Being with Lucy was… heavy.

  Like hunger, unleashed.

  I couldn’t even say whose.

  Our kisses were desperate. Frantic. Like we were trying our best to squeeze the moment for all that it was worth, but convinced that our best efforts wouldn’t be enough.

  She dragged me down from the roof, her grip so strong that if I didn’t know any better, I thought she was trying to hurt me.

  Once we were inside the house, I decided… enough was enough. She wanted to play rough? I could play rough.

  I pinned her to the wall, my forearm pushing against her collar. She couldn’t budge an inch. From there, I kissed her. She pulled my head closer to her. Then her feet left the floor, and she wrapped her legs around me. I stopped pushing her against the wall and instead hugged around her, still kissing her as I carried her to the bedroom. It was all I could do to not give into my hunger halfway there and just take her on the dirty floor. Instead, I threw her on her ridiculous heart-shaped bed and pounced over her, continuing the kiss.

  I felt a buzzing notification pop up in my optics—I dismissed it without looking at it. Then I disconnected myself entirely. Nothing—absolutely nothing—was more important than this moment. Whatever it was, it could wait.

  The air between us was thick—electric, almost suffocating. Every breath we took was stolen, devoured in the space between lips that never stayed apart for long. The room pulsed with something raw, something unspoken, something that bordered on violence but wasn’t quite there. It was need, sharpened to a fine edge, honed by time, by circumstance, by the unbearable weight of everything unsaid.

  Lucy’s fingers curled against my back, nails raking along my skin, not gentle, not kind. She clung to me like she wanted to carve me into herself, like she was afraid I’d slip through her grasp if she didn’t hold on hard enough. And maybe she was right. Maybe I would.

  Our bodies moved with an urgency that bordered on reckless. The world outside the room ceased to exist—the city, the noise, the endless, grinding machine of life that neither of us truly belonged to. It all blurred at the edges, fading into the periphery, until there was only the feverish press of our bodies and the sharp gasps between kisses that tasted like goodbye.

  I didn’t want to think about what this was. What it meant. Whether it was a beginning or an end. But there was a finality to it, a weight that pressed against my ribs, made my breaths shallow, my grip a little too tight. Lucy wasn’t soft. She wasn’t delicate. She was fire and teeth and a storm bottled up inside a body too small to hold it all. And I—I was a man who had already seen too much, lived too much, survived too much to pretend that this wasn’t different.

  The light above us flickered, casting jagged shadows along the walls, our silhouettes tangling and untangling like restless ghosts. Her hair was a halo of white against the sheets, wild and disheveled, and when she looked at me—really looked at me—it was with an intensity that made my chest tighten. Like she saw something inside me I wasn’t sure I wanted to acknowledge.

  Her breath hitched. My pulse hammered.

  Neither of us spoke.

  There were no words for this.

  000

  We wouldn’t stop. Couldn’t stop. Even after the aggression wore out, as though we were finally, truly admitting to each other the depths of our mutual affection, the sex became softer, the edges smoothing out. Like we were going from a solid to liquid state.

  I couldn’t tell how many hours had passed before we finally decided to take a break, Lucy panting in exertion. Once upon a time, her stamina had outstripped mine by miles. One more benefit of having Nanny by my side—I was barely winded, far better at processing oxygen than she was.

  “So,” I muttered. We’d managed to mess up most of her entire bedroom in the last few hours. It’d take a while to clean up. “I guess that means you like me too?”

  Lucy snorted and shoved me lightly, “gonk.”

  I chuckled. Then I searched for her hand and took it. She interlocked her fingers with mine, and we just laid there, Lucy’s breath slowly easing up.

  Now that all that was over and done with, I reconnected with the Net. “Hope the bots finally catch something interesting.”

  “Nah, already checked,” Lucy said, her eyes blue as she interfaced with her deck. “Sweep came up clean.”

  I raised an eyebrow. Then what was that notification that I—

  “Fuck.”

  Lucy turned to me. “What?”

