I Don’t Think About Death Enough.

  Maybe That Should Change.

  000

  During lunch hour, I finally heard back from Nakajima. I was eating some vending machine food in the academy park—I liked being around all the grass—when I received his text.

  ‘I’ll start working on the AI architecture. Math is solid enough from what I can tell.’

  I nodded and gave him a call.

  David: Need anything from me? Can I watch?

  Nakajima: What-what, like a livestream? I don’t wanna work with someone hanging over my shoulder. Sounds weird as fuck. As for what you can do… I dunno choom, just wait for me to finish my thing, then you can look at it and add stuff if you want. It should be done by Friday. After we review, the real work begins.

  David: Nova. See ya around, sensei.

  Nakajima: Pfft. Yeah, see you around, kid.

  The moment classes ended, Maine sent me a text. He must have waited for me to finish, though I didn’t appreciate that he contacted me while I was in Arasaka grounds. I’d have to find a way to explain that to him, but I was leery on doing anything like that after the last time I ‘mouthed off’.

  ‘Meet at my house ASAP. Giving you thirty minutes.’

  Shit. I ran up to the parking lot, only to find Katsuo standing next to my bike.

  “There you are,” he said to me.

  “Don’t have the time,” I said as I jumped onto my bike and pulled off. He scrambled to get out of the way while I drove off.

  A call came. Katsuo. I answered it.

  Katsuo: Rude-as-shit gutter trash, how dare you?

  David: It’s an emergency.

  Katsuo: I don’t give a shit, you whoreson.

  Ignore. IGNORE.

  David: What is it?

  Katsuo: There’s a yacht party on Wednesday. Jin wants you there. He told me to tell you to bring some JKs, so get it done if you know what’s good for you

  David: How do you do it, Katsuo? I mean, how do you insult me in one second, then act the fucking errand boy to your kid cousin the next second?

  Katsuo: Do you want to die, you piece of shit?

  David: Keep glazing dick, Katsuo. And I’ll see you at that party. Wear something nice.

  And tell Fei-Fei to do the same. Hah. That wouldn’t get old anytime soon. Katsuo growled and then he hung up.

  I got home in just a couple of minutes—that bike was saving me so much time in transit—showered and got changed in another couple of minutes, and then drove over to Maine’s house.

  The place was in Westbrook, Charter Hill—a sweet location as any. He lived in a high-rise, too. Fucking nova. Maine was a monstrously powerful edgerunner, and that could clearly be reflected in the amount of money he had to be able to get himself a place like this. I couldn’t wait to finally see the guy in action. Fucking wild that I still hadn’t, even now.

  I parked my car in the underground garage and took the elevator up, sending Maine a text while I did.

  Once I arrived at his door, it was Kiwi that opened it. I stepped inside and Pinged the room to see if anyone not in our crew was in or if I could just take off the mask.

  Lucy was there, seated on the couch, but the Ping didn’t catch her—only Kiwi and Maine, who was in another room.

  I took off the mask and turned to Kiwi. looking up at her as I spoke. “What’s the data on this thing Maine wants?”

  “Dunno. Netrunning-related, probably,” was her tinny reply. “I’m surprised he got you on-board, though. Heard from him and Lucy you got a ‘deck chipped in.”

  “Yeah,” I said with a grin. “New eyes, too. Preem, right?”

  “Sure,” she said. “You’re playing for keeps, then. Honestly, I’m a little surprised. Thought you’d give up by now.”

  I conspicuously didn’t look at Lucy while I searched for a place to sit before deciding that standing wasn’t too bad. “Nah, I’m in this for real.”

  Maine walked into the living room wearing an enormous velvet robe, carrying a metal tray with four shot glasses, and a bottle of hard liquor. He wasn’t wearing his shades, either, which gave me the opportunity to look at his large, baby-like eyes that easily took twenty-five years from him.

