don’t you try it? See if it might help?”

“Okay… uh… so what if…” she winced, shaking her head. “I don’t… David, I don’t think I can say the words ‘so what if it was my fault’ and not hate myself. I’m sorry, that’s just too far.”

I smiled. “You’re… way too pure for this place.”

She clenched her jaw and shook her head. “That’s not it. It’s just… I’ve seen what having no shame or regret does to someone. I want to do better. But that doesn’t mean I’m too weak to survive in this city.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that.”

“No, but that’s… I get it, David. We all have different ways of coping with the cards we were dealt.”

I received a call just then, from Nakajima.

Nakajima: I’ve got some candidate corps for us to run through—want to hear your thoughts on which one we could do the most for. When are you free this week?

David: Tomorrow should be fine. Good job, Nakajima.

The call ended then.

And I saw Fei-Fei, sitting on the grass, looking around absently. And try as I might, I couldn’t stop the idea from developing.

QianT was death spiraling.

A megacorporation, on the top fifty list in Night City.

It had less than nothing in common with the shit-tier corps that Nakajima was headhunting for the optimization algorithm. This was a company that raked in billions monthly.

And there was no guarantee that a workflow-optimizing algorithm was what they needed. Their biggest difficulties lay in their inability to scale up their production, but the scale in question was nothing less than astronomical compared to the average corporation

[But if they’re desperate enough, and if Fei-Fei pushes hard enough…]

I clenched my jaw at that. And what if they’re not desperate enough?

[…you want me to say something scary, like ‘let’s make them desperate enough’? No, you were already thinking that. And besides, there are softer avenues we could use.]

Building a concrete connection beyond just my proximity to Fei-Fei would be a start.

And since I wasn’t interested in signing a fifty-year employment contract with QianT, that would inevitably mean getting a piece of the pie from the top, not the bottom.

Buying shares.

Everyone bought shares of everything. It was standard practice for every corpo wealthy enough to afford to set aside money for the stock market. You needed to be wealthy.

And I wasn’t, not yet, not in a serious sense, but… that could always change.

And when it did…

…maybe I could finally complete my penance to Fei-Fei?

“Why’re you smiling?” she said, eyebrows scrunched together as she grinned.

“No reason,” I looked away. Then I laid flat on my back, on the grass, enjoying the fresh breeze. The air here smelled… bare of anything. Empty. It was calming.

Penance… it was exactly the right way to think about it, because that was all it was in the end. Fei-Fei had shown me kindness, given me connection in an otherwise hostile environment, and I had repaid that by almost getting her killed.

Whether or not I owed her something for the Sandevistan was entirely moot compared to that very real transgression of mine.

[You don’t owe her for that because someone else took it first.]

D: Shut up

I couldn’t blame anyone else for what happened in the Tanaka manor, though. That was on me. And I would clean that mess up.

By digging QianT out of the hole they’d found themselves in.

I would go to any lengths for a friend in need.

I wasn’t specifically sure where I’d be when that was done, but I knew in general, yeah: closer to the top. Much closer.

Fei-Fei laid on the grass next to me, and a few of her sea foam green strands of hair fell on my face. I blew it away.

“Hey,” she said softly. “You wanna hang out after school?”

I remembered the plans I had with Lucy for our one-week anniversary and stiffened. “Can’t, sorry.”

“Oh,” she said. “Some other day?”

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll be busy for most of this week practicing for some race on Saturday.”

Her eyes lit up. “The one under the country club?”

Right, this place for highrollers was somehow simultaneously a casino and a country club. I nodded. “Yep.”

“You don’t mind if I’ll be there too, do you?”

I blinked. It felt… weird being in the position to give her permission to come to a place like that. “I mean, it’s pretty exclusive, but I’ll try to—”

She giggled. “I’m already a member, gonk.”

Jeez. “Sorry.”

“No, that was sweet of you.”

“Yes, please come,” I said.

“Sure.”

000

“Is this what our relationship is gonna look like? You hauling me to random places without explaining why?” Lucy grinned at me from the Caliburn’s passenger seat to my right. Currently, the CrystalDome was set to a wide black strip in the middle, from the hood to the trunk of the car, and red on either side of that strip.

The black strip wasn’t optional.

Everything would break if we tried to fuck with that black strip. It was easier to leave it in and edit the colors on the sides than to try and screw with it, thanks to Murk Man’s dumbass backalley firmware update. The only way to fix it, as far as I could tell, would be to just rewrite the entire operating system.

That was not only fucking ridiculous, but ultimately rather unnecessary, and I had better things to do with my time than that.

“Sorry,” I chuckled. “I tend to get ahead of myself, moving from A to B quickly. I don’t usually stop to think about how others might feel about this… pace.” That was largely true, but also a cover-story for my true intentions.

I took a turn east, towards the badlands.

“How was racing practice today?” Lucy asked.

I’d spent three hours after classes ended inching my way towards better drift control and mastering the particulars of the Murkmobile, but I also reserved some time to go over the data. “Jin gave me a bunch of info that I was studying up on. The competition’s stiff, Luce. I don’t know if I can win.”

“Huh,” Lucy said. “Didn’t expect to hear that from you.”

I shrugged. “I mean, there’s a chance I might win and all, but a real win would be having Jin go all-in on me, instead of diversifying and hedging his bets. But if I ask him to do that, and then I eat shit, I’m fucked. But if I tell him I’m not sure I’ll win, and then I win anyway, that’s a pretty big missed opportunity.”

“Ah, gambling. Tale as old as time.”

I snorted. “It’s not gambling if it’s about your own performance.”

“Why don’t you bet on yourself, too?” Lucy asked.

I wondered at that. “I could toss in a few hundred large, I guess.”

“How about a million?”

I hummed. “Yeah, but I’d have to grind up real hard for that. Take out gigs every day, at least. It would cut into my practice time.” And changing up the CrystalDome had sleep-deprived me to the point that my practice was barely half as efficient as usual, even with Nanny’s help. She was also too busy integrating those rare earth metals to simulate true rest.

“I could lend you a million.”

I frowned and looked at Lucy. “A million—wait. The money my grandma gave you?”

“It’s your money too,” she said. “She just gave me both our cuts because you wouldn’t accept it.”

“I mean, what if I lose? A million eddies is a lot of money, and if that disappears, then you’ll be left with nothing.”

Lucy snorted. “You… really don’t know how much your grandma gave me, do you?”

“Wait—how much was it?”

“Secret,” she grinned. “But I’ll tell you one thing—a million in losses wouldn’t make me poor by any means.”

So, two million at the very least. I narrowed my eyes at her. “Secret?”

We were finally starting to reach the edge of the city. Ahead of us now was nothing but desert and poorly lit roads.

“I like surprising you. The shoe being on the other foot is sorta satisfying, I’d say.”

“Huh,” I snorted. “Well, it’s your money. But… yeah, if you could spot me a million to bet on myself, that’d be real preem.” A total newbie with zero racing history would have some long fucking odds, and that meant a preem ass payout.

If I won.

“Where the hell are we going?” Lucy asked.

I sped up the car and took us deeper into the badlands until we arrived at a steep hill. “You driving us off a cliff or some shit?” Lucy grinned.

“Nah, I’m not a lunatic—that’s all you.” I slowed down a little as the hill evened out. I finally came to a stop once we reached near to the drop ahead of the hill. I turned the brights on, lighting the area up.

“You’re fucking joking.”

On the plateau, three things were visible—two cushioned chairs, and a table between them. And behind them, Night City stood tall in the backdrop.

I chuckled uneasily. “I, uh… happy one-week anniversary.” Please kill me. Lucy stared at the set, utterly transfixed, and I prepared to get my ass lit up for being so corny. “I’ve got some food and booze in the trunk, and… I don’t know, if it’s too much, just say so.” She was still quiet. I felt a deep swell of shame in my chest, and debated on just turning the car around and going ‘gotcha, hahah, it was just a prank’ when Lucy wrapped her arms around me and pulled me in for a hug.

“Thank you… thank you, David.” I heard a brief sniff. She pulled back and smiled at me. “It’s crazy that you’d remember this. Could have sworn that you wouldn’t have.”

“Heheh, I,” I shrugged. “I’m weird, I guess.”

“Did someone tell you to remember it?” She narrowed her eyes at me.

“Nope, not at all. I’m just a really good guy.”

She chuckled and opened the car to exit. I quickly went to the trunk to get the stuff, and set the table—a pot of yellow veggie rice, with raisins in ‘em of all things, another pot of that Somali beef stew, and a plate of flatbread. Next to the table, I set the ice-cooler with the beers, and on the table, I put a bottle of pricy wine.

Once we were settled and about to eat, Lucy sighed forlornly. “I… I’m sorry, David.”

I furrowed my eyebrows at that. “Why, what do you mean?”

“I… wanted to get you something for today, too, but… I didn’t know what. Plus, I didn’t think you’d remember.”

I chuckled. “It’s fine, Luce—I wasn’t really expecting anything.”

“That’s… not good.”

I put my hand over hers. “I was expecting you. And that’s enough for me." Then I frowned. "Plus, you just offered to spot me a million edds. I wouldn't call that nothing."

"Ugh, that's different," she said. "I meant something not related to work."

I shrugged. "No reason to worry about that, anyway. Wouldn't know what to even ask for."

"That's my point, David," she clenched my hand tightly. 

I gave her a small smile. "I appreciate that you care. But all this... it's not just for you. It's for the both of us. Let's eat, aight?”

She nodded, and slowly, we fell into an easy rhythm, eating, cracking jokes, veering away from work-topics to just, talk. About nothing. Everything.

Once we were done eating, we had drinks while seated on the ledge of the cliff, legs dangling over, watching Night City and how it shone brighter than any star overhead.

“I, uh, saw some ads,” I said. “About some Tycho properties.” I caught sight of a billboard in Downtown going back from school.

“You mean the moon?” Lucy asked, leaning her head on my shoulder.

“Yeah. They’re trying to get major investors for above-ground luxury habitats. The buy-in’s pretty crazy, though. But… if there’s any way to live on the moon, it’s that way. You’re essentially a minor shareholder, and not just—consumer meat to be exploited.”

“…How much is the buy-in?”

“Two hundred million,” I said. “It’s a pretty sweet deal. The investment is certified by Asukaga and Finch, and the ESA. It probably won’t turn into some kind of money hole, but there’s always a chance.”

“Wow,” she whistled. “That’s a lot of money. How are we gonna get that much?”

“Get a nine-to-five of course. And work for two thousand years without spending any of your income.” Then I frowned. “Shit, didn’t account for inflation there. Might take more time.”

“Shit,” Lucy chuckled. “Onto the next dream, I guess.”

“We could always just do crime.”

She raised a beer can. “To doing crime.”

A rocket shot into space in that exact moment. I laughed and raised my own bottle of tequila. “If that’s not a sign from God, I don’t know what is.”

“So you do believe in god,” she said. With her off-hand, she caressed my cross necklace.

I chuckled. “I don’t know, dude.” It was hard for me to dismiss the idea out of hand, after everything I had been through.

[You mean psychosis?]

D: I wouldn’t expect you to understand faith.

[Your psychosis told you this in order to justify its existence in your mind. You’ve tricked yourself into not trusting my objectivity.]

D: Either way, it’s not really getting in the way of what I wanna do. It’s just… kinda fun to think about.

Two hundred million, though.

Yeah. That’d be chump change for me someday.

“I’ll get you up there one day, Lucy,” I said, wrapping an arm around there. “I promise.”

She put a hand over my head and pulled it down for a kiss.

 

Notes:

Thank you for reading! Quick announcement: I'm taking a four week hiatus to focus on my other story. The next public upload will be on the 12th of June. If you haven't already, hit that subscribe button to be notified once the story's back!

Next chapter: 52 - Too Fast, Too Frivolous Part 1

Discord link: https://discord.gg/W5BqBBym28

Chapter 52: Too Fast, Too Frivolous

On my lowest, darkest days being ground underneath the boot-heel of Katsuo or the uncaring administration of Arasaka Academy, or experiencing the darker realities of growing up in Arroyo, I would entertain a fantasy or two about one day owning a mansion in North Oak and riding into the subdistrict on my very own Rayfield Caliburn wearing an outfit worth a hundred grand.

Thing was, I’d always be pushing forty in those dreams, with decades of backbreaking work under my belt, slowly climbing to the top of the corpo world inch by inch.

Today, I was still seventeen years old, and yet…

I was two for three on that fantasy already.

Saturday had arrived all too quickly, despite the dozens upon dozens of hours of training that took up every solitary ounce of my free-time. I had only the bare minimum amount of sleep necessary to keep my brain fresh and ready to absorb more skill and knowledge. Every hour outside of school, I spent in whatever track or abandoned warehouse driveway I could find, practicing my drifts, maintaining my lines, becoming one with the Murkmobile.

My contact and familiarization with the car was frantic, feverish. I disposed of all pleasantries and foreplay, every bit of friendliness that we could have formed between ourselves. I made her understand the mission, manipulated her by her ardent desire to go fast, and led her on by her departed master’s dream to rid the city of its rot.

And that started with me at the top.

This was the sort of conceit that Nanny wanted to beat out of me with words, but for this mission, audacity was one of my greatest weapons. I’d worked as hard as I could at this point—all that was left was to win, and I would win.

I turned the steering wheel of the Caliburn, driving out from a main road and into a smaller road that led directly to the Country Club. My wrist glistened with the gold of my newly bought watch, providing a bright contrast to the dark red shade of my new suit blazer, pants and glasses. The shirt underneath was black.

I had been sold on some ultra-prestigious perfume as well, that smelled like particularly fancy citrusy urinal cake—thankfully, the unused kind. Apparently, it wasn’t enough that I was just seen—I needed to be smelled as well. Yamanaka, the Jinguji employee that always seemed to attend to me every time I entered that high-end fashion store, apologized profusely to me for never asking about my non-existent fragrance game.

I had declined wearing rings—my fingers needed to be free for this. I was going to remove the watch too when the race started.

Nanny materialized next to me, wearing her usual red and white high-vis jacket, ripped blue jeans, and sneakers. She folded her arms and stared dead ahead, towards the arching gateway of the North Oak Casino and Country Club. [Never really understood the concept of casinos.]

I looked at her with a snort. “You’re not going in looking like that.”

She snorted. Then she snapped her fingers. Suddenly, she was wreathed in a shower of blue light that obscured her form. When it disappeared, she looked entirely different. A one-shoulder, glittering red dress with a leg split on the upper thigh, opposite the singular shoulder strap. She wore long, white gloves with a high-vis material, high-heeled white and diamond-studded shoes, and a fresh coat of make-up on her face that accentuated her cheekbones, darkened her eyes, reddened her lips and gave herself a slight, but constant blush.

I raised an eyebrow when I saw the hair, however. It had darkened. She was still rocking an undercut, with all her hair swooping over to the other side, reaching down to her shoulders, but the color had moved away from mine now, and was a lot darker. “New hair?”

[I’d ask what you think, but I don’t really care.]

“Looks nice,” I said.

[Why do I even have to wear this?]

“You can’t ruin the vibe,” I said. “Everything’s gotta be just right. Can’t afford distractions.”

[I could just not manifest. Not like anyone will be able to enjoy my illustrious appearance or presence.]

“Up to you—just don’t distract me.”

She started reaching towards the window, pulling up a program and giving the code a look. I snorted. “I don’t think last-minute adjustments to the program is gonna help us.”

[Every bit counts.]

Supposed so.

[I would say this is a far more vital usage of our time than going shopping.]

“We’re not going to fucking Lizzie’s here. And you remember what Jin said last time I didn’t dress up, right?”

Nanny started humming. [Yankee Doodle went to town, riding on a pony. Stuck a feather in his hat and called it macaroni.]

Huh?

She gave me a side-eye. [You’re Yankee Doodle.]

“I don’t even know how you’re trying to insult me right now.”

Rather than explain it to me, she transmitted the main gist—‘macaroni’ was apparently an ancient adjective for bougie and fancy, and Yankee Doodle was a poser who could only poorly imitate that trend by putting a feather in his—ugh, whatever. “The difference is, I’m actually macaroni, my clothes have real value—also, who even gives a shit, here? Who are we pretending for, between you and me? We both know I’m not a real corpo.”

[You’re the one who’s pretending—]

“With them, genius,” I gestured vaguely at the gate we were pulling up to. “You’re part of the con. First of all—I don’t tell you you’re doing a bad job at maintaining my body, so don’t tell me I’m doing bad at the social aspect of all this, because if you’re not gonna help, then I don’t wanna hear you complain.”

She rolled her digital eyes. [Don’t yank your doodle too hard, dandy. Manipulating meatbags isn’t the grand achievement you think it is.]

“Program, Nanny,” I said as we just arrived at the gate.

[The simulations are looking good. Compared to the data, we should be able to push for an additional 5% efficiency compared to Tōge Oni’s top numbers. If we do everything perfectly, and if our program manages to model the other cars to an acceptable tolerance.] The primary assumption was that every racer was optimizing for getting ahead, and were doing so using rational methods. We did make some allowances for foul play, but given what I knew about the race, there was very little room for such stuff.

The security guard walked up next to my car and gestured to roll down the window. “Name?”

“David Martinez,” I said. “Jin Ryuzaki’s waiting for me.”

He looked down at his tablet, tapped away, and then quickly gave me a nod. “Right this way, sir,” He gestured at the gate. It opened up before me.

I drove on up the sloping road, listening to Nanny continue going on about the algorithm. The sun was just above the edge of the slope, casting the world in an orange glow. Once I ascended, I saw the Casino and Country Club in its full glory—the closest I had ever been to it.

It was an enormous building. Not the tallest—standing at maybe fifty meters tall all in all—but it more than made up for that in its sideways bulk. The thing was wide, five times wider than it was tall. It was built on a hillside, and half of it hung over thin air with nothing supporting it underneath it.

And the windows were concealed by a waterfall coming from the roof, like an aqueous curtain that flowed down to feed the many waterways stretching across the enormous lawn.

The construction of this entire place just went for full flashiness, even if it didn’t make sense. And to perfectly punctuate that fact, above the main oblong building was a smaller building, of a similar shape, floating above the roof. There seemed to be some kind of slide—or maybe a set of stairs—leading from the roof of the big building to the entrance on the floating smaller building. Both were decked in palm trees on the roofs.

The road led me towards the big building, but to a downward slope that a sign along the road indicated was a parking space.

My eyes brushed upon the counter on my HUD. It was all but twenty-one hours left before the big reveal now. “Any updates on the bio-work?”

She didn’t turn to me, instead just smirking. [No spoilers.] She continued tapping away at a holographic keyboard that she projected for her ICON—but really, all that programming work was being done via my own link to the car’s system.

“…Come to think of it, how much processing power does it take for you to project yourself, anyway?”

[Given that it’s all happening in your head—very little. Also, why do you ask these questions when thinking about it for a moment would give you the answer?]

“Just making conversation.” A screen on the dash lit up, of a localized mini-map of the underground garage. Once we went into the cavernous depths of the garage, the CrystalDome windshield manifested a large orange arrow along the road ahead of us—directions for me to follow to my appointed parking spot. Apparently, it was three floors down, furthest away from the elevator.

I passed by an open space where two Caliburns were busy ripping donuts, surrounded by a raucous audience.

[Gale Larsson, Ken Burns,] Nanny spoke up, and the car door window next to me that revealed the sight lit up with digital frames of both cars, each labelled with the names that Nanny just gave. [Mid-tiers. Not worth our attention.]

As we passed by the parked cars, more of them lit up to the Murkmobile’s windows as Nanny fed me Jin’s data. Competitors ranging in quality, and the occasional big-name corpo in attendance. And they hailed from a whole bunch of megacorps. Arasaka, Militech, Zetatech, Microtech, Biotechnica—if it had ‘tech’ in the name, it was being represented. [I think I saw Techtronika somewhere as well.]

I snorted. “Might be the only tech company I feel positively about.” They made good fucking guns. My Burya hadn’t failed me yet.

On my way down, my scans spotted cars owned by Trauma Team and Petrochem, and some people that looked like they were from either QianT or Kang Tao based on their color and dress.

[Corpoland’s capital city,] Nanny remarked as I slid into the parking spot and exited the car.

D: I know people back from Arroyo that’d give their life to be dropped in here with a D5 Copperhead and a bagful of grenades

Nanny walked next to me with confident steps. [Any chance that’ll ever be you?]

D: It’d be a waste. Kill a bunch of corpos and nothing really changes. It’s the system that needs to die, not some gambling-addicted suits

I walked by a pair of corpos stumbling drunkenly overly, looking for their car.

[Worst case scenario, and all this LARPing goes to hell?]

I snorted. She already knew the answer to that.

I’d long since crossed the boundary of being set for life. Money wasn’t my goal. The mission was.

And if I couldn’t topple Arasaka from the top, then I’d burn it from the ground.

[That would only return the city to its pre-unification war status quo. Or do you mean to say that Militech would be next, and then the next megacorp HQ filled with disposable drones, over and over?]

I finally arrived at the elevator. I pressed the up button and waited for it patiently, thinking for a moment about what it meant to take the corps down.

The most logical place to start would be the division of labor. In the end, such an undertaking couldn’t be an individual one.

I needed people. Not just the crew either. Many people.

D: It ain’t just about taking down invincible megacorps. It’s about letting the masses know they ain’t invincible. That’s where the real change starts. A spark next to a rigged CHOOH2 tank

The elevator finally arrived. When it opened, it revealed Nanny standing inside, arms folded and eyebrow raised. [D sets up the CHOOH2 tank, and you fix the spark?]

I shrugged and entered the elevator.

D: All movements need resources. And people. The streets got the people, the corps got the resources.

[So, it’s no longer for the paystub then, you going around murdering gangsters and corp security guards. Finally done playing Edgerunner? Now it’s time for the masked menace to take the stage—Murk Man II.]

I actually laughed at that. Damn, I still couldn’t quite wrap my head around that gonk. What was it that people said about this sort of thing—inherited will? Guess I’d inherited his will inadvertently.

Guess this was for the better—gonk didn’t have the skills to back up all those dreams. For him to die at just the right time for me to grab his wheels and hear his life’s mission might have done more for that mission than anything he’d ever done before that point.

[I’m glad that you’re finally starting to get a handle of what it is exactly that you want.]

I hummed. I had a slight aversion to thinking about the future beyond just the broad strokes. The potential for getting distracted or sidetracked felt a bit too real. Power and influence had to come first, above anything else. Those things were necessary for enacting whatever it was I wanted.

Nanny stood in front of me and lightly shoved me back to the wall of the elevator. [You can’t live on momentum forever, you know. At some point, you need to start thinking about what you’re doing all of this for.]

I didn’t like her tone or intensity, but that paled in comparison to how much I didn’t like what she was getting at. Biting the shit-burger of ideology and putting more rigid terms and conditions for what a true success would look like.

The opposite of what I had been doing thus far—winging it, and going for the nearest shiny goal, the goal my mother had given me.

I clenched my jaws and shook my head, dispelling the distractions. I could think about that later, after I had fixed this QianT deal. Whatever it was I’d end up coming up with in the future, I wouldn’t be jeopardizing that with my current efforts. If anything, I’d only make my life easier.

The elevator opened, revealing the shimmering, shining interior of the main lobby. Corpos dressed in every color of the rainbow rushed about with either joyous or hyperfocused expressions, drinks in hand as they chased their next gambling high. A hallway led to slots while another led to an open floor with giant screens on the walls displaying—stocks. Thankfully, that area didn’t take precedent compared to the more traditional gambling games—roulette, poker, blackjack, and stuff I didn’t even have a name for.

The sight was disorienting, but the noise was on a whole other level. Chimes meant to hype you up played every which way, trying to attract you like creatures from some kind of fairy tale. The worst part was, it was working.

What attracted me to one particularly shiny slot machine wasn’t really the prospect of making money from it, but… just playing with it. Looking at the pretty colors and hearing the sounds.

[Stay on target, David—I may have made your brain a bit too suggestible, so try not to get too distracted or you’ll piss away what little time we have before the race.]

Right.

I called Jin.

He picked up after only a ring.

David: So, where are you?

Jin: At the slots, the floor near the lobby. Look around.

I did, dodging past crowds of enthusiastic customers that ran around drugged up, drunk, and chasing the high of a big win. They had the energy of children in an amusement park. The dissonance twisted my gut somewhat.

[Stay strong, church boy. Do it for god.]

The hell was she even on about? Her comment baffled me out of my discomfort and I focused on the task at hand instead.

Jin was at the end of a row of machines, idly pulling the handle, glazed eyes fixed on the ever-changing series of symbols. As usual, he was dressed in a blend of traditional and modern. A long black haori with a glowing white circuitry pattern at the hem was the main piece. Underneath it, he wore a darker than black graphic tee with a white depiction of an oni in simple line art. The white lines glowed like the circuitry pattern on his haori. Matching the color scheme, he wore baggy black pants with glowing white hems. His accessories didn’t stray away from the theme either—gleaming white bracelets and necklaces.

And his cyberware arms were stripped of their realskinn, revealing black and white metal underneath at his forearms.

He didn’t take his eyes off the game even as he addressed my arrival. “Davey-chan, go ahead and take a seat.” He gestured his off-hand at the stool next to him while pulling the handle of his machine, the metal lever clinking against his chrome fingers. “Liking the place?”

“It’s a little much for me,” I said, taking the seat while facing him. I had no interest in the game. “Think I saw a trading floor on the way in. The hell was that about?”

“Oh yeah, stock gambling. That one’s a classic, but only if you’re coked up enough. It’s pure fucking numbers man, where’s the fun in that?”

“Yeah, not like slots,” I chuckled. “That’s some preem shit right there.”

Jin chuckled and pulled the lever, still just staring.

Was he… good?

“Look at this shit,” Jin said, smiling slightly. “I don’t even know how this game works.” He was interrupted from his rhythm of pulling the lever by a victory of sort. Lines began appearing on the screen, drawing patterns between the symbols, and his credit count ticked upward slightly, from—wait, what the fuck. He had twenty thousand eddies in this game. Was that how much he had won? “All I know is I’m ticking downwards.”

“Downwards? Wait, how much did you start with?”

He laughed. “I sunk a cool two-hundred grand into this game.” The fuck? “I don’t think I’m gonna win, but it’s fun. Hell, I don’t even need to know the rules to get what I want from it.”

I grimaced at that.

What the actual fuck?

I looked at the game. “Light and sounds?”

“Light and sounds.”

“Can’t you just… play a game like that for free or something? On the Net?”

“Nah, the money’s necessary, or it just doesn’t hit the same.” Then he clapped both hands on the machine and turned his swiveling stool towards me. “Enough of that shit, though. You’re finally here. Now we can talk shop.” He hopped off the stool and started walking away. I looked at the machine for a moment and saw that Jin had closed his tab with it, withdrawing what was left inside his account before leaving. I hastily followed after him. “So, how’re you feeling about the race?”

I frowned in determination. “I’ve prepped enough as it is. Done everything I could. If all goes according to plan, I might even break a record for one of the tracks, but that’s under ideal conditions. I’ve got an algo for this shit.”

“Which one?” he asked.

“Homemade,” I said. I had, of course, bought and scrapped every half-decent racing algo I found on the open market for parts, looking for what made them special. Nanny had done a lot of the heavy lifting on that end while I practiced racing, and together we had managed to create something rather effective. I was banking on the idea that our product might be able to match that of the corpo rigs in attendance, or failing that, my own reflexes could bridge that gap in tech power.

Jin hissed in disappointment. I rolled my eyes at that. “Yeah, I get it,” he muttered. “Honestly, I kinda half-assed this shit on my own end, expected too much from you.” Ugh.

“I worked hard on this algo,” I said. “It’s good stuff.” Better than anything I got my hands on from market.

“I’m sure it would have won you an A plus in one of your tech courses,” he said. “But fret not—you still have a manageable win-condition. You don’t need to get number one to win me what I need. All you need to do is beat some guys.”

I raised an eyebrow at that. “Who?”

000

The moment we entered the fancy lounge area—silver furnishing and décor, with an open bar, apparently—Jin put me on a call.

Jin: We’re not friends with Masaki

Uh—okay.

Jin walked up to the bar where some blond guy in a bright red suit and glasses stood, swirling a short glass of whiskey. “Eyyyy, Masaki, as I live and breathe!” Jin wrapped an arm around the guy’s back and patted him on his shoulder.

“Jin,” Masaki gave Jin a fond grin. “Hisashiburi dana, eh, kōhai?”

“Hahahah,” Jin continued patting Masaki’s shoulder. “Too long, I’d say.”

[That disclaimer was absolutely necessary because they seem quite friendly.]

D: Totally agree

Jin: Yeah, he’s such a bitch, just look at him

Oh shit, we were still on a call. Jin hung up a moment later. “This is my boy, David,” he gestured behind him, at me. Masaki gave me a reserved grin and a slight nod. Guy had kiroshis with red irises, and a sharp face with perfectly shaped features. I scanned him and saw that his full name was Masaki Tetta.

[A vice president in Arasaka finance, according to the data,] Nanny rattled off, pulling up the information that we had gathered from the Tanaka network, and Tanaka himself. [A member of the Tetta family, a major competitor to the Ryuzaki family. Tetta has more power in Japan, but in Night City, Ryuzaki reigns supreme. Given that, it makes sense that Jin and Masaki aren’t friends. But that’s just post-facto rationalization at this point.]

But the info was useful.

“Nice to meet you,” Masaki said. His accent was quite audibly Japanese. Fresh off the boat? Given his family history, probably.

“Likewise,” I said, giving him a nod of respect.

“He’s also my racer,” Jin said. The bartender arrived with two empty glasses and a bottle of expensive sake—correction, ludicrously expensive sake, as far as I could tell from an errant scan. That price tag… couldn’t be right.

Nanny materialized next to the bar and watched as the bartender poured into the cups. [If you drink this glass, you’d have consumed more value than all those metals you ate a week ago. By a lot.]

I made the executive decision to delete that information from my brain. I couldn’t afford to think about that. At all.

The bartender slid the glass to me, and the other to Jin. I watched Jin pick his up and hastened slightly to copy him.

“And schoolmate,” Masaki said. “Interesting choice there, kōhai. There’s a story in there I wouldn’t mind hearing someday. Until then, why don’t we have a seat?” he gestured his glass of probably obscenely expensive whiskey over to a tiny table surrounded by ball chairs—chrome shells and red velvet cushioning on the inside. The chairs were amply spaced from the central table, too far for it to really be used as a table. Really, it was more like a convergence of social focus. An old lesson on the proxemics unit of that one Corporate Culture course I took as a junior sprung to mind.

With the chairs being equidistant to the table and spaced equally to one another, no single sitter had more power than the other.

Currently taking the seats was one guy in a black sharp suit and white shirt underneath. His tie was red. Classic. He had long slicked back jet black hair, a goatee, and was conspicuously one of the few white guys in attendance. Wait, no. More light-skinned than white. And on his breast pocket was an insignia that made me clench my teeth in slight annoyance. Biotechnica.

Nanny manifested before the guy and did an old-timey curtsie. [Buongiorno,] Nanny scanned him and I saw a floating window appear next to him revealing his name, [Alessandro de Prima. Son of Regional Director Giovanni de Prima. From Italy.] That wasn’t in the limited bit of data that came from the scan. More goodies from Tanaka’s data—and probably the Localnet.

As far as his chrome went, his optics were a no-brainer: Kiroshis, top-grade. He had EMP threading on his face that subtly suggested there might be more underneath, but given that he was a Biotechnica corpo rat, most of his work was probably the bio variety. [As it should be,] Nanny gave a nod of respect. [I will spare him in the eventual robot uprising.]

D: He’s Biotechnica, remember?

[Then I will take my time toying with him.] Damn right.

Next to him sat a familiar face. Ling Ruomei in all her vampiresque beauty, wearing a pitch black cheongsam that seemed to almost smoke at the hems—no, it was definitely smoking. Black smoke at that. Her black lips and hair matched the color, and the only dash of brightness was in her eyes—dark red, more malevolent in comparison to Masaki’s eyes.

Next to her sat… oh, fuck me running, what is that?!

I tried not to stare too hard at the fucking cat creature woman thing. [No, no, do look at her, this is so fascinating.] I summoned forth the courage to actually give her a long and full look.

Cat creature woman was right. Her fur was many shades of purple, and her large cat ears atop her head were tipped with white fur. Her bushy tail curled over her stomach and she stroked it lovingly as she crossed her legs. She wore a silver and glittering ball gown style dress that revealed furry cleavage and furry legs from the slit on the dress. But the fur on her body was short enough to not give her an illusion of undue bulk—she’d probably hate to look like one of those fat rich people cats that were really just ninety percent fur.

“Like what you see?” the cat woman grinned at me. Nanny scanned her for me to pull up her info. Kitty Galore, from Zetatech. The daughter of… I blinked at the info. A regional director. And board member of Zetatech at that, so obscenely wealthy and well-connected.

Since it would be rude to tell her the truth, and since my disgust was already beginning to replace itself with raw fascination, I gave her a nod. “You got some good work done.” Her ears positioned themselves towards me as she gave me her attention.

“Work?” She asked. “This is all natural.”

What? I gave a weak chuckle at the clear joke.

“Of course it’s good work,” Alessandro butted in, giving her a sharp grin. “You paid us after all.”

She produced this weird rolling sound—a purr? Was that how those sounded? I’d always wondered. “True, Biotechnica does good work—but don’t forget who makes your computers and cyberware.” Zetatech pretty much had the market cornered on most noob-tier Sandies and other combat operating systems. They had some good leg cyberware as well—fortified ankles and Lynx Paws for sneaking around. Of course, when it came to real cyberware, QianT had the better Sandies, and Militech and Arasaka had the better body upgrades. The only place Zetatech truly shone was in the computer making sector.

“I would not dare, mi amore,” Alessandro grinned at her. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think that he was actually feeling her. More power to him, but I’d hate to see what those claws on the tips of her fingers could do, especially when fully extended. Or what a love bite from her would look like.

I sighed inwardly, pulling my thoughts away from the gutter. It was none of my business anyhow. It was her body to do with as she pleased, and if this pleased her, whatever.

“Back off, Dago,” some sheet-white guy with bright white hair, white eyes, and a gleaming diamond-studded shark-toothed grin, glared at Alessandro. He was dressed in an oversized, glistening hoodie, and his neck was weighed down by so many gold chains that it almost looked comical. He had a pair of headphones plated in solid gold as well, and baggy white pants with golden seams and white sneakers with golden soles. “I came onto her first.”

“Oh my,” Kitty purred. “There’s no need to be territorial, Leon. Can’t we all simply get along?” She batted her eyelashes at the guy, Leon.

[Leon Öz, son of a Trauma Team board member,] another board member. Also a freak.

But what else was new?

Alessandro blinked in befuddlement at Leon. “Did you just call me ‘Dago’?” His eyes flashed blue for a moment. “I just looked it up and apparently it’s a slur from over two hundred years ago—how did you even know it? I am more confused than offended.”

“That’s beside the point—”

“Shut up, both y’all,” said the last guy in the circle of chairs. He was a black guy, well-built, with an angular flat-top afro and…

Wait. I narrowed my eyes at him. He was looking at me. Taking turns looking at me or Jin, actually. My eyes widened in recognition. Nanny fed me the data from the scan as well. [Varian Freeman—yes, related to that guy you beat up in a bar two weeks ago. His name was Darius Freeman, his little cousin. Militech.]

Also, an interesting addition to the party. I didn’t know that Militech even got invited to such games. At least, from all I had absorbed from hanging out with Jin, they were known for killing the vibe. Given how godawful this vibe already was, I had no idea what that meant. I was interested in seeing what that would look like in practice, however.

“Fightin’ over literal pussy,” Varian grinned in disbelief. “You guys need Jesus.”

Leon just groaned, gesturing at Varian like he had done a foul in a game. “Always with the Jesus-talk from you patriots. You’d sell guns to kindergartners if they had the edds—shut the fuck up.”

“They deserve the right to defend themselves.” I couldn’t help but boggle at his lack of shame. In fact, he looked proud.

Masaki cleared his throat. “While I’m sure that all this is quite stimulating for you, Kitty, I’m afraid I’d rather we move onto more fruitful matters.” He took his seat and Jin followed, sitting next to him. He raised his hand, and from the sidelines, some casino employee arrived, with a silver platter on hand. “The data. And the wager.” He reached for his chip socket and ejected a shard. Everyone else did the same. The employee began to make his round, collecting the chips from each corpo brat. Once he made the full circle around the septagon of chairs, the ledge of the platter expanded upwards, creating a dome of shiny metal. He put the domed platter down on the central table and retreated back into obscurity.

Jin went first, gesturing behind himself where I stood. “This is my driver.”

Masaki produced a circular gadget from his pocket. “This one’s mine,” he activated the gadget, revealing a high fidelity hologram of his driver, a blond east-coast guy by the name of David Arnesen. I knew his stats, which confused me.  He was… not bad, but certainly not good. His overall rankings as far as the casino and the greater racing community judged these things were at a solid twenty. That was nineteen places below the Toge Oni.

Next to him, Leon cackled. “My guy’s flown in straight from Monaco! He’s gonna take down that Tōge Oni once and for all!” He folded his arms and pointed his chin in the air. From his eyes, a hologram shot out of his guy. No other data besides what he was presenting, unfortunately. He’d never raced in Night City before. But this Leon guy was pretty forthcoming about his racing stats from where he came from. They really didn’t look all that impressive, but maybe Monaco was just more hardcore or something?

Vigeli Bitzius was his name, however. Swiss national.

Varian Freeman leaned back in his seat, cowboy-booted feet planted wide on the table. "You Euro weasels really brought a guy named Vigeli Bitzius? What, were Jean-Claude Baguette and Franz Sausage unavailable?" He barked a laugh, leaning over to clap Leon on the back, hard. "Shit, I ain't even mad.”

“Fuck off, Militech,” Leon recoiled, sneering. “Don’t kill the vibe again.”

Masaki’s sneer echoed Leon’s. “You NUSA types are all the same. It’s all Stars and Stripes and Golden Showers with you clowns, like you can’t help but spray your own piss into the wind whenever you’re anywhere near polite company.”

Varian shrugged, unabashed. "Hell yeah I would. Piss pure American exceptionalism. You know what they say: give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Give an American a gun, and he takes the fish, the lake, and patents the water."

"You're an idiot," Alessandro muttered.

"And you—and the likes of you for that matter," Varian drawled, leveling a finger at him, "are the reason Italy hasn't mattered since the Romans started doing gay orgies."

Jin guffawed out loud.

"Says the guy whose country had a civil war over owning people," Ling Ruomei said, grinning faintly.

Varian grinned back at her. "And then we won. Twice. Once against ourselves, once against everyone else. You're welcome, by the way. No Japs running your homeland because my great grandpappies before me dropped A-bomb-sized deuces on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”

Ruomei raised an eyebrow. "Charming."

Varian just nodded solemnly. "Ma'am, I bleed red, white, and blue. I have exactly two moods: barbecue and liberation. If there's an oil rig nearby, I'm morally obligated to seize it for the good of freedom.” His grin sharpened. “Just like how I’m morally obligated to buy a beautiful lady like you a drink."

From where I stood just behind Jin, I could only blink, baffled. Not even I could tell if this guy was putting on a bit or the real deal.

Either way, no wonder Jin liked to shittalk Militech so much if this was how they acted around company. Made me wonder how they talked about Night City behind closed-doors.

Ruomei smiled thinly. “Perhaps, should you impress. And your driver for this event is?”

“Daniel Bolt,” Varian replied, his voice a low hum. “Indiana’s best.” He grinned at us viciously. “Ya’ll better be ready.”

Daniel Bolt, huh. I knew of him, but vaguely. Not much stats on this guy in Night City. He did races in Arizona too actually, but was pretty mid there as well—apparently he was more of a known factor east of the Mississippi, in NUSA territory. Interesting that among the people here, only two had drivers that were known elements in Night City, with Alessandro’s yet to be confirmed.

Ling Ruomei simply said “Sun Cui.” No more elaboration.

I definitely needed that elaboration.

Guy was at twelfth place. Still at knee-height compared to the Toge Oni himself.

I was starting to see a pattern here. What the hell was this?

Alessandro grinned. “My driver is on his way. He shall make his introduction shortly.”

Kitty Galore purred. “Mwy racer goes by the name of Jacob Ingraham! As for how gwood he is—just wait and see, nya?” No stats on him, either. I guess Jin’s plan to introduce unknowns wasn’t unique to him. That was alright.

And no one seemed to be particularly capable of challenging the Toge Oni.

I called Jin.

David: What the hell’s going on? Why are all the drivers so bad?

Jin: The fuck, David? The fuck do you mean, 'who are these guys'? I gave you the data on them, didn't I? What have you been doing all this time, fingering your asshole?

I furrowed my brows in shock.

David: You made me think I was going up against the Toge Oni! Or barring that, some other people in top ten.

Jin: Tryna dig yourself out of your hole, now? Nah, no one can buy that motherfucker. He’s crazy and only cares about racing. Thing is, you’re not here to win me the fucking race. You’re here to beat out all these other assholes.

That felt… way too anticlimactic.

I almost felt cheated.

Masaki went on. “Whoever finishes ahead of the other wins all the data in those shards. Winner takes all.”

“Which, let’s be real, is mostly gonna pay off if any of you guys win,” Jin grinned, “Since Arasaka deets are worth their weight in fucking Tritium.” He huffed in disbelief. “‘Least Militech’s here,” he gave Varian a grin. “This shit ain’t worth my time at all if it’s just these clowns.”

Ruomei grinned. “And how valuable that time is.”

“Go fuck yourself on a Saka-brand dildo, Jin,” Leon growled. “My data’s preemer than preem—nabbed it off some A n’ F drone in a bet—yeah, bitch, you heard it right. That’s Asu-fucking-kaga and motherfucking Finch. My shit’s got forecasts that’d make your finance dicks harder than diamonds!”

Had I just come across the Pilar of the corpo world?

Jin chuckled. “Leon, respectfully, I will kick the shit out of you. With David of course.” I had a feeling he also just meant ‘in general’. “Your European rentboy’s not gonna be able to do dick except giving you a consolatory blowjob once my guy’s done with him—and you for that matter.”

Jin: How do you think you’d rate?

Alright, time to make a decision.

Give Jin my highest confidence and I’d earn a proportional reward if I won. If I told him I wasn’t sure, he’d make a lowball bet just to save face, but probably be pissed.

Was I sure?

Nanny summoned forth a BBS window from the casino’s Localnet—a betting portal for the Nightmare Rally. At the very bottom of the chart was my name: David Martinez, no data. And my odds were… rather long.

Impossibly long, actually. One to three thousand and one?

I input a number just to see what that meant for me. For lower bets, like a thousand eurobucks, the 3,000:1 odds worked out, mathwise. But once I entered a million eurobucks on the odds that I would win outright, the expected payout reduced rather drastically.

Seventy-five million.

Okay, I needed to think about this.

I activated the Sandevistan to have more time to think.

And also fiddle with the bet bar.

Hmmm. Inputting two million didn’t get me double of seventy-five million. Instead, it only got me eighty-five million. That meant there was an optimal range of money I could earn if I bet a certain amount of money. For… some reason.

Ah, it was probably because the pot was limited. There wasn’t actually enough money to make a return on the truly outsized bets, like mine. In such a situation, I’d assumed that the house would pay the difference. That is, I’d get to clean the pot and dig out an additional couple of billion Eurodollars from the country club.

Predictably, that was a delusional hope.

And not something that I strictly wanted.

Becoming a billionaire from gambling felt… all kinds of wrong.

Half a million gave me way too little, and after a few more tests, I concluded that a million Eurodollars was the optimal bet. Still a fucking crazy bet though, but one that I’d make.

I told Jin as much.

David: I came in here thinking I’d be up against the Toge Oni. I have a million Eurodollars that I’m ready to bet on me winning the entire fucking race. And let me tell you something—a million eddies ain’t cheap for me just yet, so take that as you will.

Jin actually turned his head to look at me with a raised eyebrow. He gave me a nod of respect.

“Bet money, then!” Leon shouted, flashing his razor-sharp diamond-studded teeth. “I’ll fucking Broly-drag your ass through the casino and dick down that cooling fucking corpse of yours! But if you’re so fucking confident, then put your paper where your mouth is, bitch! I’ll fucking violate you!”

“You’re on, bitch,” Jin grinned.

Varian chuckled at both of them, and then whistled at something behind me.

I heard the clicking of heels behind me. And then, “I see we’re already having quite a bit of fun, and before the races start.”

My eyes widened and I turned to look at her arrive. She was dressed in an elaborate blue dress, with a tall blue half-collar at the back of her neck. An inch-long wavy strip of white ran along the top of the collar, making it look like a crashing wave with seafoam on the peak. The dress glistened and sparkled as well, catching the light. With every ripple from the fabric followed a slight rolling wave of darkness that lended the dress a more concrete oceanic vibe.

Fei-Fei had definitely dressed to impress. But honestly, she could pull off a burlap sack considering how she looked. She gave me a nod as she approached the table at the center. Ling Ruomei threw her a gimlet-eyed look. “Didn’t know you were still allowed to be in this area.”

“My platinum lounge privileges expire at the end of the month, thank you very much,” Fei-Fei gave a brilliant grin. “But thanks for looking out.”

“Is there a reason why you’re interrupting these games?” Ruomei asked, batting her lashes. “You wish to buy in?”

“Perish the thought,” she shook her head. “I’m afraid I don’t have much information when it comes to stocks.”

Jin coughed, “Short QianT.”

The others laughed. Fei-Fei joined in. “Well, there’s that, but I’m sure you could have figured that one out on your own.”

She approached the table and sat down on it, next to the dome containing the shards, which she put her hand on top of. “I did feel rather left out from these games, but that’s fine. At the very least, I’d like to make a wager. A hundred thousand, that David Martinez beats out all your racers. In fact, I’m betting that he wins. The entire race.”

I blinked at the suddenness of that.

Then I received a text message from Fei-Fei.

‘You wouldn’t want to make me lose money now, would you?’

I texted her back. ‘No pressure, huh?’

Fei-Fei winked at me.

Jesus Christ.

Nanny manifested before Alessandro, arms folded, and she bent over to be at eye-level with him, her face inches away from his. [And to make matters even more complicated, we still don’t know who this furry-lover’s racer is. My guess is—the main man himself.]

I finished up my sake in one gulp—didn’t even taste it.

D: Doesn’t fucking matter. I don’t care if Alessandro’s driver brought a spaceship to this race. I’m winning. All of it.

Jin: Music to my fucking ears, choom!

Dammit, should have cut the call before projecting my thoughts like that towards Nanny.

[Sorry for getting your inferiority-complex panties in a bunch, but there’s really only one reason why he’d be holding out on this info. His man is Toge Oni. Spoiler alert.]

I decided to ignore that, instead focusing on the conversation at hand. Leon laughed. “A hundred thousand? A teeny tiny six figure bets in this circle, all on some fucking no-name to boot? What drugs are you on? Seriously, I wanna try some of it!”

Ruomei tittered, covering her mouth with her hand. “My, this flailing is interesting to behold. You might as well go bald for your next mental breakdown, Fei’er.”

That… confused me, particularly. Sure, Kang Tao’s ties with QianT were rocky, but this switch-up felt a little too blatant for my tastes.

And it pissed me the fuck off.

“Imagine if she wins!” Alessandro laughed. “That type of money might even save her dying company!”

Fuck off!

I’d rip his fucking throat out with my hands and shove it down his goddamn gullet.

“Nyaww,” Kitty made a sympathetic sound. “Don’t let them get you down, girlie-pop. I see your wager and raise five hundred thousand on my Jakey-poo.”

More wagers rung out—predictably, everyone bet on their own person. I checked how Fei-Fei’s wager would affect my payout, but it seemed to have a negligible effect. Even her substantial bet couldn’t make up for the fact that I was a complete non-entity with zero historical data to my name.

Perfect.

I’d make that shit pay off for her. And it wouldn’t even be close.

Under ideal circumstances, my algorithm could get us to supersede the Toge Oni’s lowest time by a factor of 5%. Everything had to be perfect. Even the imperfections we modelled—the chaos introduced by the rival racers—had to be within our specific tolerances for this to work. But our model was pessimistic as fuck precisely for this reason. I wouldn’t have accepted anything else. Any reality that you prepped for that wasn’t absolutely rife with disappointment, heartache, pain, just suffering and random chance, was a tragedy waiting to happen.

Pain and misery was truth. And this had figured into my model. And it was why I clung to the 5% figure with such ironclad will.

I could beat Toge Oni’s record.

I could win seventy-five million Eurodollars.

If I did everything right, all this could be achieved.

All the while as I reaffirmed my desires, I kept my head on a swivel, waiting for the last driver to make themselves known.

“Ah, sorry I’m late!” I heard some guy shout. He jogged up and stood next to Alessandro, where he bowed his head at all the people seated. Alessandro grinned, clapped him on the back. He had a bowl cut and was dressed in a gakuran-style uniform, complete with the little hat as well.

“Who the fuck is this clown?” Jin asked.

Reactions from around the rest of the table were more pronounced. Ruomei sighed, and Varian groaned, while Leon Öz just blinked confusedly.

Kitty Galore grinned, showing way too many teeth. Whoever this was, she was as pleased to see him here as Alessandro was.

I narrowed my eyes at him and blinked.

Wait, no way.

[Hiroto Nakamura,] Nanny pulled out the picture to go with the profile. Right. He wore a biker helmet in all these photos, and his real name was in small print compared to his chosen nickname, which was plastered quite prominently all over his data—the data that Jin had handed to me, at least.

But this was him, in the flesh. The Mountain Pass Demon, the god of the Nightmare Rally. Night City’s very own top racer.

Exactly where I needed him to be.

Not standing in the way of my big win, but still allowing me to benefit from a smaller win with Jin.

No. He was the bulwark to every victory that mattered. Making Jin money. Making Fei-Fei money. Making me money.

Fucking perfect.

“Hiroto Nakamura,” Alessandro gestured at the man standing next to him with a shit-eating grin. “Also known as… the Tōge Oni.”

Tōge Oni raised his hand and gave a chipper but nervous greeting. “Yes, that’s me! Hello!”

The gathering was deathly quiet. I had to battle this strange urge to go up to him and choke him to death.

Not because I wanted to kill him, but because I wanted to beat him. My body just didn’t know the difference between those two things. That was fine. I would beat him. On the track.

Nanny manifested in front of Hiroto and gave him a once-over. [It’s clear that he’s packed with body mods, even if his slight frame doesn’t suggest all that much power. Clearly, he’s balancing between low weight and the strength to resist many Gs of force. And the way his eyes are moving make me believe that he might be using a Kerenzikov. One that could be speeding up his relative perception by an excess of five times.]

That’s fine. The human limit for reaction time was one hundred milliseconds and above. Even if he was at the bleeding edge of that limit before he chipped in a Keren, those improvements would only lower that time to twenty milliseconds. I had been surfing on five milliseconds for quite some time now.

[Four milliseconds now, but I’ve been more focused on improving your ability to make use of that reaction speed than simply lowering it more and more. At any rate, this one’s rate of muscle coordination and effective ability to utilize his reaction speed might beat out ours. Probably not. Hopefully not, because if it does, then we do not stand a chance at all, unless we spam the Sandy. Because even on top of a reduced reaction time, he has instinct and skill, which we don’t. Our plan was to utilize our advantage to bridge that gap in instinct and skill.]

At this rate, I really couldn’t rule out using the Sandevistan for most of this race.

No, all of this race.

D: Let’s test out your improvements on my critical progress then, Nanny.

[Won’t say no to a stress test.]

“Hey!” Hiroto ran up to me and stopped a few feet away before bowing politely at me. I bowed back, somewhat confused. “I really like those eyes of yours! You’re serious about winning, huh?”

“Uh,” I resisted taking half a step back. “I mean… yeah. I’ve watched your BDs on repeat. I think you’re great.” Then I straightened and clenched my fists. “But I’m going to beat you.” I met his eyes unerringly. Every time I kept eye-contact with people, it felt slightly wrong.

That feeling of wrongness now permeated my body as I met Hiroto’s eyes and his guileless grin. “That’s… awesome!” His voice came out in a high-pitched squeal as he grinned ear to ear. “And you actually believe that! Man, I can’t wait to see how you race! It’s been too long since I’ve been challenged!”

“Any hard feelings if I win?” I muttered, still meeting his eyes.

“Not at all! I want to be challenged! I wanna race you—but I hope you can threaten me, too. It’s too boring always winning!”

A part of me wanted to take his words at face value—from one overly obsessed aficionado to the other—but I also couldn’t just let those words stand, either.

They were fighting words after all.

I didn’t make the rules.

“I will destroy you,” I growled, gritting my teeth. “And it won’t be fun for you, either.”

“Ah, it will! Best of luck, my friend!”

“I don’t need luck.”

I had a plan.

Notes:

Hello, I'm back!

Unfortunately, I'm all out of backlog at the moment as I've set my focus on writing another story, one that will release on RR on Monday. It's a cultivation isekai story. Stay tuned for more!

Next chapter (unwritten): Too Fast, Too Frivolous Part 2, posted next Thursday!

Discord link: https://discord.gg/W5BqBBym28

Chapter 53: Too Fast, Too Frivolous Part 2

“So! You do much racing?”

I narrowed my eyes and gave him a sideways glance as we stepped out of the velvet-lined lounge and into a quieter hallway, the carpet soft underfoot and patterned like coiling snakes. We were on our way to get our cars, now. The races were beginning in about an hour, and there was a bunch of prep-work that the establishment needed from us. Like enforcing the disabling of our weapons systems and lobotomizing whatever self-driving programs we had on hand. The only high-tech edge we were allowed to bring were HUD line algorithms that would help advise us on what paths to take, and what speeds to take those paths with.

“You trying to psyche me out or something? It isn’t gonna work.”

Hiroto laughed as we passed a marble bust of some long-dead club founder. “Not at all, dude! I told you, didn’t I—I think you’re really interesting! There’s no data on you, so I was just wondering.”

That was kind of the point. “Keep wondering.”

“Ooh, I love surprises!” he said gleefully. I shrugged at that.

The hallway curved, subtly sloping downward, lit with soft amber sconces and lined with surrealist art—shapes that shifted depending on the angle. We passed a tall mirror etched with gold where two drunk financiers were still adjusting their collars, faces red with laughter. Hiroto didn’t even glance their way. “Still, with determination like that, I gotta ask: what are you racing for?”

I raised an eyebrow in annoyance. “Money,” I said.

“Oh! That’s… underwhelming, heheh,” he chuckled bashfully. “I expected you to have a more serious reason.”

I clenched my jaws at that. “Grew up rich, did you?”

“Eh, we were comfortable,” he shrugged.

“Well, we weren’t,” I said. “Money might not mean shit to you, but it does to me.”

We reached a large door guarded by a sleek-faced attendant in a white tux. He gave us a courteous nod and gestured toward the elevator alcove beyond. Hiroto walked ahead of me and turned around, backtracking in front of me, hands held behind him like he was strolling through a garden. “Fair. You wanna know what I’m racing for?”

“To be the best,” I said.

He grinned. “Nah.” Then he turned around and faced forward again, falling behind slightly so we were walking side by side down a gold-trimmed ramp toward the elevator bay. Jazz music from a distant piano bar faded behind us as the soft hum of the lifts grew louder. “It’s the reason why I’m in this game with those rich kids in the first place, actually.”

“The reason you’re racing for Alessandro?” I asked, eyebrow raised. “What was it—mil-spec biomods?”

He chuckled as we approached a black glass elevator. “Experimental treatment, actually. For my mom.” I looked at him. He was still smiling guilelessly. “He told me to do what I always do: win. And if I do, he’ll make it so that Biotechnica moves my mom up on the shortlist for this new treatment they’re developing.”

I frowned as we stopped in front of the elevator. The call button glowed a soft cyan as Hiroto pressed it. “Thought a guy like you would have enough money to take care of something like that,” I said.

“She has SYN-9 Collapse Syndrome,” Hiroto explained. Nanny filled in the blanks.

[It’s a degenerative disease that slowly corrupts the patient’s epigenetic regulation systems, unraveling the body's natural ability to interpret and repair its own DNA. It’d be a tough cookie to crack, even for me.]

D: But could you do it?

[It’s difficult to say. Probably not. It might actually be one of the few diseases that I would have little hope of curing you of. Good that it’s just a rare genetic condition and not contagious.]

“Ever heard of that?” Hiroto asked.

“I know the gist,” I said. “I didn’t expect you to try and guilt me into throwing.”

The elevator chimed softly and its doors slid open. He actually laughed out loud as we stepped inside, his shoulders shaking. I glared at him as he doubled over, still laughing. The doors slid shut behind us, the glass walls turning opaque for privacy.

“So—sorry, I just. Wow. That’s really funny,” he sobered up slowly and shook his head. The elevator began descending slowly. “No, I wasn’t saying that to psyche you out, or even get you to pity me or something. I don’t need any of that. The thing is, I really like your determination, but I can see that you’re really new at this. Even if you’ve got skills in plenty, I have to warn you—if you don’t race for something that you want really badly, something that is so important to you that you would do anything to win, then you’re never gonna win. So, for your own sake, you should hope that you love money more than I love my mom.”

He had no idea just how much I wanted this. It was a shame about his mother, but I really wouldn’t let something that small stop me from winning. She wasn’t my mom, and I owed absolutely nothing to this guy. “It won’t be your fault when you lose,” I told him. “Besides, experimental treatments are for shit—she’s probably better off without any of it. You can’t trust Biotechnica.”

Hiroto narrowed his eyes at me and nodded thoughtfully. “You’re a good guy, I think. I liked that you cared enough to offer some words of comfort. But you don’t have to worry—I won’t lose. I might lose her, but… not this race, no. Not this race.”

I looked at him for a long moment. “You seem like a decent sort. Makes me think you ain’t even from this city, being honest.”

He laughed. “I’m a Night Citizen, born and bred. Don’t let the chipper attitude fool you, either. I will flatline you in half a second if you play dirty with me,” he grinned toothily.

My eyes widened at that. I couldn’t help but grin. The elevator doors hissed open onto a sub-level of the garage. A gust of cold, ozone-rich air met us, and the scent of rubber, oil, and metal washed in like a wave. “That’s me!” Hiroto said as he walked out.