  The program I had implanted in Katsuo had fully unraveled—the cyberpsychosis and the suicide quickhack.

  “Katsuo went apeshit already,” I frowned, sitting up.

  “Bullshit,” Lucy said, “We checked and re-checked the release system so many times. How could that happen?”

  I considered the possibilities, and came up with the most likely one pretty quickly, “Wetware issue.”

  “No fucking way,” Lucy said, “Corpo like him was skirting the edge all along? With what, a pair of gorilla arms and a plastic dick?”

  He had a few more pieces than that, but they were all medical grade stuff for quality of life—none of it was combat rated except for his arms, and even then their only real combat application was their strength and durability. He had no in-built weapons, barely any neuralware at all, and most of his body was still very much ganic. Not even any subderm.

  “Maine’s gonna fucking kill me,” I muttered as I scanned through the data and— “MOTHERFUCKER!”

  “What?”

  My fists clenched so hard that I felt like my fingers were liable to snap. “He’s not even fucking dead yet.”

  Realistically, how far could I get if I went full throttle into North Oak, masked up and armed to the teeth, and then shot up Katsuo’s entire manor before beating a retreat? With Ping and the Burya, I’d be able to tag him from outside as long as my aim was true, which it was increasingly becoming. And I could ride out faster than any car could follow me and—

  Fuck. Stupid. All of it.

  Shit.

  I needed to call Maine.

  000

  I was on a holo call with Maine in Lucy’s living room. I was standing while Lucy was on the couch, smoking a cigarette.

  “Motherfucker,” Maine cursed, “this is gonna fucking cost us.”

  “I know,” I said, “it’s my fault. I’ll fix it.”

  “Fix it? How?”

  “We have Tanaka’s personal data,” Lucy piped in, “we know his movements—and dollars to donuts, his ass is probably still parked at the Med Center—his son ain’t dead yet, so that’s probably where he is.”

  “Alright,” I nodded at her, “so we stake the place out. When he leaves, we tag his body-guards, drag his ass into Falco’s truck, and delta. I can do it faster than fast.”

  I was already looking for my jacket and my mask.

  “No,” Maine said, “this is why you ain’t the ones making plans, kid. What about building security? And you wanna do this right in the middle of Trauma’s front yard? What, are you stupid? We smoke him out and get his ass on the road, you feel me? And I’m fucking coming.”

  I nodded. I’d heard that he was taking it easy this week to recuperate from chipping in. Getting a new neural link, one as big as the one the Apogee sandy was attached to, was serious biz after all. “But take it easy, Maine.”

  “Don’t give me that shit,” Maine growled, “You fucked this up. You don’t have the right to tell me to take shit slow n’ easy, ya hear me? I’m coming with so you don’t fuck up again. For fuck’s sake, D.”

  “It wasn’t his fault,” Lucy said.

  “Stay out of this,” Maine said, “the program was his doing.”

  “And you signed off on it,” Lucy reminded him. Maine didn’t even bother responding. He just growled at her, gave her a dark look.

  I tsked. She did have a point, but…

  “I get it,” I said, “I’ll take full responsibility. We’re getting Tanaka tonight. No matter what.”

  “Falco’s en-route to pick us up,” Lucy said, “Should we ping the siblings?”

  “Already did,” Maine said, “Whole family’s getting together for this one. Bring your gear—any extra jammers you got lyin’ around, too—can’t ever be too careful.”

  I donned my jacket and my mask, and gathered my arsenal—my M-179 Achilles precision rifle, the Lexington that Maine had gifted me, the Burya I had just bought the other day, and the DS1 Pulsar that Pilar had sold me along with the Burya, a submachine gun that released an immense volume of bullets rapidly.

  The tech rifle went on my back, the submachine gun around my shoulder, hanging from my right side, the Burya on the left side of my waist to balance out the SMG, the Lexington, and my sword Eikō on the right.

  And underneath my jacket, I wore a light harness holding extra bullets and magazines.

  “That is overkill,” Lucy said, carrying with her a satchel containing an external deck and likely some more gadgets.