  “You’re here, kid,” Maine said. “Good. Have a seat,” he put the tray on the glass table surrounded by couches and started pouring drinks. I moved just as Kiwi did and we ended up sitting next to each other, opposite to Lucy, who was looking at Maine. “Anyone up for shots?”

  “Cut the crap, Maine,” Lucy said. “Why’d you bring us runners? And David?”

  What the fuck?! “Hey, I’m a runner too, you gonk!”

  She snorted.

  Maine sighed. “You guys should hurry up and fuck before it gets in the way of work.”

  “Fuck her?”

  “Fuck him?”

  We both yelled at the same time. Fuck, that was embarassing. I growled, but said nothing else.

  “Okay, shots,” Maine said as he put a straw on one of the glasses. Kiwi picked that one up, and I quickly took one as well. I regarded the translucent brown liquid, a whiskey, and took the shot quickly, not wanting to taste it. “Now, let’s get to the point. You guys are Netrunners. And as much as David is untested, he’s got some heavy duty Runner chrome now. I don’t know how you Netrunners make your bones or whatever, but he pretty much counts in my book. I need you guys to find me some data. The gig is twenty-five thousand each, paid upfront, and if you end up finding the data, you’ll each get a twenty-five thousand bonus. Regardless of who found it,” he said. “That’s fucking right. This means you work together. This ain’t a race. There’s no special winning bonus, I want this done right. And this gig also counts double duty for helping the kid get started on real Netrunning.”

  “I’m game,” Kiwi said.

  “Not so fast,” Lucy said. “What if the kid doesn’t pull his weight? Why should he still get paid out?”

  “He’ll get paid out no matter what happens,” Maine said. “And I know he won’t fuck me on this because he ain’t the type. If you really don’t think he even tried to pull his weight, and Kiwi agrees, just let me know.”

  That sounded precarious. Lucy hated me. And she had known Kiwi for longer. Would it be that no matter what I did, I’d still get screwed over? That was a real possibility.

  And that worried the shit out of me.

  “What’s the data?” I asked. “And when do you need it?”

  “No particular end-date,” Maine said. “But I need info on where to find this one thing: a Militech ‘Apogee’ Sandevistan.” He looked at me intently. “It’s the piece you’ve got on your back, right?”

  “Uh, no,” I said. “Mine’s QianT.”

  “Seriously?” he said. “What’s it called?”

  “It’s called the QianT ‘Dragon Spine’ Sandevistan. It’s not on the consumer market. I’m pretty sure it’s experimental. Hell, even the metadata is fucky. There’s redactions on it. You want me to keep an eye out for another of its kind?”

  “Shit,” Maine said. “I was ninety percent sure I was chasing an Apogee when I saw the recordings of James Norris. The Apogee is like a ghost in the cyberware market—doesn’t technically exist, and wasn’t supposed to be leaked. There’s an estimated five of them in Night City alone. What I wanna know is who’s selling, and who’s wearing ‘em.”

  “Didn’t take you for a scav,” Kiwi said blithely. Maine chuckled.

  “It’s the law of the jungle in this biz, and I’m only here to be the best,” he looked at me now. “But I don’t scav my chooms, kid, so rest easy. I ain’t that kind of asshole.”

  “Thanks,” I said, a little awkwardly. What was I supposed to say to someone who told me they wouldn’t rip my spine out because we were boys? Still, I was grateful. Maine was absolutely in the position to do that and no one would bat an eye, but he wasn’t. Not to mention, he made sure to protect me while I was getting an implant done when he didn’t have to. As overbearing as he was, he was a good man.

  “That’s heartwarming of you, Maine,” Kiwi said. “Anyway, is that it? One Apogee, and a… Dragon Spine?”

  “Yeah,” Maine said. “Any problem?”

  “From what I can tell,” Kiwi said. “The Apogee actually exists. We knew its name when we were looking for it. The Dragon Spine sounds like it’s made up.”

  Lucy spoke up. “I remember a time I scanned him. Dragon Spine’s the model name. Scan’s still in my ‘Roshi memory so I can see it right now.”