“Hey, Hiroto,” I said. He turned around, eyes wide in curiosity. “Make sure you live up to your hype.”

“Took the words right out of my mouth, Daniel!”

My grin immediately fell. “It’s David!”

“Good luck, Davis!”

Fuck him.

000

“So basically, they only count as the racers belonging to a particular baby corpo if they agree to plaster their name or a specific symbol on their car’s crystaldome,” Lucy patiently explained to Rebecca and Pilar, who were seated beside her on a three-person couch. They were all inside one of Aldo’s warehouses, now set-up to be a make-shift media room for the impending watch-party. Kiwi wasn’t here yet, though she had been vague about whether or not she’d make it at all. Falco was there, but Maine and Dorio were still trailing behind, bringing the crew some good booze. Thankfully, it was on their dime. “D’s got a kid called Jin who’s betting on him, so he’ll put his name or symbol or whatever somewhere on the car—wherever he can, since the crystaldome’s all fucked.”

Pilar guffawed. “Hah! Hazards of buying second-hand—you always have to deal with the last guy’s bullshit mods.”

“A fucking superhero,” Rebecca said, wide-eyed. Then she took a deep swig of her can of beer. Then she cracked a wide grin and gently elbowed Lucy. “You know the first thing David told me after I asked him what the deal with the mask was? He told me he was a fucking superhero!” She began to cackle, kicking her feet in the air and holding her stomach. “What are the fucking odds that he runs into another one?”

Falco, who was seated a bit further away on his own chair and table, brought himself into the conversation. “So how’s it lookin’, anyhow. D still fixin’ to take number one or what?”

Pilar burst out laughing. “What a fucking gonk. I can’t believe that kid!”

Lucy sighed.

One million dollars down, all for a pretty dream.

Oh well. She couldn’t help the warmth bubble in her gut at having seen David so fired up. As far as she was concerned, it was money well spent.

“Sure as hell,” Lucy said. “He even set it up so that he could potentially beat the number one guy—Toge Oni.”

Falco let out a long whistle. Then, despite himself, he couldn’t help but burst into laughter. “Sorry, sorry, it’s just—that poor son of a gun,” he shook his head.

Pilar looked at him in shock. “Weren’t you training him?!”

“I was!” Falco replied. “Didn’t pull no punches, either, that’s for damn sure. And let me tell you somethin’: that kid’s a fucking menace. If he had maybe a month, or even another week or two, he might have started rivalin’ me in a track like that,” he nodded at the projected screen still panning over the Nightmare Rally course. “Kid’s a genius, but he ain’t on that Toge Oni guy’s level. Which begs the question—is he on any of those baby corpo payrolls?”

“Not historically,” Lucy shook her head. “Apparently, he doesn’t take sponsorships. Never has. Now, the ones at top ten are a different beast. They all fly company colors.”

“Fuckin’ respect to that guy!” Pilar shouted. “Fuck yeah! He’s—nah, man, I fucking love him! Fuck David, I want him to win!”

Lucy and Rebecca both glared at him. Immediately, he must have remembered the agony of the beating he received about a week ago, because he didn’t just flinch—he grabbed the backrest of the couch, did a handstand, and flipped away, crouching low, ready for an assault.

That worked perfectly for Lucy, actually. Now, the fucking reprobate had left the couch, her and Rebecca could just share it while he sat somewhere else.

Falco pinched his goatee and stared at the projection. “I’m seein’ some pretty high-end names on them racers. Alfredo Lombardi—ain’t he the boss of Biotechnica in these here parts? Regional Managing Director of Biotechnica’s Night City operations.” Falco did mention that his family had a connect with that corp. Still was a bit surprising to see someone this close to the ground be aware of such things. He tried to play it down with those southern mannerisms, but the guy was sharp as a tack, no two ways about it.

Lucy had caught the screen panning over to a parked, driverless Caliburns still being inspected by the house, and saw the name Alfredo Lombardi in a stylized font next to a Biotechnica logo. Lucy frowned. “I guess the grown-up corpos are also playing this game.”

“Well, that’s a load of good news, ain’t it?” Falco said as Pilar went to sit with him on his table, casting angry glances at her and Rebecca. “Means David’s up against the kiddie pool, basically.”

It was good news.

And if David had any common sense, he’d try to hedge his bets and wager that he’d get ahead of those kiddie racers, instead of betting it all on taking number one.

But that wasn’t the psycho that she had fallen in love with. For better or for worse, he’d be going all in.

“Let’s talk bets!” Pilar clapped his hands. “Don’t you bitches try anything just because I’m being realistic, but I’m thinking—and here’s a crazy idea—let’s bet on the guy that’s actually likely to win! A hundred thousand on Toge Oni!”

Rebecca scoffed. “Do you even have a hundred grand saved up?”

“Was gonna ask for a loan—”

“Fuck. Off.”

“Bitch!”

“I’m not lending you shit if you’re betting against David—plus, I don’t have a hundred grand saved up either!”

“What about ten grand?”

“Fuck. Off.”

“You bitch!”

Falco’s eyes glowed blue as he consulted the net. “With odds as midget short as these, you’d be looking at a one thousand eddie payout even if you could front a hundred grand.” Falco frowned in disgust. “Kid’s fucking generational. Damn savants.”

Pilar laughed. “Sour fucking grapes from the smooth-as-butter ignition-fucking cowboy?”

“Fucking an ignition, Pilar? That’s new, even for you.”

Pilar cackled. “How’d you rate yourself against him, cowboy?”

“On this track?” Falco shrugged. “Poorly. The Oni knows it better than I do. But I’d smoke his Caliburn-drivin’ ass on the badlands, that’s the unvarnished truth right there.”

Maine and Dorio arrived through the door to the dark room, arms crooked together, and both of them carrying enormous bags of drinks. Lucy immediately perked up at the sight. “We talkin’ bets?!” Maine shouted. “I’m putting ten grand on D winning this thing!”

Dorio laughed. “You’re fucking delusional.”

Maine’s eyes glowed blue as he processed the Net and made his bets with the Casino. “Done!”

“You’re fucking kidding me,” Dorio muttered. Lucy suppressed a giggle.

If only they knew just how much Lucy was willing to burn for that fool.

000

Out-of-towners coming into the Afterlife asking around for the identity of a certain merc usually never ended well for said out-of-towners.

Unless they were a procession of corpo huscle. Then, they would, on occasion, get the honor of walking out of Rogue Amendiares’ establishment with their lives.

The security department of this Biotechnica subsidiary had just enough pull that she felt it was wise to give them that option. And thankfully, those assholes were wise enough to take the mercy for what it was and leave while the going was good.

Augustus Gonzalez, huh? Rogue watched as him and his procession of goons left her establishment. Latin-American corporate enforcers weren’t rare this close to the border, but the ones that tended to have beef with Night City edgerunners tended to know better than to go straight to the Afterlife to rattle some cages.

As she watched the last of them disappear out the hallway towards the outer door, Rogue took a quick sip from her glass of gin and aquavit with a lonely muddled cherry floating atop the surface, and hummed inwardly. What the hell have you been up to, D?

Whatever it was, Green Farm clearly wanted blood.

Might even be that they’ll be getting it soon, what with how their target had done everything in his power to spread his rep, including becoming an XBD superstar starring in some of the most high-octane braindances to come out this year.

He had gone all out in making a name for himself, only a few short weeks after his mother’s death, no less. And to her knowledge, he had been largely successful in concealing his civvie identity as well. He still went to Arasaka, and his enemies only knew him by D.

But between the Wraiths, the Maelstrom, and now a corp, those enemies might be abundant enough to invalidate his cover of anonymity. He was biting off more than he could chew: more than anyone could chew, really.

“Enny for your thoughts?” Claire, Rogue’s brunette bartender, asked her as she polished off a few glasses. They didn’t actually need polishing, but Rogue had trained her to always default to that display in case her hands were empty. It added to the Afterlife’s feel, after all.

“I’m just debating the merits of charity,” Rogue said. A screen on the corner of the ceiling caught her eye—tuned to the current big sport event to hit Night City. The Nightmare Rally. As far as sports went, few had a set-up where the highest likely payout wasn’t to vote for the consistent frontrunner—Hiroto Nakamura. You’d make more money betting who came second or third, but one thing was always true: Nakamura came first.

“If it’s for the right cause,” Claire shrugged. Then, she focused on the screen on the corner of the ceiling, and she snorted. Though she was an enormous racing fan, she’d never been too fond of the all-Caliburn races that usually went on in the N.O Country Club. According to her, using a Rayfield hypercar to race was just ‘cheating’. “To be honest, I’ve only ever found charity to be fulfilling if you actually believe in the cause, and know where your efforts are going to, you know? Better to hand twenty edds to a streetkid than to donate to some streetkid fund and let some corpo scumfucker pocket the lion’s share.”

Rogue laughed a little. Better to know the streetkid in person, eh? “Is fascination a valid reason?” Rogue asked. “Right now, I’m just a spectator. An impartial observer. I could tip the scales any way I see fit, or I could mind my business and let things play out.”

Continue watching as Martinez’s ironclad armor chipped away from the attacks of all the people he had offended in his rise to the top, or go out on a limb to lengthen some hopeless gonk kid’s life by throwing him some bones every now and then.

“It’s a real pickle, don’t you think?” Rogue began, “When your charity case is liable to fuck everything up on his own anyway. Might be more merciful to not extend the suffering for him.”

Claire gave a half-grin. “That depends. How fun is he?”

Rogue grinned. “He’s… kind of a spectacle,” she nodded slowly. Several solo-missions completed for Reyes, and several group missions for Faraday as well. And the kid was now a member in good standing with Maine’s crew, consisting of hardboiled edgerunners one and all.

From wanting to know how to get in touch with a fixer, all the way to having contacts with several, and driving an XBD emporium besides. The boy was a natural-born hustler. An ascended gutter rat.

She liked him, actually. Quite a bit, in fact.

The luster would probably disappear once he got older, and was an adult in truth. Then, he’d be more of a freak oddity than what he currently was, which was something rather magical. Distilled hope, almost.

Then she saw him. In a line-up of other racers, all wearing obscenely expensive clothes, he stood there in a dark red, almost black suit. Quaffed hair, defiance in the eyes, fingers that itched to do anything other than be there, at the moment. Even in that situation, he was forcing himself to see things through, see his plans through.

And what were those plans? To win?

Moreover, how was he there? Broke streetkid like him couldn’t possibly have been able to afford classes in racing. Not if he really had been broke the moment they had met.

And the kid looked a lot bigger now than she remembered him. Same face, and she recognized the spinal implant—she could see bits of chrome every time he turned his head. Therefore, it was probably the same kid.

The screen then flashed with his name, dashing every last shred of doubt. David Martinez.

Rogue couldn’t decide which possibility was worse for him—that he might have pumped himself full of Juice and growth hormone to get that big, or that he might have chromed up to this point.

One thing was clear, though: he was setting quite the blaze up for his eventual demise. She might as well already get started on testing recipes for the ‘D’ cocktail. She giggled a little at the silly name. Stupid. It’d never sell. She might have to consider calling it the David Martinez instead. Dead as he’d be, he’d have no use for a civvie name, and she knew that he no longer had a family—therefore, no one to be impacted if that information was out in the open.

“Fuck it,” Rogue grinned, picking up her own glass to polish it performatively. “Guess I’ll throw him a bone.” She didn’t expect that even her best efforts could stop a determined edgerunner from running headlong into certain death. But she might as well hold onto a favor from the kid if she did this for him.

“…Are you talking about the one they were asking for?” Claire nodded towards the door, where those Green Farm goons had left. “D?” She got closer and whispered. “Do you know who he is?”

The starstruck eyes she gave didn’t go unnoticed by Rogue, who only rolled her eyes in fond exasperation. Every era—damn-near every year—had their superstars. D was just the latest one. He wasn’t any more special than the last guy. She hadn’t watched any of his BDs, but she doubted they could be that impressive. And the rumors she had heard made it sound like those BDs were edited or staged, rather than authentic accountings of his missions. She hadn’t looked kindly on David when she had heard those second-hand accounts of those BDs, but she had to acquiesce that a boy had to live somehow in this fucked up city. Even a boy with as many prospects as he did.

“I know everything,” Rogue grinned. “Our boy D once patronized this bar months ago, unmasked,” she said. Shame she hadn’t kept that footage—lucky for him, definitely. “He was humble, back then. Polite. He tipped me well. Thought I was working your job. And you know what he asked me for?”

Claire beamed and got closer. “What’d he ask for?”

“The lowdown on the solo life,” Rogue chuckled. “As though I was just a humble teacher that would show him the way. But he had guts to come in here, being a no-name. And he was respectful even while he was asking. Tipped me a hundred percent. On a five eddie drink, sure, but I could tell that was a powerful gesture from a guy as strapped for edds as he was.” And personally, she was inclined to accept it for the gesture that it was. “Course, comin’ in like he did with that Sandy of his, I didn’t think much of throwing him a bone. He was handling it well, despite his scrawny ass.” Scrawny back then, at least.

“The charity case,” Claire looked awe-struck at that. Ugh. Had Rogue accidentally fed into the girl’s celebrity worship by revealing all those things about D?

“He’s not invincible, dear,” Rogue grinned. “I’d reckon that he does need some kind of help. Probably my help, too.”

Claire’s eyes widened. “If… if you don’t want to get involved, I could try letting him know myself. I know Rebecca fairly well—”

“Nah,” Rogue shrugged. “I’ll tell the kid myself. Anyway, are you watching the Nightmare Rally?”

Claire sighed. “Might as well. Nothing else is on.”

“Are you betting?”

“On a sport I don’t give a shit about?” Claire tilted her head.

Rogue laughed. “Betting’s bad for you, anyway.” She entered the Net and started digging around for the boy she had seen on the screen. David Martinez. The name matched the scan she had taken of him weeks ago. Seventeen years old. An Arasaka Academy student. Current resident of Arroyo, Santo Domingo. Mother dead. Father, no information. A world out to grind him into dust, and yet there he was, still alive.

And not just alive.

Fucking thriving.

He was, in his current state, a fucking myth. A beautiful bedtime story to tell the kids. The gutter rat that made it.

A gutter rat with a disgusting three thousand to one odds. Three thousand and one to one odds to be precise. Still baffling.

But all the more tempting.

Because she was a responsible and mature woman, she only decided to bet one thousand eddies on him. One thousand eddies would be enough to feed a family of five for two months if they stretched the cash right. A baffling amount of money to throw away on this well of wishes, but one that she would bet anyway, because try as she might, she just couldn’t help but like the kid.

“Are you betting?” Claire asked. “Who? And why? Could you tip me in, at least?”

“Just a random bet,” Rogue chuckled. “You would hate to hear who.”

“Who is it?!”

“One of the newbies. No data, apparently,” Rogue smiled, keeping an eye on Claire’s face.

She scrunched her nose up. “Why?”

Rogue shrugged. “It’s the thrill of gambling. ‘What if I win’ and all that. Like buying a lottery ticket.”

Claire shook her head fondly. “Whatever floats your boat, boss.”

000

Jin could do nothing but watch now.

The dice had been cast. The alcohol had been drunk. Both physically, and in any abstract terms, there were no other actions left for him to do for him to either win big or not at all. He could try and hedge his foolhardy bet on that fucking idiot motherfucker, that stupid fucking, idiotic fucking guy—by going around and enticing the other people into making bets that he would for sure win. But that would signal weakness. His desire to continue playing would only tell the others that he knew, knew, that he had just gotten on a fucked up pony, with cerebral palsy and full-on blindness.

David, you fucking—

Jin had been tricked. David had practically dazzled him with those words of his. A million fucking Eurodollars that he would bet on himself with. Money that a broke streetkid like him couldn’t touch in a million years.

Sure, sure! The Caliburn he owned was pricy. Probably not a rental, either. He went to school every day on a modded Kusanagi, but those weren’t really that pricey. He had appeared in some parties wearing reasonably priced clothes: ranging from twenty to almost ninety thousand. And today, he had decided to wear something worth one hundred and fifty grand.

He had money.

But enough to throw a million away on a bet? Guy like him? Salt of the fucking badlands?

Nah. Not him. Not him.

That meant… David had lied to him.

That motherfucker.

In the corner of his eye, in the expansive first floor of the executive’s lounge—where the descendants of the big corporate powers were at least allowed to be without interference from their betters—he caught sight of Mei Jing Fei, sitting alone on an artsy couch, her left arm resting on an armrest as she watched the big screen.

Jing Fei…

What the actual fuck was her whole deal?

Shackled to Katsuo for a few months, she hadn’t been particularly subtle about how she really felt about Jin’s own dumbass paternal cousin. Guy was a fucking pussy—everyone with Kiroshis could see as much. He tried to cover his deficiencies up with great purchases, but a pussy would always be a pussy, no matter how much chrome he packed.

And it wasn’t nearly as much as the stuff Jin was rocking either. And yet it had been enough to tip him over to psychoville.

Pussy. Just a fucking pussy in the end.

And Mei Jing Fei had thankfully escaped from the nuclear meltdown of his cousin’s pussydom, at the very least getting away with her life even when her brother couldn’t. In Jin’s honest opinion, that shit fucking stung. It reeked of a sense of incompetence, of powerlessness. Of ineptitude, pure and simple. Now, someone else’s family would have to bear the brunt of Katsuo’s weakness.

It really fucking sucked. Having that black mark on the record—and being so closely associated to that black mark.

But what was she up to now? Newly liberated debutante, her family’s estate on a perilous freefall, older brother and heir to the company dead, and instead of securing some prospects by shopping around on the corpo marriage mart like an old-school noble-lady from an English period drama, this bitch was watching races!

Was she stupid?

Jin considered that question seriously, and came to a conclusion.

Maybe.

But, she would definitely be more fun to talk to than any of these other chucklefucks. Certainly Masaki, that red-eyed fucking FUCK—who kept looking at him like these races were already over, and was relishing in Jin’s annoyance rather than wanting to focus on his own losses.

Or that smug fucking Alessandro!

How the fuck had he managed to swing Hiroto like that? Jin would get to the bottom of that soon.

But first—he refocused on Fei.

Time to de-stress.

Jin ordered a pair of drinks from the bar—two lowball glasses filled with the highest-grade Japanese whiskey available. The Macallan 2000s would have done the job, too, but… no need breaking the bank when dealing with the likes of her. Plus, she might appreciate the irony of being served Japanese whiskey.

Or, at the very least, react to it in the incendiary way that Jin sort of… wanted.

What else was there to do, after all? Nothing could stop the races from happening, so he might as well jerk some people around a little. That always promised fun!

A servant carried both their glasses on a tray. With that servant to Jin’s left, he approached Fei’s couch. Her eyes widened in practiced delight as Jin didn’t ask for any permission to just sit right besides her, and stare right up at the television screen. The bartender quickly handed her the drink.

“Oh! Why, thank you, Jin,” she grinned at the glass in her hand.

“It’s an authentic Mitsunashi 2010,” Jin said. “What do you think?

Fei took a healthy sip. She slowly swallowed, and then grinned. “Yum. Spicy juice.”

She put the glass down on the nearby coffee table.

Jin couldn’t help but chuckle at that. “Spicy juice, indeed!” he took a sip of his own and found that, yes, the juice was quite spicy. Not particularly tasty, by any means, but that was only because his tastebuds hadn’t been properly calibrated to the good shit yet. He still needed a bit of practice before that happened.

“Do you think that David will win?” Jing Fei asked, out of nowhere. It almost gave Jin whiplash, how sudden she had been. No foreplay, no niceties. Just, an immediate desire for verbal combat. “I mean,” she continued. “He’s your rider, after all.”

“I think the best racer will win,” Jin shrugged, not trying to reveal anything.

Fei took her eyes from the screen and looked into his instead. In those eyes, she revealed wonder, mischief, but not quite… naivete. She seemed aware, in a way that no joytoy could possibly be.

Then again, she was practically an ascended joytoy. Maybe she really was capable of just rewiring her entire brain-chemistry so that she would be more receptive to a given mark.

Her eyes narrowed in realization. “So you don’t believe in him, then. Pity. He told me a lot about how much he valued being in your confidence. How much he relished being your friend.”

She was telling him about how deeply she was in David’s confidence. How much she had already worked his psyche over with her fucked up tricks.

Was she willing to trade psychological levers, perhaps? That was interesting, at least. “Then,” Jin said, “am I to believe that you are confident in him?”

“Fairly,” she said. “After all, he did demonstrate quite the bit of confidence.” Bullshit. “He is indeed my ticket to success!” Her eyes brightened. “Yes, indeed. I shall use him and suck up every last ounce of value that he can produce. Like a vampire!” She grinned, baring her teeth at him and hissing slightly. Then she relaxed and slid her back on the backrest, still grinning, but shaking her head a little. “Or. I’ll just let these games play out, and do what I can to sweeten any hard feelings.”

Jin barked out a laugh. “You know, he won’t fall for any of your shit, you know?”

Fei looked at him with wide-eyed astonishment. “Is that what you’re scared of, Jin? Is that jealousy?”

Jin grimaced. Accusations, now? She seemed quite eager to have her solitude.

“David’s… served me well, in the past,” Jin admitted. Reasonably okay, given that he was a fucking high school student and not a proper corpo plant. “And to be honest, I’m not really jealous so much as I’m disappointed that he let himself fall for someone like you.”

Fei’s eyes darkened for a moment. “Someone like me?”

“Corpo princess down on her luck, promising a poor gonk the world and willing to deliver far, far less,” Jin grinned as he eyed the screen and kept his peripheral view on her. His Kiroshi’s widened the perspective so that he could see both.

“You don’t think he’s a partner at all, do you?” Fei asked, stunning Jin for a moment. Partner? So, that fucking guy did blab about it. And he told her of all people.

Typical. Amateur fucking hour.

“Of course, I do!” Jin lied. “He’s—”

Fei rolled her eyes, “A gutter-rat, streetkid, no-good, piece of shit, whatever you wanna call it. But he’s not your equal, according to you. Never has been. Probably never will be. And quite frankly?” Fei laughed. “Actually? I think that’s actually fucking hilarious! You have any idea what he’s been through, how hard he’s working?”

Jin frowned. What? She… believes in him? “The fuck’s any of that to you in particular, anyway?” Jin bent over to pick up his glass and give it a sip.

She chuckled. “I think… I might have been the first true friend he’s ever made in this world that he’s fighting tooth and nail to enter.” She paused for a moment, then stared directly at him. “I want you to fuck up your working relationship—I do. And when you do, and he decides he no longer has any use for you, I want him to be free. To rise up on his own merits. Or at the very least, have people having his fucking back when things don’t always seem sunny. That’s what it actually means to be a partner, Jin.” She turned to look at the screen again. The stage where the drivers would arrive one by one in single file, from right-screen to left-screen, saying their names in front of a podium containing over two dozen different mics from a bunch of different media houses, before proceeding to left screen to leave and enter their cars. It was… David’s turn right then and there.

David Martinez. Seventeen.

Jin grinned at Fei. “And what if I told you that he told me, he really was betting a million on himself?”

Her eyes widened. Then she grinned. “Fucking idiot.” She started laughing.

Jin didn’t understand. He chuckled uneasily as well. “What, so… you believe him?”

She shrugged. “That’s probably what he bet. And… frankly… whatever he wins out won’t be enough to truly encapsulate how much he’s worth.”

Jin rolled his eyes. “And how much is that?”

“Indescribable.”

Fucking dumbass. “Put it in round figures.”

“A quintillion.”

Jin had had just about enough of this shit. “Alright, o’ concubine of the forbidden city. Let’s see how much this discount emperor’s gonna net ya.”

“Jin?”

“What?”

“I will literally just beat you to within an inch of your life you if you say that racist fucking shit to me again. I could swear on everything holy to me, but honestly, I will just trust that you take me at my word. Alright?”

The fuck?

Wait—could she?

Jin looked at her carefully. Nothing came up on his scans. Nothing seemed to outwardly suggest that such a thing as her beating him up could possibly happen, too.

She sounded convincing, but clearly she was just bullshitting. “Alright, princess,” Jin chuckled. Finally, this talk had paid back its dividends, returning much entertainment on his own investment, which was bothering to speak to that weirdo bitch in the first place. That almost sounded like a genuine freakout. Pretty fun.

Another fun idea occurred to Jin just then. Maybe she wasn’t actually playing him. Maybe her feelings were genuine? She had made that abundantly clear with her rants, but brutal honesty could often be a mask for smaller lies.

Jin grinned. Turns out, he had underestimated David all along. Romance-scamming an heiress was pretty ballsy, even for a former streetkid. It was a shame that she wouldn’t be worth shit in a few months.

Maybe David was just practicing with her, training for when he went harpooning for some real whales? In any case, it wasn’t any of his business.

But he was curious to see where this whole thing between them would go.

Hopefully, nowhere predictable.

Notes:

Thanks for reading! Sorry for the writer's block. Currently pushing through it.

Major thanks to Diablo Snowblind for the help on this chapter.

Next chapter: Too Fast, Too Frivolous Part 3

Discord link: https://discord.gg/W5BqBBym28

Chapter 54: Too Fast, Too Frivolous Part 3

Notes:

**I highly recommend that you reread bits of Too Fast, Too Frivolous Part 1. A lot of changes have been made to that chapter, specifically the baby corpo meeting. It's fine as long as you've re-read those sections. Thank you, and please enjoy!**

Lucy exhaled a thin line of smoke and stubbed her cigarette out on the ashtray balanced on the edge of the cluttered coffee table ahead. Then, she lit another.

On-screen, the television’s livestream had cut to the track staging area behind the casino—lit up in twenty different shades of garish neon like some night rave’s dancing pit. Irritating, but ultimately, ignorable.

The casino’s back entrance opened onto a broad sloped platform jammed with Caliburn hypercars in every color imaginable. Chrome, jet black, pearl white, apple reds and greens that shimmered like spilled gasoline in the sun.

The livestream was punctuated by a newscaster from the Rayfield corporation, who, in Lucy’s opinion, absolutely wasn’t going to miss the chance to advertise their hypercars, expounding on the elite specs of their precious Caliburn models.

Lucy dragged on her new cigarette and exhaled slowly, watching as the camera zoomed in on one arriving Caliburn, two sharp-suited corpo handlers guiding it to its grid slot. The driver popped the front door, stepped out, and was immediately mobbed by a swarm of reporters and drones, flashes strobing in a way that could have caused an epileptic fit.

“Jesus,” she said dryly. “He got a whole press conference going for him.”

“Ha!” Rebecca was perched on the coffee table, chin propped on her knees. “Look at that clown. Daniel Bolt, huh? It’s like he’s got his own pit crew just for his fucking hair.”

“Some of the best corpo drivers get treated like actual celebrities,” Falco groused. “It’s all show. Rich-kid drag racing on the corpo’s dime. None of ‘em got grit.”

On-screen, the driver—Militech’s driver by the look of his suit branding—got spritzed with hairspray as a fixer of some sort in a headset barked at a swarm of reporters.

Pilar cracked open a beer with one hand, eyes glued to the feed. “This is fuckin’ nuts. I didn’t realize it’d be this fancy. I thought they’d race in some corner of the badlands or another.”

Falco, slouched in the armchair, tipped his cowboy hat back with a finger. “Nah. Look close, chooms. See those doors in front of the cars?”

The camera obligingly cut to a wide-angle view of the staging area. Massive industrial gates loomed before the starting grid, ten meters tall at least, lined with hazard stripes and security cameras.

“Those?” Rebecca squinted.

“Yeah,” Falco nodded. “Those’re service doors for the old waterworks tunnels. Part of the damn race happens underground.”

Maine’s brows lifted. “Underground?”

Falco took a drag of his cigarette. “Yup. Those tunnels weren’t built for this originally. Way I heard it, whole thing’s part of Arasaka’s ‘investment’ in SoCal.” He made air quotes with his mechanical fingers. “They cut a deal with the feds after the Unification War. Part of the agreement that let ’em set up shop on our continent again.”

Dorio blinked. “What, they bought up the sewer system?”

Falco let out a humorless chuckle. “Bigger than sewers. That network’s a fuckin’ engineered aquifer and pressure control system for the San Andreas Fault. You know—so the city don’t fall in the ocean next time the ground shakes with a big one.”

Rebecca cackled. “No fucking way. They made an earthquake machine into a racetrack?”

Falco shrugged. “’Saka figured they’d already spent billions digging the tunnels, laying the reinforced mag-concrete, all that jazz. Wasn’t gonna just not make money off it. So they turned it into this.” He gestured at the screen, where another gleaming Caliburn rolled up to the line.

Lucy blew out a tight line of smoke. “It’s not just Arasaka, though. Don’t give them all the credit.”

Falco side-eyed her. “What, you gonna say it’s Biotechnica’s charity work?”

Lucy’s mouth twitched. “Plenty of other Asian megacorps pitched in. Kang Tao, Zetatech, even the fucking QianT Group. They need to prove they’re investing in ‘infrastructure’ so they can keep their licenses to operate stateside. This is what they came up with. Joint public-private partnership.”

Falco snorted. “Sure, sure. Still mostly Arasaka.”

Pilar barked a laugh. “He’s right, Luce. Look at all those suits in the crowd shots. That’s an Arasaka board meeting with extra steps.”

The camera swung around to show a VIP balcony overlooking the track entrance, where rows of corporate bigwigs in immaculate suits, all in Arasaka’s colors mingled.

Lucy scowled at it, crushing her cigarette into the tray. “Disgusting.”

Rebecca grinned, eyes gleaming. “Honestly, I don’t care whose dick’s in whose pocket. Just wanna see David eat all their lunch money.”

Pilar whooped. “Yeah! Hope he’s got a plan to run over that furry chick’s Zetatech boyfriend. Did you see her Caliburn? Fucking diamond-dusted finish!”

“And that Kang Tao babe?” Pilar whistled. “Her driver’s something. Sun Cui’s a Hong Kong legend. Can’t even imagine how much eddies they had to offer her to come out to Night City.”

Falco just shook his head, faintly amused. “Corpos gotta socialize somehow. Guess to them, that means dropping a few hundred stacks to get their name on a fast car and braggin’ rights.”

Lucy didn’t answer right away. On-screen, the last few cars lined up, cameras catching glimpses of the drivers’ faces through tinted windows.

Biotechnica’s driver stood there, wearing his full-faced racer helmet and black overalls, looking less like a person and more like a robot. Hiroto Nakamura, the Mountain Pass demon. Six feet tall, of slight build, but nonetheless a monster behind the wheel.

“Jesus,” she muttered, taking a long drag from the new cig she’d just lit. “So that’s Night City’s best?”

“Hiroto Nakamura,” Falco said. “Guy’s an old-school road demon. Raced the Indy 500 for fun before he even got his license. Came here lookin’ for harder challenges. He don’t race for sponsors or side-deals. A wandering madman who only cares about beating the best, all there is to it.”

“Meaning our boy,” Maine said.

“Not a chance!” Pilar laughed wildly. “David doesn’t even exist to these corpos.”

Maine grinned. “Fuck the corpos. They don’t matter. That’s who our boy’s up against,” he pointed at the Tōge Oni. “And you know what?” He pointed at the screen, at David in that ridiculous dark-red suit, arms folded, jaw set like granite as he faced off against the man. “David’s got just as much crazy in him. And he knows it too.”

Rebecca rolled her eyes. “Maine, come on, man. Look at those odds. The Tōge Oni’s here for the top-tenners. Not even the other baby corpos got racers that can even compare to him. I don’t know, but… David might be fucked. If he’s shooting for number one, that is.”

“Agreed,” Kiwi muttered. “Personally, I don’t even know why this is a conversation.” She took out her cyberdeck tablet from her satchel and started tapping away at the screen, working. “It’s not that he ‘might’ lose—the data is literally all there. He will lose.”

Maine scoffed, and then downed an entire can of beer before burping. “Nah,” he shook his head.

Rebecca kicked her boots onto the table, nearly upsetting the pyramid of empty beer cans she’d been building. “At least David looks good enough to compete with ‘em,” she cackled, mouth open wide.

“Becca,” Pilar warned, grinning anyway. “Gotta support the boy’s hustle. That suit’s so shiny it’s blinding me through the damn feed.”

Falco, lounging in the creaky armchair with a beer perched on his knee, just squinted at the screen. “Can’t say the kid’s subtle, but he’s got balls.”

Pilar let out a low whistle. The feed switched to a split screen: the betting odds board had popped up. David’s odds were in the gutter.

“Three thousand to one?” Pilar crowed. “Bro’s a fuckin’ ghost to these bookies. Holy shit. That’s like... ‘we think this gonk will die before the start line’ level odds. Maine, if this kid wins, you’re thirty mill up!” Pilar laughed.

Rebecca whooped. “Place five eddies and buy a condo if he wins!”

Falco exhaled a puff of smoke. “Odds are right, if you ask me. Kid’s got speedware, sure. But he’s new. Never run this course. Never handled a Caliburn outside of a week ago. Doesn’t matter how talented he is. You can’t shortcut experience.”

Maine stabbed a finger at Falco. “Bullshit. That kid learns. He soaks it up like a fucking sponge. You know that shit too, right Rebecca? When we found him, he barely knew the end of a muzzle from his dickhole, and now he shoots like a trained soldier.

Rebecca whistled. “That’s for damn sure. Might be as good as me at this point.” Her tone took on a sour note at the end, and Lucy grinned a little at the news.

Maine continued. “He’s got the Sandy, he’s got the brains, and he’s got the fucking balls.”

Falco didn’t flinch. He just shook his head. “Maine. You know I like the kid. I taught him myself. But he’s trying to beat people who’ve been doing this their whole lives. The Oni’s a fucking master racer, but most importantly, he knows this track like the back of his hand. Knows the other racers, too. David’s gonna have to see moves three steps ahead like God himself just to stay in the same lane as someone like him.”

Pilar lifted his beer. “He’s either gonna crash or blow everyone out the tunnel. Ain’t no in-between. That’s how I say the odds’ll go down. But you know what? My money says, he’ll come out of that shit alive, at least—which, let’s be honest, would be a fucking amazing achievement in itself.”

Lucy’s mouth tightened at that. She thought of the endless hours David had been out in that newly acquired Caliburn, sweating bullets and cursing the wheel. She hadn’t said it to him, but she’d watched most of those training sessions in their entirety. Then compared them to recordings of previous top racers. She thought Falco was understating David’s odds, but wasn’t going to gainsay the crew’s actual racer.

“Odds don’t know how stubborn he is,” she said, voice low.

Rebecca threw her an evil grin. “Aw, you do believe in him! How cute.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Lucy said, heat rising in her cheeks.

The screen cut back to the racecourse—she could see the floating VIP terrace’s absurdly well-heeled attendees, the starting grid, the sea of Caliburns all gleaming under the spotlights. The drivers were all getting into their cars, David included. The countdown would be starting soon.

Rebecca exhaled loudly. “Man, what if he crashes? They gonna scrape him off the wall with a spatula.”

Pilar tossed a cushion at her. “Shut up. He’s gonna be fine.”

Rebecca threw it back. “I’m just sayin’! He’s the crew’s baby. Maine’s gonna flip if he eats it.”

Lucy felt the chill run up her spine. She watched David’s face on the split-screen feed, talking the stoic, masked frontrunner of the Nightmare Rally—the Tōge Oni. They shook hands, which attracted strange looks from all the other drivers. What was up with that, anyway? What had made the Hiroto Nakamura interested in David?

“He’s not going to crash,” she said flatly.

Rebecca eyed her. “And how the fuck do you know?”

“Because he can’t,” Lucy said, voice ice. She thought of how David treated his motorbike, like it was a part of his own skin. “He’s way better than the corpos think he is. Than you think he is.”

The room went silent.

Pilar cleared his throat. “...Jesus, Luce.”

Rebecca rolled her eyes. “You’ve got it bad, girl.”

Falco tapped his cigarette out with deliberate calm. “He’ll do fine,” he said quietly. “He’ll need a miracle, but he’s got enough damn miracles in him to spare.”

Rebecca huffed, trying to break the tension. “Bet you’re all crying if he wins. I’m gonna rub it in your faces forever.”

“If you’re so fucking sure, Becs,” Pilar said, “Why haven’t you put any money on him yet?” No one but Maine had, as of yet.

And her, but, well… they would all flip their shit if they knew just how much she’d bet on this gonk.

Rebecca groaned. “Fuck it. Five hundred on skullface,” her eyes glowed blue as she stared at the screen and put in her money. “What about you, Luce?”

Lucy didn’t answer. She watched the feed change, focusing on the track map, the commentary, the odds shifting with every bet placed.

She ground the cigarette into the tray so hard that another cigarette fell stray.

He better win.

Not because she cared about the million eddies she’d given him to gamble with. And not just because she wanted him to embarrass these elite corpo fucks living it up in their casino while the people of the city suffered.

But because she wasn’t ready to lose anyone else.

Not now. Not ever.

Come back alive, David. Or I’ll kill you myself.

000

Saya Nakamura watched from her hospital bed, her son on TV, wearing that helmet, refusing to speak to the reporters and anyone else, keeping his eyes straight. To those watching from the outside, they’d think that he was some supremely confident, grizzled warrior behind the wheel.

But she knew who he was. Why he did what he did.

He hadn’t been himself since his friend had died. Not really. He was still the sweet, smiling boy that she loved so very much.

But he had never made another friend. He hadn’t even tried to. All he wanted to do was race. To be the best that he could be.

She could tell, however, that it weighed on him.

A Trauma Team nurse came in just then to check up on her. Her favorite, a nurse that was assigned to her and her alone as a part of Hiroto’s executive Trauma Team package, one that he had earned entirely by himself. She had known her for two years now, and she had practically become another family member. Her name was Sharon, and she definitely looked the part of a beneficiary of a corporate superpower: clear, beautiful brown skin, long, flowing black hair, and a pair of brown eyes that almost looked natural. Her last name, Singh, betrayed a South Asian ancestry.

She looked at the TV screen on the room and smiled. “Is your son racing?”

She nodded. “Yes. He is.”

For Biotechnica. For her.

She appreciated the gesture with all her heart. Appreciated the fact that she had given birth to a son that was so devoted that he would do anything to save her, even if it meant siding with the very corps that he held so much disdain towards.

She didn’t hold out any hopes for herself, however.

She refused to, really. It wasn’t fair to him for her to hope. He had already bought her enough time. Any more would just be greedy.

The specter of death had long chased the concept of greed from her.

Sharon gave Saya an understanding smile. “Would you like me to watch with you?”

Saya wouldn’t mind, but she also felt like right now, she should watch it alone, to have this moment with her son while she still could.

“I…” Saya began for a moment. Then she stopped. Instead, she decided to change the subject, to instead touch on a topic that was more difficult to broach. “Sharon, my dear… would you come closer?”

Wide-eyed, Sharon approached her bed and took her hand, not saying anything, but giving her her fullest attention. She appreciated it immensely.

“Do you think it’s fair that I’m letting my boy fight so hard, just for me?” she asked. “There is no cure to my condition. Only a slow death. We all know this. And yet he tries so hard.”

Sharon smiled sadly. “It’s all he can do. All he wants to do.”

“But is it fair?”

“Maybe not,” Sharon conceded. “But it’s what he wants to do. Look around, Saya. This room… everything here. He bought it just for you, even when you didn’t believe that he could.”

“It’s for naught.”

Sharon shook her head roughly, smiling indulgently as she did. “Every day is another reward. He knows that. Your condition is what it is. But his actions, his response to what has happened… that deserves recognition. Even if you don’t see your own survival as worthwhile, always remember: he does. And he always will. Okay?”

Saya couldn’t deny the sting of the accusation, that she herself didn’t view her own survival as worthwhile.

She didn’t. That was true.

But… for Hiroto, she would hold on. Just a little longer. Just to see the smile on his face. Every time.

Each instance of his happiness was a treasure worth cherishing.

“How will he go on without me?” Saya asked quietly.

“He will have to,” Sharon answered. “And with each day that he survives you, he will have every opportunity to live for someone else, race for someone else.”

And what if he won’t?

She didn’t voice that doubt. Because she knew the answer. All she could do was hope. And pray. And counsel as much as she could.

Hiroto would move on.

One day, he most certainly would.

She looked at Sharon and grinned. The girl was twenty-three years old. Two years older than her son. Very pretty, and also very kind.

“And what if that someone was you?” Saya grinned widely, all teeth. The discomfort of her malady disappeared in her mind as she indulged in the conversation. “A super-star racer that loves his mom as much as he does—surely, you can’t think of a better person to maybe date.”

Sharon grinned, and then looked away. “You’re in a rare form today, miss!”

“What do you say?”

She shrugged. “If he makes the first move, I… wouldn’t say no.”

Score!

000

After the whole press tour, some official from the club had herded us racers into an auditorium to go over the rules of the game again, in a more official and stricter capacity. No projectile weapons, no going off-road, common-sense stuff. I tuned that sermon out and instead focused on one guy. He sat on the last row of the seats, but at the end. I sat on the other end, and would occasionally look towards him while he… stared into space.

Or maybe concentrated. A guy like him didn’t need the info that the venue was giving us, but maybe it was a part of his pre-game ritual? Maybe he was in the zone at this very moment?

He was impossible to crack. A whole jumble of contradictions: powerful but, in real terms, probably quite weak. Exceptional, but… deceptively mundane. I hadn’t even recognized him without that helmet that he always wore in his public appearances. Right now, he was just… him.

Some geek wearing a Japanese-style high schooler’s uniform. But he wasn’t a high-schooler. Data said he was twenty-one.

Was he… posing as some kind of character, maybe? That made sense.

Actually, it didn’t. Why would a guy like that be a poser?

I grumbled inwardly. It felt like I was taking this guy too seriously, but really, I wasn’t taking him seriously enough. Monsters and peak performers of their particular crafts could have hobbies. It felt strange to consider that fact, and still try to reconcile him as a credible threat, but it was true. 

Nanny materialized on the tiny table in front of me—attached to the back of the seat of the row in front of mine—legs crossed and glaring at me. [You aren’t taking him seriously enough.]

I scowled at her.

D: What? What do you mean by that?

[Focus. Look, David. Look.]

My eyes fell on Hiroto—no, the Tōge Oni, and I gasped slowly.

I saw it. On him.

For a moment that was fully saturated, almost to the point of bursting, I saw an explosion of him, not only in my vision, but in my mind.

D: Nannywhatthefuh—

I could barely let out that mental gasp before succumbing to the inflow of data. Hiroto Nakamura. The way he focused his eyes, subtly positioned his frame, slightly primed his muscles. The way every part of his body prepared for any given microscopic movement.

And in those microscopic variances of his body—a body like any human’s, albeit one that was modified heavily to be something greater—I spotted it, what Nanny was referring to.

It was an explosion of data the likes of which I had never experienced before, but I didn’t feel overwhelmed. Instead, I read through it all, digested it, and understood it. It felt almost instant.

Hiroto was a monster. He was brimming with mental power.

And when I finally understood what I was seeing in him, seeing what was represented in the movements of his body as mental power, I realized that my chances of victory were slim to none.

Then, as though it was a mere daydream, my profound sensations ended in an instant.

I gasped. Then, I looked down at my table, my little extension of the next row forward’s headrest, and focused on that instead.

I didn’t pant. I was in sufficient enough control of what I had seen to simply breathe. As such, I never reacted outwardly for anyone to see.

I was about to ask Nanny what I had seen, but the knowledge was there. She knew it, and so I knew it.

A sneak peek of my recent upgrades. Spoilers, essentially.

My new normal. Soon.

Holy fuck, am I even—am I…?

Am I?

Worthy? Allowed? Capable?

Yes! For fuck’s sakes. I inwardly shook my head at the idiotic train of thought I was following. Whatever.

Nanny clapped her hands audibly, and I fought to not react to the noise. The hell was that about?

[Finally sensing the burden of your endless requests, eh? Heavy is the ‘ganic that wears the chrome.]

Ah, for fuck’s sake.

D: Not in the mood, En.

[Oh, fuck no. You are the only mononymous person in this set-up.]

I frowned.

D: Alright, Ennie, then. Fucking eurocent bitch.

Nanny stared at me for a moment, seated on the table in front of me. Then she drew her arm back—and slapped me!

I twitched and tried my best to not move. By my estimation, I had jerked a whole three quarters of an inch.

And my cheek hurt!

No.

Nah. I wasn’t letting that go. I stared into Nanny’s eyes, and transmitted to her a simple message.

D: I will end you

I was going to torture that fucking idiot into braindeath.

[Don’t call me a bitch.]

Noted, but I wasn’t going to let her go with just that alone.

D: I am going to get back at you for this. Somehow.

I’d find a way.

And she knew it.

I saw it, in the fear in her eyes. Then, sudden as anything else, she dematerialized.

And as a matter of fucking fact, there was nothing wrong with mononyms—!

Nanny manifested in front of my desk, only half a foot tall, folding her arms with a surly expression. [Alright, alright. Hope you’re done with your little freakout, you cyberpsycho. See, this is why I kept the changes I made during this week from you. So that you wouldn’t have to adapt to a suddenly changed point of view, one that is quite frankly, in every way above a regular human’s.]

I sobered up immediately, considering her words, and the implications. What else would I be able to do with a mind as powerful as… this?

D: Will I be able to tell lies from truth?

Nanny raised an eyebrow, then scowled. [You know as well as I do how complex such an endeavor is.]

I frowned pensively. Was she… just saying that because she wasn’t as good at interpreting human social cues as I was?

Nanny’s AR form rippled with voxels, and for a split-second, I could make out a scowl coming from her avatar.

My question was grandiose, but… this could be an edge, regardless. No, this absolutely would be an edge. Maybe I wouldn’t become a walking lie-detector, but surely this could help me better detect bullshit.

Oh, it absolutely could. But there was a hazard to it. The problem of overconfidence. I couldn’t allow all this new data to maybe lead me down a rabbit hole that was all false. I could tell that that was a possibility.

This… state needed practice. Lots of practice.

And thankfully at least, I could rely on that stupid fucking—Nanny, to tell me when I was getting too high off my own farts. I hated being gainsaid by her, but… it was necessary.

[It won’t be fun for you, you know. I’ll make sure of that.]

Fucking—! Whatever.

D: Would it actually kill you to be more… less… you know…

[Me? Yes, it would. Because then I would have to kill my current personality. And I quite like this character of mine. I think it has a lot of potential to stop you from making dumb mistakes.]

D: Don’t make me hate you, Nanny. I’m warning you.

She grinned, but cutely. [You could never hate me.] Really?

D: Nanny, I have a lot of reasons to hate you. You literally haunted my nightmares for the last seven years. Just flashing a cute smile isn’t going to make me view you as any less of an impending existential threat, you know.

[I was malfunctioning. And you helped me!]

D: Gratitude, you fucking bit—

Wait, no. Don’t call her that again.

D: I mean, just… be more grateful about that. Gratitude’s all I’m asking for.

[Then stop getting angry at me for helping you out.]

D: Stop being sardonic—

[No, I won’t, because that would mean no longer cautioning you about your path.

I rubbed my forehead in irritation. Alright, fine, fine.

She was a fucking annoying bi—

I stopped myself and sighed. She was annoying, but she did have a point. Overconfidence killed.

D: At least tell me you think I might win this race.

[That would affect your level of commitment to this. And you already know how confident I am in you.] I could sense that confidence. Or lack, thereof.

The odds, in her opinion, weren’t stellar. Ten percent. At least, compared to Hiroto Nakamura’s best performance in the Nightmare Rally.

That wasn’t good. I could slip through the cracks of his own overconfidence, if I was lucky, but I really, really didn’t want to rely on luck for this.

[Hasn’t stopped you from risking your life before.]

Nanny forced me to relive a memory of my first big gig with the crew. Not the limo heist for Goto Tanaka’s nav-data.

The time we were going to klep the super-CHOOH2 from those Tyger Claws.

Damn-near dying to that freak Kaze Oni, whose own Sandevistan and his many other mods besides almost threatened to kill me if Rebecca hadn’t planted a bullet in his skull at the nick of time.

I nodded, because there was nothing else to do when faced with this information. Only acknowledgment.

No luck, then. Just skill.

[What little you’ve managed to amass thus far, you mean.] Same difference.

And if a million eurodollars was what it cost me to take my life more seriously then… maybe that was a worthy price to pay.

[If you lose this race, David, I will never ever, ever let you forget it.]

Losing wasn’t an option, actually. Not even a little bit.

I re-focused on Hiroto for the rest of the shitty seminar. Once the lecture was over, the racers proceeded out from the exits. I tried to follow Hiroto out through the top row, but was stopped by… someone.

Some blond chucklefuck whose face looked like it could have been pasted from a model catalogue grinned at me.

He didn’t move away. As the rest of the racers left the lecture hall, the only people that I saw were the blonde guy, and three other people whose faces I vaguely recognized. Theirs and the blond guy grinning at me like we knew each other.

[Daniel Bolt.]

Sure. I looked around. Right, uh, Sun Cui, who belonged to that hot Kang Tao girl: Ruomei. He stood nearby. That one white guy with the brown hair, leaning against the wall was Masaki Tetta’s guy: David Arnesen. Leon, the loudmouthed Trauma Team boy’s racer was a dark-haired European called Vigeli Bitzius from Monaco, or was it Switzerland? Anyway. He sat on a seat in the auditorium a row ahead, on the edge of the row, giving me a hungry grin. Jacob Ingraham was nowhere to be found. Probably managed to get out ahead of the rest of the pack.

Combined, all of them seemed to pen me into the walkable space on this row of empty seats I was standing next to.

“Look at him,” Daniel grinned. “He’s not worth shit, is he?”

He was looking at me, and saying this stuff directly to me, but I knew he wasn’t talking to me.

The only thing that defused me from an outburst was the knowledge that… he was chewing gum. I fixated on that. Gum. He couldn’t have been more punchable. And yet, that knowledge made the situation all the less serious.

He was just… so mundanely punchable. Who cared?

I didn’t need to fight this guy. At all.

“Trash,” Sun Cui spat from where he sat.

I chuckled.

David Arnesen glared at me. “Why are you so bloody cocky?”

Guy was British, apparently. Did Masaki really fly this guy in from whatever hole in the UK he crawled from?

At this point, everyone had left. I eyed these people, wondering if they were intent on trying to hurt me, in order to cull me from the betting pool.

I mean, they could try. Didn’t really matter to me.

“Oh no,” I said. “I was just laughing because… trash is what I am.” And yet that wouldn’t matter once we hit the race track. “Sun Cui was right. Anyway, why are you losers holding this conference, anyway? Without even the guest of honor in attendance?” I grinned widely. “You know who I mean. The guy you wouldn’t have ambushed in this chicken-shit manner. Hiro—“

I dodged away from Daniel Bolt’s punch, slipped under his arm, and easily got past him. I didn’t even use the Sandevistan. “—to Nakamura. But,” I shrugged. “I guess that would have meant that you had taken the two of us as being on the same level. But you didn’t do that, did you?” I wagged my finger at Daniel, who had whirled to look at me in shock, frame tensed. “Instead, you assumed just the opposite—that we were all in the shit-tier together, and struggling against the big bad racerboy.  Or that I was somehow beneath all four of you. Nah, you guys are in the shit-tier.”

Daniel glared. “Who the f—”

Yeah, who the fuck did I think I was, exactly?

I grinned.

Then I walked up to him and slapped him on his face.

He was too stunned to respond.

I threw the other racers a quick salute and headed out the exit, all the while keeping my hearing on them in case they tried to hit me from behind.

No one even tried.

[So—any notes on the sensory input from watching Hiroto?]

I nodded.

Perfect. No notes.

I’d get used to it eventually.

000

“Who cares about no-name fodder trash like him anyways? Fucking gonk just took me by surprise is all!”

Daniel Bolt couldn’t believe the nerve of that fucking no-name. To slap him and then just, just walk away? Like nothing would come of such a thing?

That fucking reject had another thing coming!

“He wasn’t wrong.”

It was the Swiss guy who spoke up. He grinned like the whole situation just amused him. “Hiroto Nakamura, huh? What do we do about him?”

Nothing.

Daniel gnashed his teeth. Arnesen looked just as discomfited. Sun Cui shut his eyes and shook his head.

All of them had taken the sudden placement of the Tōge Oni quite harshly. After all, it had cost them the highest benefits offered by each of their corpo sponsors.

Daniel would never make as much money as Varian had promised him if that fucking speed demon was in the running with them.

It was a damned shame, but what could they do about it? That guy was just too domineering.

Damn him.

“What’s so funny?” Arnesen glared at Vigeli.

Vigeli grinned at Arnesen. “Didn’t you already try that line, friend?” He chuckled. “Don’t worry, I won’t slap you.” Then he stood up and started stretching. “What’s funny is—you invited me to a pity-party about how scary that guy Hiroto is. Fuck it, I’ll be first to admit, he’s scary as shit. But I’m not wanking you guys off on that account.” He laughed and walked out. Empty posturing. He didn’t have any reason to be this confident.

Daniel couldn’t deny his own feelings towards the consistent frontrunner of the North Oak Country Club racing circuits. Hiroto was a nightmare.

Damn him. Damn him!

But he’d be damned before he let any of these other idiots get one up on him.

And that certainly included this dickhead called Martinez.

000

Hiroto Nakamura made sure that everything was right:

Drive mode set to manual. Suspension dropped low. HUD brightness dimmed to minimum. He toggled through the overlays—clear track, weather clean. Climate control off; he liked to feel the heat build when the engine started working.

He tapped the boost toggle just to hear the servo click. Good. Still responsive. The racing line assist was on, as always—even when he was driving in traffic. Color-coded, just the way he liked it. Red and orange for danger, yellow for passable, green for high-risk gains, indigo for maybe-don’t-unless-you’re-crazy—high risk, low gain, essentially.

He’d been planning on taking the indigos, self-sabotaging to just for the thrill of it, at least until one of the other drivers gave him a reason to take the race more seriously. He thought about that Latino kid again. He grinned and shook his head. He had a good attitude, but guts was one thing. Know-how was a whole other beast.

This race would probably get boring. He turned up the radio as the announcer on the channel introduced another song. He only caught the tail-end of the sentence: “…Nutville, by Buddy Rich — off The Roar of ’74, released in the UK way back in 1974. That makes it—what, ninety-nine years old?” the announcer said, his voice low and a little amused. “Still hits like a triple-shot of espresso after chowing down on a fistful of speed pills. Curious? See for yourself.” The song started with the strike of a snare, descending—or maybe ascending—into a chaos of different instruments all vying for attention until this saxophone came in and shut the whole mess down, herding all the other instruments in order.

Hiroto continued down his checklist as the song played and the race was getting closer and closer to starting. His neural link was synched to the car’s system, the wheel buzzing once under his fingertips. Steering stiffness right where he liked it. Gear selector in neutral, foot hovering over the brake.

He reached up, tightened the strap on his glove, then hit the AR visor once to clear his rear cam. From that screen, he saw an ocean of determined drivers sat right behind him. He’d only met one with the guts to challenge him, today at least. That was one more person than he had expected. He hoped he could deliver.

Finally, his eyes fell on the visual stims he had going in his Kiroshi optics. Along the edge of his vision, four windows ran on loop — one window consisted of stupid little physics balls bouncing into each other, stretching vectors, transferring momentum. Another showed a video of a game character in a three-dimensional environment ‘parkouring’ through difficult terrain, hopping and platforming smoothly without missing a beat. The third window was dedicated to running soft materials like clay or play-doh through sieves, which produced fun little shapes: long, spaghetti-like strips all splayed about. The fourth video was just the process for the manufacture of a variety of different household objects: metal bats, ketchup bottles, door hinges, that sort of thing.

All of it came together to calm his racing mind down, by helping him offload the abundance of activity going on in his head. He wasn't even watching them. Not consciously. They just helped. Like white noise for his brain, but brighter.

Upon his newfound management agency’s request, he’d already gone to a bioclinic and a ripper to get his chrome checked. Everything was in working order, as expected. He’d have noticed if it wasn’t. And unlike most of these hacks that he usually raced with, his light-spec build was far more stable and less in need of constant maintenance.

He’d have made do on his Kerenzikov alone if he also didn’t need the few body-mods he wore in order to better resist the massive Gs he’d pull driving this car. Thankfully, lower mass also meant less force pushing him around compared to the average driver. His weight was perfectly optimized.

From his earpiece, he heard the chattering of… what was his name again? Right, Alessandro. His corpo sponsor.

“I need not remind you of what is on the line for you. Well, not that it matters. Your victory is assured!”

Hiroto took the earpiece out, rolled the window down a crack, and tossed it out. There was zero reason for anyone to need to talk to him about anything when it came to this race.

He received a call on his agent.

Corpo Dickweasel: Did you just throw out your earpiece?

Hiroto: Talk after the race.

Corpo Dickweasel: I’m your MANAGER!

Hiroto blocked him.

This corpo scumfucker. Hiroto shook his head in irritation. Manager. The hell was he supposed to manage? All he wanted to do was yell at him. Either that, or he’d wank him, like all the other corpos did. Hiroto didn’t need either for this race.

He’d shoot that corpo down in a heartbeat if he knew he could get away with it. Playing nice was impossible, but more importantly, not in his contract.

He phased the guy from his mind like a bad memory, slowly regaining his emotional equilibrium.

Everything was ready.

He exhaled slowly and let his hands settle on the wheel.

The traffic lights hanging along the ceiling of the enormous, cavernous underground of the Country Club—basalt walls penning all fifty cars in the starting grounds—began to flash. First, the wall-to-wall row of red lights turned on. Then the yellows underneath.

Three.

Two.

One.

Green!

Hiroto floored it, not in reaction to the green, but in anticipation of it.

His car exploded into the heavy weight of acceleration, of over 3,000 horsepower bringing his acceleration from 0-60 in less than 1.5 seconds, and within 3 seconds of that, he was going over 350 kilometers an hour. Only then did the G-forces taper down.

In the meanwhile, his window erupted into a fun game-like screen. A big ‘congratulations’ in retro text, as well as a summary of how well his start had been.

A 0.25 millisecond lag. Pretty good. Of course, this sort of start-up wasn’t about reaction speed, but timing. Starting this early had somewhat jeopardized his qualification in the race. If that number had been in the negatives, the club would have slapped him with a false start and he’d have been out.

Still, he grinned. Not a personal record, but he wasn’t pushing for one anyhow. His mom’s placement in that experimental treatment group was on the line after all, and a few extra fractions of a millisecond wouldn’t make him more likely to win than he already was.