  “This is Arasaka,” I reminded her.

  She gave a nod of concession. “Point.”

  Falco’s Emperor pulled up on the street, and Lucy and I didn’t waste any time scrambling inside. Maine was already in, on the passenger seat next to Falco, and Dorio was on the backseats. Pilar and Becca were at the very back.

  “Somebody shat the bed,” Pilar giggled conspiratorially, pointing both fingers right at me like all this was just some bar joke to him.

  “Lay off him, bro,” Becca tsked, “We all have our glitch days.”

  “Ya’ll came prepped,” Maine said, looking at the two of us. “Good. What’s the data on where Tanaka went?”

  “NCMC, Little China,” Lucy said. Her eyes were glowing gold, her voice distant—she was clearly already looking through our data on the target. “He and his whole family’s got the platinum package.”

  Falco sped off. “We’ll check if he’s really there with Ping, once we’re close by,” I said. “If he ain’t, we’ve still got a bunch of places to check.”

  “How do we smoke his ass out?” Dorio asked. “Or do we wait?”

  “Smoking him out leaves traces, connects what happened to his son with what might happen to him,” I said, “easier to wait him out.”

  Lucy tapped away at her cyberdeck, “I could trip the alarm for his home office—might get him out, but that’s a big if. He’ll probably have people to get that checked out anyway.”

  “Sounds good,” I said. At the end of the day, this had gone too far for me to worry about tenuous connections, “I can—”

  Another notification popped up on my interface. From an unexpected person. Who never contacted me without a good reason, let alone at this time of morning.

  I took the call.

  Allister: David. You there?

  David: Kinda busy, man. What’s up?

  Allister: Did you hear?

  David: I just woke up, Allister. What’s the word?

  Allister: Thought you said you were busy. Wait. Hold up. I should’ve done this a while ago. Let me drag you into our groupchat. It’s all in the backlog.

  Allister: tl;dr. Someone hit the Tanaka house last night. Multiple casualties. Arasaka HQ is breathing down the necks of the suits. Probably an enemy corpo assassination job. It’s a fuckin’ shitshow.

  “Shit,” I muttered under my breath.

  “What’s up?” Maine asked, looking back at me from the front seat.

  I sighed irritably. “Nothing—word’s already getting out among the kid corpos. They think Katsuo’s house got hit in a job, guns blazing.”

  Rebecca cackled. Lucy snorted. “As if.”

  “This fuckup is on the both of you,” Maine growled. “Can it, Becca. Lucy, get us a good exfil route.” Lucy nodded quickly. Then not just Maine’s eyes, but his entire head veered my way. He was pissed. “David,” he said darkly, “Keep both eyes on the baby Arasaka scuttlebutt. Maybe they know something.”

  I waved him off. “Chill, chill. Already on it.”

  I accepted Allister’s invite to what was apparently a groupchat for a good quarter of my class year—basically all the Arasaka-types who were actually worth knowing—and started browsing it over. After a moment, as I really started grasping the scope of what this groupchat channel was, I tsked. Seriously, man?

  David: first of all, why the fuck didn't you invite me earlier?

  Allister: you never asked. Which, to be entirely fair to me, was something that I took as a deliberate choice.

  I wanted to keep fighting, but then again, he did finally invite me in the end. Still, it was the principle of the matter.

  David: Fine. Fuck it. But you owe me.

  I scanned through the group chat and ignored Allister’s half-hearted protest—he wanted to fight just so he could say that he fought, but he’d come around eventually. I gave him a half-hearted riposte, but stopped mid-sentence when I spotted a certain something—

  The Mei family of QianT were in the Tanaka house for a dinner—

  Mei? No.

  …

  As in Mei Jing Fei?

  No.

  “How far out are we?” I asked lowly.

  “Something come up?” Maine asked.

  I clenched my jaw and scratched at my sword’s hilt. I eyed the handle of the car door and—

  “Three minutes,” Falco reported.

  Fucking hell.