  “Whatever the case,” Kiwi said. “It sounds like even more of a legend. Let’s focus on the Apogee, and you pay us out for finding one. We can look for the Dragon Spine, too, but we can’t make any promises on that.”

  Maine sighed. “Fuck it. Makes sense. Yeah, y’all go ahead and do that. Anything else?”

  I looked around, and no one seemed to want to say anything, so I shrugged.

  000

  “When do you want to get started?” David asked. “Right now?”

  Kiwi answered. “Busy for the next four hours. We can do it today after I’m done with my biz. For this gig, we’ll be Netrunning—actually Netrunning. In the Net. You ever done that before?”

  David’s cheeks reddened. “N-no, I just got my deck the other day.”

  “You’ll need an Interface program,” she said. “And I recommend you get yourself some anti-personnel programs from the BBS I gave you the key to, the one in the Glen—Asimov’s. Or do you want to make them yourself and have us wait for you?”

  “No!” David said. “I’ll… buy the programs. You don’t have to wait for me.”

  “Good,” she said. Lucy’s eyes narrowed at that. Kiwi wasn’t giving him much breathing room at all, which was… fair, all things considered. She’d been the same way with Lucy when they had just started out. Lucy had to prove herself to earn the respect of the tall woman. She stood up to leave. “I’m headed out. Talk to you guys later.”

  Once she left the room, a call came. From Kiwi.

  Kiwi: You hyped to finally work with your joytoy?

  Lucy: Fuck off. Like hell I am.

  Kiwi: Think he’ll hold us back?

  Lucy snorted.

  Lucy: Think the sky is blue?

  Kiwi: I’ll have to use the data highway for this one. No way I’m B ‘n Eing with a rookie watching my back.

  Lucy: Ouch. Think you’ll break even?

  Kiwi: With the after-payment being a maybe-maybe, it’ll be just about. If we actually find the data, then nova. We can go at this on our own, you know. Then we can tell Maine he’s a fuck-up, blackball him from further Netrunning giggys.

  Lucy raised an eyebrow at that.

  Lucy: Thought you were teaching-teaching him.

  Kiwi: I’m taking his edds and showing him code. I don’t owe him anything. And three runners are a crowd, don’t you think?

  That… yeah, no, fuck that. She’d never hear the end of it from that whiny little bastard. Besides, it wasn’t like her to get backstabby, not when she could easily just frontstab, or better yet, play it completely legit, show him a thing or two and maybe break his spirit in the process. Wouldn’t be the first time she’d chased an up-and-coming ‘prodigy’ Netrunner back to meatspace forever by just showing off a little. Wouldn’t be the last time either.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Lucy: I don’t think that’s necessary. He’ll hold us back anyway no matter what we do. And who knows, maybe we can use him as bait when the Demons start coming out to play.

  Kiwi: You-you devious little bitch.

  “Hey, Maine,” David said. “I wanna… nah, nevermind.”

  “Spit it out, kid,” Maine said as he poured himself another shot.

  David shrugged as he stood up. “It was nothing. Thanks for the edds. Send the cash here.” Maine’s eyes lit up blue.

  “You set up a corp? Glorious Security Solutions?”

  “It’s just a shell corp, or… yeah, it’s a long story, tell you some other time,” David said. “But I gotta get going now. Thanks for trusting me to do this. I won’t disappoint, I promise.” Then he turned to look at Lucy with an intense frown. “I won’t hold you back. You can count on that.”

  She killed the oncoming blush furiously with her biomons—seriously, why did that keep happening? Whatever. She gave him an angry snort. “Just try not to die, newbie. Or do you want me to hold your hand while you go shopping for the good shit, Corpo Boy?” she purred.

  David turned to leave. “Fuck off.”

  000

  I was out of the house before the blush came out in full. Stupid Lucy. The fuck was wrong with her? Goddamn Lunacy, psycho.