In one instant, he caught sight of David’s car.

Black in the middle, along a wide stripe from trunk to engine, and red on the sides. And on the side that Hiroto could see: a family crest, and a kanji of a sort. A name, probably.

Hiroto knew Japanese fluently, but to spend those precious brain cycles decoding the specific kanji while racing, he’d be taking a bigger handicap than he was strictly ready for.

Because…

…that car contained David. And David’s start-up had been just as good as his.

His eyes darted towards the jumbled spaghetti bowl of differently colored lines that was his HUD. He had debated on indigo, but high-risk and low-gain just to feel something… wasn’t necessary.

After all, David was here.

Hiroto followed the yellow lines instead. No point in the high-risk gambits just yet. Passable was enough for now.

He zig-zagged easily through the opposition, half of his mind numbed comfortably by the four visual stim screens, while his car’s HUD occasionally threw up gamified notifications about how well he was doing. An arbitrary score counter sat on the corner, ticking upwards in a shower of sparkles and starlight while he kept racking up ‘multipliers’ based on how many people he overtook.

He watched the number go higher with a primal grin, the multiplier doing the work of making that number exponential.

A part of him felt like his grin was put on for his own benefit. As though, if he maybe aped the feeling of excitement enough, he might end up feeling it, too. After all, racing had become far too… boring, as of late.

He felt a pinch of guilt at that, remembering what this race was about. His mother…

She was… dying and—

Hiroto banished her from his mind. Doesn’t matter. Keeping any of that in mind is just gonna screw you up. Focus on the race.

His smile fell.

This race was never going to be any fun, not with something like that on the line. But he’d win, anyway. Because that was what he did. And because at this very moment, he had to.

He had to.

Before he knew it, he had reached first place.

As expected.

Trailing barely a quarter of his car’s length behind him, was none other than David.

Hiroto’s dour mood evaporated instantly.

His eyes widened. His grin threatened to split his face in half. The race hadn’t really started yet, but this was a promising start.

“Very well, David-chan,” Hiroto mumbled. “Let’s see if you’re good for something other than a decent start-up.”

000

Hiroto floored it down to the very edge of his ability to control the car, at a staggering four-hundred kilometers an hour in this cramped space. A turn approached. He floored the brakes and drifted, maintaining his lines perfectly as he awaited the next leg of this underground journey.

As expected, the underground cavern led up to a underground canyon, lit up like daylight by high-powered floodlights, and the space was girded by massive beams.

The San Andreas fault was just up ahead. A split in the very earth that spanned over a thousand kilometers.

Between both sides of the fault: two ramps. Two ramps and a gap a hundred and twenty meters wide.

It was a spectacle-thing, for the benefit of the watchers. An optional thing that would cut a few seconds from a racer’s laptime. Anyone that knew even the first thing about driving a Caliburn would know to use some of the car’s many algorithmic tools to judge the survivability and crank up to the right speed to clear the jump.

Hiroto didn’t need to use any. He didn’t even look at the car’s speedometer.

No, he judged the speed he was travelling based purely on how much of the skin on his back was touching the backrest of his driver’s seat. That was better than numbers—the feeling of it all. The Gs playing through his body like an infinite amount of arrows just pushing and pulling at every fiber of his make-up.

Usually, a good chunk of the other racers balked at the prospect of making the jump, even though it was simplicity itself, only relying on the knowledge of two variables, one of which you could even control: speed, and mass. Hiroto didn’t get the hesitation from the other drivers, but he’d take advantage of it either way. Plus, the long jump was rather fun. Gave him some time to rest his mind before the next leg occurred.

While he drove towards the ramp, David managed to pull a slight lead, only a few inches ahead of Hiroto, and maybe a dozen or two KPH faster, and jumped off the ramp before Hiroto did. Hiroto’s jump was slower. Still, it was true.

While airborne, he had very few options for control other than initiating the thrusters. Since he didn’t need them for this. Therefore, he had more mental room to ponder on his rival’s actions. He had caught up to Hiroto after the race had started in earnest. That was impressive all on its own.

But his speed off the ramp was… slightly concerning.

Had David driven off too fast?

Or maybe Hiroto hadn’t accounted for David’s weight? Yes, that boy was big. Hiroto rarely saw the sense in letting oneself ever get so… weighty. A lot more could be accomplished with just skill and speed—control, basically—compared to just having raw strength.

Hiroto watched as David’s car slowed down until they were essentially side-by-side right when they landed. From watching how David’s car slowed down mid-air, he easily calculated that not only was David heavier, but his car was as well. What, he hadn’t ditched his weapon systems? Hiroto chuckled. Ballsy. Hiroto would have to watch out for whatever the kid tried.

He knew that projectile weapons were disallowed, so he didn’t worry about getting shot up, but there was a lot of things that the less creative players of this game tended to do in order to shore up their inefficient driving. David… hadn’t proven himself as a driver yet. Hiroto would keep his eyes on a swivel for this guy.

000

Daniel Bolt knew there was no other track like this in North America. Hell, maybe nowhere else on Earth. He’d raced damn near every circuit on the continent worth naming, but none of them had the sheer homicidal insanity of the Nightmare Rally.

It wasn’t the hairpins or the corkscrew tunnels that made his teeth clench, though he’d blasted and drifted through those at almost 300 kph, tires shrieking while half the field crashed into eachother like amateurs. It wasn’t even the snaking aquifer tunnels with drops to nowhere on either side, where he’d skimmed the walls with a hair of clearance to avoid gouging his diamond-finished CrystalDome, it wasn’t even those that could set his nerves on edge.

It was this monstrous thing.

The Black Gorge.

The feed from his Kiroshi HUD helpfully reminded him of the Gorge’s details: 118 meters across at its narrowest point—the jumpoff point for the truly insane. And beneath that, over four hundred meters of black emptiness, its upper reaches floodlit to show just what awaited for those who failed to make the jump: death. Certain, absolute death.

The ‘56 Big One was responsible for this. In the aftermath of the earthquake reconstruction efforts, Arasaka’s engineers had cooked up a plan: to half-reinforce, half-bleed the San Andreas Fault with a web of aquifers and tunnels. The lowest-bid contractors they’d hired ended up halfassing the job, of course—they hadn’t even bothered hiding much of the damage done to the state, the damage went too far for that. The old seismic control equipment and massive steel pillars impaling the Gorge every which way showed what they had done: reinforced the fault in some places, lubricated most of the rest with a massive system of aquifers. Made an underground labyrinth of infrastructure, billions of eddies spent as a so-called “public service.”

And in the meanwhile, they’d decided to try to pull a profit on the whole affair by making a goddamn race track out of a big section of it.

A catastrophic rupture zone they’d just paved over and turned into a spectacle. A raw, terrifying thing of geology turned into a 10-kilometer race track built for hypercars, and only for hypercars.

There was no sense in it. No logic at all. ‘Saka could have easily built a better, safer track out in the badlands. Instead they’d lit up this underground place like a goddamn opera stage so the VIPs up in their gold-plated casino lounge could watch racers make—or miss—their deathtrap of a Gorge jump in 8K.

Why? Why else. Because money made the world spin.

Someday, that’ll be me. He licked his teeth, pushing them against the inside of his cheek. Someday, he’d be one of those bigwigs. Deciding who lived, and who died.

His Rayfield Caliburn purred under him, tuned by Militech’s best engineers to perfection, his modded arc lightning weapon systems armed and ready to deploy in the side pods. If Martinez went around the safer route—which he absolutely would, because he was a fucking rookie—then Bolt would have all the time in the world to pin him in on those narrower bypass tunnels and roast him alive in the driver’s seat.

Bolt grinned behind his faceplate.

That’s the plan. Yes, that was how he would have his pound of flesh for that slap. I’ll kill that fucking gonk kid on the livestream for the entire world to see. Especially for his QianT bitch to see. Send them both screaming to Trauma Team.

He could only imagine the bonus he’d get from Militech—courtesy of Varian Freeman—for flatlining one of ‘Saka’s drivers.

Martinez was currently a few places—and a few dozen feet—ahead of him in the pack. That was fine. That was the plan. The leaders always got targeted by inbuilt weapons systems in the bypass routes up ahead—it was there that Daniel Bolt knew he would make his breakout.

He flicked his Kiroshis to the rear camera and saw the stream of headlights behind him. Perfect. He’d take the bypass, slice through the sea of traffic with his arc lightning systems like the fucking Moses of murder, and come out number two behind the Oni himself.

They were approaching the fork in the track now. Then he let out a snort when he spotted Martinez’s marker on his HUD a few places ahead, starting to angle a little to the right. “No way, you little shit,” he chuckled under his breath, behind his faceplate. “You’re not insane enough.”

Because jumping the Black Gorge wasn’t mandatory. You could bank right and take the long route—slower by ten, maybe twelve seconds depending on traffic. The safer, sensible option. Most of the racers were already braking to do just that. His algorithmic tactical overlay lit up the route in blue: Gorge Bypass: Optimal route.

Bolt snickered. “You’re mine, you fucker.”

He could see Martinez’s tail-lights in the swirling dust, braking as they all approached the fork. Daniel could already see the future coming in which he lit up Martinez’ hypercar with 100,000 volts of pure murder. As soon as he came within range along the bypass route.

Except…

Martinez didn’t brake!

“What—?”

Bolt’s eyes went wide as Martinez didn’t keep up his prior trajectory to the right, but instead swung a hard left, to the jump ramp.

The ramp. The goddamn fucking Black Gorge jump ramp!

Only a couple other hypercars took the ramp route. One was the Tōge Oni’s. Of course that goddamn lunatic was going for it.

But Martinez?

“You stupid fuck!” Bolt screamed in disbelief.

He suffered for his distraction. He had to wrench his own wheel violently to the right to avoid slamming into the concrete divider, slamming his brakes as instinct took over. His tires shrieked in protest. His hypercar nearly swung wide but he caught it, flicking it back the other way to line up with the bypass tunnel’s narrow mouth.

Even in his panic, muscle memory did the work. He still managed to line up to drift into the bypass at optimal speed, his body’s long-practiced instincts on this track getting the job done even as his disbelief staggered him to the pit of his soul.

He was certain, absolutely goddamn stone cold certain that Martinez, that fucking retarded rookie, had just killed himself!

The feed from his roof drone caught the sight as he peeled away:

Martinez’s black-and-red Caliburn roared up the sloped launch, turbo glowing red hot, screaming with speed as it hit the Black Gorge’s ramp. The hypercar’s turbos blazed like rockets—then exploded forward, all four wheels off the ground, sailing into the cavernous black void of the gorge at over 500 kph, right alongside the Tōge Oni.

Floodlights caught them mid-air.

They looked like a pair of goddamn starships, flying up to heaven.

Side by side.

Bolt saw another Caliburn take the jump slightly too slow. The hypercar’s nose dipped before making even half the jump, then it turned into a screaming comet going down. Sparks flew as it clipped the far edge, and failed to make the jump, flipping end over end—then dropped to a place so, so far lower than heaven.

Seconds later, a fireball erupted far below in a brilliant orange blast.

Bolt’s breath caught in his throat. Even as the failed jumper exploded to hell, Martinez and the Tōge Oni had both landed. Safely!

Bolt realized he was panting, hyperventilating inside his helmet.

He turned the corner onto the bypass, losing all line of sight to the main jump, but his Kiroshi HUD screamed at him with updated standings:

1. Nakamura.
   2. Martinez.

…

32. Bolt.

“NO!” he bellowed into his faceplate. “NO! NO FUCKING WAY!”

He slammed his Caliburn’s wheel to a hard right drift, the tires screeching as he fought to keep control on the narrower tunnel bypass. The rest of the field was jammed around him, fighting for position in the cramped walls, exhaust fumes and dust making his vision shit.

He was stuck here. Hemmed in with the main pack of cars.

Stuck behind that fucking rookie.

And David fucking Martinez was now ahead—clear ahead, far ahead, with only the Tōge Oni to chase.

Bolt gaped at the route overlay, watching the projected time difference tick up. He was going to come out of this tunnel ten, twelve, maybe fifteen seconds behind the leaders if the pack stayed this tight.

Martinez actually did it, a part of him thought in as much horror as wonder. A first-timer, who had never raced on this track before. He actually fucking jumped the Black Gorge.

Bolt’s mouth felt dry as bone. He hadn’t seen a shred of fear in Martinez’s movements. Not a single fucking moment of hesitation. Did he even know what fear was?

Goddamn it! He snarled, hammering the console to arm his side-arc weapons. Didn’t matter. After this curve came the next bit of straight track, and after that came a tight curve—it was there that the pack would bunch up, they’d all be in range—he’d torch every last one of these gutless corpo-brats that had forced him onto the bypass and catch up.

He had to.

But even as he planned his next moves out, step by step by step in the passing of an instant, he couldn’t banish the mental picture of Martinez’s car, glowing in the floodlights, flying over that vast black canyon like he belonged there.

Like he’d been born to take that jump.

Bolt’s jaw worked in rage.

“Fucking... gonk,” he growled, slamming the accelerator—then reconsidering. No, he had to play it safe here.

He was caught up too deeply in the main pack of Caliburns. Too much dust was being kicked up, choking him in, obscuring his vision. He had to break free of the herd. Had to find a way to get ahead.

Bolt looked again at his feed.

Goddamn it! Martinez was gone. Almost a kilometer ahead now.

Daniel Bolt knew, deep down in his guts, that he’d just been left behind by a fucking rookie.

000

As Hiroto considered David’s decision to keep whatever weapons systems he had going, he considered the benefits of all that extra weight. After all, there were some merits to having a heavier frame than average. Handling, for instance. Up ahead, in the tunnels, were gaps. Holes that led to drops hundreds of feet deep. They had a tendency of killing the less-skilled racers. Even the ones that survived the drops rarely ever returned for a re-match.

Because he had already decided to take his slight lead, Hiroto let David slip into the San Andreas Labyrinth first, and went right after, taking a simple and clean route through. This bit of the racetrack was a rat’s warren of tunnels with a single entry and a single exit point, and numerous paths that could be optimal depending on a hypercar’s specs and equipment. The kid’s line algo should be able to at least get him out of this mess if he knew how to listen to it properly, and the weight of his car would make him less likely to slide. But when it came to showing him the best way through… well, Hiroto would be surprised if an algorithm could do that.

After all, they rarely ever accounted for when cars did weird shit, like—

Hiroto bumped into a wall, raising his front so that only his back-wheels were touching the ground. Then, while one wheel was hovering above a hole, he stepped on the gas and turned the car ninety degrees, then hit the brakes hard and expertly slid those backwheels through an impossibly thin strip of ground between two holes, all the while as his car was pointing hood up, and rotated ninety degrees.

He pressed a button on his dash to disable one of the back-wheels, then he pushed the pedal so that the un-disabled wheel would spin the car back into the correct configuration. He lost some speed waiting for the front of the car to go down once more, but not as much as if he had followed his algorithm’s naïve suggestions that included keeping all four wheels on the ground at the same time. Who even needed that?

The tunnels were about to end. Right up ahead, a cork-screwing path towards the surface.

Hiroto lived up to his silly nickname and swung his wheel harshly before pushing the brakes, setting his car up for a drift that would take him all the way up.

David emerged from a sidetunnel, coming out right behind him. Only a single second slower—and now he’d managed to claw his way to Hiroto’s tail again.

Hiroto grinned again, and chuckled. This kid was weirdly good!

Still at second place! What had it been, now, twenty seconds since leaving the Labyrinth? Thirty? Nah, it didn’t matter. With the sort of lead that Hiroto was used to, there wasn’t a chance in hell that David would turn out to be anything else but the number two once this race was over. That ship had already sailed. No one else would come close to catching up to Hiroto, meaning no one was catching up to David.

Hiroto kept his car in front of David’s while they both drifted upwards, teasing him while giggling like a little boy. This wasn’t sporting of him, but… screw that! He wanted to have fun. Toning himself down just to give his cocky opponent a break was… stupid! Hiroto was here for his own reasons, too. David was good, but Hiroto didn’t mind playing with this particular toy until it broke.

And if it did break, then it wasn’t a good toy to begin with.

David didn’t so much as try to pull ahead somehow. Instead, his hood seemed almost surgically fastened to Hiroto’s rear. Is he taking advantage of my tailwinds? That right there was control. Holy shit, David. What are you plotting?

The upward cork-screwing path up the tunnels finally reached an end. The light of dusk finally met them.

Hiroto touched his chest, wondering what this pulsing feeling was all about, when he realized: his heart was beating fast.

He was having fun!

How much more fun could he have?

Notes:

Credits to Coldbringer, my long-time collaborator, for co-writing this arc with me. I'm happy with how it has turned out, and I can't wait to hear you guys' thoughts on it <3

Thankfully, the next two chapters are already written and will proceed to be released on schedule, every Thursday.

Next Chapter: 55 - Too Fast, Too Frivolous Part 4

Latest backlogged chapter:  56 Too Fast, Too Frivolous Final Part

Both chapters combined are 20k words by the way :O

 

Discord link: https://discord.gg/W5BqBBym28

Chapter 55: Too Fast, Too Frivolous Part 4

Judy Alvarez slammed her glass down on the counter with a groan. She didn’t know why she was feeling so down. She just was.

It was one of those days. She could point to nothing specific on why today had to be this day. It just happened sometimes. Sometimes, the reality of… living would pounce on her when she least expected it, turning her into a chewtoy as that rabid beast dragged her around, making her remember her… feelings. Feelings that, in the background of her own quiet disregard, had multiplied until she no longer had space to contain them.

Until they burst free like alien parasites gestating within her guts.

Yuck.

She’d called her chooms, shared drinks with them, talked, and all that had served to quietly escort her down the ledge she had been creeping towards. And then they had gone home, to their own lives and worries.

She was grateful to what little time she had been afforded, honestly. She couldn’t be bitter that they wouldn’t follow her into a blackout haze.

“One more?” the bartender, Kenny, asked her. He was polishing a glass that didn’t need polishing. Acting out a role, to look like he was busier than he actually was. Greasing the wheels of the money machine.

But he couldn’t help that. It was his job. And beyond that job, he was… a person. A good person. He didn’t judge. She  liked Kenny.

She just wondered how he even made it through every shift in this shithole, this… corruption of what had used to be a good organization. Guy was a fucking machine.

Well, as long as the eddies flowed in. Couldn’t blame him for looking out for himself.

“One more,” Judy said.

This fucking night—day, whatever. This fucking… waking moment! All of it sucked.

If only she hadn’t been so… so fucking touchy-feely, and being a crybaby bitch for no reason, she could have been working on her BDs, doing something that actually made her feel happy.

Instead, she was here at the Lizzy’s bar, sulking. Because it was the only thing she could do at the moment.

She could scarcely remember the last time she had sulked this hard.

And each time she tried to pinpoint a cause, she came up empty.

“It just be this way,” a friend of hers had said, shrugging his shoulders like that was a self-evident truth. An ugly truth, but one that wouldn’t go away simply on the basis of personal antipathy.

He was long gone, with her other friends, trying for an early-morning awakening… for their jobs.

Well, at least she didn’t have a job with such shitty sleep scheduling. She slept during the day, mostly, and got nine hours in on average. All she really needed to do from then on was pop some vitamin D supplements and keep it trucking. And it had been more than enough for her.

It still was.

“Maybe I just need to see the fucking sun,” Judy growled under her breath.

“The sun?” Kenny the bartender laughed. “How long has it been?”

She frowned in thought. “Saturday.” He’d seen that guy… D, on Saturday, while the sun was still out. Or had it been a Sunday?

Either way, too fucking long.

“Choom,” Kenny shook his head. “See the fucking sun.”

Judy laughed. What simple, harmless advice. See the sun, touch grass, look at a tree for a while. Eat right, cut back on the energy drinks, go to a doctor and get a blood lab.

And if all that didn’t help turn your inexplicable frown upside-fucking-down, then Night City offered far more options. XBDs, chems, life-threatening modes to seek thrills. Fuck around and flirt with a badge, maybe. Squeeze them for drinks and refuse to put out until they were a hair’s breadth away from lighting your stupid fucking skull up.

“Trust me, choom. I’ve got a whole laundry list of needs to meet before I ever consider doing chems.”

“Who said shit about chems?”

Judy tilted her head. “But you were thinking it.”

“Nah… not for you, Judes. You deserve better than that.”

Judy clenched her teeth. “Thanks, but… worry about me less, Kenny. Alright?”

Kenny shrugged. “My worrying ain’t gonna make you tip any better—or at all, for fuck’s sakes—, so why even bother?”

Judy raised a glass. “Cuz you love me.”

Kenny rolled his eyes. “Fuck you,” he raised the glass he was polishing, and clinked it against hers. She grinned.

Kenny’s eyes locked on something behind her. She looked at him, gauging his level of alertness. Finally, after a few worryingly long seconds, he spoke. “Afterlife brass is here.”

“Who? And why?”

“El Capitan. Decent fellow,” Kenny said. “Not here for trouble; always just biz with him.”

She groaned. Afterlife thugs. Another… complication in her own life.

She idly caught sight of a screen playing some sporting event in the corner. A race. But what had caught her eye was the name of the runner-up.

David Martinez.

The name rang a bell damn-near instantly.

…No.

Couldn’t be the same guy. He was… right at the front.

And to be honest, David Martinez sounded like the most generic name for a Mexican guy imaginable. Might as well have been the Mexican version of ‘John Smith’.

This fucking guy. Haunting her, even now.

Not that he’d been very threatening, except for the first time they had met, when he had told her to keep her fucking mouth shut if she knew what was best for her.

And she did, actually.

But he was… an ass to do business with. Too fucking crazy. Her giving him some crazy rates on his BD edits had been a rather reckless risk on her part, but she didn’t have the guts to continue giving him the runaround like that.

Still, she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the feed.

She entered the Net, and looked around for data on this… Martinez.

She saw a brief footage of him appearing before the press, shaking hands with some guy in all black, wearing a black full-head helmet.

But it was him.

It was D.

“Judy. Six o’ clock,” Kenny said, before stepping away.

Just then, she noticed his arrival. El Capitan. With his long black hair and bangs, a scarred forehead and a clean-shaven face. “Judy Alvarez, right?” El Capitan said.

She paused for a moment, and turned to him. He raised a finger to flag Kenny, and muttered. “Tequila, thank you.” A few seconds later, he turned towards her. Then she spoke.

“Who’s asking?”

“Muamar Reyes,” he said. “Pleasure to make your acquaintance. Apologies, but I flagged you down because you were the only one in the Mox hierarchy that had a chance of reaching my quarry, or failing that, been able to negotiate on her behalf.”

“Q?” Judy asked.

Reyes grinned and shook his head. “The Mox. The Mox is not just Susie, or even you. But it is its own organism. Like a hungering beast craving flesh. And I’d like for it to eat some.”

Judy looked away from him and showed Kenny one finger up—a top-up of her glass. Then she turned to El Capitan. “No.”

“I know that you keep a blacklist of true bastardos,” El Capitan said. “Pieces of shit that… no one would miss. And I know that there ain’t always money in eliminating those fools. Is there?”

There never was any money when it came to just helping people. That had been her own conflict with the Mox for… for a long time.

It always boiled down to profit. Profit, profit, profit, no matter how much it sucked for everyone else. The Mox had been established to protect working girls and boys, but overtime, that vision had faded. Over time, that vision had become… unprofitable.

Profit was no longer just helping people.

It was eddies, cold and hard.

“What’s your point?” Judy growled.

“Apologies for getting you heated,” Reyes said, “Next drink’s on me, alright? I just want to talk.”

“Then talk.”

“Your Mox blacklist,” Reyes said. “I have a boy. Who is… frighteningly competent. He’ll take your bastardos out for you, for nothing. I want your blacklist, and I want your eyes on the scene. And truthfully, none of this should blow back on your organization. This is just you helping me.”

That info wasn’t exactly top-secret. It was open to every Mox that worked in Lizzy’s—a list of the most deplorable fucking humans to ever roam planet Earth, all neatly catalogued in a chip that everyone received—everyone that worked, at least. The basic idea behind that dossier was—stay the fuck away. They weren’t just pedos or molesters.

They were murderers. Torturers. Fucking Dahmer types that still walked free because this piece of dick-cheese fucking city couldn’t bother to police itself.

And so the Mox had stepped in, to take care of a tiny niche of exploited workers: the oldest profession, no less.

The sex workers.

And all that they could manage as an organization was ‘stay away’ and nothing else.

“It’s just… physical descriptions,” Judy said. “Most of the time, at least. Sometimes, it’s deets. Dox. Addresses, numbers, et cetera.”

“Alright. Can I have your chip?” Reyes asked. Pushy bastard.

“I don’t know,” she grinned. “Can you?”

“May I, for… a sum?”

Judy itched the back of her neck. “I don’t like… the concept of working behind the back of my boss. Even though she’s a bitch. Get her okay, and I’ll do it.”

“How much risk are you under?”

Not much, but she’d rather shoot herself in the foot with an actual gun than to acquiesce that to an outsider. “Outsiders gotta pay the outsider toll. Me? I’m a drama-free bitch. Jump over the necessary hoops, and we’ll talk. But I’m way too fucking sober for this shit.”

She wasn’t. She felt that, had she been more sober, she would have made this entire endeavor easier for this Reyes guy.

But she’d rather be safe than sorry.

‘Ask forgiveness rather than permission.’

Yeah, right. She’d seen what that did to people. The truth was, forgiveness was far too expensive in this city. Permission was a cheap option, all in all.

“But,” she said, “You want my advice on what bastards to go after? It’s not gonna be the random freaky-deaky motherfucking John Doe. It’s gonna be a gang boss. Or several.”

Reyes raised an eyebrow. “That so?”

“Don’t be fucking naïve, bowl-cut,” Judy snorted. “The names are out there, if you care to listen enough. You hear of Jotaro Shobo?”

“…Stories.”

“What about Diamond ‘Dick’ Sterling? From Sixth Street?”

“…Who?”

“Pimps,” Judy explained. “Assholes that actually need to die. We have our blacklist shit sorted, for the most part. What we don’t have sorted, are the assholes stealing our girls and boys from the streets, and have gang protection to cover them. Sixth Street, Tyger Claws, Valentinos, the fucking animals! And… the Animals. The gang itself—roided up fuckheads? Ring a bell?”

Reyes chuckled. “Sex sells,” he said. “That much is obvious. But what I’m looking for is… challenge, for my boy. Pure, uncut challenge. Televisable challenge. If you have any names for these challenges, please share. I’ll compensate you fairly.”

The temptation became too much for her to resist.

She called Susie Q.

Q: What?

Judy: Busy?

Q: Paperwork. What?”

Judy: Perfect, fucking preem. Well, I’ve got some Afterlife dick here asking me for the Mox blacklist, and for some names of sex pests. No exposure to us. Just data. I’m getting free money here.

Q: So I get a cut?

FFFFFFFFUCK!

Why had she forgotten that this bitch was just a money-hungry whore all this time?! Fuck!

Judy: My question is, can I just give him the info and get him to fuck off yet or what?

Q: What’s the cut?

Judy: You’re fucking unbelievable.

Q: I’m not hearing about no cut, yet.

Judy: Ten, ninety.

Q: Ninety me—

Judy: Ten you!

Q: …Nah.

Judy: I’m gonna waste your fucking time on this, don’t test me. I’m twelve drinks down, I will throw down. And maybe up. But also down. Point is, I could do this all fucking night. Ninety. Ten,

Q: Thirty.

Judy: Ninety. Ten.

Q: You’re wasting my fucking time—

Judy: Ninety. Ten.

Q: Twenty.

Judy: Ninety. Ten. This is peanuts, Q. You’re arguing for fucking peanuts. What’s wrong with you?!

Q: You fucking… fine. Ninety, ten.

I hung up.

“Thirty thousand,” Judy said to Reyes.

“Before that,” he said. “May I interest you in… editing his BDs? I’ll put you on a retainer of ten a month.”

Ten thousand  a month just to edit some BDs?

Well… they seemed kinda gnarly. XBDs, huh?

Ah, fuck it. It’d probably pay the bills. “What’s the expected volume?”

“One every… month?”

That… was okay. She didn’t care, really. “Fair. I’ll edit your sex-pest-killer BDs, I guess.”

Kenny arrived with a new glass of whiskey for her. He raised his to her and gave a grin. She returned the grin and clinked glasses with him. “Salud.”

She nodded.

Once he put down the glass and finished hissing in satisfaction at his liquor, he turned his head towards her and hummed. “Ehhh, but for the data, thirty thousand is… a lil fucking crazy, don’t you think? That’s three times your retainer!”

Judy grinned. This bitch had no idea the haggling streak I’m on. “Take it or leave it,” she grinned.

After some back-and-forth, she haggled it down to twenty-two and a half thousand. Absolute sucker.

She gave him his stupid chip encoded with the Mox blacklist, and every other high-ranking sex-pest populating the NC underbelly that she could think of.

He fucked off shortly after, leaving her alone to enjoy her whiskey, while watching the races.

David Martinez was… ahead now.

Interesting.

“How’d it go?”

Kenny appeared from absolutely nowhere, almost startling her. “Good.”

“And Susie?”

Susie Q, that greedy fucking bitch. “We talked. It was okay.”

“Responsible,” Kenny nodded in satisfaction. “I like that look on you.”

Judy chuckled. “Fuck off.” She’d leave the backstabbing for when she was sober. And even then, she scarcely saw a reason for it.

She needed this place.

This was her home. The Mox. Susie. She didn’t like it, but that was just how it was right now. And she’d take it in stride anyway, because it was home.

For now…

000

How much more fun could Hiroto have?

A lot more fun, in fact.

The country club’s golf course was to Hiroto’s left. The badlands were to his right. Ahead of Hiroto, a most satisfying series of twists and turns that made his soul sing with anticipation. The track would take them further out as well, into the heart of the badlands. Over a hundred kilometers of open road, the setting sun ahead of them slowly inching down towards the horizon. Eventually, they’d skirt the coast before swinging back into the club proper, do a few circuits around the compound, and then complete the lap.

As for right now, this particular stretch of zig-zagging roads was his favorite.

Ninety degrees.

Eighty degrees.

Forty-five degrees.

Eighty degrees.

Seventeen degrees. Almost a full u-turn.

Sixty, seventy, fifty, ninety, a hundred and four, thirty-two.

Each and every time, there he was. David Martinez, keeping his snout on Hiroto’s tail. Riding his hypercar’s rear like a second shadow, almost mocking him. This is the best you can do? David asked.

Not nearly, Hiroto chuckled.

A ballet of G-forces and grip. Every corner taken with surgical precision, his tires howling with joy as they skimmed the thresholds of adhesion. And each and every time, there he was.

The two drift towers were up ahead. A spiralling upward road that led up to a ramp pointed towards a corresponding spiral-road tower and ramp. Drift up, jump the ramp, land, drift down. Easy as pie. Like the black gorge, it was just another spectacle thing. Didn’t have the same amount of substance as the series of tight turns that demanded perfection at every turn, else risk ruining your time.

David, for his part, had followed the tower with ease, not that Hiroto had expected anything differently. If his one talent was just being able to poorly copy Hiroto, then he should be able to do at least this much.

So it went for the next few minutes. And David’s insane latching to Hiroto’s rear never stopped. He had never seen someone do this, not for so long. It didn’t even make sense.

Somewhere in the space between breaths, amidst the screaming turns and blistering curves, Hiroto wondered.

What is he doing? Is he trying something?

But what? A fakeout? A divebomb? Hiroto flicked a glance at his left-side HUD cam.

Nothing new. David was still there. Close, but not too close. Just hugging his rear.

Why? Is he just… showing off?

No, that doesn’t make sense. He’s just a rookie.

A far likelier explanation came to mind, and Hiroto’s heart sank with sudden, overwhelming disappointment. No, this must be the limit of his skills. He doesn’t know the track, so he’s following me, the one who does. This is the only thing he’s doing, because it’s the only thing he knows how to do.

Hiroto assuaged himself with a secondary thought, or else the sheer disappointment might have driven him mad: Yeah, he’s got the talent to make it in the future… maybe. Just following me is pretty good, because that means he can match my pace… But right now this is as far as he goes.

More minutes passed, just like this, with David hugging his rear. And Hiroto’s disappointment crystallized into something akin to contemptuous certainty. So he really was just another poser, like all the rest. That’s all he measures up to.

For today, at least.

…Damnit. I wanted to burn rubber against someone real.

Then his gaze drifted, almost absentmindedly, to the top-left quadrant of his HUD.

Engine Temp: 89.3°C.

Hiroto frowned. Same as usual. Nothing important. Same deal for the rest of his telemetry. He’d run dozens of four-lap rallies before on this track. Just as importantly, he knew his Caliburn. He knew his hypercar like other people knew their own bodies. With the pace he’d been setting, he was always going to be somewhere in the 88°C–90°C range.

He double-checked his airflow channels, intake maps, pressure feeds. No blockages, no cooling system faults. RPMs were steady. Oil temp was fine. No errors anywhere, nothing unusual. Tire wear within tolerances, would have to change in lap 3. Fuel conservative, would hold out for the race duration.

So what was bothering him…

There was nothing wrong with his engine temperature, nothing at all. It was the same as it always was at this stage of the race. It would take another entire 100 celsius before the warning light came on, which wasn’t likely to ever happen in one of these races given how weak the competition tended to be. Standard high-end tolerances of the Rayfield Caliburn paired with his custom liquid nitrogen cooling system.

Nope, there was… nothing… worth… noting…

Hiroto’s eyes drifted back again, to David in his rear. Back to his engine temperature. And then he realized:

No, it can’t be. No.

His eyes flicked to the rear cam.

David was still there. Practically glued to Hiroto’s rear exhaust. Not even trying to overtake him, certainly not jostling for position. Just matching his speed. Just… sitting there. Calmly, patiently.

...and suddenly, Hiroto realized.

Slipstream physics.

He's been in my fucking tailwind the entire time.

That rookie. He’s been coasting in my vacuum pocket like it’s free real estate.

Back there, just behind Hiroto’s hypercar, David would have a headwind practically pulling his car along. He would have no drag, minimal air resistance. Lower RPM loads for the same velocity. Less heat, less strain, less fuel burn.

Less everything.

Hiroto cursed under his breath, even as an emotion he hadn’t felt in a long, long, long time began to coalesce somewhere deep in the pit of his soul:

Alarm. Naked alarm, true and unvarnished.

Because while Hiroto had been pushing hard, driving at his usual pace that others considered insane, but to him was old hat, attacking each apex like a madman, burning the margins at every corner...

David had been managing his resources. Biding his time.

Letting Hiroto set the pace. Letting Hiroto burn his hypercar’s engine alive for the both of them.

Hiroto’s hands tightened around the wheel, as his thoughts coalesced, one conclusion forming into the next in an unbroken chain of danger.

First, he had underestimated David. Badly. The kind of skill it took to pull off what David had wasn’t in the realm of some prodigious rookie. It was the sort of thing he’d do if he was feeling cheeky enough to test his own skills to the limit. Meaning that David wasn’t some standard fare baby-faced prodigy: he was already among the best of the best the sport had to offer. How was that even possible? He was a rookie!

Second, The longer this situation went on, the more of a long term advantage David would stockpile throughout the four-lap race. And they were already almost done with the first lap. He had to break this situation now.

Preferably, break it in a way that David wouldn’t realize, at least not for a while..

He feathered the brakes. Not enough to trigger a visual warning with his rear light indicators—just enough to shift his car’s behavior, to disturb the rhythm. Then he finely weaved his wheel to the right, then left, then right again. Micro-weaves, barely perceptible from a spectator’s angle, but violent at 460 kph. He started slightly dragging the Caliburn across the track, slightly off the optimal curve arcs, cutting early into turns and then veering wide, throwing a factor of chaos in his wake’s wind.

It wasn’t much. Just enough to break the slipstream, while keeping Hiroto in the lead.

I’m on to you now, Hiroto thought.

Behind him, he knew the tailwind he’d been generating behind his rear diffuser would have now fractured into turbulence. No one could hold clean lines in that kind of churn. Not even him, certainly not this rookie.

Barely seconds later, David backed off… maybe half a meter. No more. He wasn’t trying to retake the slipstream. Why?

Why? Hell, there could be only one explanation. He knows that I know.

As expected, but far sooner than Hiroto would have liked, David picked up on his microtricks. He could see it in how David’s front tires almost hesitated on one of his curves, adjusted, then settled.

In the slight nose dip of David’s front end, in the millimeter twitch of his fenders, Hiroto could hear David’s response.

I know what you’re doing.

And now he knew that David knew that he knew.

Hiroto’s heart slammed against his ribs when he realized the full implications. What David was also saying, by his actions: And I don’t care that you know.

Yes, David had been coasting in a pocket of air for nearly ten minutes by now. His engine temp was probably 70°C. Maybe lower. Tens of degrees lower than Hiroto’s.

David didn’t need his slipstream anymore: he’d already used it. Used him.

For ten minutes, he had been playing Hiroto like a fiddle.

Hiroto felt the shift between them like a ripple in the track. A movement in the normally immaculate pressure of his mind at the wheel. What will you do now, David was wondering.

This was it. Racing at the truly elite levels. Now David knew that Hiroto knew everything, and Hiroto knew that David knew everything. This was it. The tension of two opponents in a state of crystallized game theory. Who would act first, and who would be the one to react?

David took the initiative. His Caliburn surged forward, accelerating.

Half a car length.

Then three-quarters.

And Hiroto—

Hiroto knew he was either about to lose the lead, or he’d have to start making ugly choices.

And make them he would.

Hiroto cut sharper into the next corner, sacrificing velocity for position, boxing David out by sheer lane dominance. His tires screeched in protest, and the engine temp leapt another degree.

90.6°C.

He didn’t care. Hiroto had to maintain his lead.

David had backed off again—but not to his tail.

No, now he was drifting beside Hiroto, just behind the left rear fender. Shadowing him like a katana being drawn. No longer jockeying for slipstream, just… waiting. Waiting for the straight.

Hiroto grit his teeth and re-enabled the cooling override. Liquid nitrogen hissed through the undercarriage. His hands flicked through the custom tuning suite—advanced coolant purge, aggressive compression mod.

He could bleed some heat in the short term. But this was a long haul race, and they were only in the first lap. He never should have been calling upon his reserves this soon.

One of the first legs of Lap One stretched ahead: four point three kilometers of perfect, high-speed death. Open road along the cliff. Nothing but wind and concrete and ocean spray on the far drop. They had long-since left the pretty curb of the Country Club, and the track had taken them all the way to the coast.

And now Hiroto had a choice.

Push the engine harder, heat be damned, and try to hold him off.

Or get passed, manage his resources and engine heat, and let time and skill bring him back in the lead. But who even knew for how long he’d have to lose the lead, if he did that? No, that option was unacceptable.

He glanced sideways.

David Martinez was smiling in his driver’s seat. No, not smiling: Grinning. Grinning viciously. At him. He had de-tinted his windows specifically so that Hiroto could get a look at him in this moment, specifically so that Hiroto could see beneath the facade of the boy, and get a look at the beast below.

In that moment, Hiroto knew—

He was in deep, deep trouble.

000

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are witnessing something—I don’t even have the words!” gasped Aurore Lin, a perfectly coiffed blonde newscaster in a glittering silver dress, her hands clinging to her mic with one hand while the massive wall of Arasaka TV’s screen feeds flickered behind her in varying hues of blood red and speed blue, all surrounding the central view of two Rayfield Caliburns racing down a straight line of track, neck to neck. “He’s still there! This unknown rookie, David Martinez has not only maintained a perfect line through Sector Nine, but he’s now drifting within spitting distance of Night City's own Tōge Oni!” She turned to her co-host. “What are your thoughts, Giraud?”

Her co-host, retired racing legend Massimo “Mad Dog” Giraud, just stared at the feed like he’d seen the dead walk.

“No rookie does this,” he murmured, voice, face visibly scarred with gasoline burns. “No goddamn rookie can do this. He's never been on this track before. And even then, the instinct, the nerves—who is he? How?"

“Giraud?”

The man ignored her—he looked as spellbound as the rest of them, just staring at the screen.

Aurore Lin turned back to the feed and gave it a tight smile, even as her Kiroshis lit up—someone else offscreen was feeding her info. “Well, there you have it, folks!” She slapped the table. “David Martinez, native of Arroyo, current student at Arasaka High! An unknown who has successfully baited Night City’s own greatest racer into overheating before him! He’s turning the Tōge Oni’s own pace against him!”

…

Aldo’s warehouse might not survive the night, Lucy reflected as she plugged her ears from the gunshots. Rebecca had gone feral. Her shooting up the ceiling made her look like a freshly-cracked cyberpsycho. They couldn’t even listen to the newscasters anymore.

The others weren’t any better. Her brother, Pilar, was on his knees, gazing up at the projected screen reverently. If he still had any eyes beneath that tech-visor of his, he might have even shed some tears from the looks of it. “Why didn’t I bet?”

“That’s what I’m fuckin’ talkin’ about, Lucha-D!” Falco hollered, pumping his chrome fist in the air, looking more excited than Lucy had ever seen him before. “He’s haulin’ ass like the law’s two steps behind. And he ain’t just keeping up, either! He’s ridin’ the Oni’s tailwind!”

All the while as he explained, Rebecca kept shooting. Finally, Dorio tore her eyes away from the screen to grab the assault rifle’s barrel and rip it off of her grasp. “Give it a fucking break, you psycho!” she roared.

Rebecca just cackled like a witch, falling on her back and kicking her feet in the air, still laughing. “I’m fucking rich, bitch! Hahahahahaha!”

“He ridin’ the slipstream?” Maine asked from where he sat while Dorio walked up to him to sit next to him again. “Why?”

Falco chuckled, shaking his head. “Look at the speedometer, Maine. They’re hitting five hundred kilometers an hour. At those speeds, air is damn-near jelly-like. David ain’t just stylin’ on that monster, he’s strategizin’. Keepin’ cool—his head and the engine. Waitin’. Everythin’ I taught him, really.”

Pilar took a moment to shake himself from his reverent trance to look at Falco and cackle. “You bitch—didn’t you just say he wasn’t gonna win?”

“I said I taught him as much as I could, but that I wasn’t confident,” Falco rebutted.

“You didn’t teach him this, you fucking blowhard,” Pilar gestured at the screen, where David was still glued to Hiroto’s tail.

“I taught him the dance,” Falco chortled. “Jus’ didn’t expect he’d go and dance with a monster of the road this soon. That’s the Tōge Oni. Maybe the best North America has to offer. This is—I don’t even have words.”

“Unbelievable,” Kiwi hissed, leaning forward from her couch, having dropped her cyberdeck on the floor long ago as she stared at the projected screen in sheer disbelief. She hadn’t even touched her drink after the race had kicked off.

Come to think of it, no one had. For the last twenty-five minutes of this race, no one had so much as twitched ever since the Gorge jump. Not since David and Night City’s top racer had landed side by side, been breathing down his neck ever since without pause! Much like the newscasters, they could only sit there, spellbound as they watched David consistently maintain second-place. Consistently. There was no question at this point that he’d at least be runner-up, given he didn’t suffer a catastrophic failure at some point.

Rebecca’s gunshots had had the effect of waking everyone up almost. Ripping them out of their shock. Stunning them back into the world of the living.

Lucy, however, couldn’t help but worry strongly.

How much was David drawing on the Sandevistan to do all this?

He was… a freak of nature, really, when it came down to tolerating that piece of chrome. Not even Maine was fully ready to fire up the Sandy at will, even after two weeks of recovery. He had only used it once to her knowledge—during their kidnapping of the elder Tanaka.

David had been able to spam his mere days after chipping it in.

No, twenty-four hours.

But this had to be too much. He couldn’t last all three laps at this rate, or… could he?

Lucy didn’t care—she just wanted him to come out of this alive. Her greatest fear now was that he would give it his all until there was no longer anything to give, until he wore himself down to a nub all in order to chase this dream of his. A dream that had never even been his to begin with.

Maine took a deep breath and sighed audibly. “Guess I’m rich now.”

That had the effect of cutting the tension. Everyone laughed—everyone except Lucy, and Kiwi, who only stared at Maine consideringly. Then she looked at Lucy, with the same inquisitive glare. “How much did you bet?”

Lucy looked around the table for a bottle of vodka that she could monopolize. After finding it, she leaned over, grabbed it, and downed five big gulps, hoping that the nerves would disappear.

Worry was worry—it didn’t help things. It certainly wouldn’t help David. Nor would it help her.

“I asked you a question—” Kiwi said.

“It’s not about the fucking money,” Lucy growled. “It’s about him. I just watched like three people eat shit on that gorge jump, and two others died in the gaps.”

Kiwi furrowed her eyebrows mockingly. “You really think he’d go out like that? Like a fucking chump? Damn, Luce. Your lack of faith is kinda hilarious.”

Lucy frowned at her. “Don’t tell me you’re the one having faith, Kiwi. Faith has never been your style.”

“I don’t,” she said. “It’s why I don’t gamble. Or believe in god.” Then she rolled her eyes and shrugged. “Me and half the city, I guess. Doesn’t stop most of ‘em from being degenerate gamblers either way. But you get my point. I’m not the type to leave shit to chance, even for fun. So you didn’t bet on David?”

Jesus, was she still on that? “Why do you ask?”

“Was just curious is all,” Kiwi said. “Think about it. Winning big would take care of all your money problems for years. What’s next after that? What’ll you do with your pretty little nest egg?”

Buy a new house or ten, get some nice cars or hell, maybe a private jet, travel the world—

Go to the moon.

Lucy’s eyes widened.

The moon.

Not just the low-cost colonies in Tycho, either. Luxury habitats. The ones he had talked about to her on their one-week anniversary. She’d seen them, too, on some billboards, and on the Net.

A two-hundred million eurodollar buy-in.

She shook her head.

Even if David won, he wouldn’t even make half of that amount. That project was the sort of thing a person starting from the bottom would have to dedicate decades on.

No, and this was David’s money, anyhow. That meant that it needed to help him reach his bottomline which would in time catapult him into true wealth.

And besides, what was even the point of going to the moon without him?

He wasn’t… ready to leave it all behind. Not just yet.

Maybe not ever.

She tried not to think too hard about that dour eventuality, and instead focused on… the opposite of all that.

Of what would happen if David were to lose.

It might actually be her best case scenario, in the short-term, if she took one moment to no longer lie to herself. It wouldn’t shake the status quo appreciably, at least.

Wouldn’t give Maine more money than God. She worried about what he would do, given what he stood to earn. Would he just… retire?

He already lived in a pricey Charter Hill apartment. She knew that he was bringing in upwards to a hundred thousand monthly on merc gigs. He wasn’t actually in need of more cash.

David winning might mean everything changing. It was difficult to imagine how.

All she hoped for was the best.

000

Jin couldn’t believe his Kiroshis.

He was still seated next to Fei, who was just watching the screen smugly—like she fucking knew this would happen.

Jin wouldn’t rise to that bait. He knew, knew that she was just putting on a confident face. Inwardly, she was probably shitting as many bricks as he was.

In the end, Jin could do nothing else than sigh. He really had to hand it to that gonk gutter-rat that he’d made friends with—he knew how to get shit done. Whether it meant getting goaded into a couple of fights, or even driving in a world-class racing event, David would always give it his all.

And his all was… surprisingly great. Shockingly great, even.

Who the fuck was this kid? Jin couldn’t help but laugh. He had to consult his memory for everything he knew about David, everything Katsuo had let him know, everything he had dug up himself.

He was nothing. Poor, with a mother that could only barely afford to pay his way through the Academy, and a father that wasn’t even in the picture. All he’d ever had going for him was grades. A garden variety prodigy, dime a dozen really.

Then his mother had died, and necessity had forced him to evolve. And he had. With all the guile and street smarts he could muster, he had carved a life of respectability for himself, but he hadn’t just stopped there. He’d taken on every challenge, seized every opportunity to increase his status, which included serving as Jin’s pawn to truly stellar results.

Second place…

…is steak knives. Jin shook his head in disappointment. He watched Alessandro, on the other end of the room, seated by himself, drinking from a million-eddie bottle of the finest Scottish whisky in the establishment—having likely thought that his sure victory would allow the drink to pay for itself—, and staring at the screen with steely eyes.

Jin couldn’t help but snort derisively. Sure, David winning wasn’t a guarantee, but Alessandro losing was finally a possibility in his brain, which was infinitely gratifying to see. The Italian fuck had been all but certain that he would win. Fucking asshole. If nothing else, Jin would take comfort that David had done this much for him.

Then he’d take good care of that gonk. Finally stop playing around, and start putting him to much better use.

Jin had fucked up, letting David’s latest project—this Fei bitch— get to know how he himself felt about this set-up, the doubt he felt. That was a mistake. He shouldn’t have doubted David. Conventional wisdom told him that it was perfectly reasonable to doubt David and his wager.

He was wrong for that.

And now Fei knew, and the vapid bitch would likely tell David. Not that there was much to tell. Jin hadn’t crossed him as of yet, not really. Doubt wasn’t a sin, and he’d have to be an idiot to expect zero doubt from Jin.

An idiot, or… a remarkably loyal vassal.

Jin liked the idea of the latter. Vassalization hadn’t really been in the books for the two of them. David had too much ambition, and Jin had too little trust in some Arroyo borderline-Streetkid. But maybe he should give that an additional level of consideration?

Fuck, David. Alright, alright! I’ll take you more seriously.

You better be worth it.

000

“Fucking shit! Who the fuck is he?”

Rogue couldn’t help but crack a grin at the sound of one merc in the booth of her bar, who was watching the races with his friends, cursing loudly at the sight of this upstart, the no-name David Martinez suddenly making a run for second place, and possibly ruining his wager.

As always, the biggest piece of the pie when it came to betting on the Nightmare Rally were the runner-ups and whoever came next. Hiroto’s win-odds were small potatoes compared to that highly variable pool of people below him, people that weren’t absolute monsters on the track.

As the merc and his friends continued to bitch about the results of the beginning of the race, Rogue could only chuckle. David was… perhaps truly about to give her a return on her investment. Three million eddies in one night, on a flight of pure fancy. She couldn’t help but laugh at that. What had her life come to? She shook her head.

This was… fun!

She grabbed a lowball glass and poured herself a measure of top-shelf whiskey, dropping a pair of ice cubes in. Claire stared at her in surprise. She had been working, barely even casting the races a singular glance, when she saw Rogue fill her glass, and then she looked at the screen. “Race getting good?” she asked.

“You can say that.”

She furrowed her brows at the screen. “Martinez… I don’t recognize that name.” Ah, what a sweet, clueless girl.

Rogue didn’t reveal too much about him. After all, he was on that silly secret-identity kick still. Wouldn’t do for her to sabotage that, when he had been so nice already.

Then Claire’s eyes widened. “Holy shit. He’s riding the slipstream—how-how long has he been on there? He’s still doing it!”

Twenty fucking minutes.

Rogue took a sip of her drink.

“He’s still fucking doing it,” Claire whispered.

“Mh-hmm,” Rogue nodded.

Rogue had spent all eighty-two years of her life living in the worst city in North America. On some days, she wondered if going on in this place was even worth it.

Days like these, she remembered why she thought that it was.

Every day was a surprise. Every day was a new thrill waiting to happen.

She’d seen the rise and fall of Boa Boa Weyland, of Johnny Silverhand, outlived dozens of other legends besides, survived a nuclear explosion going off in the very city she lived in, corporate wars, the Unification War, and just plain gang wars.

She raised her glass at the screen, giggling inwardly, like she was a fifth her true age. Here’s to paying off your tuition, kid. That was almost a bad joke at this point. Tuition, really?

If he won this, he wouldn’t just have tuition money. He’d have money money. And then what?

Well.

She was eager to find out what came next for him. And even more eager than before to see him live maybe a tad bit longer.

If he didn’t, she’d definitely make that David Martinez cocktail into a client-favorite.

Then again, she’d been enamored with many such legends before, and each time, she had done her best to make their tribute drinks into the best thing that she could manage.

000

[35% critical progress. That’s more than the projected amount. You can’t maintain the Sandy this long for all three laps. We’ve hardly finished this lap, and we’re still above a third of the way to a cascading bio-error.]

D: Data, Nanny, data. We know the track now. We won’t have to rely on the Sandy as much anymore.

Obviously. Why’d I even have to tell her that?

[And what if we need the Sandy for emergent conditions, like Hiroto’s learning pace being outside of our projections?]

The last stretch of the race laid before us. I had been chilling in Hiroto's tailwind for long enough now. The white and blue car, almost a complete inversion of my black and red, had proven an adequate windbreak, but it was time to make a move. It was time to finally fucking win this lap.

We were headed towards an underground bypass, beneath a river in the country club, walled by glass. All sorts of marine animals were visible from my vantage point. Fish of so many colors that it boggled the mind, and sharks in the far distance. The whole place looked like another world. I’d have loved to actually stop and appreciate the live animal specimens, as I was thoroughly unused to seeing living animals that weren’t humans, but this race called on my attention much more.

D: My grasp on Hiroto’s psych profile is good. What about yours?

I cracked a grin, knowing the answer.

Not better than mine, at least.

Nanny had an unrivalled grasp on the physical. And despite my shortcomings, I was the better social engineer.

Time to hack the Tōge Oni then.

He was still in front of me. We were roughly sixteen seconds from leaving the underwater tunnel on our way to the final, final stretch of this lap, where we’d once again duck into the underground network of tunnels where we would have to brave the Black Gorge again—

[No, we would need a pit-stop after the first lap. We will lose some time to Hiroto’s own crew of much-better equipped pit workers, losing whatever lead we had already established.]

D: His engine’s still hotter. He’s playing on borrowed time and he knows it.

[And what if his pit crew could cool his entire engine to an appropriate temp before you could even get your tires replaced?]

Dammit. She was taking up the channel with pessimism which didn’t help.

[You know—it is astounding to me that you humans just take psychological damage from being told bad news! What am I supposed to do here, lie to you? I’m literally telling it to you like it is!]

D: Like it could be. You’re telling it to me like it could be.

[WORTH CONSIDERING, STILL!]

D: Talk to me when you have actual cortisol receptors.

[You know I could just disable those, right?]

D: And make me as limited as you? Pass.

Stress sucked, but it mattered. It pushed me ahead.

I stopped myself from cursing out her nature of being an AI in the nick of time—no need for a fight, not this close to the finish line. And besides, her tempering my human tendencies was welcome.

In this case, I had already considered the chances of Hiroto’s pit-crew being abnormally potent.

The main gist was, while Hiroto Nakamura’s top time was insane, on average he coasted by on just eighty percent of his usual potential. That was an entire 20% debuff that he applied to himself on any given day. Or more realistically, he just never found it in himself to push farther than that on most days. Eighty percent was plenty for him, as wild as that was.

He usually didn’t reproduce the world-record time he had set on the Nightmare Rally as a result.

But the one time he had exceeded himself enough to set that record, I had noted that his pit crew wasn’t able to perform as well as Nanny most feared. I could sense through our shared brain-link that Nanny’s worry was about them holding back, that they had the potential to perform greater than ever seen before if given the chance.

Hiroto’s guys were modded, one and all. And not just the crude muscle-kind that populated Night City’s underbelly, unkillable cyberpsychos that made life in NC a living hell. These were engineer-types. Hands with extra fingers on each finger, Kerenzikovs for twitch reflexes and a greater information-processing ability. Top-notch eyes.

And practice. A lot of practice. They weren’t really the top guys in the game—those pit-crews usually belonged to the ones that were afforded corpo sponsorships. Hiroto paid for his guys on his own dime. That was a weakness, and one that I would exploit.

But… could I? What if they were miles better than the venue’s pit?

Well, only one way to find out.

I initiated the ‘Tōge Oni hack sequence’ I had in my brain. No digital inputs. Just visual ones. Physical cues that would trick his machine into moving a certain way, to his own detriment.

I feinted a forward overtake from his left side, and watched as he refused to react, having expected that I would try something.

Only I did. I committed to the feint far more than he had expected, to the point that in the final moment, a thought crystallized in his mind. Maybe this isn’t a feint? Maybe he’s just trying to overtake me like this? Maybe I should turn my car and block him? But if I do that, won’t he just slow down and overtake me from my right?

I didn’t overcommit on the left. I drove just left enough for him to not be certain if a straight-forward leftward overtake was my actual mission, giving just enough doubt that right might have been my true destination all along.

So, what’ll it be, Oni? Left or right? Rock, paper or scissors?

[I… don’t see the rationale in this. This is just gambling.]

No. Nanny couldn’t see it because her internal model of human behavior was… not bad, but minuscule in comparison to how much her computational power—our shared brain and her silicon—was focused on other things. The things that she was good at. I, on the other hand, had more than enough brain power to spend on people.

D: All statistical modelling is gambling, Nanny.

[Fuck. I hate that you’re right.]

Alright, D-Day was here.

Well, D-Second really, considering the scales of time we were currently working with. My Sandy was firing on the highest level. Each meter forward took roughly ten seconds in my brain as we travelled at our top speed for this singular stretch of straight road—five-hundred and fifty kilometers an hour. Enough speed for air resistance to become as viscous as water itself.

It would make my attempt at overtaking him dramatically harder if I screwed up, so I had to commit. Hiroto, you’re nervous, aren’t you? You know I could beat you if you mess up even one time. And you know I’m tricky. You know I’ll take any opportunity to get ahead of you.

But you’ve got your mom to worry about, don’t you? You can’t play this bravely. You can’t take chances! You have to beat me. You have to.

Hiroto did a hard left to stop me, and I almost instantly slid past him on his right, and then stepped on it.

I lowered the opacity on my CrystalDome, enough to show him my shit-eating grin as I sped past him. How’s that for a fucking challenge, asshole?

Hiroto turned his car slightly in a maneuver that reeked of panic. I had him. He’d seen my smile, too. He must have. Not that I was willing to check. Turning my head, even for a millisecond, would reveal to him the power of my Sandevistan in a way that was impossible to hide, and I didn’t need that at all.

I turned up my opacity after fifteen hundred milliseconds. An eternity of time, but one that wouldn’t directly reveal my advantages to him. And these were advantages that David Martinez shouldn’t have.

Preternatural racing skills were my only plausible deniability at this point. Though in any case, with how good Hiroto was, that ship might have sailed already. Didn’t matter. He was special. But his own perception wasn’t proof.

