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 It relied on an outdated firmware vulnerability.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.”

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  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.

  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.