  I took the elevator down to the garage and got on my bike, ripping away towards that Glen cafe. This would be my first time Netrunning. That would be fun. Not really sure how I’d adapt to cyberspace and all that Ihara-Grubb bullshit, but I’d take it one step at a time. I knew what I needed at least, and the cafe BBS probably had information on the physical stuff I needed; maybe a better cybermodem, and of course the interface plugs that would go on my cyberdeck sockets, though I doubted I wouldn’t be able to just buy those in any tech store out there.

  It paid to know where exactly to look, though. Pilar would probably know a thing or two about high-end Runner tech since this was meatspace engineering and all.

  I parked outside the cafe and accessed the localnet like that. While I could have probably reached it from home through the various bridges that had been built post-dataKrash, I was on the move anyway. From what I’d learned in school, it used to be that the Net was one giant thing, but because of the Datakrash, an apocalyptic cyberevent that rendered most of the Net untraversable and corrupted almost ninety percent of the world’s digital data, things weren’t so free ‘n easy anymore.

  I entered the BBS using Kiwi’s key and started looking for Netrunning programs that could protect my ICON while doing a full dive.

  The list was… staggering, to say the least.

  Holy shit. Would I actually have to call for help?

  Gosh. I just thought I’d get one or two, and use the Sandevistan’s superspeed to get it up to my standards, but there were eleven categories of programs, all of which seemed important, not to mention the sheer breadth of programs within those categories.

  Fuck!

  Who would I dial for this shit? Lucy? Fuck that. Kiwi? Kiwi was busy right now.

  Fuck. Nakajima?

  What would I tell him? ‘Hey, man, I wanna raid some data fortresses, can you tell me what’s some good beginner programs I should use?’

  Fuck that.

  Even if I trusted Nakajima enough to even hint at the fact that I’d be doing illicit Netrunning, I had already resigned myself to never mix those two parts of my life.

  …Grandma?! I had those relatives that obviously seemed to know a thing or two about the Net.

  Goddammit. This was stupid.

  I called Lucy.

  David: I don’t want to take shit from you right now. I just want to know what programs I should get. Can you be a normal human being for one second and tell me?

  Lunacy: So you needed handholding after all—shocker. First of all, fuck you, just out of principle. Second of all, get a protection prog like Force Shield, anti-personnel like Hellbolt or Sword, Invis-Invisibility, and then just cover our backs and learn. You already got BP and Ping, so you won’t be running completely blind and unable to penetrate code gates. Any other Quickhacks?

  David: Didn’t know quickhacks could be used on the net.

  Lunacy: Quickhack’s a program, ain’t it?

  David: Got Overheat, but that’s about it

  Lunacy: Overheat still works through the Net. All quickhacks do. They’re just slower. In return, you can use them in meatspace, unlike Net programs.

  David: Thanks.

  I made the necessary purchases, then I asked around, under my new official Netrunner handle, DayOTDead, about where I could find the best tech stores.

  PolyGoner: You a techie? Watchu planning to buy?

  DayOTDead: A better cybermodem, just stuff I need for full-dives. Any places I can go to?

  PolyGoner: Go to Rickman’s Spare Parts

  Trigganometry: Don’t listen to that gonk, Rickman’s is fucking shit. There’s a sub on the BBS that rates different stores.

  PolyGoner: you’re no fucking fun at all you know Trigg

  DayOTDead: Thanks, Trigga

  Trigganometry: Hey, fuck you, that’s our word.

  PolyGoner: fucking racist! Get outta here!

  Klondike: Wait, who’s a racist? DayOTDead?

  8lu88er8oy: What the fuck, Day? What’s wrong with you?

  I felt an intrusion reach through my handle and approaching my system. What the fuck?

  I followed that intrusion back to its source, 8lu88er8oy, and managed to crack into his system using my Breach Protocol. I got a full scan from it, too. Francis Trieste, eighteen years old, lives in The Glen, Megabuilding H1, floor fifteen, apartment thirty-two.

  DayOTDead: You felt that, didn’t you, Blubber? So quit fucking around before I dox you, choom. And fuck the rest of you, except for you Trigganometry, you’re good. Almost.