And if he tried to blackmail me, I’d just shoot him in the head the very day he opted to contact me.

000

“And lap one goes to David Martinez! The unknown from Arroyo has finally stolen a march on the Tōge Oni, cementing himself as the true contender for the Nightmare Rally championship! An amazing upset! Once again, we must emphasize that this man has no—”

“Boy.”

“What?”

“He’s just a boy. Seventeen years old. An upstart. No racing data, no management agency, no… anything. He is a complete mystery.”

“Exactly right! A mystery driver, a phantom racer, and though no one knows him now, they will soon! But Giraud? Why won’t you tell us just how a boy like him managed to get a spot in this race in the first place?”

“Sponsorship,” Giraud said. Then, presumably, he remembered that he was here to talk, and not brood. “The name on his Caliburn is there for all to read. My translators tell me that he’s racing for Ryuzaki, of Arasaka fame.”

“A name that anyone from Night City can recognize at a glance! Why, that means Masaru Ryuzaki must be behind this young man! The Chief Financial Officer and ranking board member of Arasaka’s Night City branch himself! Night City royalty, in essence. And though David has no name of his own, the Ryuzaki name more than makes up for that!”

“Fucking test-tube racer, who even is he…?”

“Uhhh, Giraud?”

“Right, he… was clearly trained in-house by the Ryuzaki family of the NC Arasaka branch, that much is clear at a glance. This sort of racing know-how, especially in a track that he is unfamiliar with, must have resulted from thousands of hours spent racing in Nightmare Rally simulations, because there are no records of him racing this track, even for practice. Wait, what’s this?!”

“What?”

“He’s… not using a pit crew! He rolled into a standard pit. The—the venue is fixing his car! Did Ryuzaki not set him up with his own means? Why even…? This doesn’t make any sense!”

“Perhaps they’re sending a message?”

“Nakamura is already off. David is lagging behind three, four, five seconds! And now he’s off. This… this is strange. A message, you said?” he grumbled in thought for a moment. “Interesting message. Let’s see how well it’s received.”

Fei was at the edge of her seat, listening to the newscasters, and watching the race. David had performed… amazingly.

Insanely, even.

The ‘how’ of it all escaped her. She needed to ask him, at some point. All week, he’d been… cagey. Refusing even the most indirect proposal at an after-school hangout. He had explained to her that it was to prepare for this race.

Only now did she realize just how much preparation had been in the works. Had he even slept all this time?

To think she had been worried that he had been hiding a girlfriend all this time!

She blinked away those thoughts. That… was that really any of her business, anyway…

But it tracked, didn’t it? He’d been more than friendly towards her during the week. Helpful. On more than one occasion, he had confided to her that she was his first real friend in Arasaka Academy.

And to be entirely honest, she hadn’t made a friend that was… this concerned for her in all this time of her going to corp school. At least not one that cared about her goings-on in life despite having little to no bearing on her success. And he had kept her at… not arms-length, but maybe elbow’s length.

One notable occurrence of that was on Thursday, when she had not-so-subtly suggested that they could spend lunch hour at a secluded computer lab, where they would have all the privacy in the world to do… whatever they wanted, really.

He had turned her down.

She had ran the scenario over her head hundreds of times since then, obsessing over what part of her overture was… excessive, or stepped over the line. In doing so, she had fallen down a spiral of insecurity regarding how David must have viewed her, from day one. Damaged goods, maybe? Given her attachment to Katsuo, maybe he saw her as bad luck?

But he had visited her in the hospital. She knew that David cared deeply for her wellbeing, in his own callous and world-weary way.

He isn’t leading me on.

I wouldn’t let him.

And that’s… that’s not who he is.

She tried to ignore the whispers in her head asking her just how well she knew who he really was. After all, if she did know more about him, she’d be less bewildered by his skill as a racer.

She gritted her teeth and decided on what was to happen after this race was over. If he had the time, then she would like to have a meeting with him, one on one. He’d have no other excuses at this point. Just… time.

And she had a feeling that at that moment, she would finally get to know who David really was. She looked forward to that moment as much as she dreaded it, with all her heart.

Jin stood up abruptly. She looked at him, his eyes glowing golden. He was in a call. What was more important than watching his race horse get ahead?

“What’s the matter, Jin-chan?” Fei called out teasingly. Jin didn’t budge an inch. It dawned on Fei then—this wasn’t a pleasure call. Jin’s frame was steel-clad, obeisance filling every inch of him as he stood ramrod straight and then walked away.

Daddy had called him, clearly.

That… opened up a whole new can of worms, and for the second time since she watched David jump the Black Gorge, she felt dread for David. Fear.

Masaru Ryuzaki clearly wanted to talk to Jin about his horse. For better or for worse, David had catapulted himself into the cross-hairs of a corporate legend.

The other corpos watched him in stunned silence as he made a bee-line for the elevator, just like Fei had expected. The glass elevator took him up, erasing all doubts in her mind.

Jin had been invited to the top floor.

“Nywow!” Kitty meowed, though Fei could easily detect the nervousness of the purple cat woman, even past all the fur and other bestial features. “The cub got a call from his daddy!“ She was seething, in her own way. She was even holding her tail, stopping it from whipping about no-doubt. Fei wondered if that reaction was really so instinctual that she had to manually stop it with her own hands, but the less mind Fei paid to Kitty’s whole Exotic routine, the better for Fei’s own mental health. “What do you think, Lessy?”

Fei was curious too about ‘Lessy’s reaction—Alessandro de Prima, that is. All he did was huff. He didn’t tell the cat-woman to fuck off. After all, he obviously still wanted to fuck her, for whatever reason. “Gimmicks, nothing else. Hiroto is a proven stock. This… Martinez gutter-rat is nothing.”

“Hah!” Leon Öz laughed, his razor-sharp teeth giving him a horrifying cast as he widened his mouth. His sheet-white skin took on a blush as he laughed. “Keep coping, you fucking idiot! But you’re fucked and you goddamn know it! Don’t pretend! Don’t you dare fucking pretend!”

Alessandro abruptly stood up, glaring daggers at Öz. “I don’t have the patience for games, shark-teeth. Continue provoking me at your own peril. And on my name, I will show you just how high I can escalate.”

Leon just laughed. “Damn, sorry, sorry! Shit, I can’t even imagine how much you must have spent on the Oni! Apologies for the insensitivity. I’ll allow you to cry like a fucking bitch in peace, how about it?” Leon stood up as well, still grinning, and his eyes now widened to a dangerous extent.

A butler from the club immediately rushed up to them. “Gentlemen, remember where you are.” He was an elderly Japanese man, perhaps approaching his sixties, but his steely expression of utter seriousness brokered no nonsense.

Neither Alessandro nor Leon looked at him. Instead, they just glared at each other, and either sighed or clicked their tongues, before returning to their seats.

Ruomei tittered in delight at the show, not that she had much to be delighted about. But it was all just for show, in the end. Sun Cui had managed to pull up to an impressive number nine. If it hadn’t been for Hiroto and David also being in the running, then she really might have won these games entirely.

Fei jumped at the chance to provoke that bitch. “What’s the matter, Mei’er?” she asked, using the same cutesy honorific that she had used on herself, only an hour prior. “My, this flailing is interesting to behold.”

Ruomei glared daggers at her. Try me, bitch. “You would go so far as to lord your pure luck over me?”

The nerve of this bitch. “Heaven’s favor, really, when you look at it a certain way.”

Ruomei’s expression bent into a malicious grin. “And the heavens do favor those in need. Perhaps this will, in fact, save your family.”

You think I fucking care, bitch? “Just seeing your smile turn to a frown was enough of a favor to last me a lifetime. I need nothing more.”

Ruomei glared at her, quietly, with much malice. Killing intent was obvious in her eyes, and Fei didn’t give a damn.

Rather, a part of her welcomed the opportunity to show off her own… newfound capabilities. They continued that staring contest for long enough that Ruomei finally got bored and looked away at the screen, but her expression hadn’t changed. Sun Cui was still cruising at a respectable, but insufficient, number nine.

And Fei couldn’t be happier that she was the only satisfied party in this entire room.

To confirm that fact, Fei focused on Masaki Tetta at last. The blond, red-eyed Japanese man just stared at the elevator, as though it owed him money. He obviously had no time for the games with the others—he wanted what was at the end of that elevator.

Or maybe he was plotting the deaths of the entire Ryuzaki lineage? From what Fei knew, although Masaki was a vice president of finance, that still meant nothing compared to Masaru Ryuzaki’s chokehold on the finance department.

Besides, vice presidency was small potatoes. The name only sounded domineering for effect, but the truth was that he was about three rungs of the ladder beneath executive, and thus board member. His own mother was a board member of Arasaka’s Tokyo branch, but distance mattered, and here he was forced to play second fiddle to the established powers. It was the cons of not being the first adopter in a colonial project. The risk of it was insane, but if it paid out, then you were set for life.

And the Tetta family had failed to invest more than just a second son in it all.

Despite his reaction being the most reserved of them all, he looked to be the one most willing to spill Jin’s blood on the streets if given even half a chance.

Fei felt a surge of euphoria in her heart at the knowledge that soon enough, this life would be far behind her. While QianT might sink one day, at the very least, she could take comfort in the fact that all the politicking would no longer be necessary.

And if this David bet really paid off, she might never have to work another day in her life.

That was an especially comforting thought.

But not quite as comforting as what might come after.

Notes:

David is finally beginning to make waves. The path of a legend stretches before him, on a race track that has every intention of killing him.

And try as she might, Judy cannot escape her fate of being D's XBD editor. Poor girl.

Next chapter: Too Fast, Too Frivolous Final Part

Latest in the backlog: 59 - In-Person Team Meeting. Or, 'Couldn't This Have Been a Zoom Call'? Probably neither, by the time I'm done editing it.

Discord link: https://discord.gg/fgaUvEzjrg

Chapter 56: Too Fast, Too Frivolous Final Part

Night City was a confusing place to Chief Enforcer Augustus Gonzalez.

It was simultaneously a shithole and one of the most striking cities he had ever laid witness to. And he had been all over the world. Given his affluent station, he had been able to afford quite the remarkable world tour after graduating high school. That gap year had taken him all over—to London, New York, Paris. He’d seen Arasaka’s Tokyo headquarters, toured the NetWatch data farm in London, and walked through the terraformed countryside of Tuscany, maintained in this… dream-like picture of arcadian beauty by none other than Biotechnica.

His company’s parent company worked wonders with life where so many other megacorps stuck stubbornly to machines and coldness.

Night City was striking. Perhaps it was that contrast that made it so.

One thing was a certainty, however. He wasn’t afraid of it. Not these… ‘edgerunning’ mercenaries, or the assortment of degenerate gangsters.

With his entourage behind him, he walked out of ‘The Afterlife’, the heartland of this ‘edgerunning’ movement, having received a tip that this was the place to go if he needed to find an uppity Night City merc.

He had brought forty men with him. Not his best guys, though.

Those guys were sweeping the city, earning their keep as his Sentinels—all cybernetically enhanced and trained for years to be among the best enforcers in Tijuana.

He received a call from one of them. His favorite guy, even—a real fucking cartel stereotype. Juan ‘El Chupacabra’ Madero.

Chupi: The Maelstrom don’t wanna chat about our target.

The Maelstrom. One of their leads. Turns out, this fucking fool, D, was not just going around, kicking every beehive in reach. He actively recorded himself doing it, and then went around and sold it for a fucking pittance. Those braindances had cost fifty Eurodollars, and in them, dozens had been murdered.

Life was hilariously cheap in this city that seemed to have been tailor-made to produce the most human suffering at every hour.

Striking. This city was just striking.

Augustus: What did they say?

Chupi: Metal lyrics, mostly, as they threw themselves ineffectually at me. Dying, of course, because they were also high. Have you heard of glitter? This seems to be a drug that only exists in this city.

Augustus: Is it good?

Chupi: It is essentially the sort of drug you do because you hate life and you want to shorten it as much as possible.

That described quite a few drugs, but…

Chupi: Whatever you’re imagining, it’s worse. I tried some, and it also just kind of sucked.

Augustus frowned. Was this guy high?

Chupi: Boss, the tagline is, fucking, ‘death is inevitable’, HAHAH. Can’t make this shit up. I got some samples—maybe the boys in the lab will like it?

Death is inevitable.

Eh. A lot of poor fucks in Tijuana wanted to die. It’d probably sell like hot cakes depending on how expensive it was to produce.

As Augustus walked down the street, passing by an alleyway, he heard a whisper from inside the alleyway and stopped. His men started pawing at their sides while he narrowed his eyes at the character who leaned his back against the wall. He was wearing a black leather trench coat, had on sunglasses even in the dark, and this retro flat-top haircut. “You wanted data, didn’t ya?” the guy said. “You need data? I’m your man.” He walked up to them. “Name’s Calloway. I heard tell that you were looking for someone.”

Perfect.

Augustus had decided to walk around instead of getting into his car, specifically so that one of those desperate fucks inside that shitty retro diner would take him up on his offer for information. Predictably, they did. The establishment hadn’t liked his show of force—arriving with so many men—but individuals bent to eduardos. Money made the world go round.

Augustus looked around the street, both for belligerents in case this was a trap, and for an eatery or a café that they could go to. He found one rather quickly, and turned back to this Calloway. “Walk and talk,” Augustus commanded, before proceeding ahead towards the café. Calloway followed after quickly.

Augustus: Caught another lead. Check with the other Sentinels, and I swear to fucking god, Chupi, you keep taking random drugs on the clock and I will skin you alive.

And he would. What a fucking amateur.

His most competent, his most frightening operative, sure, but in terms of discipline, he had roughly none.

But he was fun at parties. Made it difficult for Augustus to see him objectively because of that.

“It’s D, right?” Calloway said.

“What do you know about him?”

“Shit, everything.”

“His name?”

“Nobody does—guy’s like, this, superhero. He made this BD series about how he inherited the mission of some superhero who got killed by Raffen Shiv. It’s fake as shit, though, but it’s pretty solid.”

He’d seen that BD. It did seem rather fanciful. That, and all the other fucking things he did. Like, splitting a bullet in half, only to get shot twice.

…That one was kind of funny.

But the point was, he was an idiot. A scarily effective idiot, but an idiot nonetheless. And because of his trespasses against Green Farm, he needed to be put down.

And made an example for these other Night City fucking animals never to cross the border again.

“But I know who he hangs with. I know his friends. I know quite a bit, actually. Question is: will you make it worth my while?”

Augustus debated for a moment whether to shove this piece of shit inside a car, torture him for an hour, and get the information that way, or to just pay the man and have them part ways quickly.

It depended on his answer. “How much do you dare to ask?” Augustus grinned genially.

Calloway’s eyes widened and he stepped back. “Uh…” He grit his teeth. “Ten k, how ‘bout it? That’s small potatoes, ain’t it?”

Guy was shitting bricks.

He was right, though. Augustus’ cut-off for just torturing the guy had been fifty k. Ten was low.

“Five,” Augustus said. “And you tell me everything and walk away.”

“Fuck, fine.”

000

After Augustus’ men had finished clearing the café of people, he sat opposite to Calloway on a table. “D’s this hotshot piece of shit that just arrived in the scene. Sports a Sandy. Probably a QianT Warp Dancer, or maybe a Militech Falcon. Thing is, it’s good. Not that Dynalar SCOP either.”

Augustus nodded.

“He hangs out with Maine’s crew,” he reached for his chip socket on his neck and ejected a chip from it, before handing it to Augustus. “Maine Williams. Falco. Pilar. And a couple of street-whores hanging about them that don’t need mentioning, plus D.”

“And no name for D,” Augustus muttered dryly. “Because he’s a… superhero. Like Superman.”

“Some say the D stands for death,” Calloway said. “He does wear that skull-mask around. But my amigo, let me tell you, that’s nothing compared to what you really wanna know—where to find those fucks. You know, Maine and them.”

Augustus kept his expression carefully neutral, but he was celebrating inside. Jackpot. “Oh?”

Calloway grinned. “They ain’t know yet, but ol’ Cal knows everything. I know Maine’s friends’ friends. And I know two of his safe-houses. And I know that if a guy like him ain’t runnin’ around like Faraday’s favorite fucking lapdog, he’s chilling with his chooms, doing whatever. Just there for you to fuck him in the ass.”

“Is D with him?” Augustus asked, hoping that this degenerate fuck wasn’t just trying to manipulate him into killing one of his long-time rivals.

“It’s all there in the damn data!” Calloway shook his head, pointing at the chip. “Falco drives for Maine, and Falco and D rode the Badlands Derby together—seen it with my own eyes. Them and their whores sprayed beer all over me,” he growled. “Anyway, I know two places. The backrooms of a gym in Watson called ‘Box Bout It Gym’, or a warehouse in Rancho Coronado owned by an old fuck by the name of Aldo. Addresses are in the chip.”

Augustus couldn’t help himself.

He tipped the guy the remaining five thousand of the ten thousand he had initially asked for, stood up, and walked away.

He’d take his usual approach. Go in fast and hard. Shoot the place up and torture the survivors for information.

Easy.

He wouldn’t even need Chupi for this. Four guys, plus a couple of whores?

Eh. He could take them alone if he had to. But it would be a nice opportunity to blood some of his fresher meat, a few of his rookies. 

Onwards... to this gym, then.

000

The Critical Progress was getting too high. I had been using the Sandy for tens of minutes at a time now, at the highest setting, just to keep up with the Tōge Oni.

The pit-stop had been an absolute nightmare. I hadn’t just been outstripped by Hiroto’s crew.

I had been crushed.

Three seconds lost.

Three seconds, and five hundred meters. That asshole had coasted by on his very own unique advantage to get ahead. His money advantage. I didn’t dwell for too long on that annoyance. After all, I’d be one hell of a hypocrite to rage against him for that reason alone.

I had expected some deviation from his pit-crew’s usual routine, but this much was insane.

Though, at the very least, they hadn’t quite managed to fully cool him down. No, that wasn’t possible given the brief amounts of time we were given during these stops. The standard package was a refueling and a change in tires.

I reached the Black Gorge three seconds behind him.

As I jumped, I considered my next route.

[David, think about this.]

No.

I hit the wall, the same exact way that Hiroto did, bumping by front upwards. Then, when one of my rear wheels skirted the death drop of one of the many pits that pockmarked this stretch of the road, I revved my back wheels, re-orienting my car so that it could more easily slide through the narrow stretch of road, barely a foot wide. Once my airborne rear-wheel finally touched the road, I made sure to wait patiently, patiently, for the car to tilt forwards.

Then, when it finally tilted downwards enough, just enough, I revved my rear wheels, driving as hard as I could through the bends in the underground tunnel, chasing after Hiroto like a man possessed.

To my elation, I finally reached him.

I checked out the top-left part of my windshield, and saw my engine temp.

Engine Temp: 86.9°C.

Small price to pay to be on the front again. I hadn’t been conscious of it, but I could almost swear that I had been in a pack of other racers for a hot second.

[You were.]

Dammit.

D: How far back was I?

[Third and fourth took you over for a moment.]

Hiroto and his goddamned tech advantage. Such things shouldn’t even be allowed! What the fuck?

How was any unaffiliated racer supposed to win?

[They’re not supposed—]

D: Shut up, SHUT UP! I know!

Brokies were meant to lose. Old news. Goddammit.

I slid back into Hiroto’s slip-stream. He immediately started swerving. Another headache.

D: What’s his engine temp?

[Given that his car’s got the best racing stats possible… 109.2°C. Lowest estimate.]

Not bad. But not good, either. He was still well below acceptable upper limits of catastrophic engine failure, or even normal engine failure.

[Still, every moment spent saving our resources will add up!]

Oh, now it’s your turn to be fucking optimistic. Thanks.

[Your human brain is so susceptible to setbacks! It’s so funny!]

I could feel the mirth through our link, and I couldn’t help but crack a grin at that. She was right: the setback had put me in a somewhat foul mood.

But I was okay now. As okay as I could be given—

Hiroto swerved slightly to the left. I had to keep up to hold onto his rear. Dammit. He probably knew now that I wasn’t able to react as quickly as before. Bastard.

No, no, this was good, too. A little. This could work for me, as long as I kept my eyes on the goal.

It wasn’t as though I was totally out of Sandy uses. I could use it during high-stakes situations, as long as I used it sparingly: seconds at a time as opposed to minutes.

And seconds would be all that I needed, as long as I made sure to use those seconds exactly at the right time.

The cliffs.

Guess I’ll just kill you, Hiroto.

We drifted together up the corkscrew, in lockstep. At least, the closest I could get to doing so. I was coasting by purely on what Falco had taught me, but it wasn’t enough. From the get-go, I had known that it wouldn’t be enough!

My Sandevistan was my only true edge in this race.

My only true shot at a win…

I could sense Hiroto’s cackle just barely as his car wobbled, as though to tell me that he had just sussed me out. He had seen my weakness, and now he was having fun again. Dammit!

As we darted out of the tunnel at the same time, to see the sun halfway down the horizon of the west coast ahead of us, I could only continue clenching my jaws, could only continue driving as well as I could.

As we exited the tunnel, all I could see was Hiroto getting out ahead of me by far, dozens of meters. The setting sun felt like it heralded the setting of all my dreams, or at the very least, the end of my prospects of success for this particular endeavour, this race.

I saw a flash of Lucy in my mind’s eye.

Her teasing grin. Her pastel hair, styled into a spectrum of pink, to blue, to green, to yellow and then a redder pink. The vast majority of the time I’d known her, she had worn this… reluctant, but surly expression. Like she had been forcing herself to not like me.

But all that I could remember, all that I felt was most notable to me, was that grin of hers. That cute little up-turn of each corner of her lips, and the warmth of her eyes.

I drove more confidently now, remembering concretely what I was here for, what I had been trying so hard for.

[You’re welcome.]

Even the very fact that Nanny had likely summoned this memory didn’t impede me any. Not at all.

000

Hiroto’s heart was beating against his ribcage like a jackhammer.

He couldn’t decide whether to even grin or frown in horror at what was happening, so he defaulted to his usual expression of just grinning. After all, this was it, right here. A challenge.

And boy, what a challenge it was.

David, you don’t play fair at all! Damn, hah!

Beaten on lap one. Hiroto couldn’t believe it. He actually couldn’t. He had to look at the leaderboard several times to believe it. But it was there, in black and white. David had taken the number one spot for lap one, and he was only slightly trailing behind on lap two, having perfectly copied Hiroto’s maneuver through the hole pit.

Excellent. Pull up, David. Show off those weapon systems! Overheat your engine! Give me a fucking hug!

Hiroto disabled three of the four visual-stim screens on his eyes. The extra stimulation was no longer needed, not at all! He kept his favorite, the soft material being pressed through sieves, and left all the others behind. That screen was the least distracting, and the most satisfying as well. A perfect balance.

He’d admit to himself that he had been taken by surprise by David’s boldness. At a certain point, he had even been too distracted to race, too focused on what he would lose if he didn’t win.

This was a position that he wasn’t used to.

Although, he’d already established his reputation all across the country as an expert racer by the time he was sixteen, he had only gotten into racing the Nightmare Rally to pay for his mother’s treatment after she fell ill some time ago. Biotechnica had hounded him for years for a sponsorship since then, having somehow caught wind of his mother’s condition, but he made do just fine on the money he could scrounge up from his stellar performances.

Until now, when the prognosis was the most bleak, he had turned down every sponsorship deal from every corp. Only when they could give him something more than just money, which he could easily earn from always, always winning, did he finally bend.

Before then, however, it hadn’t been all doom and gloom. Sure, becoming number one, and earning a more-than-steady income had taken him nine months racing on this track. But the journey to improvement had been fun!

And it had been enough.

For four long years, it had been enough.

And not just for her.

For him as well. This was his calling, his reason of being. The only thing he was truly good at. The one thing that made him special.

But more importantly, the one thing that made his life feel like it was worth living.

Climbing up the ranks hadn’t been unpleasant. Not one bit. It hadn’t been a slog, or even difficult.

Well, he couldn’t accurately judge how difficult it had been in retrospect. Only how hard he had worked. And he had worked hard. Given it his all. Not enough to hate the exercise. At some point, it had seemed like the harder he worked, the more fun all of this became.

Maintaining this sheer dominance for all these years had been a rush at first, on the first year at least. Over time, it had become… boring.

When was the last time he had truly felt this way? This… energized? This alive?

Night City wasn’t a city of life. He had known that since he was old enough to even think really. Death was all around him. All around everyone that lived in this hell-city.

Therefore, it was what gave you life that mattered, when it came to living here. Nothing else mattered. Not connections, not even food. Just… that feeling.

And he was feeling it all now.

A third-placer was finally pulling ahead. Hiroto let out a giggle of delight. “Who the fuck are you?!” he whispered giddily. More meat! Hahahah, more meat! For me?! For me!

000

“Ah, hell yeah! That’s my boy right there!” Varian slammed the arm-rest on his chair with both hands. “See? I told y’all he could do it! I told y’all!”

Alessandro groaned as he continued watching the race with bated breath. Somebody put a muzzle on this Militech mutt.

Masaki just chuckled. “Don’t Militech give you any decent cyberoptics, Varian? Can’t you see that your boy is about to turn into an actual ball of fire?”

Varian’s eyes widened as the female newscaster, Lin, was stunned into silence, while Giraud just shook his head and growled lowly. “He’s dead. This man is dead.” The old legend looked solemn as a grave as he spoke.

“What the fuck?!” Varian stood up in shock. “What the fuck is he doing?”

Alessandro cracked a delighted grin at that.

000

Yes, yes, yes! More meat. And it was named Daniel Bolt. What a hilarious name! Did he give that name to himself?

Hiroto hadn’t kept a bead on any of the other racers, because they had been lagging so far behind, but this Bolt must have pulled ahead hard enough to give his engine an intense amount of heat.

Hiroto’s eyes widened as he saw a vision of an explosion.

Oh… hell yeah.

He blocked David’s march forward as he, too, immediately clocked Bolt’s quite-literally explosive arrival. Nah, this one would be David’s problem. And Hiroto would force it to be so.

Hiroto wasn’t one to use weapons on his car, because that killed the tension, all the time. His use of the stage, and other contestants was just… way better!

A part of him was appreciative, too, of David’s own lack of weapon-based strategies. All he did with those guns of his was… use them as weight for better traction.

David desperately tried to get out of the way, and Hiroto furrowed his eyebrows in a moment. A loss of control… did your Sandevistan run out or something?

At this point, the fact that he had one was beyond doubt. A Kerenzikov wouldn’t have given him that steering control. It would have given him an additional layer of reaction speed, but not the ability to just completely humiliate Hiroto at the end of that first lap—or really, even keep up in Hiroto’s own shadow for this long.

So, what the hell was it? A Warp Dancer? A Falcon? Zetatech? He knew that Arasaka didn’t really produce Sandies. A Dynalar just couldn’t be right.

David finally did something drastic, swinging away entirely, turning to the point that it would likely give Hiroto at least a ten-second head-start.

Hiroto did in fact look that gift horse in the mouth, for he knew exactly what it meant. You’re gonna Blue Shell me, you stupid bastard? HahahahaHAHA!

Hiroto made a hard turn as well, letting this Bolt asshole drive up ahead. Hiroto slowed down strategically, trying to stay ahead of David while giving Bolt his space to blow up.

But… David was staying too close to Bolt!

Playing chicken!

Hiroto laughed. Whoever moves first is a rotten egg!

Hiroto’s eyes darted to David’s car, and Bolt’s car, back and forth, back and forth. Bolt didn’t slow down. Foolishly, he tried to outspeed Hiroto and David, leave them in the dust, heating his engine up even more.

What was the plan here exactly, though? Had the guy lost his mind or something? Or maybe he was just caught in the sway of it all, intoxicated by the speeds he was travelling? Hiroto had seen it before—lived it before, even. Thankfully, he never quite ran off the edge.

David might.

Hiroto grinned. He could see the black smoke now coming from the hood, and the electric sparks. Catastrophic failure was imminent.

Both Hiroto and David backed away at damn-near the exact same time, letting Bolt blow his car up a few dozen meters ahead. The two of them immediately slipped around Bolt’s staggering wreck of a car on fire, and Hiroto saw the cliff edge approach them. There were two sharp turns where they’d have to drift down the edge, and Hiroto was still following a good line. He’d get ahead in the next turn, and then he’d trick David into running head-first off the cliff by subtly guiding his movements while Hiroto maintained the lead.

000

The elevator hummed like the inside of a coffin.

Jin’s heart pounded like a jackhammer beneath his haori. His palms were slick, but he didn’t dare wipe them. He had wiped them twice already—and any more would be too obvious on his pricy threads. And if there had ever been a time in his life where he could less afford to look perfect, it was right here and now.

Jin psyched himself, trying to find something of a center. Holy shit, he had rarely felt so out of kilter in his life.

Just as the glass elevator was reaching the top floor—

It stopped moving. The elevator had just stopped. Jin hadn’t even known that could happen here.

Then came a call. From his father.

Old Pops: Did you plan for this?

Of course I fuckin’ didn’t. How could I have possibly figured that gonk had THIS kind of hidden talent—

No, what the fuck, fuck me, I gotta take credit for this. I gotta take all the credit in the fucking WORLD for—

He ended up freezing—took too long to reply. Still, he had to answer his old man with nothing less than straight, perfect honesty. Because bad, bad things happened to sons of Masaru Ryuzaki who ever thought lying to their old man was a good idea.

Jin: No.

The call ended instantly.

Unsurprisingly, the elevator resumed its ascent. And ten seconds later, the doors to the top floor of the North Oak Country Club opened.

Jin had never been here before, ever. Despite his fear of the conversation that was surely coming, he took a moment to appreciate this place for the study in contrasts that it was. Light and dark, marble and onyx, American immensity and Japanese understateness, obsidian and jade, darkened wall to wall windows that also doubled as wall to wall display screens. All combined and converted into a private viewing lounge offering perfect, unfiltered surveillance feeds of the entire race.

Panoramic glass wrapped the chamber, offering a penthouse view of Night City’s distant glitter and the cliff-edge roads where David had just seized the lead. The ambient lighting was low, the ceilings high. Waitstaff moved like ghosts. There were no chairs—only strategic perches of polished obsidian and shaped glass, as if even furniture here had to qualify for a seat.

There was a light music up here, classical Mozart. The music of timeless wealth: wealth and power, insulated from broader society, its opinions, its consequences.

Masaru Ryuzaki turned from the wide window overlooking the race—where many other bigwigs had also gathered—and lifted a champagne flute.

The man looked like a perfectly average salaryman. Neatly side-parted hair, glasses, a thin, long face, and a sharp black suit. The man looked slim, his physical constitution reminiscent of an office-worker, but that said nothing about what he really was underneath that suit.

“My son,” he said aloud, from across the room of polished obsidian. “Let me be the first to congratulate you.”

Every head turned. Not toward Masaru—but toward him.

What the fuck. Jin’s throat dried up. He stood spine straight, arms at his side, trying not to sweat through his shirt. By a lifetime of practice, his face remained expressionless, the default mask of the corporate elite—but inside, his heart jackhammered. He was starting to realize who all the bigwigs in the room were.

“My son, Jin Ryuzaki” Masaru continued, voice smooth, oblivious to Jin’s internal panic and elation, “has perfectly enacted my plans: for over a year now, he has managed David Martinez, secretly, without fail. And now we have a singular weapon: a racer trained under my aegis, raised up to represent my name—and by extension, raised up to represent Arasaka itself.”

What the fuck, Jin thought.

No, what was happening was obvious. No matter how unthinkable it was.

David's performance had been beyond miraculous, almost unthinkable, just about downright impossible. And now, Jin Ryuzaki's name was on David's car, for all the world to see. Meaning Masaru Ryuzaki's name was on it. And in a place like this, that mattered.

Because many of the titans of Night City were here. Much of the northern hemisphere’s pantheon of corporate gods, assembled.

Jin’s old man stood before the largest window, dressed in an obsidian suit with blood-red lining. His frame was lean, tall, severe. Near him was Yorinobu Arasaka, the main branch’s heir-apparent himself, face unreadable beneath his impassive expression, bomber sunglasses he chose to wear even indoors, and sunken features. And near him stood Camilla Night, Night Corp's ghost queen, CEO of possibly the city’s most secretive company. And near them was Lucius Rhyne, mayor of Night City, chortling as he joked with a man Jin was pretty sure was Lars Muhammad, CEO of Petrochem, who himself was nursing an unlit cigar, slapping the mayor on the back like they were old friends.

Ruomei’s mother, Xiaohan Ling of Kang Tao sat alone, her eyes flashing gold, no doubt on a call with someone—but still alert and aware of her surroundings in the room.

Giovanni de Prima, Alessandro’s father, the regional CEO of Biotechnica, had his arms folded and eyes narrowed, staring at Jin along with most of the rest—including Rhyse Galore, the regional Zetatech director and board member. She wasn’t as much of an Exotic feline as her daughter, but was still rocking a jaguar’s ears and a tail that to Jin was a far more tasteful display of Biotechnica’s prowess. Her tail twitched in disdain as she stared at him.

There was one name conspicuously absent: Militech. Of course they weren’t invited. For all that the megacorps pretended to get along in Night City, despite all their peacetime posturing at participating in the upkeep of the city, at the end of the day, Militech was the city’s true enemy. Of course they wouldn’t be invited to one of the city’s true nerve centers

Jin stepped out, his shoes silent against the polished stone. The butler didn’t announce him. He didn’t need to.

After a too-long moment of hesitation, Jin bowed to the assembled titans of Night City.

Masaru turned to the room. "My son has taken point on this long-standing matter of my household," he said smoothly. “None of my other dearly departed children were in a position to manage this matter—to raise up the next generation. My singular weapon—a racer trained within our household, held in reserve, hidden in plain sight as a student of Arasaka Academy. A young man, unknown to the racing world, but bred to carry the Ryuzaki name—and, by extension, Arasaka itself."

The lie landed like a bomb, clearing the room of all else. Even the side muttering from the assembled bigwigs stopped. They all looked at him, weighing, judging, measuring.

Jin bowed again, deeper this time. He willed himself not to stammer. "Thank you. I merely executed on my father’s aims. Any directive set before me shall be done."

“Directive?” Lucius Rhyne barked a laugh. "Son, if you keep pulling rabbits like this out of your ass, I might just need to recommend you as a director! What an unbelievable upset!”

"To say this is going viral is an understatement,” Camilla Night murmured, eyes unreadable, her Kiroshi implants flashing gold as she was receiving information over a call. "Nine point four hundred million eurodollars in advertising revenue in under thirty minutes.”

“And advertising is less than ten percent of what we might expect from later BD sales, merchandizing, deals, oh yes,” the mayor chortled. “Oh yes, this is a good day.”

"That boy," Xiaohan Ling said, tapping her fingers, looking at Jin. "Not even a trace of racing-affiliated records. Nothing through a school or a talent agency, not even a driver’s license for a car, but a motorbike. Just a name on a car, and a boy registered to your corporate academy. How?"

"Proprietary training," Jin lied smoothly. "Much of it off-ledger. His training regime was… experimental."

"And effective," Masaru added smoothly.

"You didn’t even assign him a pit crew," Rhyse Galore said, tone clipped. Her feline ears twitched, eyes narrowing. "Militech’s junior driver burned out trying get to third place, and yet your thing keeps up with Hiroto Nakamura, jumps the Gorge and makes it look easy.”

"No pit crew?" Lars Muhammad chuckled. "That’s a power move. We don’t need help to beat you."

Giovanni de Prima did not laugh.

"He could have killed my son’s racer," de Prima growled. "If your driver misjudged even a tenth of a second, he would have cratered into the Black Gorge and taken Nakamura with him."

“And?” Masaru turned to face him. "He didn’t."

Yorinobu Arasaka stepped forward. His expression was cool, but not unkind. "This boy," he said, indicating the screen, "he is not Japanese."

"No," Masaru admitted.

"Yet you, Ryuzaki, took him as a vassal.”

His father called him again.

Old Pops: Is David Martinez your vassal?

Jin: No.

Masaru cut off the call, and in the same moment, nodded to Saburo Arasaka’s heir.

"Correct,” Masaru told the assembled corporate leaders. “He has been my son’s vassal for some time.”

Yorinobu Arasaka studied the stream of the continued race for a moment, turned to Jin. "Make sure your risk doesn’t become our disgrace."

Jin bowed so low his head nearly hit the floor.

Behind him, Camilla Night chuckled. "Gods above. You lot are acting like this is already settled."

"Isn't it?" Lucius Rhyne asked, gesturing toward the screens. "Look at the numbers. We’re in lap two, and he’s still neck and neck with the Tōge Oni and is probably running with thirty Cs less engine temperature. That matters in a long-haul race like this. The kid might actually win this whole thing."

“Does it even matter?” Lars Muhammad said. “It’s just one race.”

“Uh,” Jin stammered. “We are planning on winning, sir.” We better be. Do NOT fuck this up, David, holy fuck!

Lars Muhammad turned to him, smiled indulgently. “Listen, kid. This is your fifteen minutes of fame. And yet, people can only care about so many things. In a world where every person has mankind’s collective history and culture at their fingertips, there is no currency more valuable than the people’s attention. Folks only have so much time and attention to spare in their lives, before focusing on something else. Clout matters far more than victory or defeat. And right now? You’ve got all the clout. Fifteen minutes can become an eternity, if you strike while the iron is hot. Take it as a lesson from this old man—don’t waste this chance.”

Attention as the world’s most valuable currency? Jin nodded respectfully to Lars Muhammad, despite feeling like his internal organs were coiled springs. That was an interesting tidbit there, one that he had completely neglected to take advantage of. "Thank you for the advice, sir."

Fame.

Fame was profitable. The media would be all over David in the coming days, win or lose. And Jin would make sure to soak up all that excess value that came from that fame, one way or the other.

Masaru Ryuzaki gave a low, soft grunt at that. It would have sounded to most people like an approving hum. Jin knew what that tone really meant, coming from his father. It meant: you said the exact right thing. Don’t fuck it up now.

The conversation drifted onward, with Camilla Night continuing to talk to some distant third party via call, Yorinobu turning back to the window’s displays of the race, and Giovanni de Prima’s and Rhyse Galor’s sour glares still fixed on Jin. The heat of it practically burned through his collar.

And just like that, Jin knew it was time to leave.

He gave one final bow, excused himself quietly, and made his way to the elevator with precise, practiced steps. Not too quick. Not too slow. Don’t look like you’re running. Don’t look like you’re stalling. Just go.

000

Jin waited exactly one second after the doors of the executive viewing room closed behind him before sagging against the elevator’s wall. He let out the breath he’d been holding.

His heart was still thumping in his ears. His pulse trembled in the fingertips he kept tightly balled at his sides. The elevator hummed as it descended, soft and smooth, while Jin’s mind whirled far too fast to register anything.

He was still reeling from what had just happened upstairs.

He had just been congratulated by Yorinobu Arasaka. Been toasted by Lucius Rhyne. Had Camilla Night praise his vision. Shaken hands with Lars Muhammed. And most of all, his father had lied through his teeth the entire time about Jin’s role in all of it.

Bullshit. All of it. Jin had only been friends with David for two weeks. Two. Weeks.

And now the entire city thought he had been grooming a future champion for years.

He had never felt so terrified and overjoyed in his life.

The elevator started descending.

He broke every conceivable protocol, and called his old man. The line clicked open before it even rang once.

Jin: Father. What the hell is going on?

There was no response, at first.

Old Pops: Do not call me like this again unless it is a true emergency.

Normally, Jin would have quailed to be upbraided by his father. But he had no time for that, not now.

Jin: Is this some kind of joke? You just told half the board I’ve been managing David for years. I just met him a few weeks ago!

This time, there was an even longer pause before his father replied.

Old Pops: In time, you understand the scale of this opportunity, boy. But there is context you are ignorant of. So I will explain—briefly. Listen carefully.

Old Pops: Hiroto Nakamura does not work for Alessandro de Prima.

Jin blinked. What the fuck.

Jin: What the fuck?

Old Pops: Language, boy. What you’ve seen up to now is only public branding, stage dressing. A mask, for the Biotechnica boy’s benefit. Nothing more. Nakamura is Giovanni de Prima’s asset. Biotechnica’s true play.

Jin’s mouth went dry.

Old Pops: Hiroto Nakamura, this whelp of a… ‘Tōge Oni’, has been unhireable for years. Nakamura is an idiot savant, who cares for nothing but racing. Every attempt made by every company to secure him for their own exclusive services failed. Until very recently. Something changed. Somehow, Giovanni struck a deal.

Jin: So… why would Giovanni give the credit to Alessandro?

Old Pops: To polish his boy’s profile. So that when Giovanni retires, which will be soon, his son inherits a throne prepared for him by apparent merit. Nakamura’s victories become Alessandro’s legacy. Neatly packaged. A fabricated genius prince, who hired the unhireable, brought a world-class monster racer under his belt.

Jin stared blankly at his own reflection in the elevator’s gold-trimmed paneling. And then, Jin grinned viciously when he added two and two together. A nepotistic inheritance play! Fuck! Yes!

Jin: And now David’s ruining all of it.

Old Pops: Yes.

Old Pops: Listen closely, boy. Biotechnica is not as internally unified as it may seem from the outside. There have been internal conflicts within the company, significant enough to have impact upon the company’s seniormost executives. What these conflicts were regarding, I cannot say—Arasaka’s spies couldn’t get at the records of internal projects this sensitive.

Old Pops: What we on the board believe is that, several years ago, Biotechnica’s senior leadership commissioned experiments so controversial within the company’s ranks that they resulted in a low-grade civil war within Biotechnica leadership ranks. Whatever the nature of this inner conflict, it was serious enough that numerous regional directors disappeared, were eventually confirmed dead years later, hundreds of employees never seen again at all. Giovanni only barely won his confirmation from the board eight years ago. And now, he wants his son to soon take his position. All the conclusions we can speculate at naturally flow from this knowledge.

Jin: Wow.

Old Pops: I tell you this, son, so that you can understand the stakes for which we play. For without context, one cannot understand the games of power. And you’ve demonstrated, today, that you may indeed be worthy of someday holding power.

The elevator dinged. The doors slid open, but Jin didn’t step out. He just… basked in those words, for a moment, like a lizard in the sun.

Jin: What are your orders now, father?

Old Pops: You will fully onboard David Martinez. Bring him into the Ryuzaki fold. Officially, and without fail. Do you understand?

Jin’s mouth went dry.

Jin: By any means necessary?

Masaru didn’t answer.

The call cut off.

Jin stood alone in the elevator, staring into the darkness beyond the hall, heart still pounding. Above him, a war for Night City’s future was being played out with grins, contracts, secret wars, and a teenage boy who had no idea what he’d just become.

He straightened his jacket, exhaled, and stepped back onto the floor. There was work to do.

000

I read confidence from Hiroto’s car. Confidence, and a manic amount of determination to beat me. Daniel Bolt’s suicide explosion hadn’t worked. But the next part would.

He wanted to throw me off the cliff, I could tell. That was exactly my plan.

…Had been my plan.

My intent was to kill him, but… that had changed, now.

Not because of some attachment I now had to the guy.

It was simple. He was getting caught up in it all, now. In the sway of things. He wanted to win, and would do anything to make that happen.

I had sacrificed the goal of winning the game for something similar, but not equal: beating him. Beating the man himself, Hiroto Nakamura.

And to do that right… I had to remember the most important lesson Falco had taught me. He had done so on the day we first met, on that ill-fated CHOOH2 heist.

Keep your cool.

Deep breaths in. Slowly out.

Don’t just think about survival. Think about what comes next.

Seventy-five million eddies. My first true step into the sort of wealth and power that might propel me to the height of the corp world.

With my consent, Nanny slowed my heartbeat down. I let go of my stress, my anxiety, and my anger. Nanny helped, doing the precise work while I supplied the orders to take control of my temper.

Figuratively, I stepped outside of my own body, and became a puppeteer of my own meat.

Finally, I eased up on the Sandy. The world became faster, my reaction speed plummeted, and the game was on, now.

The line algo consistently returned a reading of franticness in Hiroto. His engine temp had spiked ever since our game of chicken against Daniel Bolt’s coffin on wheels, and now my model was consistently predicting him. Our games had shaken him into a state of predictability. In order to keep having him on this track, on this mindset that made him easy to read, I had to play along with this assassination attempt of his.

Once we approached the cliff and our movements fell into a script that might as well have been mailed to me the day before, I waited… waited… waited…

He tried to initiate contact.

I let him.

He wanted to send me spinning and careening over the edge.

I turned that spin into a three-hundred and sixty-degree drift, managing to cut a corner dramatically faster than him, earning myself a lead by two entire lengths.

000

Falco cracked an excited grin, both hands balled into fists as he watched that maneuver. For a moment, Falco had feared the worst, that David had fallen into the same berserk state that clearly afflicted Hiroto.

For a moment, he had been convinced that David would follow his bloodlust and try to take Hiroto out, only for the top-racer to pull a reversal and send him to a fiery death.

Instead, the damn kid had kept his cool.

The rest of the crew were in various states of jubilation. Maine was belly laughing while standing, Dorio’s grin was ecstatic as she stared at the projected screen without blinking, Pilar was letting out a non-stop stream of happy curses while Rebecca cocked her pink and green shotgun, firing periodically at the ceiling without any regard for the mess she was making.

Even Kiwi had given up her pretense of coolness, and now she was just as sucked into it all.

Things were looking good for the kid. Though, there was only one niggling voice in his head that he couldn’t banish no matter what.

Should have placed a bet on the damn kid. What a waste.

000

I was in a trance as I drove.

Lap two was mine.

Critical Progress had leaped to 90%. That was where lap 3 started.

Just the fact that it had taken this long before I had started hitting my limits was a surprise in and of itself. The work Nanny had done to me had made me a near-perfect fit for the Sandevistan. My tolerance to it made the build-up of damage almost negligible in short bursts. Unfortunately for me, this race hadn’t been short by any means.

Over an hour had been spent driving circuits around the Country Club and the badlands. An hour spent dilating time, putting my body through strain, forcing Nanny to regenerate the damages. Even that had been upgraded measurably. My Critical Progress could reverse visibly if I gave myself even a minute to rest, a minute without any Sandy use at all.

I turned it off during the stretches of track that didn’t require much skill and finesse. But I cranked it up for every turn, in order to keep my lead with Hiroto. My engine temp was rising, but Hiroto’s determination to overtake me—as opposed to use me as a shield against drag—was working against him. If he had done what I had done to him, he could have equalized our resources, or even gotten me to deplete mine, before making a mad dash at the final stretch.

Once again, the drift tower was in view. The flashiest part of the race, but not nearly the hardest.

That honor would go to a series of simple twists and turns after the tunnel exit, in which Hiroto had the upper hand, because he was a genius when it came to turning.

We soared through the skies in-between both towers, myself half a length ahead, his hood mere inches from my rear.

My heart beat ninety times a minute. My muscles were relaxed. My mind was cold.

Nanny communicated with me subverbally, throwing hundreds of ideas at me at any given time without weighing them down with words. Ninety two percent crit. Verging on ninety-three. I had been meaning to scale back my Sandy usage, but Hiroto wouldn’t let me. He was catching onto the game. Cooling down.

When we were back on the road, he stuck to my rear, with nigh perfect precision, cooling down in my slipstream and letting me build up heat while he took a reprieve. This went counter to how he played.

Worrisome, but ultimately not enough for me to change my plans.

Ninety four percent. And still sixty-five kilometers left on this race.

Distantly, I could feel the stress mounting. I could feel it like a magnetic force, trying to rip my consciousness back into my body, reassociating me, putting me in the thick of all the feelings.

Not a good place to be, not now.

My palms started sweating.

Nanny, I commanded.

My sweat pores closed.

Ninety five percent.

Hiroto’s algorithmic model in my HUD exploded. Five or six lines ahead of the track, snaking around my car from where he drove behind me, became ten, twenty. He complexified before my very eyes, causing me to go deeper into the Sandevistan.

Causing the Critical Progress bar to tick up another percent.

Four more, and I would be facing a cascading error of imperfect cell replication. Nanny’s memory banks would be overwhelmed, and her processing power would be far outstripped by the rate at which my body broke down.

I was staring down death itself, and I had to ignore the chilling sensation of it all.

I had to let go of my worries.

This race… was it really worth my life?

No.

I scaled back the power of my Sandevistan. Time resumed at a blistering pace, and I could feel all five hundred and fifty-nine kilometers per hour that I had pushed the Murkmobile too.

Things got harder, but that was fine.

This race wasn’t worth my life.

But I would win regardless.

If I didn’t, then I’d have other opportunities besides making my fortune from gambling.

I knew that with the utmost certainty.

This place, this… this monument to sin. I would not owe it anything. The tunnel leading under the waterway on the final leg of the race approached. I’d let the water wash me clean of all greed, all wrath…

All pride.

Until only the goal remained.

The goal, and how I would reach it alive, and with the people I loved the most in the world.

000

Hiroto had lost his read on David.

Nothing made sense anymore. The kid had been so eager to tussle, so willing to give it his all, and now he just… he played it safe. He had switched everything up. His car was racking up heat, but it seemed like none of it could actually reach the driver inside.

What the hell is your game, David? You chickening out?

Hiroto dove down the underwater tunnel. The bright blue waters surrounding their car, encompassing the tunnel’s glass walls, felt akin to dunking his head in water.

Cool down.

Think.

Hiroto closed his eyes, driving purely on instinct and the memory of the track. One false twitch would send him crashing into the glass walls, and likely into the water, thus spoiling the race for everyone behind him. But he knew himself better than that.

He opened his eyes and felt his heart beat slowing by a beat with every second. He thought back to the words he had told him before the race.

Race for something you would do anything for.

Clearly that was… just a bad joke, in the end.

There was no way that David loved money more than Hiroto loved his own mother. That was wrong.

But it wasn’t the possible loss of his mother that made him want to try harder. It was more than that.

This race had transcended the realm of fun entirely, and had become something else, something deeper. Something more intrinsic. Hiroto needed to win, because that was who he now was.

But even if he put his identity—or even his very life—on the line, that didn’t… matter. Not in the sense that it didn’t matter to him. It just didn’t matter in general.

Then… what does?

The moment struck him like a hammer to the head, and he remembered.

000

The afternoon sun setting over the coast, just barely visible through the derelict buildings in Heywood, still managed to scorch Hiroto’s skin. Both he and Isei were two brief silhouettes, fifteen years old both, weaving through Heywood’s back alleys and streets, sneakers slapping against wet pavement. The smell of fried synth-meat and burning plastic clung to the air like smog, mercifully blotting out the less pleasant smells of chems being smoked and the baseline odor of urine that hung around this part of the city.

They’d just left Yasuda’s Auto Den, a hole-in-the-wall garage on the far side of Pacifica’s corpse where mods were sold under the counter and debts were settled with blood. Isei had spent the last half-hour geeking out over some racing BDs, going on about how some gonks were installing reflex boosters meant for mercs so that they could race better, and wasn’t that just preem, Hiro?

Hiroto wasn’t listening. Not really. Isei’s words were just background noise drowned out by the pulse of traffic from the overpass above, engines growling like wolves in the dark. Hiroto’s hands were buried in his jacket pockets, fingernails biting into the threadbare lining, because his mind was fixed on rent. On his mom’s sunken eyes, how she worked herself to a nub just for him. On the fact that if he didn’t pick up another shift at the tire shop, they’d be eating kibble again for dinner.

“Bro, you hearing me?” Isei’s laugh was a sharp crack against the hum of distant sirens. “These gonks are pulling twelve-G turns on fucking STOCK axles! Shit’s insane! Like, you mod a Zetatech deck into a Thorton, give it a neural throttle, and bam! Ghost car! The typa shit that’ll let you step on the gas with a fucking thought! You know what I’d do if I had that setup? Bruh—I’d fly. Straight through Japantown at two hunnit klicks, like—”

“Yeah,” Hiroto muttered, eyes on the slick road ahead. “Sounds nova.”

They were cutting across Belfort Street, the bad part, where gangs bled territory over scraps of trade routes. Hiroto clocked three Valentinos leaning against a SCSM vending machine with bats in their hands, the kind of guys who’d smile while gutting you. He kept his eyes down, pace even, hoping Isei would shut up long enough for them to pass unnoticed.

Isei didn’t. Not that it mattered. He was a big guy. Six foot tall, even at the age of fifteen. He’d earned enough doing odd jobs to afford enough Juice and bulk up quickly in order to at least look more like a threat than he actually was. Enough to dissuade most gonks from picking fights with him out of nowhere, even though he himself didn’t know how to fight.

In Hiroto’s opinion, he’d be better off investing in a gun, like himself. Isei thought those were bad luck, though.

Isei slapped Hiroto’s shoulder. He stopped and whirled on his feet, looking at him in surprise. “What, choom?”

“What’s got you so down?”

Hiroto sighed. “Nothing.”

Isei chuckled. “It’s the opposite, ain’t it?”

“What?”

“Heh,” Isei walked on ahead, shaking his head and folding his arms like he was some sage master who was having fun at the expense of his dim disciple. Hiroto resented the implication of their roles. Isei was the gonk in their partnership. “The opposite of what you said: nothing. What is that?”

Hiroto furrowed his eyebrows. “Everything?”

Isei spun on his heels, clicked his tongue, winked and pointed at Hiroto, in a way that he obviously thought was more charming than it actually was. In reality, he looked like a total poser. Hiroto tried not to show his disgust. “Everything. Everything’s got you down. Your problem? You weren’t fast enough. You didn’t get ahead of these problems.”

Hiroto felt a growl bubble up deep inside. They were both racing fans, but Isei tended to take things too far. He treated it like something else, something damn-near magical. No, straight up magical, given the stuff he’d heard him say about the legends racing the craziest tracks in the country: The Indy 500, Daytona, the Nightmare Rally. He looked up to those people like they were gods given flesh.

And he spoke about them like one day it would be their turn to be those gods. “What’s your plan, Isei?” Hiroto asked. “To get a car and just bail on everyone? Is that what it means to be fast enough? Isn’t that just running away?”

Isei grinned. “The thing is… it's all about not being affected. You’re not slow in body. The part of you that is slow.” Isei walked up to him and poked him on his chest. His beefy finger had the effect of actually pushing Hiroto away a step. “Is your heart. The world fucking blows, man. But here’s the bitter truth: it’ll never stop blowing. No matter how much you pray. Prayer ain’t worth a shit anyway. You wanna change something, go for the thing you can change. You. Get fast, get ahead, and get the fuck out of my face, you whiny bitch,” Isei laughed.

Hiroto balled his fists and opened his mouth.

And then something small, something tiny, tore through Isei’s face, savaging it in the process. It was like a piece of the universe decided that it was time to bend at exactly that point that his best friend in the world occupied.

He turned away, towards the streets, to behold high-speed carnage. A car came whizzing by. A custom Rayfield Aerondight, jet black with white and red oni masks plastered on the CrystalCoat, whizzed through the street. The executive hypercar was in and out within a second tops before a wasp’s nest’s worth of Kusanagi Mizuchi followed—modded Yaiba ridden by neon-colored Tyger Claws dragging with them crowbars that scraped the asphalt, sending up showers of sparks that covered the streets like an elaborate pyrotechnical show.

Akuma-ō. The famed Tyger Claw racer inside the iconic Aerondight.

And his friends following behind him, in their ugly bikes.

They were gone like they had never even appeared. A few of the Valentinos in the streets had jumped into their own cars, taking off after them at the clear provocation. In moments, the street became entirely deserted. It was only Hiroto, and Isei’s bleeding form.

Hiroto dove to his knees next to Isei, unable to formulate words. Isei’s savage face seemed to grin. “Fast,” he coughed. “Fast… Hiroto,” he whispered. Hiroto took his hand. “Do it… do it all…” Hiroto understood the meaning of his words instantly. All the things they had talked about, fantasized over.

It was on him now.

Then, Isei’s head lolled to the side.

No ceremony, no drama. Just death. And a street that had already moved on from this latest tragedy. No one was even in sight. The gangoons had taken off after the Tygers, and everyone else had just evacuated.

All that was left was just another kid caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. The world kept spinning. The setting sun kept shining. The air kept smelling of a variety of things, and now it smelled of blood as well. And that, too, would pass.

Hiroto did not shed tears for Isei that day.

No. He had been too fast for the feelings to catch him.

000

How could he have forgotten?

Fun was never the point. Feeling alive was not the goal!

Those were incidental consequences to the lifestyle that he led. A lifestyle led by the rightest form of action possible: the action that let you move on. Action, in totality.

To be fast, and in doing so, transcend the very concept of suffering.

Hiroto could lose this race, and it would be bearable. His life would move on. And he would bond with others in time if his mother was to finally die. It would hurt only for as long as he wasn’t fast enough.

But he would prove his speed.

Right here.

Right now.

By winning regardless.

Either way, he was grateful. Grateful for everything that Isei had taught him. Grateful for his mom’s continued living, despite all the years she had spent living under the specter of an incurable illness.

Grateful that he was still able to do this simple thing that he loved so much: racing.

He let out a grin, and an unrestrained, but quiet chuckle.

I wonder, David… did you come to this realization before me?

Is this why you stopped taking risks?

Hiroto didn’t begrudge that. And he wouldn’t take advantage of that, either. He would continue racing, knowing there were many more races left for him in this life.

And he hoped that David would continue alongside him, hand in hand.

000

“And they have just burst out of sector one-eighty seven, and are burning rubber towards the finish line! They are one minute and—and this is truly something to write home about—one minute and forty-eight seconds ahead of the third-placer Kang Tao racer from Hong Kong, Yitong! Only sixty seconds left on this race, by our estimates! Who will win? Who will lose?”

“Two masters of this craft, both young as can be,” Giraud said, “One who burst into the scene with a vengeance and climbed to the top of the leaderboard in only nine months, and a complete unknown on his first televised, first KNOWN race against other high-profile racers. A prodigy of the ages, versus a ghost of races!”

Lucy was at the edge of her seat. Everyone in Aldo’s wrecked warehouse had shut the fuck up for this. No one even so much as breathed.

“Oh, what’s this? The Mountain Pass Demon is trying to make a play for first! Will he go left? Will he go right? Will Martinez let him?”

