A/N: Here's the new Chapter! Which also means the next four chapters are up on my Patreon for early access as well as the chance to vote on the direction of the story!

  Why DID Lucy come back to this hellhole?

  -x-X-x-

  Not for the first time, Lucy wonders why she came back to this god awful pce. Night City was a shit heap that offered a false sense of opportunity and advancement at the expense of everything you knew and loved. She was one of the rare few who got out, who got away… and yet here she was, back all the same.

  The Moon was nice, don’t get her wrong. Her friends and loved ones had literally sacrificed their lives to get her there so she was gd it wasn’t a disappointment for their sake if nothing else. But it also wasn’t the kind of pce she’d seen herself staying forever. Or even for particurly long, truth be told.

  Ultimately, the dream of traveling to the Moon was just that… a dream of travel. She’d done so and come back down to Earth in both a literal and figurative sense. And back on Earth, Lucy hadn’t exactly had much in the way of options. She could have left Night City behind and started over somewhere else. But she didn’t.

  Instead, here she was, running some gigs here and there on the side to make some eddies while exploring the corners of the Net for interesting discoveries. All the while, making sure that her presence wasn’t uncovered by Arasaka and that no news of her whereabouts made its way to their doorstep.

  She had a twenty-four-seven watch on Arasaka because of that, with multiple hacks set up to keep an eye on their servers. Lucy wasn’t so confident that she would test herself against Arasaka’s ICE directly in most circumstances, but the data streams going in and out of their servers were a lot less secure. It was easy enough to set up a few pickets along those paths that made it so most of the information that went in and out of Arasaka passed under Lucy’s eyes at least once.

  Of course, there was one major fw with that particur way of screening… if something was completely internal, then Lucy got practically no notice of it until after it had already happened. Such as Saburo Arasaka’s death and Yorinobu’s ascension to head of the corporation. Despite her eyes on Arasaka, Lucy hadn’t heard about the old man’s demise until after it made the news. An inexcusable pse on her part.

  That was why she was currently in the process of testing something new. Saburo’s death hadn’t just been a wake up call, it was also an opportunity. With the ancient CEO dead, Arasaka Corporation was in a state of upheaval. The three political factions within the corporation were all jockeying for power, both against each other and within their own camps.

  It was the perfect opportunity for Lucy to do what she wishes she could have done originally, and get some eyes on the inside, so to speak. That’s why she was in a rented basement not a block from Arasaka’s Tower, set up on a Netrunner’s Chair. Well, that’s where her body currently was. Her mind was on the Net, looking at the Data Fort in front of her with trepidation but also determination coursing through every bit of her digitized being.

  “Well now. Didn’t expect to find you doing THIS, Kushinada.”

  Even if she’s got her eye on the prize, Lucy wouldn’t have considered herself to be so focused she could be snuck up on. Her daemons should have alerted her, if nothing else. That’s why when she hears an amused feminine voice mere ‘feet’ away, she jolts in surprise and whips around, readying herself for a fight.

  The other woman raises her hands in a gesture of ‘surrender’, not that such a gesture means anything here on the Net like it would in the real world. After all, one did not need their hands to do damage in a pce like this.

  “I’m not here to fight, Lucy. My name is Alt and I-!”

  Lucy’s scoff is loud enough to cause ‘Alt’ to pause. Crossing her arms over her own chest (because again, limbs don’t mean anything and the gesture gets her point across well enough) Lucy just rolls her eyes.

  “I know who you’re cospying as, I’m not an idiot. Whoever you really are, Altiera Cunningham has been dead for-!”

  This time, she’s the one who gets cut off. By a data packet of all things. Lucy stiffens and her hackles rise, expecting it to be the start of some sort of attack, perhaps an overwhelming amount of data traffic to try and flood her senses. DDoSing, basically. Old school, but effective.

  Except it’s only the one data packet and ‘Alt’ doesn’t follow it up with anything else either. After a long moment of silence, Lucy carefully begins checking the packet over while keeping an ‘eye’ on the other Netrunner, trying to find the trap. Meanwhile, ‘Alt’ just smirks.

  “Normally I would py around a bit more… but you seem a bit high strung, so let’s just cut through the bullshit, shall we?”

  High strung? Lucy wants to snarl at that, but she feels like it would only make this cospying bitch more convinced. Still, you try losing everyone you’ve ever cared about and not be fucking ‘high strung’.