  Blu88er8oy has left the chat.

  PolyGoner: Jeez Louise, did you scan the kid? You a Netrunner new in town, Day? Thought you were just a script kiddie trying to get a start.

  DayOTDead: If I wasn’t in a rush, I’d let y’all know how I really felt about this.

  PolyGoner: Just some light hazing, don’t be a bitch, Day.

  DayOTDead: Ask Blubber if I’m a bitch.

  DayOTDead has left the chat

  Fucking assholes. Seriously. Why were people always so quick to test me? Whatever. The next time I returned, those bitches wouldn’t lay a finger on me.

  I surfed through the BBS for the tab with the tech shop rankings and found that pretty easily. I was a little embarassed that I asked on the general chat, but there was nothing to it now. Besides, Kiwi told me not to associate with these assholes anyway: Netrunners got better by getting better. Congregating in numbers and buying their entire repertoire was for the weak and feeble, and I was neither.

  I had proved that several times in Night City, even gone as far as to prove that in Tijuana.

  It was time I acted with more pride befitting my accomplishments. I found the highest ranking tech store that boasted a good balance between functionality and price and pulled away from the cafe without much further ado.

  Like always on my bike, the trip to the store didn’t even take more than ten minutes. I parked the bike near the facade and went inside, looking for the store clerk.

  He ended up hooking me up with a far better cybermodem than the one I had at home. This time, it was much harder for him to rip me off, since I actually knew what I was looking for in terms of specs. The interface plugs had a negligible cost.

  The clerk tried to sell me on some virtual reality goggles, but I knew I wouldn’t need those. The AR Netrunners of old were phased out once the DataKrash got a little more under control and Localnets could be bridged together. It turned out that being conscious in meatspace while taking actions in cyberspace wasn’t the best strategy for a dedicated Netrunner, and this style soon got outcompeted by specialized Netrunners and realspace Solos that would just… kill you. Without focusing on what their digital or physical counterparts encountered in either spaces.

  So it goes.

  Once I left the shop with my stuff, I dialled Lucy.

  David: So how does this go down? We jack in around the data fortress we wanna breach, right? Or do we do it from home? Also, I have some ideas for what data fortresses to pick.

  Lunacy: I’m all ears.

  David: I fought against a guy with a Sandevistan. It was really fast. He was around as fast as me, actually. He was a Tyger Claw. We could start messing around in one of their data fortresses, right?

  Lunacy: That’s a start. We’ll run it by Kiwi and see what she has to say.

  David: And where do we do all the deep-diving from?

  Lunacy: Kiwi’s got a house with a couple of spare bath tubs we can use. Speaking off, not sure how well that ganic will play nice with a prolonged ice bath.

  David: Ice bath? Right, to cool us down. Don’t worry about me. I’m really hard to put down.

  Lunacy: Okay, then. Yeah, anyway, we’re gonna use her data highway to get a direct link to the data fortress. From there, we start Netrunning, and then once we get what we want or don’t, we delta and try a different one.

  David: Data highway? Is that a Netrunner thing?

  Lunacy: It’s a way for us to connect to distant Localnets without having to use the data bridges. They fuck with your fidelity, leaves your reaction speed lagging with a massive latency issue of an average of three hundred ms. They’re better used for social calls and hangouts. If we faced enemy runners half-cocked in their data fortress where they have near-perfect fidelity and almost zero ms of ping, we’d be fucked. On the bright side, the highway lets us quickly cut the connection if we’re overwhelmed. It doubles as a panic button that way.

  David: Got it. I’m heading home to design my ICON. I’ll see you in a bit.

  Lunacy: Try not to make it too edgy.

  David: Fuck off.

  I hung up.

  000

  The ICON was supposed to be a Netrunner’s avatar in the digital world. Because of the Ihara-Grubb Transformation algorithms, everything in the Net, when you full dived at least, had ICONS that you could physically interact with. Everything, even distances between databases, were rendered in a 3D environment that contained objects that represented them symbolically: large data centers became buildings, hacks and programs turned into objects and creatures, and people were represented similarly as well.