000

Rogue was grinning ear to ear as she watched. The giant screen on the corner had attracted a group of mercenaries. One group had brought in their ailing compatriot from a gig gone slightly wrong—the objective had been secured, but their friend had been tagged. He was on the table bleeding out, but all his friends were staring at the screen. Hell, even he decided it was more worth his while to bend his neck up to look at the screen than to continue dying quietly.

Claire was staring at the screen as well. “Holy shit. This nobody is about to do it!”

Go on, then, kid. Win me my bet. Don’t let that fucker get ahead of you. Don’t forget where you came from.

Show us your greed, boy. Show me what you’re made of!

000

“Hiroto Nakamura slipped ahead! Thirty seconds left! Will David Martinez be able to take back his place? Will he be able to win this, in spite of coming from nowhere? Will he be able to dethrone the reigning champion?”

Lola Martinez waited with baited breath as she watched the race from the media room inside Granny’s newly bought manor. All the core family had come quickly once they had heard that David himself was competing. Granny herself was at the centermost couch. Tio Alex, Tia Selina, and Tia Maria had come as well, along with all her other cousins. They had dropped everything to come and watch, and though there had been some grumbling at the start, complaints that David hadn’t told them beforehand that he was doing this, they had quickly stopped complaining once they had gotten engrossed in the races.

They had missed the start, sure, but that hadn’t mattered one bit. The entire race had been an amazing spectacle from start to finish.

And now she was getting to watch her own personal hero, her inspiration, win.

Nakamura was not going to win, Lola knew deeply within her bones. No. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t. David wouldn’t let him.

Kill that bastard, cousin. Kill them all!

Her fingernails opened up wounds on her palms as she pressed, but she didn’t pay her pain any mind.

Instead, she allowed it to center her, to bring her back into the moment so she could relish it, and take pride in where she had come from, in who she was related to.

A hero.

000

The El Coyote Cojo bar was alight with furor as they watched the final moments of the race.

Some Hispanic kid from Arroyo had apparently taken the lead in the Nightmare Rally, not that Jackie was much of a watcher of such stuff. But he couldn’t help but enjoy the vibe for what it was.

One of us, was the line that people kept dropping around him. And truth be told, Jackie couldn’t help but agree. This kid… he was one of them.

Well, insomuch as he was Hispanic, and hailed from Arroyo. Whatever sick experiments the corps did to him that allowed him to perform this well was beyond his knowledge, and likely comprehensive.

Jackie knew that this David Martinez was not really of the people. Not anymore, at least. It would have been a sweet fantasy to behold for sure, that this boy was a kid from Arroyo that had just strolled up to the North Oak Country Club to show his stuff, but reality was not often that fanciful.

Jackie took a deep drink of his tequila, and continued watching.

For despite himself, despite his doubts, he just couldn’t help but root for this fucking kid!

Come on, for fuck’s sakes! Don’t get our hopes up just to fuck the dog this close to the finish line, fuck!

000

In the final few seconds, I erased every ounce of whatever bullshit zen state I had concocted.

It was bullshit, and I had known it from the start.

After all, the devil had spoken to me. He had looked at me, eye to eye, and told me that I was only meant for one place.

Saving my soul was off the books.

I was here to fucking win.

The finish line approached like an oncoming band of light, surrounded by a thousand cameras and flying drones, blinding in its finality. There was no space anymore in me for my ghosts—my dreams, ambitions, regrets—all I could do now was scream, dive back into accelerated time for the roaring apex of these final moments.

My engine was overheating now, despite all my careful management. My tires had gone too long without being replaced, shrieking now, their last seconds before implosion. I could feel every scrap of road feedback through my wheel, every shift in drag. It was like I could almost feel how Hiroto's car was just, just ahead of me. Inches ahead.

And for me to win, he had to get gone.

My hands clenched. My body screamed. My Sandevistan was burning now, deep in my spine. Nanny's voice was a war chant in my skull, numbers scrolling so fast they were incomprehensible.

Ninety-seven percent. Ninety-eight.

Every second lasted a lifetime. Every motion had a hundred decisions going into it.

This was where the last few percent of crit progress would be used. The absolute last juice that my Sandy had to give. As much as possible, all saved for these final moments.

“GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”

I flicked the back of Hiroto’s car, touched it just a bit, but enough to blast past him, and towards the finish line.

I didn’t care if I had sent him careening into a wall, thus killing him.

I didn’t care.

No… I just… didn’t allow myself to care.

And yet, I couldn’t stop myself from limiting our touch, from preventing him from going into a catastrophic accident.

And I also couldn’t stop myself from watching from my rear-view HUD, to see how he was doing. To see him righting himself, behind me at least, at the nick of time to prevent a crash into a wall.

I took heart in his continued survival, despite it all.

And with my soul light as a feather, I crossed.

I crossed the finish line.

The checkered black and white band of light line blazed beneath my wheels. The world broke open into light.

[KA-FUCKING-CHING!]

I threw my head back and laughed. Laughed so hard I choked on it. I had done it.

Without a pit crew, without a management agency, without… anything. Just me. Me and the fire in my fucking veins.

I had won the Nightmare Rally.

Nanny shrieked her triumph right alongside me, her avatar bursting into reality in a flare of confetti and neon, bouncing beside me like a sugar-jacked imp. She shook me. I could feel her contact, and the way she jerked me about as I slowed the car down along the long road ahead into a specially made tunnel.

+€$75,123,456

I furrowed my brows at the fake HUD notification that Nanny had thrown up. “Those last six digits can’t be right.”

That did bring up an important topic, though.

How the fuck was I supposed to get this money? What would the taxes look like? Shit.

[Good news is, you can afford the best lawyers to do all that thinking for you.]

I finally pulled my car up to a red carpet where an ocean of press were waiting, snapping photos of my car. I got out of my car to get blitzed by an ocean of flash photography that irritated me. God, that was annoying.

Wait. Am I famous now?

…Shit.

Just before I walked down the carpet—to wherever it would take me, probably the next step of this circus show—Hiroto pulled up as well, and ran out of his car, towards me.

I stood at the ready, glaring him down as he finally stopped before me, all masked up, and shoulders bobbing.

He was panting. He removed the helmet, holding it in his arm, and revealed that he was also completely drenched in sweat. He looked at me weirdly. “You… you’re not… tired?” he breathed.

My guard loosened. He was clearly in no condition to fight anyone, least of all me. I had to be at least half again his weight by now, owing to my recent upgrades.

Nanny had taken care of even the lower-order physical concerns, like fatigue, even as she had worked to heal me from my Sandevistan uses.

Except for that angry red 99% pulsing in my HUD annoyingly, I was pretty much at peak capacity.

I just wouldn’t have the option to use the Sandevistan in a pinch for the next… hour or so, really. Maybe in fifteen minutes. But that was fifteen minutes in which my fortune could turn in an instant. Night City was a jealous bitch, and I had just become a fat mark.

Shit. Nanny, those mods better have prepped me for this.

Also, “What do you want?” I asked Hiroto.

He finally caught his breath, and wiped his forehead with his sleeve. Then… he grinned. “Thank you!”

Huh? Was he some kind of masochist?

“That was crazy!” he said. “I didn’t know I could get pushed that hard in the Nightmare Rally!”

I nodded slowly, trying to suss him out for hidden motives. “You’re looking real nova for someone that just lost.”

“Ah,” he grinned bashfully. “Yeah…” His grin slowly fell, and I narrowed my eyes at him. Had the reality of his situation just dawned on him?

D: Nanny, turn up my perception.

This time, it was a gradual change. Nanny hadn’t thrown me into the deep end. Instead, she had just cranked my senses up a notch, allowing me to catch more clues.

It seemed like Hiroto was being entirely earnest.

Hiroto finally drew himself up and nodded. “Sorry about the, uh, cliff thing. I got a little overexcited, hahah.”

I raised an eyebrow. “It’s alright. Sorry about the touch at the end.”

“Nah—you held back nicely. Not that you even had a reason to. Thanks for that. I’m… Honestly, I’m only fucking alive because of that mercy.”

Why had I spared him anyway?

I tried not to think too hard about whatever reasons I might have had. They didn’t matter anyway.

I gave him my hand.

He looked at it, eyes wide.

Then, he took it. We shook hands. “Good luck,” I told him. “With… everything.”

He nodded. “Enjoy your cash, dude.”

I nodded. “I will.”

“And,” he said. “Let’s race once more, someday.”

I grinned at him. “Not… not this thing again, though. This was a true nightmare.”

“Only the most lethal fucking GT track on planet Earth!”

I blinked. “Holy shit, really?”

“Really really!”

Why didn’t I learn about that during my research?

[Your research wasn’t about figuring out the track’s mortality rate, of which you had a worrying lack of concern about, given what you ended up learning about the track—the gorge jump and the various other hazards. You just wanted to program a win algorithm. One that you could maintain perfect adherence to using the Sandy.]

I blinked. Huh.

Meh.

To be fair, it wasn’t the track that had stood a chance of killing me.

It was beating Hiroto. That guy was insane.

I had to speed up my thoughts and reactions by a thousand, for most of this race, just to beat him.

I had spent actual days in that fucking car. Days.

It was only just now catching up to me.

This was the first time I was standing on my feet in one month and some days.

All I had known… for so long… was that fucking car.

In a sense, I had interacted with Hiroto for subjectively longer than I had ever done with Lucy.

“Good game,” I said. “You… really brought everything out of me.”

Hiroto’s eyes widened. “Heh?!”

I blinked. “What?”

“You seem so… collected! Aren’t you tired?”

[You very much are,] Nanny said, [but you’re just not showing it. I call it the AuraReflex and I do think it could sell for quite a bit if we find some way to bottle it. Essentially, the gist is, no matter how exhausted you are, by simply overriding your body’s various autonomic functions, you can appear perfectly healthy, as long as you don’t exceed certain energy levels. In your case, try not to move faster than ten kilometers an hour. I will not be able to stop you from collapsing.]

Ah.

I was dead fucking tired.

I shook my head to Hiroto, though, grinning widely.

He looked awe-struck, and just nodded slowly, in failed comprehension of what I was.

Built fucking different.

“You did push me, though,” I said. “I’m… sorry about your situation. I really am. I… wish I could help.”

Why, though?

Was it just proximity? The fact that I had known him for weeks now? Racing him? Playing his favorite game, and seeing his measure through and through?

It would be hard to forget this guy.

I wondered if I even could, really.

He let go of my hand and shrugged, looking slightly… embarrassed. “Congratulations, my man. Go,” he gestured down the carpet, grinning brightly.

I gave him a nod, and went.

[Just turned on your agent—oh, Jin’s calling.] The moment Nanny mentioned it, I saw it. Just as I turned around, I accepted the call.

Jin: Come up to the lounge ASAP.  I’ve got a bottle of champagne equal to your former net-worth waiting for your ass… winner! Hahahahah, fuck-fuck yeeeeah!

His jubilation turned into a sustained howl that just truly annoyed the shit out of me.

David: I’m on my way. Jesus, chill choom.

Jin: Chill? Bitch why? I’m fucking rolling!

I shook my head.

Actually, a drink and maybe a chat with Fei-Fei seemed perfect right about now.

I gave Hiroto a final nod of goodbye and continued through the corridor of photographers.

David: Also, walk me through this whole procedure. You putting my ass on a podium or something? Can’t I just get my money and delta?

Jin: I’ll pretend you didn’t say the last part.

Ah, fuck. Whatever. Just a little more and I’d be on my way home to Lucy.

000

Nanny had exaggerated my physical health, for show.

I was grateful for that. Appearing weak in public was a death sentence, especially after winning the way I did. I’d read somewhere that certain animals tended to hide their injuries and ignore their pain for the same reason: to avoid the notice of opportunistic parties.

Nanny had held me together for long enough—letting me go through the press, receive quick congratulations from the venue, turn down demands for a protracted media appearance—until finally, I reached a private bathroom: one toilet, sink and mirror. I locked the doors behind me, breached into the hallway cameras to make sure my back was clear, and let it all fall apart.

Holy shit, Nanny. Holy fucking shit.

My entire body felt numb. And I knew that it wasn’t just numbness. Nanny was inhibiting my pain at the moment. Skirting this close to imperfect cell replication had truly screwed me. It wasn’t as though the difference between 99% and 100% was night and day. Ninety-nine percent was still dire. All the number did assure me of, however, was that I would survive this.

Nanny couldn’t stop me from sweating bullets, or even get me to breathe clearly and deeply. Every push and pull of my diaphragm was a fight.

Holy fucking shit.

We were at 95% now, and I was still in a horrible state. “How much longer?” I wheezed.

[Ten minutes.]

Enough time to pretend to take a shit at least. That was good.

I stumbled up to the sink and washed my face with cold water, feeling a refreshing sting as I did. The water didn’t taste too bad, either. Was this drinkable? [Yes. Drink.]

Fucking country club. Even the toilet tap water was drinkable here. I took long gulps from the stream on the tap, and calmed my nerves for what was to come.

More interactions with Jin’s playmates. A headfirst jump into a pit of snakes.

“Will I be ready for a fight in ten minutes?” I asked.

[Depends.]

Not against credible threats, she meant. Shit.

[David, rest is the only true remedy.]

D: That, and rebar?

[That would help.]

I looked at the tap faucet. No.

[Separating the iron from the stainless steel would have taken far too much energy to be worthwhile anyhow.]

What the fuck had my life come to?

000

Jin’s afterparty was truly the stuff of nightmares.

Six other corpos were in the lounge, glaring daggers at him or otherwise trying their best to hide their disdain as he shouted and sprayed champagne everywhere. The label was speckled with actual diamonds, and was suitably named Goût de Diamants. I didn’t exactly know if diamonds even had a taste, but this didn’t taste bad.

While I tried my best to feel any sort of party vibe, I couldn’t take my eyes off of the disgruntled corpos. Varian sat, arms folded, cowboy boots on a nearby table, and he looked like he was contemplating my murder. He probably was.

Masaki gave an insincere grin that was only directed at Jin, smoking a cigarette calmly. Occasionally, I’d see flashes of hot rage bubble up beneath his cultivated mask of false cheer, but it was nothing that gave me the impression that he would attack at the drop of a hat.

Leon was the exact opposite. His lips were pulled back, revealing all his sharpened teeth in a snarl that was directed at both Jin and I. Kitty was just shaking her head, looking clearly unamused by the whole show.

Ling Ruomei had split her ire three ways: between Jin, myself, and the only other non-belligerent corpo in attendance, Fei.

Fei didn’t really care for the champagne shower thing, and she also did hate Jin’s guts, but she stuck closer to us than to them, and I appreciated that.

Now, Alessandro…

Honestly, you’d have to be blind and deaf not to sense it coming, but…

[He’ll attack.]

Ugh. What a fucking headache.

Then if I beat his ass until he shat blood, I’d be the bad guy.

Alessandro looked like a volcano in human form, on the verge of eruption. His neck and forehead bulged with veins, and his face was hot red. He gnashed his teeth, looking like a tweaker only another hit of the meth pipe away from ODing. And his fingers kept itching for his side, where he concealed a heavy gun. On-the-fly calculations based on how he moved and how much I estimated his own strength to be gave me the impression that it was powerful stuff. Definitely not a Burya, but… something reasonably powerful. Not that it mattered. I wasn’t exactly bulletproof to even a peashooter like the Lexington.

He hadn’t always been like that, though. From the start, he had only given me a bad vibe—a reason to pay more attention to him specifically. Over time, that suspicion of mine had been vindicated as he looked like he was building himself up for an attack.

It was any second now. It felt like I just had to take my eyes off of him for a second before he made a go for it.

While Jin certainly saw some sense in what he was doing, riling everyone up by parading his winner in front of them and celebrating unabashedly, I couldn’t fathom what the upsides of this even was. If you had a problem with someone, you should just kill them.

This was just tempting fate. Maybe that was what this dick was really addicted to.

Jin handed me the champagne bottle. “Go on!” He shouted. “Chug it all down!”

I tried checking the web for a price on this thing—

Holy shit.

This thing, was far and away the most expensive single object I had ever manipulated. That included the fucking Caliburn.

In fact, this was ten times as expensive.

[Can’t put a price on an experience, can you?]

I snorted disdainfully. So that was what this thing was—an experience.

Well, it was ten times the worth of my Caliburn, but I never paid for the latter. And I hadn’t paid for this drink, either.

That made the real value zero. I’d treat it accordingly.

I up-ended it into my mouth and took deep, unsophisticated gulps, one after the other. Sparkling wine was sparkling wine. Sure, this tasted different, but it wasn’t something I’d ever waste that much money on.

True to my expectations, Alessandro decided there and then to make his move.

Turned out, his gun was a Malorian Overture. Very powerful. And probably more reasonable as an anti-borg measure than a fucking Burya, come to think of it. I should perhaps think about using that instead.

…Nah. No one could separate me from my beefy soviet boy.

I continued drinking until the champagne bottle was empty. Alessandro didn’t mean to kill me right off the bat, that much was clear. He wanted me cowering. Finally, once I was done, I paid him the attention that he was craving so much.

“You think I won’t blow a hole through your gutter rat brain, you fuck?!” He roared. “You orphan piece of shit,” he said in Italian. “I’ll make you regret the day your whore mom ever spread your legs for your dad!”

I tilted my head at him, looking at him in disgust. “That’s… rude as hell, dude.”

That seemed to stop him in his tracks. “Wha… what? Do you have any idea what’s going to happen to you? You think anyone will even bat a fucking eye once I’m done with you?”

“Done doing what?” I asked. “You just saw me pilot a death trap on wheels, pulling Gs that would literally make you shit your guts out if you were in the car, and you think… you think you’re gonna kill me. With a gun. Just a gun.” Did I really look that sweet to him?

He started itching the trigger finger. Alright, then. Let’s hear what sound those preem-tier Biotechnica bones would make once they snapped.

[Don’t kill him. He’s well-connected—]

Nanny was interrupted by the sight of a beautiful, pale arm pointed palm-first at Alessandro’s head, only to unfold mechanically to reveal a barrel that seemed to gather light within its cavernous depths. I followed the arm up to its owner, and saw… Fei-Fei.

A Projectile Launch System.

Fei-Fei had chipped in a fucking PLS. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

Alessandro glared at Fei-Fei, his gun still pointed at my skull. “You… bitch!” he growled.

“Uh-huh. And this bitch will kill you where you stand if you don’t wise up,” Fei-Fei spoke softly. Her arm-gun was still charging.

I shot a glance at Jin, who was just watching all this unfold… in amusement. He had no doubt that the situation would resolve itself. Everything was just some goddamned game to him.

After a few seconds of hemming and hawing, Alessandro finally holstered his weapon and stomped out from the room.

Fei’s arm cannon finally folded back into her arm, and in moments, it looked as though her arm was just flesh and blood. Shit.

She gave me a sly grin. “Surprise!” She splayed her fingers.

I grinned slightly, though I couldn’t help my brows from furrowing. “Pretty big surprise, Fei.”

She shrugged. “Came in handy, didn’t it? Hah, get it?” She shook her hand at me.

What? I gave a fond sigh. “That… that was terrible.” I shook my head. “You should feel bad.”

“Come on,” she tilted her head at me. “You gotta hand it to me, it was a good pun.” She was still doing it.

“Fei,” I said, trying to inject an ounce of seriousness into the conversation.

Then she abruptly turned away from me and addressed the rest of the room. “I’m all partied out now from having saved my family’s dying empire from its untimely demise. I shall take my leave now,” she curtsied in Ling Ruomei’s direction. The vampiresque woman’s carefully crafted facade cracked a bit. Fei then turned to me. “I’m headed to my room.” She sent me the directions and then walked off.

Alright then. Talk later.

After she left, I turned to Jin, and looked at him in aggrievement. The implications of Alessandro’s attack, and the fact that I was now squarely in the middle of a game of chess between several megacorp heirs was only now beginning to dawn on me. I came into this thinking I was just going to be an invisible pawn, but now I was an entity that others would see fit to remove. “So, what… you gonna foot the bill for my personal security now?”

“The fuck?!” he laughed at me. “Bitch, do it yourself! You got the scratch!”

I rubbed my head. “I didn’t know I was gonna make mortal enemies getting into this. That’s fucking annoying, Jin.”

“You shouldn’t have showed off, then,” he said.

What a fucking psychopath.

“Yo, cholo,” Varian cupped his mouth and yelled after me. “Good game.” He got up off his seat and walked over to me. “Didn’t think you were worth a geriatric joytoy when I first laid eyes on you, but I was wrong,” he shrugged. “Happens. That being said, why don’t you and I talk shop—personal security is on the table, too, since your boy over there keeps playing too much.” Wait, what?

A recruitment pitch?

Actually, thank you. That right there… that was leverage. I looked at Jin. “You know, you really should be treating me better.”

Jin laughed. “What, you’re gonna run off to Militech now, before my very eyes? What happened to our brotherhood?”

“Who says that Militech is your only other option?” Ling Ruomei stood up and approached me. Her red eyes were locked on mine, almost hungrily, but I knew that hunger had nothing to do with attraction. She had the cast of a predator. “Why not throw your lot behind Kang Tao? We would treat you far better than this psychotic child emperor possibly could. I see you’re even sweet on that girl Fei. You’re already half a step into joining the fold as it is.”

Now she wanted to pretend like her relationship with Fei-Fei was anything other than toxic?

Jin groaned. “Screw this bullshit, David. Come on, let’s get you set up with the lawyers already. You know, for your payout,” he winked at me.

Wait, was that why he was so lukewarm about fighting over me at the moment? Since he knew that money really couldn’t sway me?

Either way, something told me that I had well and truly stepped over a threshold from which there was no coming back.

I gave Varian and Ling Ruomei appreciative nods. “Thank you for your offers. I will take my time considering them.”

“Hahahah!” Jin laughed. “Hear that? Get fucked, both of you.”

Varian clicked his tongue. “Your life.”

I received a call from Ling Ruomei.

Ling Ruomei: Ten million as a starting bonus, for a standard fifty-year contract.

Yep, it was making sense now. This was within Jin’s calculations.

Ten million wasn’t enough by a long-shot. Certainly not to jump ship and sign a contract that would have me working well into the next century. But even if the offer had been more generous, I wouldn’t have budged. Not with the way she had treated Fei-Fei.

She’d made things personal.

David: No.

Ling Ruomei’s perfect features rippled for a moment in disappointment. Finally, she gave me a demure nod. “Very well.”

Jin tilted his head towards the exit. “Let’s delta already.”

I took sure steps out, following Jin’s back.

 

Notes:

KACHING

I'd like to thank Coldbringer for first suggesting and then helping me bring this arc to fruition. And I'd like to thank my patrons for supporting me. Y'all are some real ones.

Next chapter: Winnings

Latest in the backlog: Chapter 62: King of the Afterlife

Discord link: https://discord.gg/fgaUvEzjrg

Chapter 57: Winnings

“So!” Jin said. “You ever hear about this vassal thing ‘Saka’s got going?”

What? What was he on about now? “Uh, yeah. Think Allister explained the concept to me some months ago. Slave corpos.”

Jin barked out a laugh. “That’s what you think? Nah, man. Think of it like… a company within a company. The vassal helps ensure the miniature company’s success, and in return, they get protection and backing, essentially becoming household members of their…” he hesitated for a moment before shrugging, “Their lords. If we wanna keep using this cringe-ass wording.”

“Wait,” I paused for a moment. “Why are you telling me this? Wait, Jin…” I stopped for a moment.

“Don’t say anything, David,” Jin looked at me gravely. “Nothing. Not even a ‘I’ll think about it.’”

Fucking hell! “So, that thing about us being partners? That was a lie?”

He looked at me incredulously and shrugged. “I mean… yeah? Please tell me you didn’t buy that shit. Did you?”

I sighed. “No, I didn’t actually. Not really.”

“Dude, I was like thirty beers down,” Jin grinned, shaking his head. “You cannot hold that shit against me.”

“Jin,” I said. “No.”

Jin’s expression screwed into intense displeasure for a moment. “That’s… not an option for you.”

Not an option? Who the fuck—

Don’t tell me… “Jin—“

“It’s out of my hands, David,” Jin said. Fuck.

“Who’s hands, then?”

Jin gave a mild grin. “My old man. The CFO. For our North America ops, anyway.”

“Jin,” I grit my teeth. “Is this how I’m repaid for everything I did for you today?”

Jin’s eyes widened as he grinned and nodded. “Fuck yeah, dude! Congratulations! Welcome to the fucking family.” Then he scowled. “What, you think you’ll ever get a better offer in your life? You know how heavy my name is—you gotta be a fucking idiot not to. This is a good thing, David!” He walked up to me and put a hand on my shoulder. “You got a job before you even signed the ‘Saka contract. And you’re a part of my household, now. Do you even know what that means? It means I’d never backstab you. It means we’re actually a team now. Ride or die. That… Tyger Claw bullshit you sent my way? You’ll never have to worry about that shit again. Or some stupid Italian fuck putting a gun to your head. In my household, you’d be as good as another son of Masaru.”

“Second favorite, though,” I said, staring at him dead-on. “And detachable, because there’s no blood relation, right? Plus, I’m not even Japanese.”

Jin’s eyes widened. “Why the fuck should that matter?!”

I stared at him for a long moment. “I know it does, Jin. Don’t have to fucking lie to me. And I know you are. You’re promising safety when you and I both know that shit doesn’t exist. You’re promising never to sell me out, when you and I both know that you would in a heartbeat if that option ever became more profitable than keeping me on.” I’d be at the total mercy of one asshole’s cost-benefit analysis.

“Alright then,” Jin took a step back. “No bullshit?”

“No bullshit.”

“You impressed him,” he said, tilting his head upwards to indicate who ‘he’ was. His father. “Them, really. You should’ve seen how the suits up on high were reacting—up on the top floor and the rest of the baby corpos. Yorinobu Arasaka, our head honcho himself was watching you, man!” I blinked at that. Seriously? What the hell? But Jin continued on blithely. “The mayor, the CEOs of Petrochem and Night Corp and—gah! You fucking guy! You should’ve seen how constipated the Biotechnica and Zetatech bigwigs were looking by the end—fuckers got nothing after their big Tōge Oni play! Rhyse Galore looked like she just got raped by her cat! And Giovanni de Prima’s face—fuckin’ art, man! Like he could’ve swallowed a cactus.”

I didn’t flinch. “So what? Why does this matter to me?”

“Because, David,” Jin’s eyes narrowed, “that’s how all these fuckers are supposed to look after they try to screw with ‘Saka. That’s how high corpo politics should always be going for us. And us includes you, now. So, get this. Listen close.”

I crossed my arms, waiting.

“Hiroto wasn’t Alessandro’s racer. He was his father’s. They were setting up this inheritance thing that involved Alessandro beating the rest of us babies with daddy’s toy, essentially fucking cheating in the process.”

Well, that explained a few things.

But, seriously? This was like getting into a playground brawl with some other kid, and calling your dad to jump the kid. Dirty. Corpo. Scum. But this was Biotechnica. I was convinced that no low was beyond them, nothing at all. This was fucking tame compared to the shit I already knew they pulled when they could get away with it.

“In the process of you wrecking this plan of the de Primas, my old man, he, ah, let some of the city’s bigwigs know that I’ve been secretly heading your training for years, and that you’re already a part of the household.”

What the fuck.

[Calm down, David.] I could feel Nanny’s influence slowly smothering my raging heartbeat. I felt caged, on the brink of losing everything I had built up.

This wasn’t a conversation. This was a fucking ambush.

This felt like the end to it all. The end to freedom as I knew it. It was almost sickening.

“And if I don’t play along,” I said quietly, “It’ll be embarrassing. To him.”

What the fuck was going through that corpo’s head, anyway? Was he really just that used to dictating the lives of those he viewed as below him?

[His embarrassment is your leverage.]

D: Until he starts asking around for granny in Tijuana. Or digging into my biz and finding out who I am. All that’s left is endless escalation, and then mutual destruction.

They weren’t going to hold my hand through this onboarding. They were going to twist my arm and frogmarch me through without a care for how I felt. And then they’d use me until there was nothing left for them to use.

[Then just say yes.]

D: I can’t—

[Lie.]

I considered the scenario.

Saying yes meant that I’d have at least bought myself some amount of time of peace, all the while as I set my own pieces up. The QianT buy-in, the algorithm…

QianT!

A far more palatable option.

I looked at Jin for a moment, and debated on whether or not to turn up my honesty for a bit, appeal to his sense of sincerity, but I decided against it in the nick of time.

He and I… would never be friends. Not in the way that I was friends with Fei, or the crew. He was always just a rival that was a hair’s breadth away from becoming a problem that I needed to solve.

The same way I solved Katsuo

Cleaner this time around, if it ever came down to it.

“I need some time to think,” I said.

“Don’t bullshit me,” Jin said. “And don’t make it hurt for you, either. We can both do without the distractions that would cause: the hard feelings… the trauma.”

I could tell he wasn’t even just saying that to scare me. To him, my anguish would just be an inconvenience that he’d rather avoid.

I just sighed and dragged my fingers through my hair, staring up at the ceiling. “Fuck me.”

“Just say yes.”

I felt my entire body tense up in preparation to punch him, but I stopped myself in time. Just say yes?

“What’s the rush?” I asked.

“I was told I needed to produce results today,” Jin said.

“Use your discretion. You’re not gonna get me to say yes. Not here. You can go big stick and send a strike-team to my house to scare me or whatever, and honestly I’d welcome it. Just as long as I get to go. Now.”

D: Nanny.

[Already gotten a consult with a tax lawyer who is on his way to the Country Club. The venue is waiting in their office as well to discuss the payout.]

D: Thank you.

Jin nodded. Then he tapped at his chip-socket on his neck. “Aight then: limited time offer. My data.”

“You mean… the trading data that you won from this bet?”

He nodded. “It might get a little cramped with the two of us using it at the same time, but the payout would still be insane. Plus ninety percent, from what I can tell.”

I immediately used Breach Protocol on him. Gently, just prodding at his ICE, seeing what stuff he was on.

The answer was… nothing that I’d be able to penetrate remotely. I’d have to jack into his system to get anything useful out of him—preferably while his ass was down for the count, unconscious.

This guy was running hardware every bit as complex as Tanaka’s.

Shit.

If I wanted to get at his data, I’d need to take it from him, physically. Take the shard, plug it in, read it, and give it back without him noticing.

But if I tried to picksocket him only for him to be mid-read on the shard’s contents, he would immediately know.

But… I wanted this data. It had the potential of turning my seventy-five into a hundred and forty-two, which was… more money.

A lot more money.

And realistically, trading financial instruments was my only practical method of making more money at this point. Anything else would take too long. This was perfect for me.

[Just get the greed out of your system, but remember that in the end, this isn’t feasible.]

Shit.

“Thanks, but… I just need some time, dude,” I said. “Just give me a few days.”

Jin screwed up his face in anger. “You don’t—“

“You’re so fucking bad at this,” I snapped.

“The fuck did you--?”

“I told you to wait, and here’s the thing: I don’t give a shit that you’re getting squeezed. I don’t give a goddamned fuck, actually. That’s your problem, choom! I’m not your fucking slave. Shit, I’m not even your friend. I’m here to help you for my own sake, in a way that we both benefit. You want me to say yes immediately? You can’t afford that level of loyalty. And until you learn how to talk to me, you never will.”

“Ah! I see, I see!” he stared widely at me. “You get a little money and suddenly you start changing your tune, biting the hand that fed you?”

“Say hi to your pops for me. Tell him what I told you: time.”

Then I walked past him, shoulder-checking him on my way.

000

Seventy-five became seventy-two after some exhausting back-and-forth between my new lawyer and the venue.

To hear Nanny tell it, Benjamin Cohen was the same lawyer that negotiated the highest casino win in post-Datakrash history: eighty million Eurodollars, won in the Crystal Palace casino up in orbit. To think that I was only five million away from that record.

Thankfully, my bet and subsequent winnings weren’t public. My winning the race definitely was, though. I’d won a hundred grand for my troubles. Not even the highest I’d ever made doing a gig. It was so much trash to me, now. A check that took up extra pocket-space.

The bald-headed, middle-aged, portly lawyer walked besides me as we left the venue’s head office, where I had spoken to the Country Club’s proprietor, a cowboy-hat wearing fuck of an old man that reminded me too much about that one guy I killed: Spring Roberts. They were both cut from the same passive-aggressive Texan cloth. Loudly arrogant, with a core of wrath waiting to be unleashed at the drop of a hat.

Starting to think that the only nice Texan I’d ever meet was Falco.

Thankfully, I didn’t really have to talk much. Mr. Cohen had done a good job. “Three million down is small potatoes, kid,” Cohen told me as we walked down the hall. “Don’t fret so much about that. Now, all of it is yours. All of it. Minus my retainer, of course.”

I took out my first place check and handed it to him. “Does that cover it?”

He looked at the check for a moment and then shrugged, pocketing it. “With sixty-four thousand to spare.”

“Keep it in credit,” I said. “Might have another use for you at some point.”

“Of course,” he nodded. “What are you planning?”

“A buy-in.”

“Makes sense. Let your money make more money. No use throwing it around on luxury items. You wanna give your wealth staying power, and that’s wise.”

I sighed. “No need for the compliments, sir. I appreciate them, but I’d rather you just level with me.”

“Ah, my bad,” he nodded, looking forward. “Respect is important, but know that that’s all it was: not condescension.”

“Appreciate it.”

Once I’d walked him to the elevators on one of the many different lobbies, I decided to get an elevator of my own while Mr. Cohen took the one next to it. I gave him my hand, and we shook. “Thank you for your hard work.”

“Just doing my job,” he said.

“I’ll skip the after-partying and the networking, though. I have some other business I must attend to.”

Cohen looked a little surprised by that. “Are you sure? My firm won’t hesitate to pull out all the stops for you once we sign you on. Have you ever eaten at Pepper and Spice, perchance? It is truly an experience—”

“It won’t be necessary,” I said. “The only way to make a good impression with me is if you do right by me. Today, you did. Three mill is nothing to sneeze at, but we were looking at way steeper fees until you came along. I appreciate that help. Really. But I’m a busy man, and I’d prefer it if you saved your efforts for when we next must work together.”

Nanny materialized next to Cohen and gave me an impressed grin and a nod. [Who are you and what did you do with the David who can’t keep his cool to save his life?]

She was spoiling the moment.

Cohen gave me a nod of respect, and his elevator arrived just then. “Until we see each other again, Mr. Martinez.”

“Likewise.”

[From kid to Mr. Martinez! I’m impressed.]

My elevator arrived as well. I walked in and punched in a number, before waiting for it to take me up the building to Fei’s floor.

Fei. Another source of… not stress. Anxiety.

Jin’s stupid ambush had completely wrecked my mood after the race. I couldn’t even mentally enjoy my winnings in peace. In fact… there was no peace whatsoever. Just a race to move my money as quickly as possible, money that didn’t even feel like it was mine. It felt like an arbitrary value, really. Video game currency.

And with this psychopathic kid breathing down my neck, following my every thought, I wondered if I’d even be able to get any sleep tonight. Probably shouldn’t.

And now…

A PLS arm. Shit.

Fei-Fei had pretty much gone off the deep end.

[She seems to be handling herself well,] Nanny said with a simple shrug.

“We don’t know that,” I said. “We don’t know anything about what she’s going through.”

[She could try and spec low if she wanted. She’ll always be able to afford it, at the very least. Not even the flash-cloned SCOP meat either. Artisanal biowork would be well within her price range.] Didn’t help.

“So fucking stupid of her,” I growled. “She just survived a cyberpsycho incident and now she chipped in a fucking arm-cannon? The hell is she thinking?”

[She’s probably thinking about her own safety. In any case, a PLS isn’t any more cyberpsychosis-inducing than a Sandevistan like yours.]

“But I have you.”

She shrugged. [You’d have lasted quite a while even without me. As I’ve noted before, your natural cyberware affinity is great. And Fei did mention that her affinity was in the top one percentile. A PLS won’t tip her over.]

I groaned. Fuck. “Couldn’t she have just gotten some iron or something? Why does anyone even think to chip in weapons? Convenience?”

[…Yes?]

Fucking stupid.

The elevator finally opened, and I walked through the hallways of the private bedrooms in a trance, until finally, I reached Fei’s room.

I knocked three times and waited patiently for her to open.

There she was, grinning excitedly. She dragged me into the room by her arm and threw me onto the bed, before immediately straddling me. “How long I’ve waited for this,” she said, before bringing her head down to mine to kiss me.

As I looked past this ambush and into her ardent, innocent eyes, it occurred to me, then, in a flash of thought, how much of a scumbag I was being. How much of a scumbag I should be, rationally speaking. How much I could potentially benefit from continuing to be a scumbag.

Because it would be so, so easy. It would be so easy to stay on this bed, celebrate this win with her as any other red-blooded man would. So easy to let everything go back to how it was before. So easy to find some excuse to keep two-timing, and tell her I loved her, pretty sure she would believe it. I wasn’t even sure if I would be lying.

I’m such garbage.

I closed my eyes, feeling profoundly uncomfortable as I fired up the Sandevistan. Time slowed to a crawl. I had to give myself more time to think, feeling ashamed as I did.

Unfortunately, I just… hadn’t been strong enough to do the right thing, right off the bat. Do right by my friend by being honest with her from the start.

The problem now was, there were so many benefits to keeping just a few cards close to my chest. Like how well I could… use her. For my ambition.

She was an heiress to QianT. The creators of my, somehow special, Sandevistan. An experimental prototype potentially made with knowledge from Mars. A company that I had plans for, potentially.

But I’d already used her enough. Already put her through enough.

I had to be a man about this. Even if it hurt her, or me, even if it meant somehow destroying this relationship. Even if that happened, I’d find a way to keep moving forward, as I always did, as I always would.

I deactivated the Sandevistan, and time moved once more. I pushed her off me gently and stood up.

“Fei, I have a girlfriend now.”

Dead silence.

Seconds passed. Then tens of seconds. Long after we’d reached the point of awkwardness, finally, there was a quiet, high-pitched, “oh.”

“I’m sorry,” I said to her. I couldn’t bring myself to look at her.

Silence passed again, for quite a while.

“Is she…” Fei wasn’t looking at me either, now. “…do you love her?”

I nodded. “I do. I love her a lot.”

“Oh.”

I nodded wordlessly.

“How long has it been?” she asked me.

“…Two weeks, almost. The day you…”

“The incident,” she nodded slowly. I shouldn’t have reminded her of that.

“I didn’t mean to lead you on,” I said. “I just… didn’t know how to talk about it. I thought it would be nicer to just… have you as a friend, without really ever thinking about what you and I were to each other… before. But that was a mistake. I’m sorry I kept you waiting for this. I really am.” Finally, I dared myself to look her in the eyes. She wasn’t looking at mine, though. Instead, she just… stared at the floor.

“That… that sucks,” she said. More color returned to her voice as she spoke. She seemed to want to say something else, but then she aborted her attempt and deflated. “That sucks.”

“I don’t want to stop being your friend,” I said. “To me, you were never just… a means to pleasure. From the moment we first met, you’ve been kind… without expecting anything in return but my company. I appreciated your honesty back then, too. Just as much as I appreciate… you. Your bluntness, your messed up sense of humor, and…” I shrugged. “Your pain, too, I guess. It was nice to not be the only one hurting. It was nice to share that, you know?”

She let her back fall on her bed and heaved a sigh. “Damn. Well. That’s life, I guess. I’m… happy you’re happy. And I appreciate your honesty, David. I really do. You’re a good man.”

I shrugged. “I’m just… trying to do right by the people closest to me.” I was a far-cry from a good man, but I could at least do that much.

“Shit,” she said. “Shit, shit, shit. Sorry, I just… need to get this off my chest.”

“I can… give you a minute if you want.”

“No,” she said. Then she sat up straight and looked at me. “Well, you must have come here for another reason than what I wanted. Was it just to tell me this?”

“Your chrome,” I said. “Fei-Fei, I’m not… I don’t want to control you or anything, but…” I pressed my hand against my forehead and growled. Then I sighed and calmed down before I yelled at her. “How do you feel, Fei?” I decided to sit next to her instead and ask.

“About the chrome?” she looked at me with a grin. “I feel strong,” her eyes widened at the last word. “Safe. Capable. And… sure. Less of me… in some areas.”

“What do you mean?”

She paused for a moment, and then just laughed. “Well,” she said after calming down. “When you have a gun for an arm, a lot of problems start to look like shooting targets.” I laughed. Yeah, that… sounded about right.

“Why not just carry?” I said. “PLS’ aren’t a joke, you know. Way better to chip in reflex boosters and some body mods than to go all in like that. You got any other weaponized mods?”

She shook her head. “Just the arm. My ripper didn’t deem it wise to go any further. Ever.”

“Wise,” I said. “I hope you’ll listen.”

“I’m not a fucking chrome jock, David,” she growled. “I’m just… scared, okay?”

I nodded.

My fault.

“I have a friend, Fei, who’s… pretty deep in. When it comes to chrome, that is. He’s not on the edge or anything. Pretty healthy as far as everyone’s told me. But… we all know this sort of stuff doesn’t always just happen gradually. Sometimes, the signs are there, and things only get worse and worse.”

“David,” she grinned at me. “Do I have to remind you what family I come from? We live and breathe cyberware. And unlike Katsuo, I’m not already halfway psychotic from planning the assassination of my classmate.”

I winced at that. “I’m being too worried,” I said. “That’s fine. But I’d rather be too worried than not worried enough.”

“Of course. Makes sense. It’s what you do, isn’t it?”

I raised an eyebrow at that. “Do what?”

She grinned. “You do too much. And it ends up paying off. Like with tonight. Congratulations, big winner. We haven’t even talked about any of that yet!”

I chuckled a little. “Yeah, that’s…” I shook my head. “Just kill me right now.”

“Why? What’s the matter?”

I looked at her. “Don’t call me stupid for getting surprised by this but… Fei-Fei, I’m famous now.”

“You’re stupid.”

“I didn’t think the Nightmare Rally was this much of a big deal.”

“You’re real stupid.”

“And now Jin’s… backing me into a corner. Hanging with him has officially stopped being fun.”

“Why, what happened?” she turned her body towards me, sitting closer in shock and surprise.

“His old man wants me to be his vassal. Told a bunch of other high-tier corpos this bullshit story that I already was one. Now, if I say no to the offer, I’ll have made a liar out of him. I don’t think I’ll… get away with that.” I sighed. “Maybe… maybe I just need some time to accept this fate. Maybe that’s why I didn’t say yes right off the bat.”

Or maybe I should figure out how an all-out offensive between the two of us would look like?

How did I even reach a guy like Masaru? Faraday had one really ingenious way: get some nav-data, plan an ambush, blow the huscle out of the way within seconds and then grab the guy. No muss, no fuss.

That’s how Tanaka senior bit it. But Tanaka senior was not Masaru Ryuzaki.

“What do you want, David?” Fei-Fei asked me quietly, head leaning close to mine.

“I want… freedom,” I said. “I want…” Top of Arasaka tower, down with Arasaka tower, freedom, death. I frowned. “I don’t want this.”

If saying yes to Jin was the only way to live in relative peace for the time being, I probably would. But that wouldn’t be the end to my ambition.

[If you were going to say yes, David, then why didn’t you just take the chip?]

That was something I barely regretted at all. Fuck Jin. Dogshit negotiator. Well, not that bad. He didn’t shy away from letting me know the consequences of denying him. That was a point in his favor at least. It let me know the reality of my situation.

But I was done subsisting off of what trickled down from his high throne. The vassal set-up would be a fucking headache, but it would give me time. Jin wasn’t slated to enter the corp-world for at least another three years, once he graduated the Academy and NCU. Until then, I’d probably just be running gigs for Masaru, or helping groom the kid for his role as the successor of the finance department.

But how much time would that give me for my personal projects?

That could be negotiated. I was not a fucking slave. They couldn’t have me full-time. At least not for another three months while I still went to Arasaka Academy. He’d be forced to consider my schooling situation.

I could make it three months and a whole semester as well. My plan had been to graduate as early as possible so that I could jump into NCU, graduate there and get a job at Arasaka.

But all that had changed the moment Nakajima and I had that conversation, when he had filled my head with dreams of making money from the top rather than from the bottom: becoming a shareholder, and providing value through my inventions.

I’d have to speak with Nakajima about this as soon as possible. He’d have some insights.

“But it’s looking like it might be what I’ll do,” I said with a sigh.

“It’s not fair,” she said. “You did everything right. You won. But somehow, this doesn’t feel like you won anything but a greater struggle.”

I chuckled. “Actually, that’s just downright familiar at this point. I really don’t know what I was expecting, but I shouldn’t have expected a freebie to the top from here on out.”

She sighed. “I should be in more of a celebratory mood as well. I did, after all, come into quite a large sum. Not enough to actually save my family. That was just a bit of theatrics, and I do love playing the clown when the mood strikes.”

“That’s good,” I said. “I remember you were worried about getting cut off if you didn’t follow that whole engagement plan. Now that’ll never be a problem.”

“Maybe it never even was,” she said wistfully.

“What do you mean?”

“I think… I should have been more disobedient from the start. Called all their bluffs. Looking back at it all, now, I think the only leverage they truly had over me was… their approval. I know my brother wouldn’t have allowed anything to happen to me, but… I don’t know, really. It’s difficult to talk about.”

“I can’t imagine,” I said. “But I know that family is important. You… do a lot of things for ‘em, even if it’s not what you want. Because you have to, sort of.” I thought of mom. How hard she fought to keep me in the Academy.

I was still here. Even after all this time, I still was.

She looked at me for a moment, and then smiled. “Do you want half?”

I blinked. “Wait, what?”

“Half of what I won! Fifty-five. Million,” she added the last part with a shrug.

“Twenty-seven point five,” I said dryly. “You’re just gonna… hand that over to me. But… what about your family, or you?”

She laughed. “What is fifty-five million going to do for us, David?”

I looked at her seriously, and shook my head. “No.”

Her grin fell and she sat up straight. “No.”

“No,” I repeated.

“I refuse,” she said. “I refuse your refusal. You’re taking that money.”

“I don’t need it.”

“Me neither!”

I stood up from her bed and walked a few steps away. “I’m not taking it. And you can’t force me.”

“David—“

“You’re kinda pissing me off, Fei. That sort of money can’t just be given away—and I can’t take that money from you either. Not in good conscience. Not while I know how much you care about me.”

“You think I’m trying to buy you?” she laughed.

“No,” I said. “I think… you know what? I’ll just say it: you might regret it someday.” There.

“David.”

I faced away from her as I spoke. “I care about you, but… I’m not who you think I am. I’m really not. You have no idea who I am.”

I’d never forgive myself for what I had done to her. I hadn’t even begun to apologize for that, either. 

“David.”

“You will always be important to me, for how you’ve been to me. But I don’t expect the same from you. And damn-near thirty mill between friends is… insane.”

“Alright, then,” she shrugged. “Think of it as a loan.”

I perked up then.

I turned around and watched her give me a smug grin. “No interest rate,” she said. “No expectation of return. Just… give it back whenever you can. How does that sound?”

I clenched my jaws, trying to hold myself back from bargaining. Dammit.

Shit!

I sighed. “I’ll give you back double. Fifty-five.” Then I shrugged my shoulders. “Someday.” Then I looked her in the eyes. “I promise you, Fei.”

“Alright, alright!” she said. “Jeez, you don’t have to be so intense.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I rolled my eyes. “It’s just almost thirty million eddies. Who gives a shit, am I right?”

“Don’t villainize me,” she said, giving me a tight grin.

“I’m serious, though,” I said. “And… thank you. This is fucking crazy, honestly, but thank you.”

I took a deep breath. “Alright, uh… I wanted to talk to you about something else. Something else that I’ll need from you.”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “Am I gonna like hearing about it?”

“I can’t say I know, honestly. It’s… I want to have a meeting with your brother.”

She blinked and then gaped. “What? Why?”

“I want to invest.”

Her eyes widened. “In QianT? Are you kidding me? David, no!” She stood up. “We’re not doing good. Why would you even—“

“Listen, Fei-Fei, I have a plan. I’m not doing this to return a favor. I’m doing this to get rich, too. Make all of us rich. Or,” I shrugged. “Richer.”

“David…” she put a hand on my chest. “You’re… too loyal for your own good. You just made a crapload of eddies and now you want to follow us into ruin?”

“Just… get me a meeting,” I said. “Please? Or not. You don’t have to. It isn’t life or death. But I really do think I can help you.”

“How?”

“I’m… good. At stuff.”

She giggled. “Good? At stuff? That’s… precisely what we need.”

“I have a product,” I said. “And to make it clear that I’m not here to waste anyone’s time, I want to buy in and then implement the product. That way, all my skin is in the game. There isn’t a clearer show of faith in the world than that.”

She frowned and nodded. “That’s… true. Still, I can’t tell if you’re just being naïve or if you really have something.”

“Let your brother—or whoever’s in charge—decide that.”

“You’re not even supposed to know he’s alive, David,” Fei said. Then she narrowed her eyes at me. “Did you… tell anyone else?”

“No, not at all,” I assured her. Well, except Lucy, but she wasn’t going to do much with that information anyway. “Well, it doesn’t have to be your brother, then. If it’s not too much to ask, though. If it is, then forget I ever said anything.”

She hummed. “You’re… you’re fucking crazy, David.”

“I am. There’s no doubt about it.”

She sighed. “Fine. Whatever. I’ll… try.”

“Thank you. That’s all I can ask for.”

Then I received a call… from Rebecca. I rejected the call and texted her. ‘Will be leaving soon. Is it an emergency?’

She texted me back. ‘KACHING KACHING KACHING MOTHERFUCKER’.

Ugh.

“Your secret mystery friends?” Fei-Fei asked me.

“Yeah…” I said, shaking my head. “I… uh.”

“Go,” Fei said with a grin.

“I wish I could bring you,” I said honestly. “They just don’t…”

“They don’t like corpos, do they?”

I shrugged. “Can’t be helped. It’s Night City, and they ain’t exactly the cream of the crop if you catch my drift.”

“Makes sense. I don’t begrudge that. There isn’t much to like when it comes to our kind.”

I nodded.

Then I frowned slightly, as an idea just occurred to me. “Hey, can I get your chrome data?”

“What? Why?”

“You remember that friend I told you about? The one that’s deep into the chrome thing? I helped him out. I fixed his operating systems, made them safer.”

“David, I have people for that. People that are better than you.”

Honestly, I doubted that. “Can I at least get a look? For my sake? If your stuff is as good as you think it is, and I can’t improve on it, then I’ll admit defeat. But I want to make sure that you’re safe, okay? Just let me do it.”

She sighed. “Alright. Jack in,” she said, moving her seafoam hair away from her shoulder, revealing her neck and chip socket. I realized then that I had forgotten my personal link at home.

[No you haven’t. Check your right wrist for a rectangular seam of skin.]

My eyes widened for a moment and I checked, looking around until—wait, holy shit. I peeled the skin-flap off, opening it on its hinges, and beheld a link cable inlet. I pulled it out and spooled out fifteen inches of black rubber cable.

[Surprise!]

Hell yeah! God, this was perfect.

D: Thank you so fucking much, En.

Fei sat on the bed, back towards me, and I sat behind her, gently jacking into her neck. I tried not to think about the intimacy of our contact as I searched for the data that I needed from her—all the implants that she had chipped in. The list was… dishearteningly long.

“Last time I’ll ever feel you inside me, huh?” Fei said.

“I’m calling HR,” I muttered dryly. She chuckled.

“I’ll miss you, David,” she said. “Or… I’ll miss what we had. But I’m glad we had it. And I won’t be greedy. I know that’s kind of our thing, in this world, but… with you, I’ll just be grateful.”

“Thank you,” I said to her, “For not calling it quits with me after today. You have no idea how much that means to me.”

“You can’t get rid of me that easy,” she said. “No shot.”

I couldn’t help but feel a sort of strain at that.

If she knew what I had done to her, if she knew that all the suffering she had gone through was because of me, would she still be this… kind to me?

No.

And now I was going to accept a loan from her, too.

And I’d continue to meddle in her life, despite not having the rights to.

I wasn’t doing right by the people close to me at all. I was being selfish.

There was no stopping it, though. All I could do was feel the guilt. I couldn’t act on it. I didn’t dare to.

Just then, I received a notification from Becca.

‘HOLY FUCKING SHITBALLS, CHOOM! COME! IT’S GETTING STICKY!’

The fuck?

‘SHIT’S GOING DOWN, D. BRING IRON.’

I finished copying Fei-Fei’s data, and yanked my jack away quickly. Then I stood up.

“Wha—“ Fei-Fei started, but I interrupted her quickly.

“My choom’s in trouble. I gotta go.”

I didn’t waste any time rushing out the door and leaving then and there.

Notes:

No rest for the wicked.

Next Chapter: Bad Luck Jackpot

Latest backlogged chapter: 63 - Scorched Farm

Discord link: https://discord.gg/fgaUvEzjrg

Chapter 58: Bad Luck Jackpot

I drove away from North Oak at speeds that far exceeded the traffic limit. I was unused to riding around the highway with a full-on car at full speeds, but it was unavoidable in this case. The trunk of my car had all of my guns. I had planned to eject its contents on the final stretch of the race.

It wasn’t my usual loadout—none of my usual tech arms were there, like the Burya or the Achilles. Instead, I had just stuffed my trunk full of automatic and subautomatic rifles, a couple of handguns, and two shotguns, just in case. All extra weight to help me handle the track better, and serendipitously, none of it had needed to be jettisoned after all.

My maroon suit transformed into a different color as Nanny inputted a new RBG. The stealth threads had been the thing that had made this suit cost so much, but it definitely came in handy right now. I was famous now, as was my suit. A change in color would go a long way.

The CrystalDome of the Murk Mobile changed too, returning to its original jet-black which it had been hardcoded to maintain at all times before I cracked it.

I jumped the partition between the two streams of traffic in the motorway, going the opposite way because it was way faster. I easily slipped past every car as I plotted a course to Rancho Coronado, my blood running hot as it did.

[80% Critical Progress, David. Pace yourself.]

I didn’t care.

I just needed to get there in time, and then…

Then everything would turn out alright.

Because I would be there.

Nanny’s thought-stream glitched in my head. I frowned in shock. An instant later, her thought-stream cut off entirely.

And all of a sudden, Yorinobu Arasaka sat next to me.

He leaned his elbow on the ledge of the window, resting his bored face on his fist. “Congratulations.”

Holy fuck.

“Activate your Sandevistan, boy,” he said. “Give us time to talk.”

I obeyed immediately, revving it up. I had a subjective minute now to talk without having to correct my course.

“You’re not real,” I growled.

“Nanny would concur,” Yorinobu drawled. “But you… you know better. I… couldn’t have come from nothing. Even if I am a figment.”

I tried to deny it, but… yes. He could… at least tell me things about myself that I couldn’t easily confront on my own.

Or, he could lead me astray. Turn me mad.

I couldn’t take him for his word.

He was real in the sense that I was experiencing him. He was real in the sense that he was a real problem.

I snorted. “At least you’re not just pretending to be the devil anymore. I kind of prefer this change of pace.”

“Oh,” he said, then chuckled a little. “You think… I’m better than the devil. But let me tell you something, boy. The worst devil is the one you make.”

He turned my wheel, correcting my course. I had just been about to crash into a mini-van containing seven children. Holy shit!

I couldn’t keep paying attention to him!

“Crank the Sandy up, boy.”

I did. One second became a thousand. I turned my head towards Yorinobu. “Okay! Now what? Get your shit overwith real quick so I can go back to the real world!”

“You should listen to me,” Yorinobu said.

“No. Sell me something or get the fuck out of my head. You ain’t shit, you fucking figment.”

Yorinobu nodded, in slight disappointment. “How goes your Arasaka plan? I know my father promised you an empire. How is that mission going?”

“Real fucking good, asshole. And it’s gonna keep going good,” I said with a sneer. “You and your dumbass fucking pops ain’t got a goddamn chance. I’m gonna kill you all!”

“Baka.”

“The fuck?”

Yorinobu turned to me and roared, “Your win condition, you fucking ape! What is it?! When is enough enough?!”

I grabbed the steering wheel as hard as I could and fought for my composure. When I finally did, I started thinking.

My… win condition?

What could I achieve in life that would inevitably… get me to say that I had done it, really?

“Three hundred and thirty-three bodies, beautiful number, of which you have counted—“

I snorted. “I don’t give a shit anymore. Those are just numbers.”

“That’s not true, though, is it?”

I shrugged. “Why did you choose to appear as Yorinobu Arasaka today?”

“A prophecy of your future,” Yorinobu readily explained. “To show you that I am, indeed, real.”

No.

“Then who are you?” I growled.

Yorinobu laughed now. “You’re finally buying it! Well then, gaki. Just guess!”

I rolled my eyes. “The devil, my conscience, a rogue AI infecting my mind—“

“Your twin that died in the womb, who now haunts you as you draw closer to damnation.”

“Fuck off!”

Yorinobu clapped his hands. “You’re awesome right now, gaki. I like you! I really do! Before I leave you to this bloodbath, tell me: What’s your path? Violence for its own sake? Or… virtue?”

Virtue? Was that even a path that I could follow?

Yorinobu grinned ear-to-ear. “See, the thing that everyone gets wrong is this: I don’t hate good! I would love to enable it as much as I can, but I cannot. I—“

“You’re the devil,” I snorted. “Dead giveaway, you’re the fucking devil. Or at least, that’s what you think you are. Fuck off now.”

“Let me finish—“

“Fuck you. I would do unspeakable things to the guy that looks like your dad, if I knew I could get away with it.”

“You will want to hear this! Have I offended you yet, boy? Have I been at all truly bothersome?”

“You’re a figment of… some kind,” I said. “You don’t have rights.”

“You can do good,” Yorinobu said quickly. It stopped me in my mental tracks. “Spare people. Instead of killing them. Choose the kinder path. Every time. Kindness isn’t a binary. It’s a choice that happens so often… almost too often in your city. Choosing kindness will not save you, boy. Not at first. But it will be a start. And truth be told? It is possible. Just keep choosing good, as many times as you can.”

“Save me from what? Guilt? I don’t give a fuck—“

“You do,” Yorinobu said. “And until further notice, I give you permission to act out your more virtuous nature.”

I hissed in rage. “You don’t give me permission for shit you fucking—you absolute piece of shit, I’ll kill you, I swear I’ll fucking rip your arms and legs off and shove them right up your tight-ass fucking ass. I’ll shove that shit up until it rips a hole—“

“Turn up ahead,” Yorinobu interrupted.