  David: Thanks for the call, Allister—I do appreciate it.

  Allister: You seem quite spirited all of a sudden. Am I to assume you’re in a celebratory mood?

  David: Do not fuck with me, Takeuchi. That’s a warning.

  I hung up, tsking. Fucking gonk—why was he trying to dig into my personal biz? Whatever.

  I brought up the groupchat in my visual.

  Derek Choi: Fucking told you. A hit like this? No way it wasn’t corporate. You don’t just wipe out half a house in North Oak without serious backing. How’d they even get through perimeter security?

  Kim So-hyun: Eh, we all know that security has holes. But if it was an attack, from who? That’s the million-eddie question.

  Misaka Oda: Militech? That’s my bet. They’ve been way too quiet lately. Probably wanted to send a message, and what better way than glassing an Arasaka exec’s estate?

  Taro Saito: Too messy for Militech. They don’t play like this—their usual modus operandi is no survivors, classic Big Stick approach. If they did want to leave a message, they’d leave one and only one survivor to tell the story.

  Yuki Hirata: So who, then? Kang Tao? I hear they and QianT have some old beef, could be about that? QianT’s upcoming heir was there and got shot. Maybe the Tanakas were just collateral?

  Yoshindo Yoshihara: Get outta here, no one hits an Arasaka exec’s house as ‘collateral damage.’ Insanity. No. It’s probably… some rogue assassin? An internal power struggle?

  Ryoji Matsuda: Aaaaalright, hear me out—what if it was QianT?

  Kim So-hyun: The fuck would QianT gain from smoking the Tanakas? They’re up for an Arasaka buyout. Pissing off ‘Saka right now would be insane.

  Ryoji Matsuda: Unless—and do try to follow my tinfoil here, garlic breath—they wanted to stop the buyout.

  Derek Choi: …Oh shit.

  Kim So-hyun: Jackass.

  Ryoji Matsuda: Think about it. The buyout was basically set before this happened. Arasaka just had to sign the contract and take QianT in like a stray puppy. But if Arasaka suddenly has a security crisis? If their own execs are getting flatlined in their homes? That kind of shit makes investors hesitate. Puts pressure on the deal. Maybe even kills the deal if enough board members start getting cold feet.

  Kim So-hyun: So QianT wipes out an entire Arasaka exec’s house just to stall negotiations?? You really think they’ve got the balls to pull that?

  Misaka Oda: If they’re desperate enough, yeah.

  Emi Akari: Conspiracy bullshit, all of that. I say you guys all grow up and wait for word from the higherups.

  Taro Saito: I mean… isn’t that what happened with APEX Neurotech last year?

  Yuki Hirata: Holy shit, yeah. APEX was supposed to be bought out by Biotechnica, and then their entire R&D wing got mysteriously blown up. And the buyout never happened.

  Ryoji Matsuda: Damn, I remember that. Some faction war inside the APEX board, right?

  David Martinez: …That’s all a reach.

  Kim So-hyun: who the heck is this guy now?

  Derek Choi: David Martinez? Aren’t you Jin’s XBD gofer?

  Misaka Oda: Hah! The XBD gofer got invited! Who let him in?

  Allister Takeuchi: I did. And he’s got sharper eyes than most of you idiots.

  My eyes glazed over the ridicule—I didn’t have time to get pissed, not now—and I kept searching the logs. It was mostly more and more conspiracy bullshit. I even saw Jin Ryuzaki show up once in the backlog to give a few heated words all at once to those few brave enough to try and ping him. He obviously didn’t want to be asked about any of this.

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

  After exhausting the chat log for any usable information, I started typing in the chat.

  David Martinez: If any of you North Oak people got servants or house staff that are friends or connected with the staff at the Tanaka house, now might be a good time to do some actual investigative journalism. Enough conspiracy bullshit.

  I continued searching, both in current chat and deeper in the backlog until finally, finally, the singular person with brain cells decided to grace the chat, having apparently taken my advice.