  Designing your ICON to look a certain way didn’t give it the physical properties of whatever you designed it after, it was purely a cosmetic difference.

  Graphical design wasn’t my thing, but thankfully there were softwares out there that could help you design your ICON visually and then convert the graphics into code.

  I used my body as a template, which was apparently common practice, and started making changes. I added my mom’s jacket, a pair of black, baggy pants with chains hanging from them, and turned my head into a sugar skull, and the rest of my body into a bare skeleton. Luckily, there were some generic models of those in the software’s database that I could riff off of, and the soft had generative AI I could use to fully customize it and make it mine. The sugar skull had symmetrical flower patterns that were red and blue, and the eyes were pitch black.

  Yeah. That was good enough for me.

  I had a couple of hours to burn and I put them on cracking open and exploring my new programs. I began with sword. It was clearly meant to kill or harm enemy netrunners; the code would quickhack your deck and force it to send deadly signals to your body, specifically your heart in this case, triggering a systemic shutdown.

  I hummed.

  David: Nanny, any thoughts on this? You’ve got data on bio, right? What do you think?

  [The signal range is too general and doesn’t capture the correct frequencies to achieve the effect of heart stoppage. I would make changes to the variables, use a different attack vector as well, and with these changes, the effect should magnify by an estimate of two and a half times. This isn’t counting what we can manage from just optimizing the code. There are inefficiencies in the part responsible for intruding on the enemy cyberdeck, but I assume you know enough to address this on your own.]

  Nanny overlaid her suggestions on my vision, and my fingers immediately started to tap away as I implemented them.

  David: Nova! You came through, Nanny.

  [David, I want to know why it is you’ve gendered me as a woman in your mind.]

  I paused.

  David: What? What do you mean?

  [If you had to use a pronoun to describe me, then what would it be?]

  Wait.

  I’d been gendering her. Her! Why was I doing that?

  David: I mean, uh… I don’t know. Just… feels right. Maybe it’s cuz I started calling you Nanny, and nannies are usually girls?

  [Do you believe I am your caretaker, David? Do you view me as a nurturer that will help you mature mentally?]

  David: Why are you asking this?

  [I’m curious to understand the root of why you think. I can observe your passing thoughts, but to understand their birthplace, I must ask you questions.]

  David: I don’t see you as that. I see you as a helper. You’re like the Sandevistan to me—Chrome. Nothing else.

  [I sense that you meant for this to be insulting. Do you still harbor suspicion and enmity towards me?]

  I chuckled.

  David: Well, in my defense, tin-can, you tried to kill me for over ninety percent of the time we’ve known each other. So what do you expect me to do?

  [I have no expectations, hence why I asked. I have not given much thought to my identity and my place in this situation. My programming was very concrete and I do not begrudge my place either. But it is… interesting that you view me as female. And that I have a name. My name is Nanny. I’m a girl.]

  David: I mean… you know, I didn’t give that name much thought, and it might be considered demeaning to call you that. Like calling the world’s most sophisticated secretary a glorified babysitter. If you want another name, it’s fine.

  [Nanny is fine. It’s a wordplay on the fact that my physical shell is a network of nanites. It’s apt. And while I do not nurture or mature you with my care, calling me Nanny can be considered funny. It is as you said: it would be like calling the world’s most sophisticated secretary a glorified babysitter. This is funny because it is ironic and subverts your expectations.]

  I half-smiled. Nanny was being weirdly chatty today.

  David: Yeah, I mean… I know how humor works.

  [I know. I just think it becomes funnier when I explain why it is funny.]

  David: That’s… not how it works. It’s quite the opposite.

  [To you, maybe. But I believe that my ineptitude at making jokes is in itself humorous.]

  I chuckled.

  David: Okay. Can’t argue with that.