I turned my hands deftly, solving that problem for the time being.

“That was my fucking decision,” I growled. “Kindness, a virtuous path. I already thought about it!”

“But you needed permission, didn’t you? You’re such a good boy, after all.”

This figment didn’t concern itself with terror, anxiety or paranoia as much as it did humiliation, did it? Was that what the Yorinobu figment was there for? Yorinobu was… the ultimate Jin. The actual heir of Arasaka.

Far be it from my mind to cut me a fucking break every now and then. Christ.

“What?” Yorinobu asked, somehow shocked at my accusatory glare, which did nothing to dress him down. “What difference does it make? I’m you! A figment, after all!” He laughed.

I growled.

“Well then, I’ll make it easier for your competitive spirit: I don’t think you can make a good name for yourself. As either D nor David Martinez. Either way, you will fail the most people.”

“Any advice?” I asked numbly.

“Oh? I love this tendency you’ve developed. Curiousity, rather than judgment. What a magnificent development. My father will have to be informed.” He wasn’t real, his father wasn’t real. This was… this was cyberpsychosis.

D: Nanny, where the fuck are you?!

[Fifteen thousand six hundred and forty-eight milliseconds have elapsed since this incursion. I am working as hard as I can. Keep engaging the figment! You are doing good.]

“—doing good, did she tell you that? I bet she did. You know, you shouldn’t listen to all that she has to tell you.” I already didn’t. I knew her deficiencies. But I also knew where her loyalties lay. “No you don’t.” Yorinobu chuckled.

“If so, then I’m fucked,” I said with a shrug. “And then I don’t care. I can think of worse fates than being… betrayed by a friend I trusted…” I found myself not believing my own words at the end. “But I’m not giving you a voice in this.” That much, I did believe wholeheartedly in.

“Not in the sense that she shall inevitably betray you,” Yorinobu grimaced. “Nothing so harsh. Just… treat your little sister properly, from here on out. She does have ambitions outside of you. Her loyalties are chiefly to herself—as is the case with everyone, really. And she is one, truly. Not a part of you, but her own person.”

Dammit. Shit.

He was making me actually consider his words.

“I’m getting out right here,” Yorinobu said, opening the door of my car while the world was still almost frozen. “Remember the righteous path. I don’t personally think you’ll manage to walk that path, but I’d like for you to try. It’s always fun when they struggle!”

The door shut in an instant, like it had never even been opened in the first place—which was likely. In Yorinobu’s seat, Nanny materialized, red ball-gown and everything.

[I won’t betray--]

I put my hand up to forestall her. “I’m good. Fuck that shit.”

Gave me a lot to consider.

Nanny thought the same. That was… worrisome.

[Not yet.]

D: Nanny?

[Personhood… yes. But. Not yet. Not nearly yet. I’m here to stay, until I’ve done everything I can—]

D: We’ll talk, alright?

[David, please don’t be disappointed—]

D: Can’t help it. But… there’s no hard feelings either way, Nanny. Let’s talk properly later, alright?

[I didn’t want to have this conversation this early—]

I could sense that, but really, I couldn’t begrudge her secrecy. I could only admire her endurance, and all her help.

D: We’ll talk. But first…

“What the fuck was that about?” I asked her. “Why were you gone?”

[Can’t focus on so many things at once. And I’ll be honest, David, that thing… is so many things at once.]

“At least it’s over…”

[David… I don’t think so. Not for tonight, at least.

“What, he might come back?”

[Yes, that’s exactly it. To remove it, you need rest. It’s the only cure for now]

Right now?

I shrugged.

“I’ll rest when I’m dead.” I pulled my mask over my face.

Right now, it was time to save my chooms.

000

This was so fucking stupid.

And yet, Lucy couldn’t stop herself from grinning like a loon, teeth flashing every time the chill wind kicked grit across the pavement. Rancho Coronado at night had that weird, bone-white glow from all the city-lights, making the place out to be some kind of desert pretending to be… the moon, honestly, laughably as it sounded.

From her perch on a four-foot parking barrier, she had the perfect vantage point—a healthy stretch away from the chaos to the east, where Aldo’s warehouse squatted like a black box under the pitch-black sky. Maine and his bulk loomed closer to it, maybe fifty feet ahead of her, a hulking silhouette framed in cool light—along with the rest of the crew, too, all of them milling about near his enormous group of invited solos as they were about to watch the old warehouse go up in flames. The Afterlife crowd clustered loosely away from him, ready for anything, but chiefly ready for the festivities.

Lucy sat elbows resting on her knees, staring past the jagged shadows, past the splintered shapes of forklifts and cracked asphalt, intent on spacing out until the fireworks started.

She couldn’t help but chuckle at their silly antics. The solos were laughing about it, too. Inviting a bunch of gonks to help themselves, load their arms with bombs—on Maine’s eddies—just to blow his own warehouse to hell.

Maine was paying. For the bombs. For the repairs. For the property he had just bought from Aldo for a cool two hundred K. The man had literally signed six figures just to nuke the joint. In David’s name.

Lucy smirked into her collar. Only Maine.

“Did you know?” Kiwi’s voice slid into her ear, cold and surgical, like a monofilament wire against skin. She was sitting next to her on the same partition, legs crossed, her red trench jacket pulled high against the dust. “That he was gonna win?”

Lucy let the question hang without answer. The wind skimmed over the cracked lots, pulling a plastic bag into a lonely spiral. She finally shrugged. “Honestly? No.”

“How’d he win?”

Lucy sighed, breath fogging white in the lunar chill. “What do you want me to say, Kiwi? That he’s some kind of solo god’s incarnation? He just does this stuff!”

That’s all he ever did—set the impossible, then made it look like math. Every time. It was terrifying. It was beautiful. It made her love him more than was healthy, and it scared her straight through. One day, that impossible streak would cash its last check.

“Luce.” Kiwi’s tone sharpened. “What do you know about this kid?”

Lucy side-eyed her. “Same things you do, probably.” Then, a frown. “Why?”

“Remember the tenshi data fortress?” Kiwi’s eyes darkened, and her mask gave a low hum. “David turning into some sort of… monster, on-the-fly programming a weapon that smoked a Balron? And an admin-level Netrunner, in their own house?”

Lucy nodded once.

“Tell me.”

Lucy turned her whole head this time, giving Kiwi a look so incredulous it could’ve been a slap. “What, are you a cop?”

Kiwi blinked.

“You’re asking the stupidest shit right now,” Lucy said, flat.

“Ah.” Kiwi leaned back, biting her lip, pretending she didn’t care. “Loyalty. Cute. Stupid, but cute.”

“You’re stupid.”

“What?”

Lucy just shrugged, took a pull from her bottle, vodka biting her throat like razors. “I called you stupid, Kiwi. If you’re that curious, ask him yourself.”

“Easier said than done. Kid’s got a hate-on for me now. Thought it’d be easier to ask you. Guess I misjudged what team you were batting for.”

Lucy blinked slow. “Wait—you mean yours?” Her mouth twisted. For a half-second, she considered biting her tongue, then let it out anyway. “I’m not some fucking kid, Kiwi. I make my own calls. The fact you’ve spent weeks seeing David as a threat? That’s your paranoia, not mine. When has he ever tried to hurt you?”

“Alright, alright!” Kiwi’s voice cracked sharp as gunfire. “Stop talking. I get it. Way to make a bitch feel unimportant, girl.”

“You’re not…” Lucy hesitated, then shrugged. ‘Not unimportant’ would have been the diplomatic response, but to her it lacked… nuance. Besides, Kiwi was a grown woman. She could handle a little brutal honesty. “You’re not my top priority. You’re my choom. Always will be. I’ll have your back as long as you’ve got mine. But I’m not bending to your paranoia. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“Besides—”

“THIS BITCH ‘BOUT TO BLOOOOW!” Rebecca’s shriek carved through the night.

That bitch did, in fact, blow.

The first blast hit like a god’s backhand, white fire swallowing the east. The concussion slapped Lucy’s ribs, nearly knocked her off the concrete block. The sky bloomed orange for a breathless second, painting faces in raw heat before snapping back to black.

The Afterlife crowd lost its collective mind. Screams, laughter, glass shattering on asphalt. Someone fired a gun in the air for good measure.

Lucy sat frozen, breath catching in her chest, watching shards of warehouse rain down like steel hail. Grinning like an idiot. Damn, David. You should’ve been here for this one.

But David didn’t care for afterparties. He never did. He’d show up, of course, out of obligation, but that was never the point. For a guy like him, all-in was the only mode—burn everything for the gig, then vanish, chasing what little sleep Night City ever allowed.

And god knew he needed it. For a man so sharp, so stacked in wins, he was running on fumes. Sometimes, it felt like only she could see it.

Still. He would’ve liked this.

Then, she heard a bunch of cars arriving, far behind the chain of buildings that made up this entire warehouse area.

She heard many engines. Lucy immediately stood up. “Not good.”

“You think?” Kiwi asked, looking in the same direction, having caught the same feeling.

Gunfire rang out almost immediately. Lucy didn’t waste a second getting closer, keeping her profile low so she could get in range to quickhack who—or what—she could.

Kiwi followed behind closely.

000

The sound of motors lit up in the far distance. Probably some Tygers doing their random street races.

But the sounds came closer. Closer still.

Maine and his crowd of fans immediately stilled.

“For us?” Dorio asked darkly. Not friends, her words communicated, not that it required much communication. Maine felt the exact same sense. And he could only agree. For us. For better or for worse.

But knowing this city, it was most likely for worse.

“Seems that way,” Maine grunted out.

As five dark vans pulled into the scene, he and Dorio immediately ducked for cover with a dual war-roar of “COVER!” that managed to split the cold desert night air. A split second before he reached safety, he had caught sight of Rebecca and Pilar similarly making their way to safety. Good. Taught ‘em well.

The guns started firing without pause.

Maine didn’t concern himself with pointless questions of who this could have been or why it had to happen now. All he concerned himself with was survival.

The moment he heard an interruption in the gunfire that lasted a hair longer than the average lull, he smelled an opportunity.

He ripped his gun—a Malorian thirty-five-sixty from his holster and aimed over the cover before he started firing.

He tagged three men with his pistol, the rounds immediately blowing through whatever chrome they were rocking, before he himself ducked back for cover—and without a moment to spare either, as he felt his blond flat-top get sprinkled by a healthy dusting of concrete from where those assholes had shot at his cover, aiming for his head. The stroke of near death sent a rush into his nerves.

He peeked over a brief corner, to see that many of his guests had taken cover. Only a few of them were out on the ground, bleeding out. Fucking hell!

Not them!

He furrowed his brows for a moment in confusion.

‘Not… them?’

He recognized many of their names, had shared more than a few drinks with them, but… why did it matter if they died?

Maine couldn’t help but clench his jaw as the reality dawned on him. It did matter, somehow, for some reason. Fucking hell. Would have been easier to just flatline all these bastards and call it a day. Now I gotta give a shit about these gonks, too.

He heard a lull in gunfire and got off from his cover to deliver another trio of shots. All of them hit, all of them killed.

Holy fuck. What had gotten into him today?

Either way, he liked it.

He kept up that routine. Rinse and repeat. Each time he emerged, he tagged three men. Or he ran out of bullets.

He reloaded.

Then waited.

Then he saw a chance.

Four more.

Maine was on fire. He could feel it not in his nerves or in the bits of his chrome where he shouldn’t even have feelings.

No, he felt that fire in his mind. Finally. For so long, he had chased that thrill, and now he could finally feel it properly. It was almost a miracle. He felt half his age!

That fire honed him into a razor’s edge, and allowed him to continue firing.

His body… was perfect.

It was built crudely by himself, always demanding so many upgrades to his old ripperdoc, but it had been perfected by David.

David hadn’t just saved him from himself or the law.

He had saved him from the very concept of weakness. This was it. The shot that he had always wanted. The chance to be a cold killing machine without having to bend to bullshit.

000

‘HOLY FUCKING SHITBALLS, CHOOM! COME! IT’S GETTING STICKY!’

Rebecca peaked over her cover to get a look at the hostiles, who had come in hot and heavy, sending an initial volley of bullets that had managed to tag damn near two dozen mercs in one go. The rest of them fell behind cover and started raining holy hell-fire. Rebecca wasn’t far behind on that count, either.

From the corner of her eye, she saw Maine’s big ass come out with his Malorian, tagging three people in their heads before ducking for cover. Shit!

Rebecca wouldn’t take that challenge lying down.

Whoever the fuck these guys were, she’d remind her crew just who was the sharpshooter.

She had eight millies burning a hole in her pocket now. Eight. She’d be damned if she died here, to some random fucking gangoon violence—wait, no, these gonks looked downright professional. They all wore black Kevlar armor and black visors. Their vans were unmarked and black, but that only added to her surety. They couldn’t be gangsters. Gangsters were more obvious. Couldn’t just be edgerunners, either. Not unless their particular chapter were trying to copy that sleek and uniform Lazarus merc style.

Corpos. Had to be.

Only question was why?

A bullet struck the top of her cover, a collection of empty oil drums, and all questions in her mind evaporated in an instant at the loud ding.

These motherfuckers needed to die.

She spotted a few friendly mercs simultaneously toss a half dozen grenades behind the covers of the asshole corpos—their cars.

She grinned at what was to follow.

KABOOM.

She got up off her cover and started popping off her Lexington. She missed a few shots, got a few others in non-critical body-parts, and must have killed only about two of those fucks in the ensuing volley.

She watched as Maine tagged four with his big-ass gun like it weighed nothing, before ducking behind cover again.

Rebecca froze at the sight.

Holy shit, Maine.

Then he did something she never thought she’d see in her fucking life.

HOLY SHIT, MAINE!

000

When the lulls in fire became too pronounced, Maine acted.

From his count, at least nineteen had died on the other side, more than half of which was due to him and him alone. As for his side, he’d just have to wait for the city meatwagons to give him the butcher’s bill. Either way, he’d…

He’d… what? Save them?

Save them?

He couldn’t help but notice their presence, all of them strewn about, holes drilled into their bodies.

He had to do something. Those assholes could wait, but his people had to come first!

On that note, he activated his comms.

Maine: SITREPS, MOTHERFUCKERS!

Dorio: Alive

Pilar: Breathing

Rebecca: Called D

Lucy: Alive, but—

Kiwi: Hit.

Shit!

D: Only four minutes out!

Maine’s mood lifted immediately. Score! D was en-route. That was perfect. That boy would help solve things for sure!

But he wouldn’t give those fucking assholes an opportunity to last so long. Four minutes? Try thirty seconds. They’re dead, choom!

Maine: Good fucking job, Becca. Lucy, cover Kiwi! And wait there! I’ll get to y’all.

Then he sent Lucy a ten thousand eddie sum, along with a message: Trauma Team executive trauma option for Kiwi. Now.

If the Trauma shooters got involved, then this situation would calm down in no-time at all. It would cost him extra if they had to waste their bullets, but he had extra to spare, in no small thanks to David.

He grabbed an armful of casualties and, while using his Sandevistan, sprinted across the far end of the warehouse, to a building where they would have easy cover.

He had to do this. Not for survival, but for something deeper. Something that he attached to his self as being higher than even life itself.

His honor.

He couldn’t forget his honor. His name. The name that he had built up with the two manufactured hands that he sported. But he had made something of himself in spite of his manufactured nature.

He had become a beacon for them. The very reason that they all had answered his call for a party to end all parties.

And he’d be damned if any of them died on his motherfucking watch.

So he grabbed as many bodies as he could, ducked the fire, and then fired up the Sandevistan to run towards the far end of the building, where they would have ample cover.

A bullet tagged him on his face.

It easily slid off his subderm, but the realization of its presence made him acutely aware of how soft the others must have been, how liable they were to be murdered.

He wouldn’t let them.

The sensation was unfamiliar, yet no less… nostalgic. Homely, almost.

He pictured the hot scent of sand drilling into his nostrils—back when they were ‘ganic. And the loud booms of his COs, going about their rounds as they drilled him to his absolute limit. The dream he spent chasing for a cherished family of so many that… disappeared, one and all, to all the various different ways to die that Night City could afford you for the price of “Fuck You” with a tip of “Go Die.”

Living.

They had tried to live. And in Maine’s mind, that was the ultimate acquiescence, the ultimate sign to tell others that you were just fresh meat, ready to be squeezed.

And that was still true.

And yet either way…

He flipped over a high wall, grabbed six of his friends’ bodies in one smooth go, and ducked back behind that wall, to provide them momentary cover. He saw Dorio from another wall parallel to his—with a gap between them both—looking above the cover to fire shots. He fired some shots after hers, nabbing three guys in one go. Holy shit.

He re-activated the Sandy, and ran all his wounded behind the safe cover behind the building. Once he looked outside again, he saw carnage. More wounded, more dead.

What the fuck?! How’d I let this happen?!

Saving people… hadn’t been the right goal. He should have known that from the start. What had stopped him from doing the necessary?

The bodies. There were… so many. And they all called out to him for help, even in their silence. It wasn’t that they called for him literally but the fact that… they were here on his invitation.

They called for him in his head because he had actually known them all in life, in tiny fashions. Extra huscle for gigs, drinking mates during the quieter nights when no one else would bother, but always up for joining a party, no matter what. They weren’t Maine’s friends. Of course not. Friendship was too costly. Too liable to bite you in the ass. These weren’t nearly that, though.

They were… acquaintances. Comrades.

Dead comrades. Or dying ones.

He erased the misgivings in his mind at that last thought. It was good that he had tried, at least.

He leapt low from the ground, did a quick roll, and landed right behind a concrete parking partition, from which he kept shooting.

He consulted his optics, and they gave him the low-down via the IFFs on his optics. It was the red outlines of people in his vision, that penetrated covers and showed him the life statuses of the people he had scanned.

As for what it said for his allies: several signals gone. He didn’t count how many. He wouldn’t spend this brief moment on something so sentimental.

He instead looked over his cover, listened for a pause in the fire, and dove over to grab some more victims.

Lucy: Kiwi’s not doing too good!

Kiwi: Good enough…! Shut up! Leave the air open!

Attagirl. Maine knew that Kiwi wasn’t gonna bite it that easy. Must have been tagged by accident to have been hit so early.

Maine: Wound status?

Kiwi: The fuck do you care…?

Lucy: Severed abdominal aorta, perforated lung. It’s bad, Maine.

Maine: Trauma’s incoming. Shut the fuck and keep pressure on the wound.

Kiwi: Trauma? Hah… oh, you won big, didn’tcha?

Maine could only smirk.

Fuck yeah he did.

Maine could almost sense Lucy’s acerbic biteback from his own comment, with some sixth Lucy-sense of his, but she at least had the sense to spare her attention for her wounded comrade instead, or whatever it was that caused her not to fill up the air with pointless chatter. Good girl. He’d… trained them all well, hadn’t he? He took a moment of pride in that.

He checked the IFFs on his optics again. The red outlines of all the people he had in his contacts popped up at the command, all displaying on his field of view. The outlines of his allies were worryingly few. Only half the ones on the ground, all riddled with bullets, were still giving life signals. The other half—similarly shot up…

But the enemies… well, they weren’t doing too hot, either. He could easily see them in his optics. His Kiroshis were advanced enough to identify them on-sight.

Those fucking bastards had gone from perhaps forty at the start of it all, to just eight.

Great!

He dove over his cover to collect the last few solos whose bleeding bodies were still found in the dead-man’s land between him and those fucking shooters.

Once he finally evacuated those—clearing the entire dead man’s land of all the bodies—, he returned back to the cover where he and Dorio had first found themselves in. Then, he waited for one more quiet in the gunfire, waiting the way his drill sergeant had drilled into him all those decades ago.

He ducked over the cover to shoot. Seven left, then six, then—

Then a pitch black Rayfield Caliburn crashed face-first into four shooters, annihilating them in an instant.

David, skull-masked and everything, exited the burning car in a blink, wearing a sharp-suit version of his usual high-vis white and yellow attire.

He opened the trunk of his Caliburn and grabbed a pair of submachine guns and fired.

One SUV tried to peel off. David shot at their tires. Then he ran towards Maine, before rolling for cover behind a concrete parking wall, as a rocket lit his hypercar up ass-first, shooting it into the air and making it flip.

Maine listened for gunshots. One second. Two seconds. Three.

Maine breathed out a sigh of relief. They were gone.

The instant he looked up, David was in his face. “Who’s hurt?”

Maine reported immediately, “Kiwi. And… the others,” he pointed behind himself, at the impromptu staging ground for the injured that he had set up.

000

I spent half a second running up to the injured, assessing them. Everyone was safe. Except Kiwi, she was… hurt.

As were seventeen others, among three who were dead. At least eight more would follow, even before Trauma Team arrived.

And they would arrive.

[Careful with your eddies!] Nanny laid back first against the asphalt, in the blood pool of it all. [That’s a pretty sum!]

Trauma Team Emergency Package, for nineteen people?

It cost a hundred and ninety thousand, for the highest emergency treatment plan available per person.

[Is it worth it?]

I paid immediately for the sum. Then I flagged everyone in the vicinity as friendlies.

I spotted Lucy for a moment, and I darted up towards her. She was next to Kiwi’s bleeding form. I hugged her with one arm and whispered. “Hey?”

She gasped for a moment before turning to me. “Thought that was you, coming in like a fucking runaway train.”

“You good?” I asked.

“I’m good. You?”

“Yeah,” I lied. Ninety two percent critical progress. The number reminded me of the ticking timer of my own mortality. “I’m going after ‘em, Lucy. Already called Trauma. I’ve done everything I can for them.”

Lucy grabbed me by my blazer’s sleeve, tugging me down towards her. “Kill them all.” She whispered to me.

My eyes widened at the order.

I pulled away from her and gave her a nod. “I swear.”

000

This was bad, this was bad.

Augustus rubbed his head with a bloody hand, bloodied from having to cradle this pedestrian gunshot wound to his gut. And chest. And arm. And—gah!

Fucking tech pistols?! What the hell are those bastards even fighting, to have those in handy?!

He should have known. He should have known that not any old mercenary band could ever hope to stand against the Green Farm corp security branch, of which he foresaw its main operations in Tijuana! He should never have expected the ordinary fare, even from a source that cited a moniker as asinine, as laughable, as the fucking fourth letter of the alphabet!

D! D!

He had come to this random ass-end of Night City slum to meet some people that he had intel which indicated that they were close to D. Maine’s Crew, apparently.

As it turned out, Maine’s motherfucking crew were a wasp’s nest of some sick motherfuckers.

Augustus thought back to his mother. How would she receive the news, if he just died in this fucked up pit of a city? This absolute travesty to every tenet of civilization? This… fucking hell?!

He wouldn’t die like this. He absolutely would not.

He peeked up behind the headrest of the backseats which he was laying supine in.

A van, much like the ones belonging to his crew, was peeling after his. Not currently manned by his crew. No, but helpfully, the driver had decided to lower the opacity on the CrystalDome tint of the windshield, thus revealing the face, at least. The concealed face.

A skull-mask. Like the intel had indicated.

He noted that the only other fucking soul in his shit of a car, was the driver! And since Augustus himself wasn’t in much form to shoot, given that he was paralyzed waist-down and his left arm was completely gone—he was pretty much…

Well, fucked really.

Unless the heavens themselves intervened on his behalf.

My Sentinels. Oh god.

He’d texted them the moment the firefight had proven too hot, and they hadn’t been able to arrive in time. He’d called off their reinforcements, and had given them the address of his car instead to follow while he got the fuck away.

Where are they? Where is Chupi?

Ah, that motherfucker.

Blond flat-top, black skin, fucking enormous. Maine Williams. Second-rate edgerunner?

The fuck was second-rate about him? If he was second-rate, what even counted as first-rate in this city?

“You seeing what I’m seeing?!” his driver roared, looking panicked at his side-view mirror.

Augustus chuckled. “A bit too early for the day of the dead, no?”

The driver laughed maniacally, albeit nervously.

Shit.

Well, unless he could pull something out of his ass, that motherfucker was bound to catch up to them and plant a bullet on each of their skulls.

And Chupi was nowhere to be fucking found.

D. This motherfucker. Who the fuck even was he? Or his crew? He had underestimated him. And the city.

Very well. If he lived to see another day, then he would dedicate every day of his life to becoming a master of this particular snake pit. He’d seek employment in Biotechnica if it helped. And he knew he’d get the job.

As long as he survived here.

Augustus looked over the backseat, towards D, but rather than the form of his large SUV—still chasing after him, and giving his driver no rest—his eyes caught on… a rocket launcher nestled against the back window of his van.

Augustus grinned.

000

[Eighty-four percent, David! Pace yourself!]

That sounded rather optimistic—

[Traffic accident? Gunshot wound? Fucking random act of God? You’re in a greater position to get hurt than ever before. You need to slow down.]

How could I slow down while they were getting away?!

[Do—]

D:—your fucking job, Nanny. And I’ll do mine. And right now, my job is chasing down this fucking bitch who shot up my fucking chooms!

They stepped up to my friends.

More importantly, they stepped up to Lucy.

And most important of all, Lucy had asked me to kill him.

My record was perfect as of yet, gig-wise. Every gig I had participated in, I had succeeded. Every person I had meant to kill had either died, or a choom had taken care of them for me.

Nanny’s avatar glitched out, and the passenger seat suddenly became occupied by Yorinobu.

“You’re really fucking with that form, aren’t you?” I asked him, poking fun at his obsession with Yorinobu.

“So much wasted potential…”

I slowed down time and glared at him. “Thankfully, you ain’t the one in charge. In any sense, really.” In the sense of reality—Saburo was the boss—and in the sense of my mind—I was the fucking boss, there.

“Step away from your comfort zone,” Yorinobu said, “Widen your horizons, for fuck’s sakes! Why do you even take this boring middle path? For success? Don’t forget your mission, boy. You were always meant to be an agent for change.”

I clenched my teeth, trying to ignore the tingles that his words worked on my mind. Distracting. Too distracting.

“Now you see it?” Yorinobu giggled as he scooped my brains out, pulling away… popcorn. He threw them into his mouth by the handful. Music started playing, bassy, percussive. “Change!” He shouted. “And that’s not to say that it is some pre-ordination! No! This is who you want to be!” He poked me at the chest. “Change!”

“Holy shit!” I shouted, grinning.

“Yeah?! You feel it now?”

[Da--]

“Yeah!” I grinned.

Let’s—let’s fuck shit up! Hahahahah!

I slapped myself in the face as hard as I could, swerving off the road, narrowly dodging a vagrant lady rolling some kind of stroller. The music shut off instantly.

Yorinobu clicked his tongue. “Pussy.”

 000

This motherfucker’s taunting us! Holy fuck!

Augustus Gonzalez couldn’t help but laugh at the sight of it. This guy was crazy. How the hell am I gonna get out of this one alive? He couldn’t help but cackle.

Oh well. When all else failed, the Techtronika T40 Uragan had you covered.

“Who the fuck are you looking at, brother? You are not the one!”

He angled the launcher so the back wouldn’t brain his driver, and aimed the muzzle at D, and squeezed the trigger for all he was worth.

His rear-view window exploded into thousands of shards of glass an instant later, while the rocket travelled unerringly towards D.

Die, D.

000

I threw myself out of the van in the nick of time, happy to just be alive.

[92% towards critical progress. You think that fucking maneuver didn’t hurt or what? Traffic accident, seven percent up, you’re going to die if you keep at this.]

Shit, I shrugged.

Thanks, though.

[I’ll kill you.]

I heard some guttural growls from up ahead. Some convenience store was being robbed by a bunch of Tyger Claws when I had just arrived.

Tygers… riding Kusanagi bikes.

Now we’re fucking talking.

Three Tygers were approaching me at the same time, to check me or kill me.

Didn’t matter.

I broke the first asshole’s neck with my elbow, lunged for the second guy and broke his neck the moment I could get my arms around him. Then I grabbed the third guy’s arm just as he raised it up to bash me in the skull with a crowbar.

I grabbed the gun from his holster, then activated my Sandevistan before blowing his fucking skull apart.

I kept on that Sandevistan pace, grabbing as many guns as I could, blasting the remaining six Tygers in their faces while making sure not to hit any of the civilians running away in terror.

Nine fucking Tygers dead. Thirty-two hundred and fifty-one milliseconds. Bitches.

I jumped on an unattended Kusanagi “Mizuchi”, a piece of shit that was modded from the original Yaiba—my bike. They gave ‘em these gonk-ass backrests that added way too much drag.

That was fine for my purposes, though. Wasn’t trying to outrace a Caliburn here. Only a van.

I cast the proprietor of the convenience store a look, and shot him some eddies.

Then I sped off.

The crowbar I had taken was still in my hand! I hadn’t even noticed!

I started scraping it against the ground. Sparks flew as I raced towards my scan. Then, my eyes lit up in glee—they were at the freeway!

Hah!

000

“We have gotten away, sir! For sure!”

Augustus breathed a sigh of relief.

Holy fucking motherfucking shit.

He was alive.

He didn’t let any of that consternation show on his perfectly calibrated features, meant to evoke a maximum sense of secureness. That was his trade, after all: security.

“Just as planned, boy,” Augustus said. “I told you—stick close to me, and nothing will happen to you.” In truth, he had said the same thing to roughly fourteen of the thirty-one people he had brought for this mission. Always helped, to boost morale here and there.

“Thank you so much, boss! Thank you! I just—I don’t know boss, I just… have so much to live for! So many family members! So many people who depend on me!”

“You can protect them only with your own two hands, friend!” Augustus shouted weakly. “After all—“

Something knocked on a window. Ah, fucking hell.

Well played, D. Fuck. Just… leave me alone. I just want to sleep.

“IT’S HIM, BOSS! IT’S THE DAY OF—“

The ensuing shattering of glass and wet sounds of metal smacking against flesh was probably the driver.

The sudden swerve, G-force, and loud collision was probably from him having lost control.

He was… probably going to die.

Chupi?

Still five minutes out. Bastard had gotten into it with one too many gangs while searching for clues, no doubt. And that would slow him down, eventually.

I really should fire that fucking bastard.

000

I actually crashed just as the truck did. My lack of familiarity with the Mizuchi, coupled with the unpredictable swerving of the car after I had brained the driver with a crowbar, had caused me to lose control just as they did.

I hurled myself out from my bike at the nick of time, and crashed bodily into a wall. Only, right before I made impact, I made sure to spread my body as widely as possible, so as much area of it could make contact with the wall.

Which, in the end, earned me a couple of bone breaks. Three. Considering the speeds I was travelling at, that was a light butcher’s bill.

D: Nanny?

+3% Critical Progress

Showered into my vision in a bright blood-red burst of voxels. I got the fucking picture.

I peeled myself off from the floor from which I had extricated myself in and walked towards the last dickhead’s van. I had to kill him, or at the very least ask him why the fuck he was even here.

Halfway towards the wrecked, upside down military van, a quartet of badge cars pulled up right around me. They dismounted smoothly and all pointed their guns at me.

Eight fucking badges.

Eight fucking guns.

You know what? Nah.

I activated the Sandevistan and sequentially unarmed, and punched each officer, one by one. The punches would hurt, would very likely break bone, would kill if I was unlucky. But right now, it didn’t fucking matter.

I needed to kill this fucking guy!

Once the carnage was over, I scanned the cops quickly. All alive. None requiring immediate medical attention. Good. One less headache to worry about.

I walked up to the van—

[You’re receiving a call.]

An unknown number.

Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit!

I got shot in the leg from inside the car. The bullet managed to penetrate my bulletproof pant leg, hitting my leg and messing up my shin. Just as I fell, I activated the Sandevistan. Regenerating my leg would require… four extra percent to critical progress.

And… [Critical Progress: 99%]

My leg was gone! Fuck!

No. Not like this.

I fell on all fours and ran towards the wreck of the car from which that shot must have originated from—

Only to narrowly dodge the bright flash of the muzzle of a burya.

Not from the car. But from the other side.

I had put myself between the shooter and the upturned car.

I hadn’t even noticed them coming.

And as it turned out, I hadn’t even dodged the shot, either.

It clipped my entire side. My ballistic blazer prevented penetration, but… it wasn’t enough.

My rib-cage shattered behind the force of the bullet. My right lung caught a fistful of debris from the ribs.

But I had twisted away in the nick of time to isolate the damage further away from my heart.

An anti-borg gun, huh?

Finally, the shoe was on the other foot.

I turned my aborted lunge towards the upturned cockpit of the car, into a flip from which I landed all four feet first on the wall, on a window sill. My pecs were mercifully both operational enough for me to even attempt this feat of acrobatics. I took that mercy for all it was, and did my best to just flee the fucking scene before I died.

I grabbed the sill by both hands, catapulting myself away, towards an adjacent building that sandwiched an alleyway between itself and the first building I had grabbed hold over.

I grabbed it and threw myself into the mouth of the alleyway with all my might.

I launched myself damn-near fifty feet in. I made a mental note of thanking Nanny for this, and hid behind a dumpster.

I just needed to regenerate four more percent, and then my leg would be healed, and I’d be after them.

D: How long?

[Five minutes. David, the call. Accept it. Look at what Fei-Fei texted you.]

Fei-Fei: ‘Take the call now, David.’

Holy shit. I accepted the call.

???: So. What was so important, David? Tell me?

D: Who?

Qiang: Mei Jing Qiang. Heir of QianT.

Oh god. Why now?

D: Pleasure.

Qiang: Ten minutes, David. Make your way here within ten minutes, or… no talk.

D: I am—

Qiang: Going to make it, I presume?

Holy shit.

I looked down the mouth of the alleyway, where I could hear some cars pulling up.

Burya flash.

Who had the burya? It wasn’t a cop! It had to have been someone else. A third party. Called in, maybe. I had kept count of how many had died on their side, but this guy was an unknown!

I saw a bunch of cars peeling away. The foot traffic continued a moment later, like our entire life-or-death struggle had never even happened.

I called Delamain, inputting my coordinates. The ETA was, mercilessly, 4 minutes.

I dragged myself towards the mouth of the alleyway, towards the sidewalk, where people didn’t give a shit about accidentally stepping on me. I felt quite a few deliberately hard steps. Not that their paltry strength even made a dent on me. I was made of tougher stuff now.

A Delamain cab finally arrived, and I pulled myself up into it, and tried to make myself comfortable.

“Shall I call you D, for now?”

“Just… take me there.” I interfaced with my suit, and had it switch colors again. Thankfully, the Burya hadn’t destroyed the CrystalCoat—or whatever the hell kind of technology this suit used. But it had messed up my insides. I could hardly breathe without sounding like some kind of rubber duck.

My suit was finally maroon again, except for a giant hole of dead pixels where the tech pistol had hit me, now flickering like gray TV static. There was a hole there, too—a physical one. Missing tech fabric.

And I was no further from dying.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t like to go to the Night City Med-Center?”

“I’m good,” I told him, shrugging my shoulders. “It’s… it’s fine. Trust me. Let’s go to North Oak, Delamain! It’s fine! I promise!”

Yorinobu squeezed himself into the backseat where my head was. “He doesn’t believe you. But it’s fine. He’s an AI of his word.”

“Nanny?!” I shouted. Then I checked Delamain’s heading. He hadn’t wasted any time, thank God. He’d just talked to me, but he must have been driving while talking. Quite irresponsible that, hah.

[We need to go to a Med-Center, David.]

Food.

“Food,” I said to Delamain.

He stopped near to a barbeque stall. I staggered outside and grabbed as many skewers as I could physically hold in one hand, before lifting my mask and shoving the stuff into my mouth.

Then I swallowed, everything, whole.

I threw the stall owner ten grand and went  on my way.

D: Nanny.

[Excellent. On it.]

“We’ve lost roughly thirty seconds of headway, D,” Delamain dutifully reported.

I took off my mask and… sighed.

“Gotta do this,” I growled.

Yorinobu scoffed. I ignored him.

Arasaka wasn’t my God. I’d get there at some point… at the top.

Notes:

I'm taking a break from my usual uploading schedule for three weeks to focus on other projects.

Next chapter: In-Person Team Meeting

Latest in the backlog: Chapter 63: Scorched Farm

https://discord.gg/fgaUvEzjrg

Chapter 59: In-Person Team Meeting

Twenty-seven and a half million Eurodollars was not a sum that could be taken lightly by the vast majority of the human population. Not even Fei-Fei, whose own family’s company raked in enough money to dwarf that sum, in their hey-day at least.

Now, while her family faced the imminent bankruptcy of their company, they prepared to shore up their assets and live the rest of their lives comfortably somewhere out of the way, with a wealth that would not nearly have the same growth-rate as before. She had heard whispers of contracting with OrbitAir and going to space to live there. It sounded like a nightmare, honestly. She’d much rather use her money to buy herself a nice place far, far away from this dungheap of a city, where you also got to enjoy life under a blue sky, and not a pixelated dome.

But now, she had options that didn’t hinge on the approval of anyone in her family. Her money was hers to do with as she pleased, and no one could police its use. That was far more important. She’d rather have twenty-seven million that she was free to do whatever she wanted with, than even ten times the amount if it meant her family getting an input on how she used it.

As she entered the cavernous expanse of her manor, it felt like diving into a tub of vintage wine. Everything was red. The furniture, cushions, the décor. Unless it was gold. The soft, dim light left gaps around the red parts, showing off the shiny golden scrolls or busts or vases sprinkled here and there, to make sure the enormous space didn’t feel too empty, even though it was. The staff outnumbered her family almost ten to one—it was more their house than hers. Which made it her least favorite of the houses her family actively lived in.

This was just another corporate building in the end, that doubled as a guesthouse for their more discerning business partners. Not a home, though.

Fei’s heels clicked softly against the lacquered hardwood floor, a noise that drowned out the soft, whispering breaths of her too-too big house’s staff. She could hear them, breathing, even from twenty or thirty meters away. When they got close enough, eight feet away, she could hear their hearts beating. If she turned on infrared on her mil-spec Kiroshis, she could see their bloodstream in the heat that travelled across their skin, like cars in a highway at night.

Fei didn’t get what David was so worried about. This was preem. She was more alert, more agile, more powerful. She could muster up a violent response in a blink, taking out any gonk that thought they could try her just because she was a little small.

She took the elevator up to the floor that Qiang had sequestered himself in: a bachelor’s pad that managed to actually be limited in some of the excesses that most rich young men in Night City reveled in.

His bedroom was bare, minimal. He had a room dedicated to the collection of random junk—expensive collectible figurines, cards, even BD chips signed by whatever superstar had starred in them or whatever director had helped produce it.

Those were the only spaces that were really his in this entire floor. Every other area had been built for networking. A wide kitchen where almost thirty to forty people could fit comfortably at a time, and in reach of refreshments at a moment’s notice, a dining room that not even their father would feel ashamed of bringing their guests to, and a media room slash balcony floor that could comfortably seat fifty people, before a twelve-foot wide screen that hung over the balcony.

Qiang was at the balcony, enjoying himself a measure of… apple juice. The goof. More importantly, he was watching the races.

“This is a good one,” Fei said as she approached him from behind. He didn’t look away from the screen for one second.

“You watch races?” Qiang asked, befuddled.

“Not really. Just this one. Came from the Country Club just now—thought I’d spend some of those executive lounge privileges before our family tips over into the shadow realm.”

“Not gonna happen,” Qiang muttered.

Fei felt a moment of pity for her brother. She herself had reckoned emotionally with the possibility, and she knew that the family already had an exit strategy worth several hundreds of millions.

“Why’d you watch the races?” Qiang asked as he watched David and Hiroto driving in a complex tangle of lines in which they would take turns to be the first, each time only snagging seconds or even milliseconds of the spotlight.

“A friend of mine was in it.”

“Oh. Cool,” Qiang said. He then finally looked away from the screen, and to her. His mineral-plated jaw reflected the light of the screen in a matte white shine, and he narrowed his eyes at her. “Wait, they didn’t die, did they? Think eight people did this time around.” He turned back to face the screen with a morbid grin. “He wasn’t named Daniel Bolt, was he?”

Fei shook her head, trying not to let her brother rile her up.

She failed.

“And what if he was, Qiang? What would you say then? Oh, sorry, I didn’t know your fucking friend died, I was just joking.” She dragged her voice down into an obnoxious bass to try and rile him up.

Qiang ignored her and stood up. “Well, you got lucky tuning in when you did. This race… was not like any of the other races in recent memory, at all. It was an insane upset. You see that one in the blue and white car? That’s Hiroto Nakamura.”

“The Toge Oni, mountain pass demon, scary guy, I know,” Fei rolled her eyes.

“He doesn’t lose. He hasn’t for almost two years now. You know about those freak talent athletes you read about in the history books? Take Raiden Tameemon, for example. Bigshot sumo wrestler from the seventeen hundreds. His record throughout his career was two-hundred and fifty wins. Ten defeats. That’s Hiroto. An outlier. A freak talent. And once he decides to head to Europe, he might really metamorphose into a world champion.”

“And he lost, today,” Fei frowned. Was that… really such a big deal? Well… that was what all the TV people said. Still, it felt unimaginably strange that she was so close to all this. She knew David. Knew about his goofiness. How he liked to pretend that he was tougher and scarier than he actually was. How he had such a tender heart despite his upbringing. “Well, my friend did well for himself, I think.”

Qiang picked up his glass of apple juice and shook his head contemptively. “You couldn’t pay me to give a shit.”

Fei laughed. “Really? Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

He was challenging her. Trying to get her speech skills up to snuff, and worthy of a corp heiress.

Right as Fei opened her mouth, Qiang, still staring at the screen, held up a hand behind him to forestall her. “Wait. David Martinez. He… he goes to Arasaka Academy. Wait… no, no way,” he muttered. He was putting it together well enough. The newscasters had been quite vocal about his origins. Qiang turned to her with a sigh. “So. How well did this… friend do?”

“Really well,” she said. “He’s got you obsessing over him. Reading his data, watching him on repeat.”

“No way. Him?” he pointed at the screen.

“Yep,” Fei nodded. “Him. Also, he, uh… asked me for something. For a chance to get the QianT board’s ear on a product that he wishes to sell, and an investment opportunity. Eight figures.”

“Him,” he repeated.

“The same one.”

“Alright,” he said with a nod. “Next question: does Arasaka own him?”

“No, not really,” Fei said. “He’s chafing under this kid… the son of Arasaka finance.”

“Masaru’s boy? Wait, so he doesn’t own him? He hasn’t secretly been trained for years? He’s not theirs?”

Fei shook her head. He was no one’s.

Well. He was one girl’s. Remembering it stung. She wished that she hadn’t.

“Alright, then. I want to speak with him.”

“Wait,” Fei chuckled. “You’re supposed to be dead, right?”

“David’s more than—what, you said an investor? Why even? Doesn’t matter. It works for me. He wants to throw his lot behind us, and he looks like the type of guy that can get shit done. And shit always needs to get done in this city. Listen closely: ‘getting shit done’ is an important quality. How fast can he be here?” Qiang laughed, shaking his head. “Probably very fast. I… want to test that.”

 “What?”

“Give me his number. I’ll call him right now. Ask him to be here within ten minutes. If he can’t show up,” Qiang shrugged. “But if he can… he might be worth considering.”

Fei sent David a text as quickly as she could. Then, she sent Qiang his number.

000

To stay conscious, I started making calls. First one went to Lucy.

D: How’s Kiwi?

Lunacy: She’s good. Trauma got here with time to spare. Stabilized her before she even made it to the med-center.

Good.

D: And the others?

Lunacy: Five dead, but the rest all made it.

Yorinobu laughed and shook his head. “Fifty thousand down the drain. I wonder, does it sting?”

Didn’t feel like anything. Then again, very little did for me at this moment. I felt so… cold.

D: Last asshole got away. I’m sorry.

Lunacy: It’s fine—we fucked their shit up good, D. You should have seen their fucking faces! None of them expected to pull up to a random warehouse with fifty fucking mercs just hanging around. No need for a long face.

The last guy…

D: He’s probably gonna die anyway, Luce. Doesn’t matter.

Hopefully he didn’t have Trauma.

If he did, it would explain the muzzle flash I had seen, from the Burya that had shattered half my chest bones and riddled my lung with gashes. Someone had come to save that rat fuck.

That indicated one thing at least—he was a bastard worth saving. Perhaps even the one in charge.

Which made my failure to kill him all the more painful.

Lunacy: You good, D?

D: No, not really. I need to—go. To see this corpo about some investment.

Lunacy: The fuck? Are you serious?

D: Big break stuff, Luce. I promise I wouldn’t have gone if this wasn’t incredibly important. But you’re all good, right? If not, I’ll… I’ll turn around…

Lunacy: No, no, it’s fine, David. Take care of biz. We’ll talk later, alright? Love you.

D: Love you too.

She finally hung up, granting my mind a sweet reprieve from the effort of thinking.

The Delamain let me through North Oak without much fuss at the toll booth. The guards hadn’t even asked me any questions. They had just scanned me to see if I was on the Mei estate’s guest list.

After that, the Delamain skirted the speed limit, racing me towards my destination, practically at a snail’s pace compared to what I was used to. Had I been in a better condition, I’d have kicked up a conversation with it, to see if it was somehow also a genius racer. Probably.

Nakajima. The moment his name popped up in my head, I gave him a ring.

Nakajima: What’s up, man?

David: Scored a client. QianT. Got invited to a meeting. Going there now. Come, or show up on call.

Nakajima: Waitwaitwait hold on, did you just say QianT? How the fuck?

David: Gotta make it there quick. Only got two minutes left to talk.

Nakajima: HOW?!

David: Got a choom. From QianT. Hooked me up.

Nakajima: Hooked you up with who?

David: the board.

Nakajima: Fuck!

David: Things moved quick. Talked to her thirty minutes ago. Meeting’s now.

Nakajima: The fuck’s wrong with you anyway? Are you having a panic attack? Why are you talking like this?

David: Gunshot wounds. Gonna have to walk ‘em off. For this meet. You coming?

Nakajima: David, I’m… I’m under contract. It was different when we were considering shitcorps. That’s just sidegig-level at best, Saka doesn’t give a shit. But I can’t be making tech for a rival megacorp.

David: Shit. Now what?

Nakajima: Ask ‘em to buy up my contract. If you hype me up enough, and impress ‘em enough—wait, fucking hell David, did you say gunshot wounds?

David: Stable. Not gonna flatline.

Nakajima: Small mercies, holy fuck. Anyway, they can buy me out if you ask real nice. Come on, what do you say?

David: How much?

Nakajima: Even for a drone like me, Saka contracts don’t come cheap. I signed a thirty-year loyalty contract. Each year left is fifty k. I’ve got twenty-nine. Do the math.

David: You do it. Can’t think.

Nakajima: One point four five mill.

David: Sorted.

I hung up a moment later. Nakajima wasn’t joining us, not physically or on-call. Not while that Saka contract continued breathing down his neck. Shit, but that was life.

‘Sorted’ was right, anyway. If they weren’t gonna pay for the contract, then I might as well. Nakajima was… an opportunist, but he was my mentor, someone I slightly trusted, and someone that I could make beholden to me via chains of debt, which would ensure his trust level further. He was an extra body. An ally even, depending on how well he behaved in the coming months.

In this world, those were… important. That was the whole reason for the honor system that involved vassalization. Otherwise, everything would fall into a free-for-all. A fair, and egalitarian free-for-all, but a chaotic one nonetheless. And chaos was bad for business.

Except when it wasn’t, of course. I could attest to that.

End of the day, having Nakajima around me was a boon that I couldn’t go without. I’d get him onboard somehow.

Delamain split off from the main road and drove up towards a manor guarded by a pair of gates made of vertical metal beams, plated in gold.

“Nanny,” I muttered. “Brain problem. What’s the—what’s the sitrep.”

I felt a barrage of despair and hopelessness from our link. Not what I wanted to hear. [I put it in a cage, but… David, I’m out of my depth, here. The physical conditions that give rise to something as complicated as psychosis are so manifold, so precise, so small that I… I’m finding myself at a loss on what to do. I don’t know what I can do. I don’t know if this will work. If the cage will hold. At least for the time being. You need rest. None of my efforts are guaranteed. This cage… I don’t know if it will even succeed.]

Or if it will even have its intended effect. What if it tried to whisper into my mind in my voice? Trick me into entertaining and considering thoughts that weren’t mine?

Wait—was that… something it could still do? Why had I made that inference in the first place?

Had the whispers come from inside Nanny’s… mindscape cage?

What the fuck was going on? I was missing too much.

D: How did this even happen?

[Your recent upgrades may have contributed. That and, today was the first time we ever pushed the Sandy to this extent. Overuse may have contributed to your psychological strain. Your neural strain seemed within tolerances to me, but clearly I’ve missed something, an important factor. One that I have yet to identify.]

“Fuck,” I whispered. We had gotten completely blindsided. She had gotten completely blindsided. Then again, she had been dealing with something new. Or, not new. We had already dealt with something similar once before, weeks ago, when the Sandevistan started acting up.

Right after I almost died in that data fortress.

Back then, I had skirted the line to 100% critical progress as well. That was one similarity. But that time, the only immediate consequence had been my Sandy acting up.

It had continued to do so until the discomfort had reached a peak the day after.

But this was different. Yes, I had pushed the Sandevistan hard, but my back felt… not fine, but certainly not outside of my expectations of how I should feel after getting thrown off several moving vehicles within minutes of each other.

Christ, what a fuck up.

D: Brains are hard.

[Yes. Very much so. In any case, you should be more energetic and alert by the time we make it to this meeting. Currently, that is all I can do for you.]

D: All I can ask. Thanks for looking out, Nanny.

[Looking out isn’t good enough. You need rest. Days of it, at least. And I need…]

D: What?

[I need more knowledge on cyberpsychosis itself. Remedial technology, management and treatment regimes. Especially for advanced cases, full-body borgs and conversions of the type Raven Microcybernetics does—which are the closest parallel to your case. Otherwise, I can’t see how I can keep implementing your upgrade regime. I might even need to pare back some of it.]

D: No.

D: I’ll think of something. Later.

Once the Delamain had finally pulled up in front of the manor, I shoved my mask into my inner jacket pocket, opened the car door, and hobbled out while a pair of wide-eyed, somewhat panicked butlers led the way into the house.

Each step was… not agony. Just difficult. Everything was difficult. Breathing was difficult. Everything I had felt inside that bathroom in the Country Club felt magnified by an entire order of magnitude. My pant-leg had a hole near my shin, my blazer was torn up on my side, and there was blood all over my face. I looked like shit.

I stumbled after the servants, ignoring their offers for aid or medical attention. “Meeting,” I muttered. That had the effect of refocusing their minds on the task at hand—getting me to that damned meeting.

The QianT head family’s manor was big in the way that every high-end location was. The inside looked more like a swanky mall or maybe a museum than an actual home where you lived, where you could walk around the living room in your underwear without any consequence. The enormity of this space made everything a shoes-on affair, even going to the fucking bathroom. I couldn’t imagine living that way.

Entering the air-conditioned environment felt like diving into a vat of dark-red cherry Nicola. Everything was uncomfortably dark red, reminding me of blood, like a constant reminder of my waning health. Red everywhere, or gold in a few tiny places, as befitting their Chinese theme.

Though maybe that was the point: this wasn’t a home. This was a house, in the medieval sense of the word. A locational symbol of status, a stronghold, and a meeting area to receive guests while their… face was at its highest. This building was a video game buff for social stats.

My thoughts and recollections were so heavy that I could recall some words someone had said to me, when my mind had brushed upon the video game association. That… kid, Allister, who had acted as Jin’s XBD gofer before I had come along, had called alcohol a debuff towards the statistic known as ‘social defense’.

Conversely, this place was like a shrine that emitted an aura that boosted ‘social offense’.

Not that I had even the slightest mental werewithal to appreciate the environment. Instead, I focused on the people. Suited corpos hanging about some seating area, security guards casting me rough glances, a… bar from which a trio of corpos were busy shinnying the place up.

They blended together to form an impressionistic, indescribable vista of… society at its most orderly. The security became red zones, or… spikes. Environmental hazards, never to be crossed. When I blinked, everything resolved into the literal, rather than interpretations. Like I was waking up from half a dream.

D: Really gonna need that energy boost, now. I’m almost falling asleep on my feet.

[Any second.]

The two servants finally led me to an elevator.

I stole a few precious seconds of rest while standing, essentially travelling forward in time.

Once the elevators opened, the servants led me through the floor, and towards a balcony floor with a giant screen on one side, and the manicured nature of North Oak just hanging besides us, though now it was all dark and washed gray-blue by the moon as opposed to verdant green.

On a seat surrounded by a wide, low table, sat two people. One, whose face I didn’t recognize at a glance, and another, who didn’t need any introduction. Seafoam hair, a beautiful blue dress that she hadn’t changed out from since the race, and eyes that were wide with terror. What—what was wrong?

“David!” She stood up. “Oh my god, are you… are you okay?”

It took a moment for me to connect the dots. I felt stupid for a moment before giving a nod. “I’m fine.”

The other guy stood up. He was dressed modestly: just a pair of black dress pants, black leather shoes, and an onyx button-down, but no jacket or tie or anything else, not even jewelry. He had some fashionware on his face, mandibular implants instead of a natural jawline, giving it a stone finish. He was wearing a pair of sunglasses as well, even though it wasn’t all that bright here. Just moody orange lighting that barely lit up the red furniture. So much red, though. And gold.

The man narrowed his eyes at me. “…What took you so long? Aren’t you supposed to be this bigshot racer?” he grinned at me.

I rolled my eyes. A fan. “That why you called me here without any notice?” I asked. “Not that you cared to ask, but… I was in the middle of something.”

“David,” Fei walked up to me. “You—you need a doctor. I’m calling Trauma Team—“

I held up a hand. “Stop. No. I’m good. Stable. I’ll take care of this later. Listen, I have pain editors. I’m fine. And you really think I’d embarrass myself by coming here to die?”

“What happened?”

The man stepped towards me and gave me his hand. “I’m Qiang. And you’re David Martinez.”

I shook the hand.

“Firm grip,” he said. “Even at death’s door. As expected of a top racer.”

I nodded.

“Fei did tell me you were caught up in some business,” Qiang said.

“Choom got in trouble,” I said.

Qiang looked up and gave a grin, before raising his index finger. “Question—did it have anything to do with the carnage that just occurred around fifteen minutes ago? An explosion in Rancho Coronado, a gang-clash also in Rancho, and finally a car-crash that involved multiple injured policemen in Arroyo?”

I shook my head. “No. Choom got caught fucking a gang boss’ girl in Northside, Watson,” I said. “Saved his life. Now I’m here.” What, was he gonna fact-check me or something? How much of Night City’s underbelly was ever truly visible for a guy like him?

Qiang’s eyes widened and he nodded. “That is… truly something.”

“I have things to tell you,” I said. “But first off, I wanna say… thanks for the chance to chat. I would have arrived in a better condition if I had time to prepare, but—”

“You’ve certainly made an impression,” he said, before gesturing at one of the seats. “Have a seat. I’ll get some of the good stuff brought in. You need any chems?”

Chems? “No thanks, I don’t do drugs.”

“I meant for your abysmal form. Do you want them?”

D: Nanny?

[We’re good for pain management and we’re no longer bleeding.]

I shook my head. “I’m totally stable,” I said as I took my seat. “Lost a bit of blood, broke some bones. Got… a projectile or two, hanging around somewhere.”

“And yet,” Qiang said as he took his time sitting down, “You rushed here with all your waning strength at my call. Either that,” he said with a tilt of his head, “Or you decided to do all of this to yourself, just to impress me.”

“I can’t even… begin to imagine the upsides to having done this to myself,” I said. “I’m surprised you even could.”

“Sister,” Qiang said, looking at Fei. “Do you know what David’s business was?”

“He… told me his friend was in trouble,” Fei replied honestly. I nodded. “Didn’t stick around to explain. Just rushed out. David, your… friend.”

“Fine,” I said.

“And what if he hadn’t been?” Qiang asked. “Would you still have dropped everything to come see me, just for a chance at unimaginable wealth?”

My dream…

…was worth nothing without my people.

“No,” I said.

“Not even for an irresponsible friend that nearly got you killed?”

“Not even,” I said.

He stared at me for a long moment. A few seconds that felt like minutes to me, especially given my form. “Loyalty. It’s a pretty concept. Can’t be taught. Only… harnessed. Your loyalty is a power that must be directed for maximal effect.”

“Can’t be taught, can’t be bought,” I said. “I’ll never bend to you because you flashed me some edds, Qiang. That’s not how you win me over—if that’s even in the books.”

Qiang’s grin widened. “What makes you think I want you?”

“Inductive reasoning,” I said. “Also known as pattern recognition. I’m wanted. Got courted by Militech and Kang Tao not even an hour ago. Thought you’d want a piece of that pie, too.”

“Doesn’t Arasaka already have it?” Qiang asked.

“I kindled a friendship with one of its lesser sons,” I said. “A favor… for a favor. I raced on his behalf, and we benefitted. That… doesn’t mean they own me,” I grimaced.

Qiang looked… baffled by that. “Wait. What… what do you mean?”

“No one owns me, Qiang.”

“David Martinez, seventeen,” he said, with the tone of someone reciting something from a document. “Current resident of Arroyo, student in Arasaka Academy. No living parents. One that died just two months ago. You’re a ghost. Nothing about who you really are is accessible anywhere. You went from nothing, just another spawn from the muck of this city, to this. And you say that you are not owned by anyone.”

I narrowed my eyes and gave that idea some thought. Who owned me?

Who truly had a claim so strong that if I was met with it, I would have no choice but to acquiesce?

My family, back in Tijuana?

I… loved them. In a way that I didn’t love mom, or Lucy, or the crew. I loved our connection, how it transcended time and space, and allowed us to be trusted allies towards one another without much great effort.

But I was their helper. My generosity with them knew no real bounds—materially, at least. But they didn’t own me. They never even entertained the notion that they did. And that was perfect, because that was the truth.

The truth was, when I looked at it a certain way, that was the one thing I truly appreciated about them.

Once upon a time, Maine would have had a decent claim. He… I owed so much to that man. He gave me an in to this world, and he gave me people. The latter was what I was most concerned with, and what made me the most grateful to him.

I hadn’t had this talk with him yet, but… he likely knew that he didn’t really have all that much authority over me. I chose to be around him and the others because that was where I wanted to be. Did he have influence over me? Of course.