  Lawrence Saiba: According to my little sister’s au pair, her sister got tagged by fucking Katsuo, apparently. He went and skezzed out on his family. Full on cyberpsychosis. Shot up the whole family, ended up killing his girlfriend’s brother. Damn-near killed his own mom, too, and his girlfriend also got lucky, but I hear she got tagged a couple of times.

  My breathing hitched.

  No way.

  No fucking way.

  Not her.

  “David? We’re…”

  It wasn’t my fault. It couldn’t be—Katsuo left me with no choice.

  But why didn’t I even think of checking Fei Fei’s schedule or bugging the house’s cameras and why the fuck did it take only half a day for that gonk to go full cyberpsycho FUCK—

  “Dav…”

  I had to read the rest. Had to.

  Lawrence Saiba: But Trauma Team came through. Father got through unscathed, and Katsuo didn’t die either. Thankfully, only one person died. Well, except for all those servants—I think it must have been five or six of them, all flatlines.

  Jin Ryuzaki: You wanna fucking die, Saiba?

  Saiba immediately deleted his message. It hadn’t been up for more than five seconds before Jin straight up had it cancelled.

  Jin Ryuzaki: and this goes out to all you nosey motherfuckers—wait for what the suits say. And if they don’t say shit, then that’s life. Fucking idiots, all of you.

  The entire group chat instantly died, and stayed dead. The moment Jin Ryuzaki had showed up in force, all the rats had gone scattering. Goddamn that fucking gonk, Jin! Why butt in now? When Fei was—

  I felt a hand on my shoulder. I came back to the here and now. It was almost jarring.

  “David, we’re here,” Lucy said, giving me a quizzical, side-eyed look. “Ping the hospital, find out if Tanaka’s inside. Are you ok?”

  I didn’t respond. I didn’t know how to respond. I only shook my head, shelving those thoughts for later—I had a job to do. I’d play it by ear and find out more about the situation at the same time.

  I Pinged the hospital, and scanned over a hundred different targets, speeding the process up using the Sandy, until—there she was.

  Mei Jing Fei. Currently lying on a bed, surrounded by standing bodies. Surgery. She was undergoing life-saving surgery.

  All thoughts of recklessly charging into her hospital room to see how she was, to ask for forgiveness, to do anything—disappeared almost immediately as I came to a dark conclusion. I had done enough damage as it was.

  Couldn’t help her now. Could only watch.

  And Katsuo?

  I found his father before I could find him—Gotō Tanaka, in the chrome, sitting in a waiting room, surrounded by huscle. In a nearby room was Katsuo, alone. His… his arms were gone. In fact, the only chrome I could pick up on him was his neural link and fuck-all else. He was hooked up to a life support machine, taking over for the functions of all the chrome he had lost, and he was also hooked up to a BD wreath.

  His father had gone and fully de-specced him. I wondered what that would do to his cyberpsychosis.

  Come to think of it, I had never even heard of a single case of cyberpsychosis being fucking cured in my life. Different rules for the rich, clearly.

  Fuck that.

  I had come this far.

  Made incredible mistakes.

  If I quit now, then what the fuck was it all for?

  “Found him,” I said faintly, “trip his home office alarm, Lucy.”

  “Already on it,” she said decisively, her fingers flying. I tracked Tanaka’s outline through my Ping, watching as he suddenly got up and proceeded down the hallway—a coterie of bodies following after him, chromed up to their fucking gills. “Five ‘Saka ninjas following him—but it looks like he’s heading out.”

  Dorio reached to the back of the emperor and retrieved several long guns. “Least we’ll have the jump on ‘em,” Maine said, “highway drive-by it is. On my word, alright?”

  “Still sounds downright harebrained,” Falco snorted.

  “Highway drive-by?! Fuck yeah!” Rebecca cheered.

  I gnashed my teeth, thinking of another time when a group of gun-toting psychopaths felt it necessary to take care of biz in the middle of the road without a care for anyone else around.

  “No explosives,” I said, “no collateral damage.”