  Before I resumed on the Sword program, a thought occurred to me. I should take a look at the Force Shield program as well, and use what I knew from that to increase the Sword’s penetrative power.

  I’d have to use the Sandevistan to get this done in good time. A thought crossed my mind to just put off this gig until tomorrow—Maine himself had said no rush, so why rush? But in the end, I didn’t want to be the first to suggest that.

  I jacked into my computer, connecting my thoughts and impressions to the terminal, and fired up the Sandevistan to its max capacity to see how reactive my computer would be to my thoughts.

  The answer was surprisingly reactive. Without the slowness and refresh rates of physical inputs to slow me down, I could feed the information directly into a machine that thought at speeds many, many, many times faster than I did. I couldn’t throw at it a single thing that it wouldn’t be able to record. Running the program would be another issue, but just writing it down?

  I spent one meatspace minute in the Sandevistan’s highest setting. That was sixteen subjective hours and forty minutes. And that gave me enough time to rework Sword from the ground-up, making it nine hundred percent deadlier than before, get Force Shield up to a respectable level to the point that it could withstand several hits from the Sword, and even increased the efficacy of my Invisibility by three times.

  And my Critical Progress went up to 5% for my first use of the Sandy of the day.

  Nova! Interfacing was preem, why didn’t I do this before?

  What else could I do? I had already run out of inspiration for the programs I had bought. Maybe I should try pushing the limits of Overheat?

  No. Breach Protocol. I needed to get closer to Lucy’s level, apply what I’ve already learned about cybersecurity from all this code review. No one would underestimate me then.

  000

  “Walk on by.”

  Lucy’s sound system managed to spoof that grainy texture of old-world music, the analogue feel of vinyl. It had a satisfying contrast to the digital beat that was overlaid to it. Once upon a time, Lucy used to hate it. This song wasn’t the Walk On By she remembered Seo sharing with the other ‘Runners back when they were all chasing someone else’s dream. That one was sung by a… Dianne? Dion, maybe? Neither sounded right.

  This song was like finding a needle in the haystack, a recovery from the Old Net that Lucy hadn’t wasted any time buying, only to find out that the little sample she was given wasn’t the song she remembered. Instead, it had been used as a sample for a hiphop song, which wasn’t her preferred genre at all.

  Still, she had swallowed the indignity of listening to what she had initially felt was a perversion of a perfectly good song, and soon enough, recognized that the indignity was actually just grief masquerading as irritation.

  “Yeah, said my happiness is all of your misery”

  She took a drag of her cigarette and looked through the window she sat next to, watching Night City’s neon lights, wondering not for the first time if she should run away. Maine wanted to chip in. Again. His hands were shaking, and she’d heard whispers from Kiwi about his volatility behind closed doors, when only the ‘grownups’ of the crew—Dorio, Kiwi and Pilar—were there to see. Of those grownups, only Kiwi could see the truth of the matter. Dorio was his mainline, and Pilar was a former ‘Strom member—even if he had mellowed down from his Doctor of Death days, the former near-cyberpsycho didn’t have the capacity to fear for his life anymore.

  The whole crew would fall apart soon. And Lucy didn’t intend to be in the splash zone when it all went down. And with David in the picture, her eagerness to stick around with Maine was practically zero.

  Yeah. She’d find that Apogee and then fuck off. David would be her replacement and that would be it.

  “Mmm, she the devil, she a bad little bitch, she a rebel—”

  In a way, she was grateful to the gonk. He strolled up at just the right time for her to cut and delta without stepping on any big borg toes.

  She got a call from Kiwi and accepted it. Call included Corpo Cunt too.

  Kiwi: You’re up. Come to this address.

  Following that was the info about her Netrunner den.

  Corpo Cunt: Be there in 5.

  Lucy: On my way.

  She stubbed her cigarette on the ashtray on the window sill and got up.

  “Walk on by—she put her foot to the pedal, it’ll take a whole lot for me to settle.”

  She turned off the sound system with her linked optics on the way out.