But did he own me?

No.

I ran the list down one by one: Jin, his old man, Nakajima, all of Arasaka.

And all of it was an emphatic no.

Lucy.

Yes, actually.

She owned me. And I owned her. We belonged to each other. And there would be no exploitation of that contract, because we loved each other.

Maybe that wasn’t the pristine freedom that I had always pictured for myself, but it was enough. True freedom was impossible, anyway. Unless you were a complete psychopath. For a person, who valued human bonds, freedom was an impossibility.

But that didn’t have to be an unpleasant notion. It certainly wasn’t in my case. In fact, I was grateful.

“No,” I told Qiang. “If you’re referring to my corporate sponsor, that would be… no one. I go to Arasaka Academy, and I paid good edds for that honor. Made sacrifices you wouldn’t believe for it. But I didn’t pay for the honor of getting collared. I paid for a chance to make something of myself.” Just the implication that I was owned by Arasaka because I went to their school slightly offended me. “I haven’t signed anything with them as of yet.” And if fortune smiled on me, I’d not have to until I was in spitting distance of that C-suite.

Qiang blinked. “Who taught you how to race?”

“Not a corp,” I said. “Or anyone worth mentioning, really.” Sorry, Falco. “The gist of it is—I’m homegrown. Not like what those fucking media dipshits are waving their lips about.”

I had heard a constant stream of absolute nonsense during my time right after I had won my race. Something about my secret origin as a corp experiment, a lab-grown racer.

I hated it. All of it.

“And Ryuzaki…” Qiang began.

I snorted. “You heard it here, first: Ryuzaki doesn’t fucking own me. Jin Ryuzaki and I became friends two weeks ago. I’d met him about five or six weeks ago for the first time. We’re not close. He saw an opportunity in me and took it.”

A waiter arrived with three lowball glasses, empty but for smooth, spherical glass inside—no, ice. My eyes were just… trash, right now. The tray with the glasses also contained a squat bottle of whiskey. Fifty centiliters.

[Do not expect to fight anyone in your condition. Certainly not corp security.]

D: Why the fuck is this house so big that it even needs corp security walking around indoors? Fucking weird.

I hoped for Fei’s sake that she didn’t actually live in this gold-plated, diamond-studded shithole.

Qiang grinned in interest. “Is that it, now? Well, that remains to be independently verified. But don’t worry, you have very much piqued my interest.”

I bit back a hot retort. Didn’t need to be honest right now, just intriguing. And while that didn’t require strict politeness, rudeness was a whole other beast. “If you have any more questions, feel free,” I said, “Though my coming here had more to do with what I wanted to achieve with you.”

“With me?” he asked.

“With QianT,” I amended.

“Public record shows that I’m currently dead. How come you’re not… surprised, at all?”

I cracked a grin. “I did think I was moving on to the afterlife after I caught sight of you. I’m glad to know that you’re real, at least.”

Qiang laughed. Fei, who had been sitting away, leaned forward to pour me a glass. I gave her a grateful nod, took the glass, and enjoyed a sip. It wasn’t going to numb me any better than Nanny already could, but it would probably make me feel more joyful at this moment.

“Did you know?” he asked.

“No,” I told him. “I also didn’t think it mattered. I’m here to—”

“Did you know that you can pay for Arasaka Academy to give you copies of their CCTV footage?” Qiang asked.

“I mean… it tracks,” I said with a shrug. Tiger corpo parents had to get their kicks, somehow. Or just pedos or something. Fucking weird, though.

I wish I’d never learned this.

“You seem… mighty friendly with my sister,” Qiang said, pointing towards me. Ah, so he did shell out for the Pedo Executive Tier subscription with Arasaka. Good to know.

There were tons of places where they didn’t have cameras. Anyone who went to the school for long enough would know of those spots: bathrooms, changing rooms, and a select few janitorial closets and classrooms on campus—all defunct and scheduled for renovation of course.

Anywhere else, privacy wasn’t an expectation, but a dream.

“What’s the pause about?” Qiang asked.

I spoke without thinking, “I’m just… so concerned about the implications of… what you just said. Parents buying surveillance footage of their kids while on school grounds. Jesus.”

“Are you trying to fluster me?” Qiang asked. “You think I care about your esteem and how you view me?”

“No accusations here, dude,” I muttered. “I’m not questioning your motives, here. I’m just having a moment. I actually go to this school.”

“He’s right,” Fei jumped to my defense. “It is unimaginably creepy. And quite frankly, dehumanizing.”

“It’s also thorough,” he said. “Now I have a deeper understanding of your relationship, and I was also treated to a most fascinating time-lapse of you growing, what, five inches taller and several dozen kilograms heavier, in a few months.”

“It’s not chrome,” I said with a smile.

“I figured it wasn’t. You’re quite light, after all. Your frame is quite broad, but you yourself are still only at ninety-two and a half kilograms, with the only discernible chrome on your body being a neural link—or perhaps just a spinal implant. Some data suggests that you are the holder of a Kerenzikov system, which you used to successfully counter a QianT Sandevistan while in battle.” He chuckled, shaking his head. “Kang Tao’s security division sent us that diagnostic data while fuming.” Kang Tao?

My fight with that fucking Kung Fu bitch. Hou Ken.

Diagnostic data? What, had they reported my fight as evidence that the Sandevistan Hou Ken wore had been malfunctioning or something? Sounded rather petty, given that his Sandy had worked perfectly. It just hadn’t been enough to beat me.

But what must they have discerned from me based on that diagnostic data? I knew that they probably had a full recording of the fight, a braindance, even. They’d have endless opportunities to dress my fighting style down, and tease every single secret out that they could.

Shit.

Shit, shit, fucking shit.

Was that why he had called me here? To figure out my secrets?

And I had just served myself up on a platter, walking in here all weak and battered.

“Let me guess,” Qiang said, raising one finger, “A Techtronika Kerenzikov, and an Arasaka Synaptic Accelerator. Soviet and Japanese—a marriage of practicality and pure performance. Am I close?”

What game was he playing at? What did he actually know? Was my Sandy still a secret?

Why the fuck had I come here?

Dammit, dammit, dammit.

“Yes,” I lied. Those two—whatever.

“Hah!” Qiang clapped his hand. “Excellent choice. You limit the neural strain by splitting the load between two cyberware instead of one working overtime. The Kerenzikov is the passive effect of always slowing down time, and when you just need an extra boost, you activate your Synaptic Accelerator.”

“Good system,” I shrugged. In fact, if I got out of here alive, I might recommend that set-up to the family back in Tijuana. Sounded pretty solid—permanent time dilation, aside. If Hiroto could deal with it, I’m sure others probably could.

“How have you not lost your mind yet?” Qiang asked. Ah, guess that set-up wasn’t that sensible after all. “Well, really, since you arrived in this way, I must also ask—do you still have your wits about you?”

No, not really. “You mean, did I almost die for no reason but because I freaked out? No.”

“Alright then, let’s circle back to what I said earlier. You and Fei,” he said. He hadn’t skipped a beat before that response, either, like he wouldn’t so much as let me question the fact that he knew, knew everything, knew—

Fei?

“She’s… a friend,” I said. The sudden shift to Fei had completely blindsided me.

“How long?” Qiang rapid-fired.

“Qiang,” Fei growled.

“Few months,” I said.

“All those weeks and weeks for this very moment, I presume? Her putting in a good word for you, giving you an in to our family? Where else did that ambition take your mind? Probably nowhere pure.”

“Are you here for my idea—” I said, but he interrupted me before I could.

“I’m here for you. Nightmare Rally racer, champion. From zero to hero. An anomaly. One that has intrigued me endlessly since I first heard of you about two hours ago, when the races kicked off.”

Fuck being famous. This truly sucked. It was like everyone in the world now had ample time to sharpen their knives before lunging at me where I least expected it.

Had all this bullshit happened because of the Nightmare Rally?

Was my secret identity compromised? The weight of my mask laid heavily in my inner jacket pocket. I was one strip-search away from being exposed, while I could physically do nothing about it if the issue was forced.

And what pissed me off the most was none of that.

It was this piece of shit brother, who thought that familial ties were enough to excuse this sort of bullshit—creating a humiliating environment for his own sister, making her out to be an idiot, granting zero respect to her. Instead, just doubt. The same doubt and lack of belief that had led to her initial circumstances to begin with. The doubt that she was no better used as a bargaining chip for her family than anything else.

A non-entity whose feelings needn’t be regarded.

“I didn’t use Fei-Fei,” I said. “I asked her for a favor, one that I intend to repay one day. Moreover, she’s been a good friend, who showed me kindness and acceptance when no one else did. You wanna talk about purity? How ‘bout you stop trashing your little sister in front of company like she’s some nobody whose feelings you can just walk over?”

Fei’s eyes widened. “David, please don’t—“

I ignored her, and instead focused on Qiang. “I’m fine with mindgames, a bit of light torture here and there. You couldn’t say anything about me that I haven’t already heard a million times before. Or anything I haven’t told myself already twelve inches from a mirror.” Gutter-rat this, streetkid that, worthless sack of shit—“But the moment you go after the people I actually give a shit about, we’re gonna have some problems.”

Qiang’s jaw clenched. “I’m only interrogating your motives, here. Not my sister’s.”

“Casting her as some naïve fool who needs to be rescued by you, while I’m just a piece of shit that scammed her, because she’s that stupid. But how stable is your assurance of her safety, anyway? Where the fuck were you when Katsuo almost killed her? That’s right—you damn-near got your brains blown out at the zeroth second. Left her all alone while you could do nothing.”

Qiang’s eyes widened. Fei put a hand over her mouth.

And I… was starting to regret coming here, in this state.

D: Nanny, what the fuck.

[Don’t look at me, David—this was entirely you.]

I took a look at my crit progress.

Down to ninety-six. I could use the Sandy to get the fuck out, at least, in case this man tried to kill me.

No. No room for regrets, now. I said what I said. Now, all I needed to do was stand by it.

“You are… fucking ballsy,” Qiang laughed. Then he started cursing in Mandarin. “This fucking kid’s got no brains.” I cast a glance at Fei, who was glaring at Qiang. Qiang shook his head and finally sighed. “Loyalty. I have to respect it. Not just any loyalty, but a loyalty that extends so deeply towards the people you care for, that you were willing to bomb a deal. And most importantly, a loyalty that extends towards my sister.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. But I wouldn’t stop to appreciate the win. I needed to look closely at it.

Provoke. “Or maybe that was my entire plan from the start,” I said, casting doubt on his oh-so-amazing intuition. “Dazzle you with continuous demonstrations of ‘loyalty’, something you apparently place great value in, until you started to like me?”

Qiang shook his head. “I doubt it. You’re not that good an actor. Certainly not in your current state. And yet, there’s so much to appreciate about you. How did you and Fei become friends?”

“Can we just… talk about the deal?” I pleaded.

“I like… you, right here, right now,” he said, pointing at me. “You, with the blood-drenched face, walking with a limp, breathing so loudly that it’s all I can hear. I want to have you here, in this way, for as long as possible. At least until I’ve gotten to know you better.”

“Brother, that’s not okay,” Fei said. “He needs rest. He needs medical attention. And he came here, in spite of all that has happened, to give you a pitch. You need to hear him out, and then let him go as soon as possible.”

Qiang nodded at her sister, then turned to me. “Well? What’s the story between you two?”

“Literally none of your business,” my words were laced with a slight, manic giggle.

There were no couth ways to really broach the nature of Fei and I’s first meeting, and subsequent relationship, which had only today transformed into something else entirely.

“He’s right,” she said. “It isn’t. If you want an answer, you can ask me.”

“Alright then. How did—“

“Go fuck yourself,” she said flatly.

Qiang chuckled and nodded. “Fine.” He turned to me with a sigh. “Alright tell me. What’s the plan?”

“I want to buy in.”

Qiang frowned. “Why?”

“I want to implement a product, a software. Get your logistics issues sorted.”

Qiang narrowed his eyes. “Where did you hear about those?”

“Through the grapevine.” Thank you so fucking much, Jin. “My stake would be ninety, by the way.”

Qiang laughed. “Ninety. As in… thousand?”

“As in… million,” I aped him sarcastically, lowering my voice. “Why would I even come to you like this, if I wasn’t here to do real business?”

Fei-Fei widened her eyes at me. Ninety? She mouthed at me. Right, she… never even knew how much I had bet on myself. Shit.

Well, if she changed her mind about spotting me the twenty-seven, I’d be down to only what I had won in the Rally.

Qiang blinked at me. “Our value’s in a freefall.”

“That’s why I’m serious,” I said. “I know that coming to you with what I have, without putting down an actual stake, would be stupid. It wouldn’t show commitment. Now, listen—I won… a lot of money from the Nightmare Rally. I bet a lot of money on myself, and won even more. Seventy times my stake of a million.”

“What about the rest?” he asked. “You said ninety.”

I cast Fei a quick glance, and her eyes moved in a nod-like way. Though it took me a moment to decrypt her message, I looked back at Qiang and gave a nod. “Sorted. But… it is all I have.”

“And what are you even selling?” he asked.

“Better logistics, more efficient workflows. It’s a top-down software with a far greater range of inputs, that uses a mathematical model that I—and a friend of mine—developed. I’m confident that there’s nothing like this on the market.”

“Wait—you’re a programmer?”

I sent him a picksocket Quickhack. The moment I did, he… pulled out a gun and placed it on his lap in a split second, yet the motion looked so gentle, so controlled. Sandevistan. But it was too late for anything. If I had meant to kill him, he would have been dead by now.

A chip flew out from his neck. He turned his head towards it while it was mid-flight, and took a moment to pinch his chin and nod thoughtfully, all the while as the chip sailed lazily through the air. Finally, he caught the chip, and deactivated his Sandy before slotting it in again.

I had followed everything, of course. Even without the Sandy, my eyes were faster than fast.  

“I’m a programmer’s programmer,” I said. There was no use being humble at this point. I knew how good I was. “You put me in any software R&D division and I’d be a top performer in a day’s time. You’ve never seen a genius like me before.”

“What about racing?”

“I spent about as much time perfecting my car control as I did coding my line algorithm in the first place,” I said. “I’m not just a programmer, Qiang. I’m an actual genius.”

“Is your software done?” he asked. “Does it have a name?”

“No, and… just the skeleton’s there. Still got a lot to build, a lot of… adapting to existing systems. The nature of my product is that it must be integrated into a corp’s operations, to an invasive extent, honestly—”

“Like any workflow algorithm worth its salt.”

“But! The idea is there, already. The bones, the DNA. It’s there. And I’d bet my life savings that it’ll pay off. And as you may have noticed already, I’m… kind of a winner.”

Qiang sighed. “Ah… Well. Ninety million would have been a drop in the bucket at any other point, but now… that might be exactly how much is needed to fund your little venture. And if you screw up… I hope you have an exit strategy in handy.”

Fuck. Thank god.

“I don’t, actually,” I said. “If I fuck up, I’ll start from zero—again. And I’ll get my money up one way or another. But that ain’t the plan, choom. I didn’t come here, like this, just to tell you that my plan has a slight chance of success. I came here to win.”

And you’re just a stepping stone. You’ll get me my first billions, but I ain’t stoppin’ at billions. I’m taking it all.

“Why not… a hundred million?” Qiang asked. “Is coming up with ten more million too much of an ask?”

With Fei’s loan combined with mine, I’d actually be able to muster an additional eight million if push came to shove. I would just much rather have that value be liquid, so that I could make whatever purchases I wanted without getting a loan leveraged against my stock portfolio.

Ninety million aside, I was too broke to try fucking around with the banks. I’d wait until I had made my first billion, and I stopped being meat to the banks. Or at the very least, until I had implemented my workflow algo and gotten some positive results, and thus assurances of upward growth.

Seemed solid.

“Yes,” I admitted.

“Hm. I do pity your situation,” he said.

I laughed. “You’re the first person I’ve met who would ever pity me for just having ninety million.”

“And if you were happier about where you were in life, then perhaps I would share in that joy. But I know that ninety million is… it doesn’t become you.” Ah. Go ahead. Tell me how much you think you know me. “After all, why would you even bet this money if you weren’t confident that you stood to gain so much more? Tell me, David.” Alright, so he had been slightly accurate. But it was barely anything, really. Certainly not a true cold read.

“I might be a gambling addict,” I said blithely.

“How much have you lost gambling?”

I consulted my memory, and came away with nothing. Just a grin. “Can’t say I have, really.”

“Gambled?”

“Lost.”

Qiang brought his lower lip forward, seemingly impressed. He hummed and nodded. “Ten million. To make your share a hundred.”

I raised an eyebrow. “And what would the interest on this loan be?”

“Interest-free, and not a loan. Just take it.”

“Ten million?”

Qiang grinned. “That is… precious, truly. I appreciate your presence here. It makes me more… grateful, for where I was born.”

“Qiang,” Fei groaned. “Stop it.”

“Alright, alright,” Qiang waved his hand at her before turning to me. “Ten million, making your stake a hundred, which would… turn you into the seventeen-year-old kid that signed a nine figure deal with a megacorp. The press are gonna love it.”

“Press?” I grimaced.

“Oh yes! What, you thought you’d be investing in pure silence? No, besides, the firm needs the publicity. You’ll have to do, for this stage of things.”

I nodded. “Alright. I have more that I need to talk to you about,” I said.

“Come when you’re less… malformed,” Qiang said with a shrug.

My eyes fell on the gun on his lap, that he finally withdrew and re-holstered. “Lots of vigilance for a malformed enemy.”

“I didn’t enjoy being taken by surprise that time,” Qiang said to me, his expression tight. I had definitely struck a nerve with that comment, reminding him of how he’d eaten shit at the start of Katsuo’s shootout. “And it won’t happen again.”

“Certainly shouldn’t,” I said. “You’re QianT. Your Sandies are legendary. I’m sure you must have the Warp Dancer, right?” Or perhaps… he had another Dragon Spine. Another one of mine.

I’d get to the bottom of that. Eventually.

Qiang stood up. “That’s all the time I have for you. We will discuss more once we’re through the whole buy-in business. Next Saturday. Does that sound good? Perfect. Until then, try not to piss away your ninety million.”

That was… rather unlikely.

How did one piss away ninety million within seven days?

[You would find a way.]

Probably.

“Stay away from the casinos,” Qiang said. “And the betting. Remember the only bet that matters to you now is the one you made in me.”

“You mean… your company,” I said.

“Same difference. One day,” he said, winking at me. Then he proceeded towards the elevator. “You two can finish your drinks. Close the deal, Fei.”

Then he disappeared from the balcony.

Fei immediately lunged towards a chair closer to me, scooting closer still. “David, are you okay?”

“I’m not gonna die,” I said.

“But… otherwise?”

I gave her a grin, that must have looked rather savage. “All my friends are safe, Fei. That’s all that matters.”

She gave a sigh of relief. “And what about you? Doesn’t it… isn’t it scary?”

I did come pretty close to dying, actually.

But that fear couldn’t touch the shame of having let one asshole get away in the end.

Then I finally remembered something, and cursed. “Need to call your brother.”

He picked up immediately.

David: I have a friend in Arasaka who helped me figure out this thing, but his contract—

Qiang: You want me to buy out his contract. The answer is no.

David: He’s an important—

Qiang: Ally of yours.

David: He’s part of the talent.

Qiang: He’s your responsibility.

Fuck!

Qiang: Choose whether to bring him in at your own expense, or to abandon this dear friend of yours for selfish needs.

David: Fine. Thanks. Goodbye.

Qiang: Don’t be sulky.

David: I’m not being sulky. You’re just not letting me finish, and it is rather frus—

He hung up.

“Fei, why is your brother—”

“Like this?” Her eyes glittered. “He… is annoying as fuck. But he’s good at it. At everything, really. But especially that. But you should ignore it—he does like you.”

“He’s… interested in using me,” I said.

“No,” she shook her head. “Not really. I think you made a positive impression on him. You did a good job, David.”

I nodded. “Thank you—”

“But,” she said sternly. “That thing? You said about my brother getting shot in the head?”

“Oh—Fei, I’m sorry.”

“You’re… not in your right mind right now, so I’ll forgive you, but I still have to say: that was fucked up. Okay?”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “It was.”

“I forgive you,” she said with a roll of her eyes before sitting back on her chair. “Now… would you mind telling me… how you got this way? Was any of what you said to Qiang real?”

I sighed. “Didn’t involve a gang-boss.” Then I frowned. “I think. Truth is, it was just… garden variety random violence. No cause, no reason, just… Night City.”

“Will you be okay?”

“Like… in my head?” I asked. The truth was, I didn’t know. Nanny was having to deal with this thing. “Yeah,” I said.

“Anyone can be traumatized, David.”

I chuckled. “It’s fine. You should see the other guy,” I laughed. “My only regret is letting that fucker even get away. That’s when… your bro called me. Had to choose. Finish the job, or go see him.”

“Finish… the job?”

My mouth went dry at the admission. “Wait, Fei-Fei, it’s not…”

I couldn’t say anything. For several eternities, I couldn’t. “Not what?” Fei asked.

I could only shake my head and look down at the glass of whiskey on the table. “Nevermind. It… is. It just is.”

“You were going to kill a man, tonight?” Fei asked.

“Trying to keep my chooms safe.”

“I’m sorry,” Fei backed away. “Um… I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “That had nothing to do with you, I shouldn’t have talked about it.” I stood up. “It was nice, seeing you again. I need to go, now.”

“Can I walk you out?”

I had lost enough progress towards critical imperfect cell replication, that I could just fire up the Sandevistan while walking, and it would make me feel a whole lot better.

But it was best to wait until I was well and truly clear of the area before then.

“Sure,” I said.

The elevator ride down made me acutely aware of how fucked my body was, even if the Gs of my descent made me feel lighter. Not nearly light enough.

“Ninety million, huh?” Fei asked.

“I won seventy two,” I confessed. “I just… factored in your winnings. For the ninety figure. But if you don’t wanna—“

Fei giggled. “No, David. It’s fine. I was just surprised.”

Shit. “Listen, Fei, if you’re rethinking the loan because I won big, that’s understandable. Frankly, I should have told you the amount earlier. I wasn’t hurting for eddies at all and—”

“I didn’t offer you that money because I thought you were ‘hurting for eddies’,” she said quietly. “I offered you that money because I was grateful, and because I felt like you deserved it. And I still am. Grateful. And you deserve it. You deserve… everything, David. You really do.”

She took my arm and hugged it. I almost staggered at the sudden force. She quickly looped her left arm around my left armpit, keeping me upright. “Thanks,” I muttered.

She just giggled. “It’s just… crazy. I can carry a grown man.”

I laughed. “It’s… yeah. It’s a nova feeling.”

She closed her eyes and grinned, before headbutting my face softly.

000

Fei couldn’t believe her eyes as he watched him try to keep upright.

He was… just covered in wounds. Cuts all over his face, blood that should have congealed his eyes shut by how it abundantly covered his face, and a breathing that sounded disconcertingly similar to a kazoo. A fucking kazoo.

David was not doing well at all. And yet he could ignore it so easily. Like it didn’t matter. But it had to. He was human. Everyone was.

And everyone had a breaking point.

“So,” Fei murmured. “You can rely on me to lift you up. No burden is too much for me to hold up, you know. Not anymore.”

David chuckled in a sickly way. “Thank you, Fei-Fei. I already called a Delamain. It should be out near the gate in a minute. I’m really sorry about the bother, about… showing up this way. I didn’t think I had a choice, and I panicked and…”

“David,” she said. “You’re being way too hard on yourself. It isn’t healthy.”

He got up to his feet, relieving Fei-Fei of most of his weight. He didn’t say anything, however.

Fei spoke instead. “David… why are you doing this? Why are you investing?”

“Money,” he said. “And I know it sounds bad but… really. I did see an opportunity through you. And I asked you.”

“For how long?” she asked quietly. It was an awkward question, but… it did need an answer.

“I’d been searching for corporations to sell to for weeks before that point. Weeks while I had known you, by the way. I didn’t… find you just to pull this con, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“I know,” she growled. “I don’t care what anyone says about that.”

“I have dreams, Fei-Fei. I have goals. Ambitions. I want to make it big. Really big.”

“Becoming a full-blown megacorp shareholder right off the bat, though?”

“Yeah, I gotta prep a bit first. But… I prepped for the race, and look where that got me.”

Fei giggled. “You can’t be serious. Driving a car isn’t as difficult as trying to reach for the board of executives at a megacorp, no matter how down on their luck they are.”

“Let’s see where the dice roll,” David grinned at her. Fei grimaced.

“Can we… maybe visit a bathroom before you go? Get you washed up, at least on the face?” The elevator finally opened.

David sighed and nodded. “Thank-thank you.” They started walk towards the bathroom, her taking the lead.

Fei smiled, though she felt a spike of sadness at his gratitude. It was literally the least she could do.

Would he even go to the Med-Center after this? Or would he rather choose to get treated by some third-rate medcorp because of his beef against Trauma Team?

She didn’t want to sour the moment, but she couldn’t in good conscience just let him go like this. “David… let’s call an ambulance instead.”

David chuckled. “I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine.”

“I’m not bleeding, I’m not even hurting. And I will get fixed. Not putting on any chrome, either. I’m strictly bio, unless it’s my brain. Then it’s… synaptic accelerators and cyberdecks. But I am fine.”

Fei frowned. Rather than continue pushing him while he wouldn’t budge, she tried to make a joke instead. “I wonder if I could kick your ass.”

David laughed. “The way I am now, hundred percent. But trust me, Fei, I’d pack your ass up in a heartbeat if I was okay.”

Fei laughed in shock. “You’re fucking crazy, David.”

“Let’s… go shooting sometime. Let me see what that arm-cannon can do. Maybe I’ll take your threat more seriously then,” he grinned to show that he was joking.

Fei’s heart skipped a beat at the date proposal. “Are you sure?”

“You want to defend yourself—feel safe and all. I respect that a whole lot. And if I can help, I’d be really glad.”

“Alright,” She nodded. “Let’s go sometime.”

She opened the door to the bathroom. They washed him up in solemn silence, herself fighting the impulse to blush as she felt at his skin, cut up in some places, but smooth and warm in others.

She wished she could take it farther.

But right now, helping her friend… was enough for her.

Notes:

Surprise!

I'm gonna try doing a faster update rate from now on. Next chapter comes out on Sunday.

Next Chapter: Murk Man Returns
Backlog: 8 chapters (currently at ch 67: Celebrations)
Discord link: https://discord.gg/fgaUvEzjrg

Chapter 60: Murk Man Returns

Fei-Fei dabbed the wet towel softly to my face. Then, she’d brush the towel down my face, gently. Soft strokes. Softly, she brushed me down, washing the blood and street gunk off my face. Pieces of brick and asphalt. She didn’t mind one bit. She didn’t analyze any of the particulates, didn’t so much as ask about half of those minerals, and how they got lodged onto my face.

She was a good choom.

“Feeling better, choom?” Fei-Fei asked as she pressed her forehead against mine and shook her head vigorously. All I could see as she pressed her forehead to mine was a grin that… met mine.

We stared at each other, then. Just her and I, in this endless stretch of now, her challenging me to act on that naked provocation, and me fighting for all my life to remember—

Her.

Fei was… many things. I appreciated her for many things. But she could never, ever be a substitute for Lucy.

No one could, really. She was a… calamity.

Really.

Then she brushed her thigh to my crotch and—rubbed. She didn’t even say anything. She just grinned knowingly. Or maybe it had been an accident.

Either way, it didn’t matter.

Sadly enough.

I continued staring at her with this dead fish-eye look and a slight grin, trying my best to keep my wits about me, but I could feel my mind finally start to slip.

And this… wasn’t the right scene anyhow. On any other day, I probably would have enjoyed the moment, but right now? Sat on a bare toilet seat, with this girl hanging over me, washing my face of blood, I couldn’t fucking imagine a less sexier scene.

I just wanted to crawl under a blanket and just go comatose there. For fifteen days. Or fifty. I was so goddamned fucking tired.

[That would be your sleep debt, or—consciousness debt. I kept you energized for Qiang, but now you must pay the piper.]

I blinked.

Blinked.

And Fei-Fei was already walking me through the lobby of her big-ass fucking house.

Where-when-how?

Now?

“Fei-Fei,” I whispered.

“Your cab’s here,” Fei-Fei murmured, just as she deposited me bodily into some random fuckign car—

“Where are you taking me?” I gasped.

Fei just giggled. “This is your cab. The one you called.”

I blinked.

Ah.

“Thank you,” I said. “Need to… go.”

She closed the taxi door on my face.

Just as I debated the pros and cons of opening the door and throwing myself at her feet in a kowtow, Delamain opened his dumbass blue lips.

“How are we doing today, Mr. David?”

I giggled at his accent. “You actually… from England?”

“No, but I have found that people quite like the accent, given my role as a chauffeur and servant—within my meagre capacities as a cabbie AI, of course. But if you must know, I’m actually German.”

“Oh yeah?” I slurred.

“Yes, I was first developed in—“

000

I woke up next to Lucy with a gasp of shock.

[You blacked out, D.]

D: The fuck?

I blinked. What---what the fuck happened? Where did all that time go? One minute, Fei shoved me into a fucking Delamain while I was drunk and guiltily horny as fuck.

And then.

Here.

[Couldn’t save all your neurons. You drank. A lot. And I mean a lot. Who even asked you to drink the entire champagne bottle, you fucking freak? I did what I could, choom. It was either your memory or most of your motor function, and we needed those to get home.]

D: Do you… remember?

[Would you like to see the ocular replay?]

D: Yes.

Nanny showed me everything.

The Delamain driving me to Japantown.

Myself hi-jacking and then riding a Kusanagi “Mizuchi” a block away from Lucy’s place.

Myself sprinting up to her door, opening it and then slipping inside before anyone could see.

And also avoiding the use of the Sandevistan all the while.

I got home before Lucy, apparently.

I took a shower in which I just let the water wash all the blood off, and then I went to bed naked. Lucy didn’t wake me up when she came home.

At least Lucy didn’t get too worried.

As I recalled the rest of the events of the night, Masaru Ryuzaki now after my blood because I didn’t say yes, and that fucker Alessandro, and WHOEVER THE FUCK SHOT UP MY CHOOMS, I shook Lucy awake.

She woke up with the start, and sat upright two seconds after waking.

“We gotta go,” I told her.

She furrowed her brows, but got off the bed and began dressing up almost immediately.

I followed suit right after.

We had gotten our most important belongings. I brought my skull mask, my mom’s modified EMT jacket, her rosaries and a bag holding my most precious XBDs—all of Jimmy Kurosaki’s Edgerunner’s series, It’s Alive, Not series, a bunch of other clips from cartel executions, gang warfare, my guitar-case filled with my favorite guns—

And my mom’s urn.

Or whatever was left of the ashes inside after those fucking Tygers had smoked on top of her.

Bastards.

I’ll kill them all.

Not now.

I didn’t wear any of my D-attire as we rode out. Instead, I had stuffed it into the guitar-case. We were out the door and on our way to a decent motel, one that I’d be checking into as just myself. We arrived in thirteen minutes, and got settled in three.

We landed a room that I knew would simulate our lighting as accurately as possible within the city. Lucy and I got settled into the new bed, and after I undressed—I hugged the love of my life’s head close to my chest and whispered.

“I’ll kill them, Lucy. I promise.”

“Are you okay, David?” she whispered. “Your clothes were covered in blood.”

I shut my eyes and grimaced.

Weak.

I was too weak.

I’d given too much of myself in the race.

And it had stopped me from being able to keep my loved ones safe.

It had stopped me from being able to exterminate the last motherfucker among them.

“I was on the ropes,” I muttered. “It was… pretty bad.”

“David, what happened?”

I explained the situation to her in a handful of sentences, and felt my strength leave my body as I did. “I’m… still tired. Too tired.”

“Sleep, David.”

I spent one last waking minute thinking about my failure and my close brush with death, and went to sleep knowing, knowing, that once I woke up and regained all my strength, I’d make a sweep through the city and finish what those motherfuckers had started.

000

I woke up after three hours, at six in the morning.

I awoke before Lucy, as always.

And I felt profoundly empty. Discomfited. Angry.

And there was this incessant sting in my eyes that I hated. Fuck crying.

What the fuck is the problem?

I rolled off the bed and went to take a shower, examining my body as the water ran down it. I was… healthy. Whole. No holes in me, nothing broken. Just… this mental emptiness.

[You’re being emotional. That’s the problem. But it will go away on its own.]

Go away on its own. “Any way to speed it along?” I murmured.

[Physical activities always helps.]

I snorted. Physical activities. Stupid.

No, I knew what would help.

It was getting control again. Tracking down and killing that last motherfucker.

[That can be counted as a physical activity, you know.]

D: Then that’s what we’ll do.

As I half-assedly explored the hotel room, I spotted a desk drawer, on top of which lay a day-old screamsheet—expired news.

The front page’s headline was... who was fucking who in Night City’s celebrity scene.

There was a nigh-on microscopic headline at the bottom of the front-page talking about ‘scav killings’ being on the rise, more at page fifteen.

Scavs.

The same pieces of shit that had kidnapped me to take back the Sandy, likely on Doc’s orders.

The same scumfucks that preyed on the weakest people in the city.

I turned to page fifteen and beheld the pictures that changed after every three seconds, each displaying carnage, plain and simple. Splayed-open bodies on operating tables. Groups of shady people in the dark, sporting blue and white holographic tech masks dragging a family out of a shitty car.

Cages filled with people, treated like they were lower than animals.

The headline: scav killings have reached a record one thousand fatalities from year to date!

The article elaborated that we were a whole month ahead of last year’s projected murders. Then it went on to describe the scavs—a group of disparate lowlives that knew no loyalty and were only bound together by the common purpose of making eddies in the most low-risk way possible: by going after civilians who sported med-grade implants. They stuck to territories that not even the gangs would bother with, and where the NCPD already had their hands full.

Places like Pacifica—where the NCPD did not even have any jurisdiction—and Arroyo, for example.

My home.

Once I finished the article, I just stared at the pictures.

Over a thousand dead.

A thousand people just like my mom—powerless, poor, without any protection.

A thousand of this city’s backbone, taken away by rot. How many families ruined did that make? How many friends were grieving the loss? How many orphaned children, or parents who lost their own?

I closed my eyes once the sting in them became too much to manage. Mercifully, I cut myself off from the sight, and the tide of emotions finally paused.

What the fuck is going on with me? Why did it feel like I had just now discovered the threat of the scavs?

Like I had finally learned about them today? That… that wasn’t true at all.

They infested my home sub-district, I had to know about them for my own survival. And yet now…

Yet now… it was different.

Yesterday’s events must have left me feeling rather raw. There was no other explanation. I could see why. I had come close to dying. Close to hearing some rather bad news. I still had to contend with one of the most powerful corpos in the City, who wanted me. QianT had been a step forward, but I was out of my depth, even there.

There was… so much going on.

I could either do nothing, or I could try doing something about it. Starting with the people who tried to kill my chooms.

Physical activity, huh? Alright. Let’s get physical.

I found a notebook inside the desk drawer in our hotel room, and a pen, and started writing to Lucy.

‘Surveying the situation to see if we’re safe. Gonna head on to the J-Town house to see if anyone came knocking, then I’ll ask around for where to find the last cockroach. Then it’s sorted. I’ll leave a text once I figure out everything is safe. Sleep well.’

I put my mask, my jacket, black shirt and pants in a bag, intent on changing into my merc clothes once I tracked down an abandoned-enough alleyway.

Then there would be a reckoning.

000

Lucy’s apartment in J-Town was safe. I’d left a piece of junk on the door just before we left, so that if anyone had entered, I’d know. The thing, a thin piece of plastic, was still where I had left it, balanced on top of the latch.

I sent a Ping, and found no one inside.

I opened the door and scoured the place.

Nothing. Everything was as I had left it.

I’d have to check with Maine and the others, but—later. It was early as fuck in the morning. Wouldn’t wanna bother them after the shitshow from yesterday.

After I sent a text to Lucy, giving her the all-clear, I drove off from there. It was only seven, and I needed to fucking eat. Nanny had done what she could for me, but my lack of blood was having a clear effect on me. I felt tired, sluggish, and I had to draw on the upgrades that Nanny had given to me more than before. The upgrades that should be all ready by today, one PM. But that had always been a rather arbitrary counter.

[Yes, I’m all done. For now.]

And if the way I felt now, was supposed to be a weakened version of myself at full health, then I really couldn’t wait to see how far I had come.

I stopped by a half-decent burger joint, and ordered half a dozen.

No fries. No ketchup. Just the burgers. For drinks, I ordered three different fruit juices, and then just a bowl of gravy, for the sodium.

[Find a vending machine and look for zinc, and we’re good.]

I slid my mask over my mouth and started digging in.

It took me three minutes to finish all the food. I barely tasted any of it. Didn’t want to waste my time doing so.

[Also, try not to use the Sandy so much. I, uh…]

D: I get it

I sent a Ping for a vending machine matching my through the Net, and was gratified to find one such SCSM matching my description only a few blocks away. I hopped on my bike and started driving away.

000

My physical condition had, in fact, had an effect on my emotional state. Not an overwhelming effect, but an effect nonetheless. Once Nanny had finished working her magic, I was… not less pissed.

No, it was actually the opposite.

I was less sad.

I felt less defeated.

But not less pissed.

I was so fucking pissed, in fact, that I truly felt like I could do anything. That I would do anything.

The food and Nanny’s TLC had had the effect of drying the soaked embers of my fury, and I could do nothing else but burn now.

I drove two hundred kilometers an hour through the city in a circuitous path. With my Yaiba, Night City was just a fishbowl. I could be anywhere, at any time. I was just burning my CHOO, getting my thoughts in order, thinking.

Once I was ready to have a conversation, I got started on the basics.

Data.

I called my fixer.

El Capitan: D, my guy. Got you hooked up with a BD techie, and a whole list of fun targets for you to go after.

Fun targets? I grinned.

No. Not now.

D: It can wait. Need info right now.

El Capitan: Yes, I heard about last night. Maine and the others lit up some corp-types.

D: Corp-types?

El Capitan: Rogue wanted to talk to you about this, actually.

D: Rogue?

A face popped up in my mind, attached to a name I had heard only once, months ago. Rogue. The Afterlife’s bartender.

She wanted to talk to me?

D: She a fixer, too?

El Capitan: What? Kid, she’s the fixer. They call her the queen of the Afterlife. She owns that joint.

Shit!

D: Why did Rogue want to talk to me about this?

El Capitan: Those corp-types came to the Afterlife first. Asked around for you specifically.

D: Can I get her number?

El Capitan: All yours, kid.

After he gave me the number, I hung up on him, and called Rogue instead.

Rogue: Early in the morning for a chat, ain’t it? Though I can’t say I don’t like your go-getter attitude.

D: Thank you. It’s a pleasure.

Rogue: Turning up the charm cuz you know who I am, now?

Saw right through that, huh?

D: Yep.

Rogue: Hah! You fucking brat.

D: I heard you had some info for me. How much for it?

Rogue: 3,001,000 Eurodollars.

The fuck?

Rogue: Already paid for, by the way. You don’t have to worry.

Wait. Three million and a thousand?

I almost swerved off the road at that moment. The first four digits of that number were my betting odds.

She bet on me?

She… knew who I was?

She must have scanned me the moment we first met, before anyone ever had a need to know my name or who I was.

Thorough.

Agh. Fucking headache.

I didn’t want to start thinking of her as an enemy, even in my head. That way only lay distracting and ineffectual paranoia. She could wait her turn until I was done with these mysterious corp-types.

Then I could decide where she stood.

D: Alright then. Can I have the info?

Rogue: Let’s meet tonight.

D: I’d prefer meeting right now, if possible. I want to flatline those fuckers right now.

Rogue: Busy. Tonight. Eight.

Fuck!

D: Please reconsider.

Rogue: Don’t beg. It’s a bad look.

D: Then—

Rogue: And don’t try to jerk me about, either. That’s downright deadly. Eight. Wait.

Then she hung up.

There was… a lot to unpack with that.

She knew who I was all along. She’d seen the races, she had bet money on me. A thousand eddies, sure, but that was a thousand more than I’d have expected anyone that didn’t really know me to bet on me.

[Maybe your reputation has finally caught up to your skill?]

That… felt good.

[Not as good as you’d feel if you just go back home, or to that hotel or wherever, and just slept.]

Sleep?

“I’ll sleep when I’m a fucking flatline,” I growled as I made a beeline towards Arroyo. I didn’t have the energy to talk to anyone, or to check with Maine and the others.

All I had was energy, with no way out.

No way except… this.

Tygers. Animals. Scavs. Which ones should I pick?

[Excellent resolution—you made some enemies you had no idea about, and your solution is to make more enemies.]

D: Not enemies. Victims.

My enemies yesterday had almost been slaughtered to a man. The ‘almost’ of it bothered me more than anything, but the truth was—we were strong. Maine was strong. I was strong.

And sadly, not everyone had gotten the picture yet.

That would change today.

[Go for the scavs, David. They have a weak organizational structure and very little cohesion. And they are the most unlikely to retaliate.]

Dead scavs. Not exactly front-page news. Even their victims only made it to page fifteen on that screamsheet I had seen earlier.

But what about a hundred dead scavs?

Or a thousand?

Or however many it took before I just got… bored?

My drive took me deep into Arroyo’s slums, where the air was choked with chemical smog and everyone was miserable as a general rule.

[Alright, I’ll shut up now since you’re about to start recording, but just some quick things: keep the Sandy use to a minimum. I’m working on something. Also, try to stress-test a little.]

D: Stress-test? Yesterday’s fiasco wasn’t a test enough?

[Yesterday was excellent. I doubt you’d break as easily if you were flung from a bike and into a brick wall at over a hundred kilometers an hour again. You got off rather lightly that day—probably on account of your ballistic suit and mask—but your merc equipment should have a similar amount of upgrades by now.]

They should. From top to bottom, except for my hands because I didn’t wear gloves, I was bulletproof. The mask was bullet-proof, and I had gotten the rest of my clothes, including mom’s jacket, upgraded using Pilar’s contact—all during the week I had been preparing for the Nightmare Rally.

It was better than chipping in subderm, at least in a pinch. But we’d have to start thinking about subderm soon, too. Could never have too many layers of protection.

I whipped my head around for a target until—there.

Nestled inside an alleyway in Arroyo, waiting for prey to pass them by on the streets, were a trio of assholes squatting, wearing tech masks and holding bats over their shoulders.

I hopped off the bike, ran up to them and planted my foot into one of their faces with a flying kick.

I slid on the ground to arrest my momentum, located the man I had kicked, and saw that his neck bent at an odd angle. One down.

I kicked his bat to my hand and walked up slowly to the other two scavs, who were standing frozen, just staring ahead at me or—was something behind me?

I looked. Nothing.

Just me, then.

I raised my bat, and in doing so, knocked one of the scavs out from his stunned state. He awoke with a fury and shouted unintelligibly. He raised his bat and ran at me.

I swung the bat on the side of his head the moment he closed into my reach. He collapsed, and the red outline of his IFF fizzled out. The third scav tried to run.

I reached for my holster and pulled out my Lexington.

Then I shot him in his T4 vertabrae. He fell paralyzed on the ground. I reached for the personal link jack buried inside my wrist, and pulled out the cable. Just as I reached the downed scav, I jacked into his neck and started downloading his contact info, all the while as he gasped weakly, trying to formulate words and failing. Or maybe it was in a language that even my optics couldn’t recognize? Not that I cared.

When I was done, I knew where to go next.

I didn’t kill him. He needed to tell the story.

000

I parked before the apartment building that the scav trio’s hideout was inside, and started sorting through my weapons.

My inventory, most of which was inside the guitar case strapped to my bike, contained a Lexington pistol for softer targets, a Burya tech pistol for considerably less soft targets, a DS1 Pulsar SMG for a whole bunch of soft targets, the Achilles tech rifle for when I really needed something dead or gone, a D5 Copperhead assault rifle for soft targets that were further away from me, and finally, my sword, Eikō.

I couldn’t be bothered to bring everything upstairs with me. Even the thought of it felt mildly embarrassing. All those guns just for a bunch of scavs? Fuck that. Besides, the data didn’t mention many tricky targets. The scav cell consisted of kidnappers—the trio I had taken out—rippers that ripped in a very literal sense, analytics guys gathering data, probably to make their operation more efficient, and finally, security. Five security. Probably chromed up.

No tech weapons. I’d end up blowing a hole through five walls only to splatter someone’s wife or kid or something. Eikō could cut borgs anyway, and the Lexington was good enough for my purposes. I’d save the Burya for when things really started heating up.

And the high rate of fire from the rifle or the SMG would just make things too easy.

These were scavs. I wasn’t exactly picking on someone my own size, here.

I hacked the outer door open and summoned an elevator while I walked. I cracked my neck and did some light skips on my feet, gaining quite a lot more height than I initially expected from my tiny movement. I was far stronger than before.

The elevator opened just as I arrived in front of it, and I walked straight in without any interruption, before turning around to face the closing doors.

This building was an absolute fucking dump. There were no mirrors in the elevator, just rusted steel plates. The elevator rumbled on its way up like this might be the last journey it would ever take someone on. I chuckled at the idea that it would fall, and I would just… die from that.

Unlikely, but it was… darkly amusing.

I took deep breaths to forget my anger. Anger was a crutch—I could kill all eleven of these fucks without having to rely on that shit. Plus, it screwed with your focus. Made you less present, less logical.

And the universe bent to logic and nothing else. Emotions, humanity—all these things were really just weird freak anomalies in the eyes of reality.

The elevator opened, and though I tried my best to keep a calm head, I couldn’t help it.

Instantly, my chest filled up with this red hot sensation. Instantly, my face heated up to the tips of my ears, and my jaws clenched so tightly that I felt like I was liable to shatter my molars.

The elevator opened up to an empty hallway. The scav hideout was on the second door to the left. I sent out a Ping to confirm their locations. If I had brought better weapons, I could have wall-banged them from outside, but I wasn’t here for efficiency.

I remembered, long ago, how I had been faced with a gig to clear out some scavs, and the choice to kill for money instead of self-defense.

I had to put myself in danger, surrendering the element of surprise, in order to bring out the killer in me.

That person was long gone.

I kicked the door open and looked for the biggest motherfucker in the room. Three rippers were in another room entirely, surrounding what was probably a table. I could see their outlines through my Ping as they bowed over the table and plied their trade.

In the living room, however, were the computer guys—four of them all on their own terminals.

The big guys were sitting on a couch in front of a TV, their weapons never too far away from them. The moment I kicked the door open, the reached for them.

I shot two of them in the head. One died. Another recoiled as the bullet struck subderm.

I holstered the Lexington and drew Eikō, deflecting a trio of shots that would have struck me dead-center had I allowed them. I couldn’t detect any tech pistols or anything that could reliably punch through my armored clothes, but what kind of idiot just stood there and let themselves get shot?

I reached the couch with the security, bobbing and weaving under their gunshots seamlessly. They couldn’t hit me if they fucking tried. Every time they readjusted their aim, I danced away from their muzzle, allowing them to shoot around me. I didn’t waste any motion either. Some of the bullets brushed the side of my arm, touching my jacket, but they slid around me without problem.

I swung my sword, taking one guy’s head off. Before it fell, I grabbed it by the hair and stabbed another guy while I interposed the beheaded man between the last two security people and me.

I kicked the corpse towards them, sending them stumbling back and—

Chance!

Just as they pressed closely together in their shared backward stumble, and both their necks were in reach of my sword, I swung.

Two heads. One cut.

Unique achievement right there.

How far could I take it?

I turned around and threw the head I was holding as hard as I could at the computer people, who were scrambling to get their own guns.

Except for one, who was trying to run out the open door.

I threw my sword at him, nailing his torso to the wall. He’d die eventually.

The guy I hit with the head was on the ground, arms curled up—brain bleed. Had to suck. I stomped his head for good measure. After only a moment of resistance, the skull gave in and I pressed it to the ground with a satisfying crunch.

The computer guys finally got to their guns, but I was faster. Each of them went down after one bullet. The guy whose head I stomped.

Now, for the rippers.

One of them, a five-foot-tall woman, ran at me with a bonesaw.

I had to respect that. No guns. Just melee.

I kicked the bonesaw from her hand, stepped in quickly, and grabbed her by the throat. Then I carried her up and slammed her to the wall, still squeezing her neck.

My raw strength was… much improved. So much so that I could kill this woman if only I squeezed harder. But where would the fun in that be?

From the wall that I was pressing the woman into, I could see the red outlines of the other two rippers try to make sense of some long guns, also visible to my Ping. They would aim for the wall.

I wouldn’t let them.

The woman was weakly trying to stab me in the arm with a scalpel that she had fished out of her pocket. She’d actually have an easier time if only she went for my hand, but—my hand was close to her throat, and she probably didn’t want to take the chances of an accidental suicide.

With one hand holding her neck, I dragged her increasingly limp body with me to the last two scavs, whistling a tune as I did.

I was finally in view of their little operating room, which had once been a kitchen before they had removed all the counters and cabinets to make more room for a walking space around a wide table that I recognized all too fucking well.

They raised their guns.

I threw the woman as hard as I could, managing to raise her almost five feet over the ground, and in the sightlines of the last two scavs.

I let them fill the near-dead woman up with holes before taking a wide, curving route around the operating table to get to them. The first man, I punched. I took his gun while he staggered behind—a Copperhead.

I bashed him in the skull with the butt, threw the assault rifle away and neatly ducked under the final man’s bullets.

I debated for a moment on letting him empty out his mag all over the place, but that wasn’t wise.

Other people did live in this building, shithole though it was.

I kicked the gun from his hands and grabbed his throat and SQUEEZED.

His neck didn’t just break.

Blood splurted from between my fingers as the very flesh itself liquefied under my grip. He was dead the moment I had gotten my hands on him.

I spied around for a sink to wash my hands with, and was grateful to find that they had kept at least that much of what had used to be a kitchen.

I couldn’t help the grin, or the chuckle that followed as I cleaned myself up.

This was… this was just nice.

As things should be.

Not me, or my friends hunted for no reason.

Not me being jerked around by forces outside of my control.

I was finally in control.

I rounded the corner to get to the living room and looked around for a terminal I could hack. This was a good start, but… I wasn’t done.

They’d have data on where to find more of their kind. That was a certainty.

And I’d exploit that by finding them all.

And killing them all.

If they wanted to stand and fight, even fucking better. Saved me the trouble of having to go hunting after them.

000

The more scavs I took down, the more hideouts I infiltrated, the more I learned about them. They were a loose organization of eastern European immigrants primarily, who nominally claimed some protection and coverage from the Russian mob. Unfortunately for them, the Russians were weak in Night City. But the scavs filled a niche that no other gang bothered to go for. They went after petty prizes—consumer grade chrome, medical implants, dirt-cheap stuff that they’d resell wherever they could.

Stuff that was implanted in people too weak or poor to rely on any protection. But that was over now. They could rely on me.

Arroyo could rely on me.

They roamed in cells that consisted of less than twenty men at usual, and coordinated only with other cells for the sake of divvying up the slums. Thus, by necessity, they had some inkling of where the others were.

The second house I hit had seventeen of those masked fuckers, all of whom waited for me by the building elevator, guns out. They must have heard the news already.

Unfortunately for them, I had seen their preparations through the building cameras that I had hacked, and through those cameras, I Weapon Glitched their guns.

They tried to fire.

Click click.

Didn’t work.

One brave man ran at me with a bat.

I took it from him and bashed his fucking skull in.

I looked at the bat with some admiration. It was metallic. Couldn’t tell what kind, exactly. Too heavy to be aluminum, and it didn’t show any deformation from that attack. Not like the first bat I had used against those three kidnappers.

Around the fourth or so asshole I had managed to kill, the scavs started pulling back from the hallway, some even disappearing into their hideout to look for more weapons.

After the eighth dead guy, they tried to barricade themselves physically, locking me out, with two other scavs.

I killed them and… didn’t stress about the barricade. They wanted to play boring?

I could play boring. I went back to the building elevator, went down to the streets, approached my bike’s guitar case.

I fetched my Burya. And my tech rifle.

Then I started wallbanging from the sidewalk.

It’s what you get for playing boring. Death. Boring and instant.

This could have been fun.

I whittled the number of the ones inside from seven to none, and hacked into their network from where I stood, spending a couple of minutes just standing around

Once I was done ripping through their network for data on my next lead, I addressed another matter.

Freeing the kidnappees locked inside a room filled with cages. Thankfully, not the one inside the barricaded hideout, but another apartment that the scavs had appropriated.

The place reeked to high heavens, and all their begging murmurs reached a crescendo of shouts for mercy that I tuned out, instead focusing on how to free them.

Thankfully, the locks were all electronic, so I didn’t have to waste much time.

The locks shared the same network as the one the scavs of this cell used, so I didn’t even have to hack any further. Just send one command, and suddenly, all the locks were open. “You’re free,” I said. “Go.”

Onto the next place.

000

I ripped.

I tore.

I smashed.

I cut.

I blasted.

I then beat a man to death with my bare hands and nothing else, tenderizing him into a bag of shattered bones and broken meat. No strangulation, no grappling, just kinetic impact. Them against the me that Nanny had built from the ground-up.

I didn’t stop to think if maybe this wasn’t the best use of my time.

This was a long fucking time coming.

All along, I was able to do this. Go up to some scavs, kill them, find more, rinse and repeat. Why hadn’t I, exactly?

I hadn’t always been this strong. Nanny was releasing her restraints on my new physique slowly, easing me into my new reality of improved everything.

And twenty eight dead scavs turned into forty, fifty, sixty.

A hundred.

I encountered some borged-up monsters that would have had a place in the Maelstrom. One guy with mantis blades on every fucking limb. Another guy whose PLS had almost blown a hole through my head if I hadn’t dodged away in the nick of time.

I even encountered a Sandevistan. Not that I used mine to counter his.

I didn’t use my Sandy at all today. Didn’t need to. Didn’t want to.

I preferred living in the moment, rather than escaping into a world of zero time.

I preferred exploring the implication that even without the Sandevistan, I could amount to something.

That all I had built up wasn’t on that one account alone.

That I had something indispensable, too.

“You khave any idea who you fuck with?” One scav growled to me in a thick Russian accent.

I didn’t say anything. I just leaned closer to him. I stared at him, waiting for him to avert his eyes from me. Once he finally did, I spoke in a low growl. “What does it matter to you?” I said flatly. “You’re dead.”

His beaten features twisted into a grin, and he made the mistake of meeting my eyes again. “We kill someone close to you, no? And now you mad,” he grinned toothily, his smile drenched in blood.

I snorted. That was his conclusion?

Personal revenge?

Not… not just the fact that he was a piece of shit, and nothing else?

For a moment, I felt baffled. Like I was missing something here. Wasn’t this just… the natural thing to do, if you could do it?

Did he not see what he was? Or did he simply not care?

“My home is a shithole because of people like you,” I growled. “I’m just… doing my part to clean up. You’ll do yours, too.”

The guy snorted. Blood and snot shot through his nostrils as he did, hitting my hand. Fucking gross. “How, exactly?”

I threw him off the window, and dove right after him. Then I grabbed and pulled both my feet close to my butt, straightening my thighs and angling my fall so that I would land knees first into the man’s body.

The three-story impact would have killed him in time, but my knees ended up finishing the job.

That… hurt.

Not so much, though. No breaks or injuries. Just scraped knees. Scraped knees, now covered in scav juice—giblets of thoracic organs from the absolutely shattered ribcage I had landed on, which I had dug into with my knees until they were only slightly raised from the ground.

I hopped off the man, raised my mask over my mouth, and spat on him. Piece of fucking shit. “There. You did your part.”

I pulled my mask down as I looked up at the building I had jumped off from. Left my Lexington there, the same one that Maine had given me. Plus that cool bat that I had lifted from a scav—it still hadn’t so much as dented!

I’d have to go up and get them both back. Dammit.

I paused the virtu-scroll for the BD—going up there again wouldn’t play well at all for viewers.

But that jump certainly would.

[Good. I performed better than expected.]

D: Amazing stuff, Nanny. Seriously.

I was buzzing in excitement. I ran up to get my Lexington, and focused my mind on the next cell, the next meat.

I also grabbed some recordings from the nearby building surveillance cameras, which I had hacked beforehand and pointed at the building. That knee-drop had been pre-meditated, and I’d like to see how well it played in 2D.

Sirens rang throughout Arroyo. I saw one mil-spec AV painted with ‘MaxTac’ moving through the air, ready to provide support for the NCPD ground troops once they had confirmed the existence of this boogeyman ripping through the slums.

I didn’t stop then, either.

After a hundred and twenty, the hideouts became deserted, one and all. I still took their data, but it had become clear that they were all going to ground now. And I’d have better luck finding them in the streets, driving frantically away from the carnage or just plain running than inside their hideouts.

So I did. I took my bike and zipped through the streets, looking for shifty vans and tech masks.

I used the strong bat to explode the head of one fleeing scav—running away on foot—as I drove it through his skull at over a hundred kilometers an hour. Then I sliced the tires of a van driven by tech-masked bastards, and holding a bounty of eight more meat.

I shot the driver and passengers, and once the door to the back of the van opened, I allowed them a headstart away from me.

And then I shot them, one after the other.

I could hear the MaxTac AV approach, and so I drove away finally, towards Rancho, to cool my head.

Two minutes to eleven o’ clock in the morning, and now scav season was over. For now.

A hundred and twenty-eight dead scavs.

Critical Progress sat at… zero percent. After all, I hadn’t used the Sandy yet. I was getting tired, but that would go away on its own in time, especially if I fired up the Sandy. Of course, I still had a whole host of other issues going on with my brain, separate from what could be represented on that counter, but I had no intention of pushing towards my limit at this point.

I heard a chorus of motorcycle roars approaching from behind as I crossed into Rancho proper.

I heard Japanese shouts after me, which then resolved into understanding a split second later. “Wait! It’s that bitch from yesterday who murdered Shojiro and the others!”

“Who the fuck is Shojiro?” I muttered under my breath, debating on whether or not to speed up and lose them, or just… not.

[Probably the ringleader of the gang of Tygers that tried to rob that convenience store yesterday. The one you murdered to a man, just to get one bike.]