  Unfortunately, Lucy can’t find the trick here. The data packet seems to be just a data packet. The other Netrunner seems to be completely at ease, though Lucy doesn’t think for a second that that would make them an easy target. She wishes she could blow them off and just leave, but she’d paid good eddies for the basement she’s currently inside, and this is one of her best opportunities to slip into the Arasaka Data Fort behind her. Damn it…

  With a put-upon huff, Lucy opens the data packet and consumes the data. She immediately freezes up a moment ter, her eyes widening in disbelief and shock as she whips her head in the direction of the woman who sent the data her way.

  “That’s not possible. You can’t be…”

  “I’m not, technically.”

  Lucy blinks at that, taken aback as Altiera Cunningham in the digitized ‘flesh’ shrugs.

  “The original Alt Cunningham DID die back in 2013 courtesy of the not-so-tender mercies of Arasaka… something I know you have plenty of experience with. However, her biological death resulted in her consciousness remaining on the Net, where she ultimately became an AI and went beyond the Bckwall. I’m an offshoot of what became of that original engram.”

  AI. It was the boogeyman for Netrunners. Most AI resided beyond the Bckwall, and those that didn’t were either hunted or policed heavily by NetWatch. Still, you could definitely run into a rogue AI here or there if you ventured into the darker corners of the Net even without risking going beyond the Bckwall. And dealing with an AI was nothing like dealing with a fellow Netrunner.

  Lucy suddenly feels very, very exposed. This fragment of Alt Cunningham probably had tricks up her metaphorical sleeves that the white-haired Netrunner could only dream of. Basically if Alt had bad intentions, she was probably already fucked. On the other hand… Lucy’s eyes flicker over to the Arasaka Data Fortress she’d been about to infiltrate.

  “… What do you want with me, exactly? Are you… here to offer your services?”

  It made sense, in a way. Like she’d said, the original Alt died because of Arasaka. The AI had even made an attempt at common ground by pointing out Lucy’s own experiences with the Japan-based Mega-Corp. Except on the other hand, she’d opened up with that line about this not being what she expected to find Lucy doing, so maybe not?

  Alt’s eyes flicker to the Data Fort as well and a wistful, amused smile appears on her face.

  “Tempting. Very tempting. But… no. I’m here because we need your help, Lucy. I’m here because I was deemed the best option in a slew of bad ones.”

  They needed her help? Who was ‘we’? No, more than that… if a literal Artificial Intelligence was the ‘soft sell’, what the fuck were the other options?!

  “You believe you lost everything that day.”

  Lucy flinches, knowing immediately which day Alt is talking about. The AI even has the gall to look sympathetic as she continues on.

  “And… I’m sorry, but David is truly gone. Smasher opted to take the honorable approach and shot him in the head.”

  That makes Lucy want to snarl. What was honorable about that execution?! Except…

  “… What would have been the dishonorable approach?”

  “What he did to Rebecca.”

  This time around, Lucy flinches even harder. That, even more than David’s tragic death, still kept her up most nights. And when she did manage to catch a few winks of sleep, she wound up dreaming about it all the same. Rebecca and Lucy hadn’t ever really gotten along very well. Especially not after David took Maine’s pce and she and David started dating.

  … But Rebecca had still come for her alongside David and Falco all the same. The gun gremlin had still risked it all to save Lucy from Arasaka’s clutches. And right as they were maybe finding that common ground it had been ripped away from them in a split second by Adam Smasher.

  Except, even as Rebecca’s crushed corpse makes its regur appearance in Lucy’s mind’s eye, she detects something in Alt’s tone that makes her think the manner of Rebecca’s death is NOT what the AI is talking about.

  “… What exactly about Smasher killing Rebecca do you consider dishonorable?”

  Alt sends her another data packet, wordlessly. Lucy does her due diligence again. Just because the first data packet didn’t have any tricks or traps doesn’t mean this one won’t. But no, once again its just information. And yet… information by itself can be its own trap, can’t it?

  Lucy opens the packet and absorbs the data before stiffening in fresh horror and disgust. It’s all theories and conjecture on Alt’s part, but it’s educated theories and conjectures. And given the hypothesis is coming from the very woman who made Soulkiller in the first pce… yeah, Lucy believes it.