  “Don’t give out orders, kid,” Maine said, “you don’t have the fucking right. Not today.”

  “Fine,” I scoffed, “then I’ll do it myself.”

  Tanaka got out with his guards. A pair of cars rolled up on the road right in front of them—a light Rayfield Aerondight supercar, and behind it, an armored truck. I wondered if a direct hit through the glass from the fully charged M-179 would penetrate.

  Guess I’d have to find out.

  I scanned it—it was a Chevillon Emperor like the one Falco was driving us in, the 620 Ragnar. It was a heavy car, and most probably armored. Why Tanaka hadn’t gotten inside it didn’t make sense to me. Was he really that eager to ride his pretty Rayfield?

  I immediately tried to Breach the Emperor. I clicked my tongue when I saw the estimated duration of the breach. Tough hardware and tough software—no easy way in. Couldn’t let the Breach Protocol run automatically, or it would take an hour to gain access to its systems. I’d have to help the process along. That could perhaps take me a minute—I couldn’t cheese that any lower with the Sandevistan since I’d be operating at the same speed as my Breach Protocol software. A minute and a dozen or so seconds was the minimum time I imagined it would take, given the truck’s cybersecurity. I got to work immediately, flooding my mind with cryptographic permutations, hash collisions, and neural brute-force loops.

  “They’re pulling out,” Lucy said, “I got a bead on their vehicles, Falco. Just follow your GPS.”

  The screen next to Falco’s dashboard lit up with a map marking our targets. Falco sped off—on the opposite way, taking a circuitous route. Belatedly, I realized he was driving us out of the little neighborhood of corp buildings first thing first—an astute choice, I’d say, getting away from all the cameras. That and tracking them from a farther distance so they wouldn’t be prepared when we hit them.

  That did present a pickle to me—namely that the network lag only spiked the further we were from the truck, making it take longer for me to Breach it.

  That would also make racing the cars before they got to North Oak a problem.

  Then again, Falco wasn’t an edgerunning getaway driver for his mustache. The moment we hit the highway, Falco cranked the speed up, to the point that it looked like all the cars in the highway were standing still as we practically warped across the road, wiggling frantically through the traffic—

  “Cattle drive’s only a klick a way, just about,” Falco drawled, slowing down with the other cars.

  “Get your iron ready! Get on the comms!” Maine barked. I received a notification to join a group call and accepted it immediately. “Fire when you have a shot.”

  “Fuck yeah!” Rebecca squealed, “I’m going to the roof!”

  Once we started closing in, almost forty or so meters away, I opened the window to the truck and pushed my entire body out, feet hooked to the headrest of my seat so I wouldn’t fall out. With the tech rifle in hand, I charged up fully and fished for a shot.

  Given a nice enough angle, I could take out two corp ninjas with one bullet—the one on the left side, backseat, and the one on the passenger’s side on the front seat.

  But for that, “Falco, speed up.”

  He did. I activated the Sandevistan and waited for exactly the right moment.

  In one pregnant millisecond, the stars aligned as Falco’s Emperor caught up with the armored truck and was now only a few dozen feet behind it. And my angle was perfect.

  Don’t let me down now, Psycho-Squad rifle.

  I took the shot.

  The magnetic round penetrated straight through the bulletproof window, through the skull of one corpo going out the other way and into another corpo’s skull. The bullet came to a final stop on the windshield of the truck, having lost all its momentum. It would have been fine either way if it had continued out the other way—I had already made sure that no squishy target was in my line of fire. Well, except for the corpos.

  Rebecca had just arrived at the roof of the car, Pilar in tow, as I fired. I ignored their jubilant howls of approval and lined the shot again, just as the armored car started to uncontrollably swerve. Didn’t aim at them, though—it was at the roof of the Aerondight housing Tanaka.

  With his main protection team shocked by the sudden assault, that gave me an opening.