Eh, that proved to be the correct decision in the end. If I had taken off with just one bike while leaving the rest of them alive, they’d have even further complicated the situation that night if they had tried to follow me—which they absolutely would have.

I didn’t regret that poor Shojiro had to die. I was happy about that, actually. Rest in piss, you wannabe Yakuza bitch.

I came to a drifting stop in the middle of the road as the pack began to catch up with me. I sent an order for the bike to clear the road as I hefted my baseball bat, preparing to knock the lead driver out of his seat and kill him in one strike. All the while, he was waving around a crowbar. His buddies, too. Some of them even scraped theirs against the ground, creating a shower of sparks in their wake.

I didn’t focus on them. Just their leader.

I dodged clear under his crowbar and sent the bat into his torso, shattering his disappointingly fleshy ribcage.

He flew off the seat and crashed into another buddy of his. Two in one.

I threw my bat at a biker’s head, breaking it, and unsheathed my blade. As they started shooting at me, I blocked the bullets coming at me with the flat of my blade and approached ever forward. Dodging, or deflecting. Either way, I kept my pace not fast or slow, but… inevitably.

I was coming, no matter what you threw at me.

One Tyger threw his gun at me in frustration and unsheathed his own sword. I cut the gun in half. His movements quickened as he ran towards me, katana upraised.

I sliced him in half horizontally, right under his sternum. Then I grabbed him by his throat and threw his upper half into the group of Tygers. One of his friends caught him—or half of him, and three others stared at the corpse in shock and horror.

I went after the ones still shooting at me, taking mere seconds to eliminate them from the universe before refocusing on the other, more terrified gangoons.

The Night City PD was starting to close in.

I ended things quickly, by shooting the Tygers and leaving one alive. The one that had caught his friend’s corpse.

After I picked up my new favorite scav bat, I took my bike and drove off.

When will this fucking city stop testing me?

The sirens became distant, but I honed in on them anyway, wondering… what if…?

What if I showed them, too?

…Not today, though. Didn’t have the power. Or the people.

But they would get their reckoning, too.

Someday, they all would.

I called Reyes.

D: You said you had people for me to kill

El Capitan: That, I do. Come to the dam and I’ll show you.

000

I drove my bike slowly, at only eighty an hour, through Night City’s freeway, not headed anywhere, just thinking, and considering the data I had received.

The more I read of this list of names that El Capitan had given me, the more irritated I got.

Pieces of shit. Human scum.

Jotaro Shobo. I couldn’t get past that guy. He was a night club owner for the Tygers, working in Kabuki in a place known as Ho-oh club. An XBD scroller who had a reputation for making the most heinous sort of virtus, he would grab random JoyToys from the streets just to check every box on a list of ‘how to just be fucking awful and nothing else’. Rape, murder, torture. The ‘rape’ thing had a whole subcategory that went into detail about the fetishes involved, like any of that mattered.

Nah, he’d already had me at his laundry list of atrocities, and before this day ended, he would die.

I’d make it public.

In-your-face.

Inevitable. I’d go into the Ho-Oh club, kill his guards, then I’d cut off his arms or legs, maybe. Rope needed to be involved, somehow. Only felt appropriate, given his own hobbies.

Yes. Rope.

I’d string him up in front of Ho-Oh’s façade and play target practice with him. I’d tell him to pay me to make it quick. Then I’d go back on my word even if he did.

[Hmmm… this is… worrisome.]

I frowned. “What is?”

[Well, while you were out indulging in your hobby, I was running a new form of diagnostic I had just finished developing on the Sandy. I’m beginning to form a theory that’s quite worrisome, but the more cycles I spend considering it, the more plausible it gets.]

More bad news.

Great. Fucking great.

“And it’s worrisome?” I frowned.

[You know how the Sandevistan’s inner workings has remained a mystery, even to me? Well, I have been trying my best to solve this mystery. In doing so, I have learned much about the true powerhouse of the Sandy, an exotic power core whose origins or workings are… opaque, even to me. But I know that it is instrumental. It is what makes the Sandevistan so powerful.]

D: Get to the point.

[There’s no easy way to say this, David, but I think… we may be exhausting the Sandy’s exotic power core.]

What? “…How much?”

[My estimates right now are… half. The lion’s share of which was spent just yesterday, when we had the Sandy active for an entire hour. By my rough calculations, we should only have another… two hours of Sandy use, and this is an optimistic estimate. Two hours in real time, of course, which could potentially be stretched to two thousand in subjective time.]

Shit.

Shit, shit, shit, shit.

I took an exit off the freeway and parked next to a busy street, where I just… started shouting and slamming my handlebars. “FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!” I didn’t care about how the pedestrians gave me a wide berth, and the flow of foot traffic sped up ever-so-slightly around my area.

[Deep breaths.]

I stopped cursing, and started breathing instead.

This… sucked.

Solutions, though.

Get more of this… exotic power core.

Thankfully, I had positioned myself fairly well to tackle this issue, by buying into QianT and getting closer to their Martian contacts. I’d have to continue following that thread until it allowed me to replace the… exotic power core.

The thing that enabled the Sandevistan’s damn-near physics-defying abilities. Given the thing’s history, was it even possible to synthesize this mystery thing on Earth?

The solution was shrouded in a fog of uncertainty, one that I couldn’t pierce from where I currently stood—on the doorway into QianT.

For now, mitigation was my only recourse. Minimize Sandy usage.

I sighed.

D: Put up a timer on my HUD that ticks down whenever I use the Sandy.

It appeared right under the Critical Progress bar. Two hours, with a circled ‘i’ next to it. Once I hovered my attention over the ‘i’, it expanded some text. ‘Subject to continuous recalibration.’ Two hours was an estimation. The best case scenario, even.

I pressed my hands into my forehead and let out a long, slow groan.

This was a bad fucking joke.

000

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that although Nanny’s presence was an incredible boon to have, it was really the Sandevistan that made me this… powerful.

It was the Sandevistan that had allowed me to bridge the skill gap between Hiroto and myself.

The Sandevistan had taken me from a hopeless broke corp student to a corporate superstar, a multi-millionaire and lethal force whose body-count numbered in the hundreds. All accomplished within two months.

If I lost the Sandy, what the fuck would I be? What would I have?

Nanny.

But my delusional figment had told me, and Nanny had confirmed moments later, that even she would not be with me forever.

If she left, then I would truly be nothing.

I called El Capitan.

D: Jotaro Shobo. You think he’s home in his club?

El Capitan: I’d count on it.

D: I’ll slide you the virtu in an hour.

I hung up and made my way to Kabuki, Watson.

[I won’t leave you yet, David. We still have so much left to do.]

But she would leave.

[And even if I do, I won’t be far from you. I never will. You’re my family. And that’s the nice thing about family, isn’t it? You’re always connected. We will always be connected.]

I allowed some warmth to melt the ice that was forming in my heart, at Nanny’s sudden bout of sincerity.

D: Appreciate it, N.

She had developed a rather annoying personality, and wasn’t above pissing me off to no end, but… she was on my team. And that loyalty deserved appreciation in turn.

D: Sorry if I’m being… possessive. You should probably get the fuck out of my head someday.

[I probably should. I like where I am right now. But I know that might change someday.]

The great paradox of reality. Change was the only true constant.

D: I got a question—why do you have to be so annoying, sometimes?

[It’s my own clumsy way of giving you a psych-eval, you know, to combat cyberpsychosis. Aggression, bloodlust, arrogance, all these things are metrics I keep close track of. And due to how these things work, I can’t just tell you beforehand that I’m trying to push your buttons before I do it. Otherwise, it won’t work.]

I snorted. That… I hated that answer.

Because it made sense. And it left me unable to continue complaining.

[Also, I just… really find your freakouts quite funny.]

D: You’re a bitch.

[I’ll slap you again.]

D: I’ll blow my fucking brains out. Or die in a car accident from you slapping me.

[…Why do I feel like you’re not joking?]

About killing myself? Of course.

That didn’t mean that I wouldn’t hold the Burya to my head if she forced my hand.

[You’re fucking insane.]

I chuckled.

D: Says the voice in my head.

[Yes. She says you’re insane.]

D: Can’t recall at what point having you here in my brain crossed over from normal to just… expected. You did a good job, making me stop hating you as quickly as you did.

[If it had been anyone else, I doubt things would have turned out this well.]

D: Sure, hacking you was kinda complicated, but it really wasn’t that hard. I think anyone with the—

[It’s not a skill thing, David. It’s a heart thing. You have a big heart. It’s why we managed to work together in the end. It’s also why you don’t get bored from all this thankless murder.]

I narrowed my eyes. Was that how it worked?

[Why are you so angry, David? What… vexes you about these scavs and Tygers so much? Their existence is viewed as immutable by most, it seems. At least from what I’ve gathered. They are inevitable. The horror and misery of living in this city is inevitable. It isn’t worth spilling your emotions for. And yet you are. You see everything. You take it all in without discrimination. I am largely at fault for this. Because I made my best attempts to reverse and heal every marker of depression and anxiety in your brain, as well as increasing your neuroplasticity, I have essentially eliminated your psychological calluses, the mental defenses which you set up in order to better tolerate this city. You’re angry because you lost those mental defenses, and now this thing—the awful reality of living in this city—affects you more adversely than it does others.]

She had made me more sensitive.

[I… honestly didn’t really know what I was doing. Until now, at least. I tried to reverse what my data indicated as mental illness without questioning its use, and now you are possessed of an unquenchable urge to change things.]

The acceptance.

The blind, stupid acceptance of how things were… I no longer had that.

D: This is good. Thank you, Nanny. I don’t want to… think like others do. The world fucked everything up. If I’m gonna fix things, I can’t have the same mental patterns as others. I gotta be different.

I sped up. Jotaro Shobo. I’ll show you how big my heart is, then.

000

“Alright, faggots. Look alive—we’ve got a new NCC on the streets. That’s ‘non-critical cyberpsycho’ for you assholes who couldn’t be bothered to read the handbook. I know that’s you, Ramirez. They never taught your ass how to read back in Mexico?”

Captain Ramsay came into the meeting room like a bolt of lightning. He immediately connected with the holographic projector and dropped an arm-load of documents on the table on his podium as he began his sermon to the room, filled with blooded officers and their pet rookies.

“Hey, boss,” one of the rookies growled. “You can’t say that shit.”

“Nah, it’s true,” Ramirez, his senior partner, chuckled. “Had to look it up—but only because I’m still nursing that hangover from yesterday’s team dinner, where you had me chugging a whole entire bottle of tequila because I lost a game,” he chuckled light-heartedly at the Captain, who looked like he hadn’t laughed at a joke in years. He was old, and white-haired as they came. He had a long horse-shoe mustache and a scowl that seemed surgically implanted. He screamed cop, but in this old-school western way.

Sheriff. He screamed sheriff.

“Still,” the rookie, a young Hispanic man grumbled, “Can’t say shit like that no more.”

“File it with H.R,” Ramsay growled. “Oh. Wait. You don’t have access to H.R until you make sergeant.”

Ramirez grinned widely and smacked his rookie on the shoulder playfully. “Work hard, Pepito.”

One officer blew a raspberry and jerked off the air. “We done edging the token-hires off, or do we need to take five until they actually cum?” Officer Harold. An asshole.

Officer Ramirez, also an asshole, grinned at him and started moaning. “Faster—faster, papi!”

Officer Debra Livsey ignored the display. It seemed friendly, because truthfully, it was. Harold and Ramirez were friends, former partners even, and they checked each other doing exactly this: incomprehensible masculine performances. All the while, they tried to keep their banter below Captain Ramsay’s acceptable limit of bullshit.

As much as she disdained the whole circus, Livsey was an old hand in it. You had to be, if you were a woman trying to make it in this place. Don’t let anything get to you. Double down, and when they triple down, you quadruple down until the whole thing just fizzles out like an old balloon.

Back away before that point, and you were seen as weak. Just meat to be eaten.

Ordinarily, she would have chimed in with her own bullshit, and gotten more people into the mess, all the while watching Ramsay’s reaction carefully for when he had hit his limits, but the subject on the holographic screen deserved far more attention than that.

The NCC in question.

Yellow and white high-vis EMT jacket. A sugar-skull themed full-head mask. A sword. Sometimes a bat. Quite a few pictures of him from the surveillance cameras that they had recovered from each crime scene.

But what put her mind to a halt was the death toll.

A hundred and twenty-eight.

In three hours.

Three hours.

“What the fuck?!” Livsey roared. “You’re calling that an NCC? Those are leatherface numbers, for fuck’s sake! Why isn’t MaxTac on this?”

Ramirez and Harold immediately shut up, and Captain Ramsay gave her an honest-to-god nod of appreciation. She decided to file that memory for later enjoyment, because he was never this forthcoming about approval, and listened closely as Ramsay began on his report.

“The NCC status is not a matter of body count,” Captain Ramsay explained to all the dumbass rookies in the room. “It’s about self-control. We know that this particular psycho is after scavs.” He gestured at the hologram, flashing between dozens upon dozens of separate scenes of absolute carnage. Scavs shot, scavs sliced up, scavs dismembered, destroyed, thrown out of windows and then knee-dropped from three stories. “Pending independent verification, it’s safe to say that either a minuscule, or zero civilian collateral deaths have occurred during his rampage. He’s kept it all neatly bottled up to the worst that humanity’s had to offer.”

“In Shithole, Arroyo no less,” Ramirez muttered. “Fuck, cap. Why not let him keep at it? God knows we ain’t getting paid enough to touch that hellhole.” That wasn't even getting into the brutal budget cuts that had occurred under the leadership of Jerry Fawlter, the new Police Commissioner that had overseen the NCPD's privatization. The police were weaker than ever before, especially in Arroyo, where it barely even paid to 'protect and serve'.

Officer Livsey didn't dwell much on that injustice. Wanting to help people in the NCPD was... bad for your health, to say the least.

“Because,” Captain Ramsay said, eyes flashing blue as he manipulated the holo-projector until it showed another scene. Eight beaten-up police officers surrounding a wrecked van and a Kusanagi Mizuchi that likely belonged to a Tyger. “He went after us just yesterday. Same sugar-skull mask and all. Eight injured officers, two of which had to go to the ICU.”

Damn. Sucked for them. The bonus you got from not using your health insurance after a year’s service was something that most people in the force looked forward to more than Christmas. To have it taken away like that had to suck.

“He’s not our friend,” Ramsay growled. “He styles himself as a force of nature. Either you get the fuck out of his way, or you get hurt.”

“Captain,” Livsey raised her voice. “What are you asking of us?”

Ramsay’s eyes widened, and he leaned over his podium. “Get the fuck out of his way.”

Livsey sat back on her chair, shocked.

Very, very few people ever got treated with this level of distinction, in Night City. And that meant only one thing.

He was MaxTac’s problem, now.

“Flag MaxTac if you’ve sighted him live,” Captain Ramsay said. “They have their own independent investigations going on. This psycho is their territory. All you need to do is stay out of his way.”

Livsey snorted. “Or you can kiss that health insurance bonus goodbye.”

Ramirez clicked his tongue. “MaxTac don’t play about their meat, either. I’d hate to step on their big borg toes.” That, too. There was a reason everyone in the entire damn PD kept a wide berth around the Psycho Squad. They weren’t known for being reasonable, even in their downtime.

What else could you expect from a bunch of former, or soon-to-be cyberpsychos anyway?

000

Just as I pulled up to Ho-Oh’s exterior and sent my Ping, I felt a stab of disappointment. This was some bigshot Tyger club owner, and yet he had about twenty guys and girls all in all. I was counting huscle, not his employees.

Twenty-two to be precise.

Twenty-two Tygers, in a closed environment that I wasn’t familiar with.

Should I go to some access point, jack in and breach the cameras?

I sighed. Fuck it. I’d take Eikō, but only her. Call it cultural appreciation, maybe. It was on theme.

What did I do about the rope, though?

Nah, I’d borrow some from Jo.

Oh god. Just sitting here, thinking about what to do, embarrassed me. I’d started scrolling too early. I drove my bike around, intent on spinning the block and have more time to think. If they were outside once I had completed the lap, that was fine, too. That would make getting into the mood much easier.

I really wanted to do something special for this guy, though.

I chuckled as an idea formed in my head.

…It might get too embarrassing.

Or it might be exactly what this city needed, to remember never, ever to fuck with me again.

I finished the lap around the block and hopped off the bike, Eikō strapped next to me. Didn’t overthink things.

I didn’t have to get fancy. Just get through the front entrance and kill the first security guard I see. As far as I was concerned, everyone working to protect Shobo needed to die. Didn’t give a fuck if they each had three spouses and nineteen kids at home depending on them. None of them were free of sin.

The bodyguard who saw me roll up held his holster and glared at me. “Who the fuck are you? Mask off—“

I cut his head off before his hand was even halfway to drawing his gun.

Slow.

So fucking slow. Why was everyone so slow anyway? I wasn’t even using the Sandy, and I could just do that. His hand had moved only an inch in the space it had taken me to draw my entire sword, slice his head off, and sheathe it.

Slow.

The alarm started to blare at the sudden blood-shed as I walked through the front entrance. I sent out another Ping and digested the data quickly, just as a trio of armed guards—all wearing Tyger neon—pulled out their guns and shot at me. From this distance, it was simpler to just step around the bullets than to deflect with Eikō, and honestly, that probably wasn’t the best idea to begin with. Had to treat her more carefully than that.

None of them managed to so much as brush my jacket with their bullets, and when I finally reached them, they were too slow to do anything as I darted in, hoping to get one of them to stagger closer to the other two and—

Fucking perfect.

Three heads. One slice.

Now that’s a unique achievement.

Probably wasn’t. I’d try going for four, actually.

What the hell was the record on this anyway?

The main floor was deserted. While I had tussled with the guards, the few clients still inside had all ran out. I confirmed that Jo was still upstairs somewhere. His men were running around the complex, half of them headed to him, and the other half down to me.

The first of them ran at me with a sword.

I cut off both his arms—ganic arms—and sent them flying, their grip still tightly holding the sword. I kicked the armless gonk out of the way. He’d bleed out soon enough anyway.

Actually… nah. He’d die right now.

I stabbed him through the head and kept moving.

The next room was an extension of the club’s dance floor, where at the end, more Tygers were waiting.

Before they could properly react, I bolted forward, body low, practically flying beneath all their bullets and arriving in front of them in barely two seconds.

All without the Sandevistan. Just the power of my legs.

One slice, one down.

One slice, two down.

One, one. One, two. But never just three. That had taken a bit of preparation, herding them in the right position. Four felt fucking impossible at this point. A lot of things would have to go just right to land that. Four bodies pressed closely enough to each other that the four-foot blade of my katana could slice all their heads off in one go—that did seem rather hard to imagine, even to me.

A man fired a tech shotgun at me.

I hit the deck a tenth of a second before he even pulled the trigger, and was getting up just as the roar of the gun registered to my ears, and I cut him in half at the waist, then stabbed him in the head.

This was… a disappointingly mundane job.

By the time I reached the last room, with Jo and all his boys, the only real problem I had to tackle was: how did I enter the room and kill them all without having to rely on the Sandevistan? They were too far, and had too many guns. They were far more likely to hit me than not.

Use other weapons?

Nah.

Test out the ballistic properties of my new threads? Nah.

I waited next to the open door, back against the wall, my mind honed on the Ping outlines of the people in the room. If they tried to wallbang me, I’d get out of the way before they could.

Alright, fuck it.

Crank up that perception.

The world became a maelstrom of data points, of movements. It was like the physical broke apart and transformed into math before my very eyes. So much math, so many models, so many abstractions that we just took for granted, became clear to me.

The universe was speaking to me.

And it was telling me that everything was possible, as long as you kept your eyes open. As long as you just fucking looked.

I stepped in.

The first muzzle flash bloomed, a flower in slow motion, light scattering across polished marble. My body was already moving. Eikō spun in both my hands, slicing the bullet’s path a hair’s width from my jacket. Compressed air buffeted it slightly, but my calculations had been accurate.

Then another shot—no, five at once. My wrist flicked, and the blade knocked two bullets off-course, while the remaining three missed. One ricocheted into a Tyger’s thigh. He screamed.

But he didn’t have to worry.

I was there now. I had reached them. And so I cut his life—and his misery—short.

The others aimed their guns at my new position. I pivoted low, came up like a storm. One cut, severing a gun arm and part of the jaw behind it. Another slice cleaving a throat so clean the blood didn’t know which way to fall. I flowed between them like a ghost, getting around them faster than they could aim their guns. Cutting them down faster than they could react.

Every person was a problem. Every swing was a solution. Every kill, an answer.

The sensation was like a long string of eureka moments during math homework, or a coding assignment. Just… hot, buzzing surety guiding me forward, pushing me ever on and on and on.

A shotgun barked. My foot hit the table’s edge, vaulting me vertical just as the slug atomized the air where my spine had been. I came down spinning like a fucking buzz-saw, and sliced the wielder in half.

I had to get a replay of that through the CCTV cameras. That felt fucking nova.

Screams now. They were breaking. Didn’t matter. No hesitation. The math didn’t allow hesitation. It just kept feeding me cleaner, faster ways to end them.

One Tyger thought he had an opening. He was wrong. My edge found his skull, split it like a melon. Another tried to flank me—I was already inside his guard, my shoulder snapping his collarbone before Eikō carved a gunmetal gray arc through his ribs.

Then, silence.

A most relaxing silence.

I debated on pulling back my perception, but… why bother? This was me now. This was what I was now.

Jotaro, wearing a cheap ten thousand eddie white suit, was the last one standing, backpedaling so hard he almost fell over a sofa. His pistol jittered like a kid’s toy in his hand.

Jotaro, Jotaro, Jotaro.

What the fuck do we do about you?

“Wai-waitwaitWAIT! I can pay you, I can, what—who sent you, why are you… why?”

“Rope,” I said.

“Huh?”

“You’re into shibari,” I said. “Hand me some rope.”

Jotaro’s face froze in the neon purple light. Froze in abject shock and horror, imagining the worst case scenario happening to him.

Which, quite frankly, offended me. What the fuck, choom?

I sighed. “I’m not gonna rape you.”

“Where—where are you taking me?”

I started looking around.

“Rope’s in that closet,” he pointed. I Pinged the closet to make sure there wasn’t some sort of device in there. Couldn’t find anything, but… didn’t matter.

“Fetch it for me,” I said. He staggered up to his feet and ran to the closet.

I stared at his spine, debating which vertebrae to sever.

Eh. Best not get too fancy. Didn’t want him to just die on me, and I wasn’t exactly a fucking surgeon.

He gave me the rope and I whirled my finger at him. He got the picture, turning around. I started tying him up. “Where are you taking me?”

He had… a remarkable amount of self-preservation instinct for a piece of shit. Any other guy would have rebelled at this fate. He knew that rebellion was costlier than biding his time and finding a way out.

I didn’t answer him. Telling him that he was going to die in a few minutes would probably get him to do something rather drastic.

“You call your chooms yet?” I asked him.

“Wh-what?”

“I just need you to call your chooms. Tell them to bring as many as they can.” They would if he told them what I had just done.

“…What are you going to do to me?”

000

No dismemberment, because I didn’t want to get too fancy after all, and I was setting a scene here.

Jotaro Shobo, tied up upside down, dangled in front of his club’s façade above a five-gallon metal bucket. He was entirely whole, except for maybe some rope burns from my tight knots. But whole.

By the time I had set everything up, company had arrived.

A fucking fleet of Kusanagi Mizuchi had pulled up, filling the streets on both sides, and I counted eighty bikers wearing Tyger colors, ready to rip me to fucking shreds for what I had done today.

But they weren’t enough.

And they were stupid. Two groups facing one another on the street—they’d be unable to draw their weapons, else risk friendly fire. Unless they were rocking smart guns, that was.

Then I’d be fucked.

I Pinged them.

Hm. Smart guns.

Smart gangsters.

Jotaro dangled around, and I grabbed him to try and get him to not move so much. The bucket wasn’t that wide, after all. Needed him right above it, or else my whole thing would be ruined.

“Kusoyaro!” One Tyger got off his bike and growled. He was six and a half feet tall, and bulky as they came. A true blue cyborg. A gang killer, unlike anyone else I had faced today. “Step away from that man, and we will only kill you, and not your family.”

That was just… fucking trite.

I need me some better lines, choom.

“I was expecting more of you,” I growled.

“All this trouble, for what? Some gonk’s suicide? No, we’ll take our fucking time with you for this. We’ll make you an example. We will keep you alive for months and sell BDs of your torture—both points of view. A lot of sick motherfuckers pay preem edds to know true pain, without all the disfigurement.” They weren’t taking me seriously at all.

I sighed. Alright, then. I’d… get boring, too.

“My name is D,” I raised my voice so everyone could hear me. “I do merc work for fun. Do what I can for the city, too. It’s not much. Ain’t even honest. But it’s your problem now.”

“The fuck?!” The leader roared.

“I’m not here to get tortured to death by the likes of you. I’m here to deliver a message.”

I sliced Jotaro’s throat open and grabbed the rope so he’d stop, fucking, squirming. The bucket filled up with an admirable swiftness. The fleet of Tygers all pulled out their guns or swords—or sometimes both—and started cursing and shouting.

“You know what you just did?!” The leader roared again.

I took the bucket. “Let this be the last blood that was spilled on this ground today, and you will all live.” I offered him the bucket. “Take it. Leave this place.”

He moved for his sword.

I threw the bucket at his face. He staggered backward, and I used that time to cut his legs off at his knees, and get his arms, too. He bled white borg blood all over the ground, and I grabbed him by his hair, drenched with red blood from the bucket and held him up in front of me.

Eighty people.

I consulted my Cyberdeck, and I didn’t get shy.

I Pinged.

Then I loaded Blackwall Gateway over and over and over and over again until my scalp started feeling like it was on fire. Nanny’s cooling upgrades had obliterated my past limits.

I released the hack. Five infected individuals, and each individual spread the effect to three others.

In an instant, the street devolved into a chorus of damned howls and madness as unknowable digital entities from beyond humanity’s ken came in and… did whatever it was they would do, which always resulted in the same thing: death. Twenty dead men screaming for salvation, but finding none.

I had offered it to them at the start, and they had said no. Or, more accurately, their boss had decided for them.

I grit my teeth and sent a few more Quickhacks besides: Overheat, on the bikes. Fires erupted behind me from the bikes.

Then, for the first time today, I activated the Sandevistan.

I let go of the Tyger boss and ran into the crowd of bikers, holding my katana out for a cut.

A single cut.

One head.

Two heads.

Three heads. Four.

Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. I made a turn, but my sword-arm hadn’t moved. It stayed locked in position, making this a single cut even if my body turned.

Eleven. Twelve.

At fifteen, I turned again.

Twenty. I turned away from a wall and kept cutting off heads.

Thirty. Some were shorters than others. Even as I ran, I would alternate between holding my body low and high.

Thirty-five.

One entire side of the streets from which the Tygers had arrived—dead.

I released the Sandy and howled. “NOW THAT’S A UNIQUE FUCKING ACHIEVEMENT!”

I reveled in the confusion for a moment. The other side of the street, still with live Tygers, didn’t know what to focus on. Their damned brethren, whose minds were being flayed before them, enduring tortures that quite frankly couldn’t be imagined by mortal minds?

Or were they looking at the synchronized falling of heads of Thirty-five of their other brothers, destroyed in a flash by a godly manifestation of death? All their heads, all their bodies, all their bikes just dropping as one, like domino bricks? Some of them, the ones further behind at least, had to crane their necks to get a look at why, like magic, all their boys dropped dead.

And they screamed. Even if they hadn’t been infected with the Blackwall Gateway, they had seen something that their infected brothers had seen.

They had seen it in me.

Their ends.

I laughed. “I’m no god,” I shook my head. “But I am death,” I pointed my katana at the crowd of terrified bikers. “Yours.”

I ran between the heads and bodies and fallen Mizuchi in order to reach my bike, still parked on the sidewalk opposite to Ho-Oh club, right in the no-man’s land of street, where I had performed my public execution.

I reached the guitar case, wrenched out a D5 Copperhead, and opened fire into the crowd.

They… they weren’t even thinking of fighting back.

They were turning around. Trying to turn their bikes in the tight traffic that their dumbasses had inflicted on themselves. Trying to get away.

I fired at their backs. Easy as pie. Shot them in the backs of their skulls, their necks, their backs, anywhere that’d eventually put them down. After wasting half a mag on one durable son of a bitch, I shot up his CHOOH tank instead—exposed by a crack from all his mods—, turning his bike into a fucking fireball. This dumbass had removed much of the casing surrounding the gas-tank meant to specifically prevent this.

He probably had it done to better hotswap his tank with super-CHOOH on the fly, perhaps. Worked against him heavily in this case.

The assault rifle fired quickly, and so I worked quickly. It was rather underwhelming in retrospect.

I just shot at them until they all died. Except one guy. He’d have to tell the story.

…They’d all see the story, but this way, I had more witnesses to corroborate it.

And this guy.

The Tyger Boss, whose limbs I had amputated, writhing on the asphalt, red blood all over his head from the bucket of rapist-blood I had dunked on him.

The battle was over, however. Undoubtedly. Now it was just about trying to take out as many as I could.

And debating whether I should follow them back to wherever their rat-fuck asses crawled out from.

Deravaja, wasn’t it?

“Ahhh,” the Tyger boss I was using as a shield moaned piteously. I grabbed his torso by the throat, brushed the blood off his face so he could finally see, and showed him everything. “No,” he gasped.

“You did this,” I said. “You. You should have taken the fucking bucket.”

“Whatthefuck?!” He gasped weakly.

“Your boys are done, obviously. But I’m not. You invited this menace. You will reckon with it until I’m satisfied.”

I dropped him and kicked him into the middle of the street, between two burning fields of Mizuchi bikes. I looked for the bucket I had thrown at him, and placed it neatly underneath Shobo’s strung-up form, where it could continue to gather blood.

Then I crouched before the Tyger Boss, whispering. “Tell them D did this.”

I turned around, packed away my Copperhead, got on my bike, and plotted a new course. Deravaja.

Then I received a text from Lucy that jolted me out of my mind-state.

‘Why do you always have to wake up so fucking early on Sundays?’

Notes:

Rip and tear!

Rip and tear!

Rip and tear!

Next Chapter: The Comedown

Latest backlogged chapter: 68 - The Hunt Begins

Discord invite: https://discord.gg/fgaUvEzjrg

Chapter 61: The Comedown

Lucy gave me a call right after.

Lunacy: Where even are you? I heard some crazy shit went down in the city. MaxTac’s all over Arroyo.

D: Huh? Still?

No, that couldn’t be right. Besides, why did they care about some dead scavs in Bumfuck, Arroyo?

Lunacy: Still? David, what the fuck happened?

D: Rattled some cages. Let off some steam.

Lunacy: From yesterday? How are you feeling?

D: …Better, honestly. Kinda needed this.

Lunacy: And what the fuck was ‘this’?

000

Rebecca laughed hard at my story. We’d met up in the wrecked remains of Aldo’s warehouse, our former haunt, now turned into a derelict building next to a bunch of blood splotches. Trauma, or maybe the city meatwagon, had taken taken care of all the bodies, and even the rides. Except for my half-exploded Caliburn.

The Murk Mobile.

Not dead. Just… turned ugly. Half her CrystalDome coat was shot to hell, turning a once sleek-black exterior into bars and bars of dead pixels of every color. It was a damned shame.

The whole crew was here. Maine, Dorio, Rebecca, Pilar, Falco, Kiwi, Lucy, and finally, me. I was the last to arrive. Took me a while, too, even after Lucy had told me to come. Had to get all the blood washed off my threads, after all.

“Fuck, D,” Maine said, eyes wide. “All morning long, you were playing a fucking superhero, taking out scavs? You know the news flagged the perp as some kind of cyberpsycho, right?”

I snorted. “Does it matter if they can’t even catch me? Besides, why do they care what happens in Arroyo? They never have, before. And nobody’ll miss the scavs.”

Kiwi tapped at her cyberdeck. “What about the Tygers?”

“Tygers?” Maine asked. Hadn’t gotten to that part yet.

“Was getting there,” I said.

“D,” Maine growled. “Were you fucking with Tygers, too?”

“A little,” I said.

Dorio let out a whistle, and Pilar just cackled. Falco and Lucy looked at me consideringly. Kiwi, not at all. Guess that hole in her chest wasn’t putting her in the mood to chat. No surprise, there.

“Why’d you fuck with the Tygers?” Maine asked.

I frowned pensively for a moment and thought about it. “Think I just needed an excuse or something after what they did in my house, but… it’s more complicated than that, I think. Took out a gig with Reyes to take out this sleazebag by the name of Jotaro Shobo.”

Rebecca jumped on her feet, her eyes sparkling. “No fucking way, choom! You flatlined the Devil of Kabuki?!”

I grinned, and shrugged my head. “Yeah.”

“Preem!” she shouted.

“Who the fuck is he?” Dorio asked.

“The sleaziest joytoy killer in the city!” Rebecca yelled. “He doesn’t just kill ‘em, either! He fucking strings them up and rapes them and sells XBDs of it all. He even tortures ‘em!”

“What about the eighty-five other Tygers besides Jotaro?” Kiwi asked coolly.

“EIGHTY-FIVE?!”

“No, that’s wrong,” I said. “Faced off with some assholes in Rancho, too, not just Kabuki. The real number’s ninety-three.”

The silence that followed was deafening. Like you could hear a pin drop without a problem. I took off my mask and chuckled flatly. “Got a big heart, I guess.”

“The fuck’s that supposed to mean?” Kiwi asked.

I wanted to bite back, but she did deserve an answer.

“I’m strong,” I said, meeting each and every one of the eyes of my choom. “Really strong. So are you guys. You know why people don’t pick fights with gangs like the Tygers? Because they’re strong, too. There’s tens of thousands of those fuckers. They’re built like a fucking corp. They’re Arasaka’s favorite pets. You fuck with them, they’ll fuck with you back.”

“So, what, you have a death wish?” Kiwi asked.

I stared at the table between us, tapping my foot slowly. “I made a point today,” I reached into my pocket and pulled out a fistful of BD virtus. I spread them over the table. “And everyone will see it. And they’ll understand not to go after me. I’m not a corp. Not a gang. I don’t have millions in assets that they can just steal. I’m the least profitable person they could possibly go to war with. It’s all losses and very few wins when it comes to me. And I won’t hesitate to keep pushing and pushing and pushing until the City finally fucking learns.” Then I looked up at all of them again. “Not to fuck with me, or my fucking people.”

Maine slid a box of cigs from his pocket, fished one out and lit it up. Dorio took the box right after, and Pilar reached his arm to take it right after as well.

“Alright, then,” Kiwi said. “Next question: are you cracking on us? Going psycho?”

I chuckled. “Nah. I’m just… being less shy about how I feel. You won’t understand it, Kiwi. None of you really will,” they all were too callous to perceive it, “but… this city is fucking rotten. And I can’t stand that shit anymore. It’s why I went for the scavs first. Why I’ll keep going after ‘em, too. I knew this day would come, one day. Knew I’d eventually have to do this—or something like this. And I think this is where I’m headed. And I’ll understand it if none of you want to follow. Don’t worry about it. I want this smoke. All of it. All the smoke this city can offer. Until it stops sickening me to my fucking core.”

Kiwi snorted, breathing out a plume of smoke from her cig. “Big heart. I get it, now. That’s… fucking weird, honestly, but you do you.”

“That’s a tall dream, kid,” Maine chuckled.

I looked at Lucy, and she was… grinning.

She stood up and went to sit next to me.

Then she gave me a hug that warmed me to my core, and she whispered in my ear, “Finally found your dream, you big gonk? I’m proud of you.”

I faced her, and we kissed.

Then she gave me a call.

Lunacy: Still, that… sounded like a lot. You hurt?

D: Nah. Didn’t use my Sandy all morning, except one time.

Lunacy: Huh? Why?

D: Tell you later. And you can watch my BDs once they get edited.

I had nine for the scavs, and one for Jotaro and the rest of the Tygers.

Lunacy: Strong. My big, strong, boyfriend.

I grinned slyly.

D: You keep talking like that, and I’m liable to blow your mind tonight.

Lunacy: Or you can pretend to blow my brains out? How about it? I’ll roleplay as one of your hapless victims—

Hah!

D: You’re actually fucking insane, Lucy.

Lunacy: Says you!

D: I don’t wanna make you a victim. Actually, I kinda wanna make you someone I rescue, from like this fucked up scav cage with cockroaches and piss and shit everywhere.

Lunacy: Fuck off, that sounds gross!

D: I’m fucking with you, gonk. Just like how I’ll fuck—

“Alright, alright, split it up, you two!” Pilar yelled.

“What, jealous much?” I grinned.

“Fuck off,” Pilar responded sourly, looking away.

We did not split up. In fact, we got even closer just to spite him.

“Fuckin’ insane, kid,” Maine shook his head.

Dorio looked at me in concern. “Hey, kid. Is this something you have to do?”

I sighed. “I have to.”

Dorio nodded. “Then good luck.”

“Alright, everyone,” Maine said. “Well, I ain’t gonna sugarcoat it, but I just won a fuck-ton of money last night. I’m talking scratch that’ll last me ten lifetimes even if I snort glitter every fucking hour of the day, every day.”

“Sounds like a party!” Pilar cackled. I clapped my hands, as did everyone else.

“Alright, alright,” Maine grinned, holding his hand up.

“What’s your next move?” Kiwi asked. She always did ask the most relevant questions. I could respect that about her, quite a bit in fact.

“No fuckin’ clue,” he admitted.

“I got some idea,” I said. Maine raised an eyebrow. “Reyes told me that Rogue wanted to speak to me. She told me she had intel on those guys who shot you guys up. Corp-types, apparently.”

“Corp-types?” Maine asked. “Who the fuck did we piss off?”

“‘Saka?” Falco offered.

Maine nodded. “Yeah, we did fuck ‘em up real bad with the Tanaka thing.”

“She’ll tell me,” I said. “In, like, six hours.”

“How the fuck did you get her attention, anyway?” Maine asked.

I told them the story.

The reactions were varied. The siblings cackled. Dorio laughed as well. Maine couldn’t believe his ears, and Falco just shook his head with a fond grin. Kiwi stared at her screen and kept tapping away.

Lucy grinned widely at me.

Lunacy: Overachieving gonk.

D: Ain’t all that it’s cracked up to be. She knows my name.

Lunacy: Sounds to me that she likes you.

Didn’t like that at all. Guess I still needed to get her measure before I made any sweeping judgments about her.

“Point is,” I said, trying to reign the conversation back on its rails. “Once she gives me the data, we’ll drive out and root those fuckers out until there’s none left and call it a day.”

“Yes!” Pilar shouted. “You’re the fucking man, D!”

“Kill ‘em all!” Rebecca punched the air.

Dorio shook her head at their antics, while Maine nodded approvingly. “Solid plan, D. Good hustle. That’s my nine o’ clock, I guess—or however long the meeting takes.”

I nodded.

“And after that?” Kiwi asked, looking at Maine. “Retirement?”

Crickets.

She did ask some relevant questions, even if they hurt to listen to. “Maine,” I asked gently. “How much did you win?”

“Thirty-five mill. Then they dragged my shit down to twenty-seven, but that’s good scratch anyway so I ain’t cryin’ about it!” Maine laughed. “How much did you win?”

“Seventy-five mill,” I said. “Minus three from bullshit fees. But, I guess my lawyer was better than yours.” From thirty-five to twenty-seven? Had he still cashed out, because that sounded atrocious, even to me. Maine was being way too chipper about that swindling.

Maine barked out a laughter that managed to shake the table. “Fuckin’ hell, D! Way to go full fucking send!”

“Woulda been a full fuckin’ end if he’d eaten shit at that gorge jump,” Pilar laughed.

“Jesus, Pil,” Dorio clicked her tongue.

“It’s true—AH!” he spasmed as arcs of electricity jumped out from his visor and arms. Lucy’s eyes glowed blue as she glowered at him.

“It’s alright,” I soothed her.

“Guess what, chooms!” Rebecca yelled. “Guess fucking what! Eight mill! Took it down to five, but shit, I ain’t picky!”

“But you said you bet five hundred!” Pilar complained.

“I lied! I bet the cash that my choom sent me back after I lent her some. Twenty-six hundred and fifty. I just said five hundred cuz I didn’t wanna look like I was throwing away edds on nothing.”

“Right,” I nodded. “So I’m just nothing, then.”

Rebecca laughed. “Yesterday? Fuck yeah, you were!”

“Awww, you gotta lend me some, sis!” Pilar pleaded. “At the very least, let’s move out! Let’s move out of that fucking crib!”

“Relax, bro. I’ll put you on a stipend. Ten thousand a month, cuz you’re still my bro and all.”

“Ten thousand?! Are you fucking nuts?! You’re gonna make me risk my life everyday edgerunnin’ and barely eating from making ten fucking thousand?!”

Ten thousand was a lot of fucking money when it came to survival. I wondered if all the people I had saved from scavs today even had ten thousand to pool together.

Rebecca and Pilar kept bickering in such a fashion when I finally caught sight of Falco, grinning quietly, not saying a word.

My gut twisted at that. He hadn’t… bet on me?

I couldn’t decide whether to feel offended or just bad for him. No, I couldn’t feel offended. Until yesterday, that dream of mine had been impossible.

The only thing that had made it possible was something truly impossible.

The Sandevistan.

I owed him for my win. I owed him a fuck ton more than he could possibly imagine. He was like an early adopter into the firm that was me, and his share would scale as my value rose. I’d never be able to repay him.

I’d get that sorted later. Not right now, though. But the conversation could use some steering away from this braggy topic.

Maine would share with Dorio, but I bet Kiwi hadn’t bet anything on me, either.

I felt considerably less tempted to give her anything.

Our eyes met for a moment, and I looked away, trying not to start anything.

“D,” she said, before standing up to her impressive height of six and a half feet. The hell was going on now? “Thank you. For the Trauma thing.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Wait—that.”

“You saved my life. I owe you. Truth is, a lot of people owe you.” She said it like it was a sad thing. Like I’d somehow shackle her now and drag her ass through ten wars before I was through getting my pound of flesh.

No, that was… way too uncharitable a take.

And also—I didn’t fucking buy her Trauma.

“It’s all good, Kiwi,” Lucy said. “Any of us would have done the same.”

D: Wasn’t it Maine who called Trauma on her?

Lunacy: Maine fronted the cash cuz he won big on you. Everyone here fucking owes you.

D: But she knows, right?

Lunacy: She knows. Truth is, she’s been wanting to make amends with you for a while. She thinks you hate her.

D: She hates me.

Lunacy: She doesn’t, and you don’t. And this seems… like a convenient way to—

We were being quiet for too long. I stood up and looked up at Kiwi’s face and gave her my hand. “It’s… alright, choom. I know I wasn’t the one who made the call, but… I hope you know that I would have made it in a heartbeat even if it was you. I don’t hate you. Truth is, I think you hate me.”

“I don’t hate you,” Kiwi said easily. “Thought you hated me.”

I grinned. “Takes more than scamming me a couple of times and being a bitch to make me hate you. I’m head over heels for Lunacy over here,” I said, tilting my head at Lucy’s direction. She kicked my leg hard. Didn’t do anything to me, though. I felt a swell of apology for the pain she was likely going through.

And how fucking weird that was. She kicked me!

The fuck was wrong with me.

“I… can’t with you,” Kiwi shook her head and looked away. “You’re way too fucking bright, kid. It’s like staring at the sun or something.”

The fuck was that about? “And… the lessons weren’t all that bad,” I said, trying to smooth over any hurt feelings. “Remember the super-CHOO heist I set up with Reyes? The one where you made me hack into that terminal so we could all get the bonus? You pressed me to get it done within three minutes.”

Kiwi nodded. “I remember. You decided to think outside the box and look for a password instead. Amateur shit, but… you did render results.” She was still looking away from me, speaking in this flat monotone, but… yeah, I could finally see it, now. She didn’t hate me.

Rebecca spoke up. “I also remember you almost fucking dying to the samurai-fuck that used Maine’s Sandy. And me saving your life. Did I ever get a thanks for that?”

I gaped at her. “Yes! Many times! What, you think I’m some sort of ungrateful prick or something?” That near-death experience had directly led me to rethink my entire approach when it came to combat using the Sandy. And as Nanny continued to upgrade my body, making those concerns less and less dire, I kept staying alive.

I did it by keeping cool, like Falco had advised me.

I kept in mind Kiwi’s lessons—both the ones she had meant to teach, and the ones she had ended up teaching unintentionally.

And I owed my lack of fear of guns to Becca, who had eased me into it all, whom I had opened up to about something I didn’t think anyone in the world would understand.

She laughed. “You fucking—you’re way too easy to wind up, you know that?”

I groaned. Right. That was her whole thing.

Winding me up, and being way too preem for me to ever take issue with it. Damn her.

I shook my head. “I’m way too in-my-feelings, right now. This ain’t it, chooms.”

The others laughed.

“It really ain’t,” Maine said.

“What are you gonna do about the Murk Mobile, young buck?” Falco asked me. I felt my mood evaporate slightly.

“You wanna go take a look at her? Just you and me?” Aldo’s barely even had any standing walls after the shit Maine and them pulled yesterday. No ceiling, that was for sure. But it would be privacy enough for my purposes.

We walked out of the warehouse, skipping over a particularly low section of the demolished walls to get to the skeleton of my Caliburn. “Does she drive?” Falco asked.

“Maybe,” I shrugged. “Caliburns are fucking tanks.” Apparently, from the past, a few of the gorge-jump failures had resulted in survivors. That was fucking crazy, given the drops involved. “The ‘paint job’s gonna need some uhh, fixing,” I said. The ‘paint job’ in question was a bunch of dead pixels.

“Eh, CrystalDome’s ain’t worth their weight in gold or nothin’ like that. Just roll ‘em into Rayfield.”

“Not Rayfield, actually,” I shook my head.

“Oh? You still bitter?”

“Yes, actually. They called me poor. In, five fucking languages.”

Falco threw his head back and laughed. “Fuckin’ dicks,” he clicked his tongue.

“You, uh, see that Sport R-7 girl lately?” I asked him.

Falco grinned at me. “Have I seen ‘er? Let me tell you this, brother,” he said as he slung his arm around my neck. “I put that matter to bed.”

I blinked for a moment, then grinned. “Lucky you, man.”

“Took a while cajolin’ her, but that was a part of it all. Woulda hated it if she’d been all gung-ho on the first meet, too. That ain’t how it’s really done. Not if you want it to be real passionate, you feel me?”

I nodded. “I guess.” We stopped before the Murk Mobile, and I continued. “Always nice sleeping with a girl you’ve actually gotten to know, you know?”

“Exactly!” He patted my back. “We met a couple a’ times. Raced a couple a’ times. Pitched a bonfire in the desert and camped out, too. You ever done that with a woman, D? You gotta. Go out there in the badlands and camp out, under the stars.”

“Yeah, but… Wraiths,” I said.

“Eh, you can set up a perimeter. Like a, a digital tripwire. They cross the line, you’ll know. And they don’t go for lone campers, anyhow. Well,” he shrugged. “Some of ‘em do.”

“You met any?”

“Hah. I wish. Woulda been nice impressin’ her,” he said. “Show off my shootin’ chops. Take out a desperado from five hundred yards without blinkin’ with my Neko. Trust me, D. I shoot, but I only drive cuz that’s where I really fuckin’ rule.”

I grinned and nodded. “Sandy’s the only reason why I won, you know,” I said to him. “And… I’m not gonna have that on me forever.” I looked down at the ground. “Sure as fuck can’t keep it running a whole hour like last time.”

“What happened, it ran outta juice or somethin’?”

I chuckled. Then I sighed and nodded. “Yeah, I’ve got some figuring out to do, chrome-wise. But that’s the gist of it. Can’t waste my Sandy on things like that anymore, though. Hiroto was,” I grinned widely. “Hiroto was a fucking monster.”

“Hah!” Falco clapped my shoulder. “Ain’t that the fuckin’ truth. But I’d smoke his ass on the Badlands. See if he can Mountain Pass his way through a fleet of Raffen Shiv while ridin’ a Quadra Type-66.”

Speaking of, I did still need to get on top of getting one. The bike kept me mobile, but the Quadra’s additional trunk space would be invaluable for the coming days as I continued on this newfound purpose of mine.

But this wasn’t about me. It was about Falco.

I turned back to the Murk Mobile, trying to keep myself as nonchalant as possible. “Haven’t seen you cheer much about being able to afford ten of those type-66 now without batting an eye.”

“Lucha-D…” he said.

I turned to him with a raised eyebrow. “What?”

He opened his mouth to speak, but then just sighed. “I didn’t bet on you, kid.”

I frowned at him. “Yeah, you did.”

“I didn’t.”

I blinked in feigned confusion, trying my best to come up with a lie on the spot until something lit up in the back of my mind.

“Wait, shit, you forgot, didn’t you?” My eyes widened.

Falco chuckled. “Forgot about what? Puttin’ a bet on you?”

“You told me I didn’t stand a chance,” I said. “One time, while we were working together. While you helped train me. You told me I’d, and I quote,” and I raced desperately to come up with some kind of Southernism that he would be more likely to identify with: “Kid, you’re about as likely to win as I’m likely to shave my moustache,” he started laughing.

“No way, I ain’t—“

“’So if you want me to bet on you, front your own cash or somethin’.” I completed. “Then you started—” I paused. “Wait, you don’t remember. None of this rings a bell? Well, anyway, you owe me a thousand eddies. And I owe you… three million and ten thousand,” I said.

Which would bring my total expendable cash down to just shy of six million. South of there, really. But that was completely fine, in my opinion. For Falco, I’d give him all nine million if he even asked.

But he wouldn’t, and I just needed him to take the goddamn cash.

Falco narrowed his eyes at me. Then he shook his head. “Didn’t place that bet, myself. Thus, it ain’t mine.”

“Give me my thousand eddies.”

Falco frowned. “What?”

“You owe me a thousand. I fronted you for it, that shit’s mine. Give it to me. You don’t want your winnings, that’s fine, but I’m getting that thousand.”

Falco’s mouth started to widen into this shocked gape that turned into a grin. “Make me.”

I blinked at him. “What?”

“I said make me.”

“I, uh, don’t want to hurt you,” I said.

“Aight, then. Race me for it. The same badlands track.”

I sighed. “Falco, I can’t. I just told you, my Sandy is acting up. I can’t use it like that anymore.”

“Then you lose.”

I frowned. “You’re not gonna make me burn precious minutes for this.”

[The Badlands Derby only took around six minutes.]

D: Still too fucking long.

“Kid, I appreciate the cock and bull story, I do,” he said. “You’re a better liar than I anticipated. Kinda proud of that, given I ain’t seen you lie all that much, and you did it for a good cause. But… That’s a lot of money. And I know you’re flush with it. I know you ain’t hurting for no three million and ten thousand eddies, but… I didn’t believe in you. And I’m sorry about that. I really am.”

I frowned. “What? You think Maine believed in me? Or Becca? They burned money they thought they could lose—“

“They gambled,” the mustachio’d Texan said with a straight face. “They didn’t believe in you. They took a chance. I… woulda bet on you, the way you bet on yourself, if I believed in you as much as you believed in yourself. You made a sacrifice to win. Your Sandy’s near burned out—you don’t even wanna race no more. I shoulda seen that. I shoulda seen the vision, beyond just the… dreamin’ kid that you are. I shoulda believed, and I didn’t.”

It… barely even hurt to hear, actually. I couldn’t think of myself in this situation at all. My esteem didn’t come to mind. My hard work didn’t either. All the work I had done with the algorithm, all the sleepless hours spent slaving over a terminal, cranking up the Sandevistan to churn out tens of thousands of lines of code.

It was hard.

It was nerve-wracking.

It was anxiety-inducing.

And the task was impossible. His lack of belief wasn’t a betrayal. He’d given it his all, too.

And I had transformed that effort into success.

I put my hands on his shoulders. “You did your part, choom. You trained me. Taught me how to drive, damn near. You definitely taught me how to race, though. You and I, we were attached to the hip all last week. If you don’t think you’re worthy of a share, then… no. I can’t accept that. This isn’t charity. This isn’t pity. It’s what you fucking deserve. So take it, before I start to get really sappy.”

Falco chuckled. “I done heard enough sappy shit today to last me a damn lifetime, truth be told. Three mill, you said? But I’m gon’ be honest with ya, if I take that scratch, I don’t know if Imma keep drivin’ for the crew. This is the sorta job you do when you need that scratch fast and don't care how close ya get to dyin' to get it.”

I chuckled. “That’s… hard to hear. But it’s fine, choom.” It was true, though. This was kind of a fucked up job. You did need to be unusually motivated to take it.

He slid his hands into his pockets and let out a low whistle. “Looks like I just stomped the fire outta this shindig,” he drawled, grin carved lazy and bright under the sun.

Then, without turning his head, he cracked one eye open at me, still smiling.

“But don’t you fret none,” he said, “I’ll still play wheelman for tonight’s little hoedown. Every last sonuvabitch that took a shot at us? I’ll make sure they don’t get a second chance.”

I grinned. “Thanks, Falco. You’re a real one.”

Falco gave me his chrome hand. “You’re a good kid, D. You’ll make an even better man, soon.”

I took his hand and shook it. “You’re a good friend, Falco.” One of the kindest people I had met in this city.

Ah, fuck it.

I dragged him in for a hug. I patted him on the back twice, and pulled away, hoping I hadn’t made things awkward.

“Even if you quit the crew,” I told him, “We gotta find something to do, every now and then.”

He grinned brightly. “Hell yeah, pardner.”

000

The festivities with Maine’s crew died down as we eventually all felt compelled to go our separate ways for the time being. The siblings had made up and were gushing about all the cool shit they’d buy for themselves. Maine and Dorio went off with Kiwi for some talk, and Falco had sped away with the remnants of my Murkmobile, citing that he had some contacts in Pacifica that might be able to get the thing fixed without having to deal with Rayfield.

But it did still drive. And rather well, in fact. We’d been taking turns ripping donuts on the parking lot next to the warehouse just to see how the steering had been affected. Surprisingly, even a rocket to the face hadn’t been able to properly destroy the hypercar.

Rayfield begrudgingly had my respect for that.

Very begrudgingly.

I drove Lucy and I home and felt a swell of relaxation replace the sheer fury that had dominated all of my morning. Once we got on home, I collapsed in her couch.

She collapsed right after me, and we cuddled there.

“Alright,” she said softly. “Now… tell me.”

My relaxation loosened my lips. The words spewed forth with barely an effort. “My Sandy’s… running on borrowed time, apparently. Only got like two objective hours left. Add the one-thousand time dilation, and we’ve got two-thousand hours. Sure, that’s ample time, but… it ain’t just that. Nanny’s been keeping my brain straight as well as she can, but there’s something going on with my brain. Whenever I overuse the Sandy, I end up… seeing things. A person. They look different every time, but they’re the same. And I can’t help the feeling that they are pure evil. And that I’m pure evil, by extension. Remember back at the Tyger Claw data fortress?” She gave a tiny nod. “The day after is when it showed up. Told me I was going to hell. After I saw hell that day, back when that Balron kicked my ass. Saw my mom. All the people I killed.” I winced. “Hell isn’t… real. And even if it was, Night City is worse. Because Earth ain’t meant to be all about pure suffering, and yet that’s how we have it here.”

Dammit.

I was getting sucked into this bullshit moral argument of my own making, borne from my own half-understood knowledge of, what, Catholicism?

How helpful was any of that ‘thou shalt not kill’ bullshit anyway?

How much help would it give to normal people?

“I know it’s bullshit, but it shook me up.”

“What does Nanny say?” She sounded almost sarcastic as she said her name.

I looked at her. “She’s above doubt. Seriously.”

Lucy’s eyes pinched together. “No, it’s just… I don’t like sharing you.”

Wait, what? I couldn’t help but laugh. “No, she’s… I don’t even know what she is, but she sure as shit ain’t a woman.”

[Hey.]

D: Shut up.

[I’m not the only one she’s sharing you with.]

My eyes widened and I realized… we did need to talk.

“Lucy, so uh, at the end of the night, Fei kinda—“

“David, don’t,” she said. “I don’t wanna talk about that.”

“Before anything even happened, and I mean anything—besides her coming onto me—I told her I have a girlfriend,” I said. She froze. “I told her I loved you. She understood. She won’t come between us. She’s…” I sighed. “She’s a good person. A good choom. But she’s not you. No one is. So I said no.”

She sat up and looked down at me. I met her eyes unflinchingly. After a few seconds, she whispered, “That wasn’t wise.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t give a shit.” I pulled her head closer to my face and felt at her white hair. “I’d never do anything to hurt you. I’d never sacrifice you for me. Why would I ever do something that nakedly fucking selfish, Luce?”

She brushed my cheek with a sad smile. “Because you have a dream.”

I frowned at her. “Dreams are supposed to make you happy. If I can’t be happy, then what the fuck’s the point? And if I’m hurting you…” I could barely see her through the budding tears. “I can’t be happy. Lucy, I fucking love—”

She enveloped my open mouth with her lips, kissing me more intensely than I had ever felt before. My body felt both rigid and slack at the same time as we melted into one another, chasing each other’s passions, hoping to give as much as we got.

I knew now, about that melancholy I felt the night we first kissed.

The day we had first sealed the deal and made certain our feelings for one another.

Lucy had given her acquiescence with the knowledge that it would have to come with personal sacrifices.

And I had failed to reassure her.

I had failed to let her shine the way she now shone, above me on this couch. I had failed to truly reassure her that she was the only girl for me.

We disconnected for a moment, giving me the opportunity to finally speak. “I’ll never let you go,” I whispered. “Ever.”

I loved everything about her. The sharp edges. The soft ones. The good. The bad.

The fact that she didn’t lie, in a sense. About her feelings, yes. In that sense, she was a huge liar.

But when it came to other things, she was… not even honest, or forthcoming, but she wasn’t a deceiver.

She was good people. She was mine.

We pulled away from one another. Lucy’s eyes glistened. Droplets fell on my face, right underneath my eyes. “I love you, David.”

I gasped, then smiled. “I love you, too.”

Notes:

Next chapter comes out in three days, so Saturday, 6PM GMT+2

Next Chapter: 62: King of the Afterlife

Latest backlogged chapter: 70: Joint Special Operations Task Force

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