  Adam Smasher was testing a new form of torture that day. Soulkiller delivered at the end of his fists and feet. Soulkiller delivered through application of extreme physical violence.

  But then, the only reason Alt would be theorizing or hypothesizing any of this… the only reason that she would be bringing up Rebecca in the first pce…

  “H-How much of Rebecca survived?”

  “Not much.”

  The blunt admission makes Lucy flinch a third time, much to her chagrin. But Alt doesn’t leave it there, thankfully.

  “She’s still coming to terms with a lot of it. We recently put her in a Gemini FBC based on her original appearance so she could interact with the real world again. She was no Netrunner… being on the Net, especially in her fragmented state, was doing her more harm than good.”

  Yes, Lucy can imagine.

  “… But she still has a long way to go. And there are pieces of her that will always be missing. Pieces that need to be repced.”

  It wasn’t Rebecca. Not the original Rebecca anyways. Alt said it herself, she wasn’t even the original Alt. The original Alt died in 2013, leaving nothing but a copy of her mind on the Net. Even if that copy had grown and grown to the point where it could apparently have its own very scary, very intimidating offshoots… it still wasn’t the original Alt Cunningham.

  And yet… and yet…

  “Do you know why you came back to Night City, Lucyna Kushinada?”

  Straightening up, Lucy looks at Alt, her eyes narrowing and her jaw clenching.

  “I assume you’re about to tell me one way or another.”

  Alt just smiles.

  “You came back to Night City because at the end of the day… you couldn’t leave well enough alone.”

  That makes Lucy bristle in indignation, but before she can angrily retort, Alt is continuing on.

  “And why should you? Arasaka took everything from you. Smasher took everything from you. You want revenge.”

  What? No that wasn’t…

  “I’m not looking for revenge.”

  When Alt gnces meaningfully at the Data Fort behind her, Lucy is quick to protest.

  “… I’m just trying to stay safe!”

  And fuck if this conversation hadn’t revealed just how important her current mission was. She had no idea that Arasaka was developing a tactile-based delivery system for Soulkiller. That sort of thing would probably be kept entirely internal for obvious reasons, so of course she hadn’t heard about it.

  Now, more than ever, she needed eyes on the inside. So why then did her own words sound weak even to Lucy? Alt certainly doesn’t seem to be buying it.

  “I’m sure that’s what you’re telling yourself. But if you were really trying to stay safe from Arasaka, you never would have come back to Night City, Lucyna. You could have fled to NUSA, where Arasaka would have struggled to ever reach you. You’ve put yourself back in their open palm by coming back here… all because you’re hoping for an opening that will let you rip out their throat.”

  Lucy’s mouth opens… and then closes. She stands there in silence for several long moments, her entire being shivering as Alt’s words wash over her. The AI… is right. That is why she came back to Night City. She just couldn’t accept it because it was so at odds with her established sense of self. And yet, deep down inside… a part of her, still raw and bleeding, rages at the injustice. Arasaka took her and forced her friends to mount a desperate rescue operation to get her back and by the end of things, it was just she and Falco left standing.

  And what did Arasaka lose in the process? Nothing it couldn’t afford to. Nothing that would even put a dent in its books. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. The rational part of Lucy’s mind says that life isn’t fair and that little happens in Night City which could be considered ‘right’.

  … But she doesn’t care. Fuck, she really doesn’t care. She wants revenge even if it kills her.

  “Come with me. Help us with Rebecca. I know she’s not your Rebecca… but we can help you get back at Arasaka. We can help you get your revenge if you assist us in putting Rebecca back together again.”

  Tempting. Very tempting. The idea of seeing Rebecca again, even in AI form, is not tempting to be clear. But the thought of having allies against Arasaka now that she realizes she’s been subconsciously gearing up for a crusade against the megacorp… that’s definitely tempting.

  Still, is it worth the risk? Even now, she can’t be sure that Alt is on the up-and-up. Everything she’s shown her so far might be free of any discernable traps or tricks, but that doesn’t mean anything. The truth can be just as sharp of a bde as any lie, especially when wielded in the right hands…

  -x-X-x- The Vote: [ ] Too risky, time to flee - 3%[X] She'll help... if Alt helps her with the Data Fort first - 77%[ ] She'll help right now, clinging on to any remnant of her past she can get - 20%

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