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.”

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  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.”

  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.