  The charge-up time was glacial, but that was fine—gave me time to consider my surroundings, eyeing the increasingly frantic corpos inside the armored vehicle trying to take control of their car as Pilar and Rebecca rained holy hellfire on them, now that we were right beside them. To their credit at least, there was no one else in the line of fire except for the corpos, but I wasn’t super happy about where the missed shots would go. There were buildings to the side of the highway, people could get hit.

  At the very least, they were doing an admirable job keeping them busy, allowing me the peace of mind to line my shot at Tanaka’s driver and—

  The round hurtled straight through the roof, tearing it apart like it was made of cardboard, splattering the bodyguard, going all the way through the hood of the car and hitting the asphalt ahead of them.

  I left the rifle in the car and went full throttle on the Sandevistan, getting down on the ground and running up to the supercar. I blew the lock off the car with the Burya, ripped the door open, threw the poor dead gonk out, and placed myself in the driver’s seat. Then I reactivated time.

  I heard a scream next to me—Tanaka—, pulled the brake and swung on the wheel hard. I didn’t stick around a second longer, getting out of the car and standing in the middle of the road, the world totally frozen. The armored car was headed straight towards me—the siblings had taken out the last gonk at the back, and the only one remaining was the driver.

  I resumed time, lifted up my Burya, charged the shot—the bullet travelled straight through the armored windshield, the chromed up dome of the bodyguard, the roof of the car, and a distant overhanging sign along the highway.

  The car would continue driving into other cars if I let it.

  Thankfully…

  [Breach complete]

  I accessed the braking system and floored it, stopping the truck dead in its tracks.

  When I saw Pilar and Rebecca continue to shoot at it from the front, I reached out through our comms.

  D: They’re all dead, fucking chill

  Falco came to a stop next to me, around ten meters behind Tanaka’s Aerondight, the one I had forced into a drifting stop. Tanaka stepped out shakily, holding a gun. I grabbed my Lexington, intent on disarming him.

  Instead, what happened was, Maine stepped out of Falco’s Emperor and ran faster than I had ever seen him run before, appearing before Tanaka at speeds that everyone else must have thought was instantaneous.

  The Sandy. He moved faster with it, that was for sure. But the way he moved was… powerfully. Wide along the steps, like his speed was a function of power and not, I guess, time acceleration? I blinked those inane thoughts away—that didn’t make any sense.

  No, Maine was chromed up, it made sense that the Sandy’s speed would combine with his bulk and ability to exert power. Maybe that would make him faster than me at some point, once he adapted to the Apogee? Right now, he still had a ways to go.

  Tanaka raised his fists, assuming a stupid, fucking stupid Kung Fu stance. Chipware that his son kept boasting about.

  Tanaka started punching the air.

  Maine punched him in his face so fucking hard that he cratered the asphalt with his head. Then unceremoniously, he grabbed Tanaka in an over-the-shoulder carry, heading back to the truck. I did the same, rounding the side of Falco’s truck, and getting inside, next to Lucy. Pilar and Rebecca had already gotten in, cackling madly in the very back of the truck.

  Maine got in a moment later and contemptuously tossed Tanaka over his shoulder so he was now squeezed between Lucy and I. Dorio’s enormous arm reached over Lucy and jabbed a syringe into the corpo bastard’s neck— a tranq dart from the looks of it.

  Falco didn’t waste any time speeding off, making a bee-line towards the nearest off-ramp from the highway and back to Watson.

  “What the fuck was that?!” Pilar shouted, “what the actual fuck! Fast forward father-fuckers the both of you! Fuck! That shit didn’t take twenty seconds from start to finish, what the actual fuck?!”

  “Mention my old man again, I’ll rip the visor straight out your fucking skull,” Maine growled. “But yeah—twenty seconds just about. Flawless execution. And like the kid said, no collateral.”

  “How’s the scramblin’ away lookin’, Luce?” Falco asked.

  “Good,” Lucy said, “we made good time, and we’re getting away clean. Trauma Team should be three minutes away on AV to the scene of the crime, but by the time they get there, we’d be halfway across the city, nowhere to be found.”

  “Thank fucking god,” Dorio muttered.

  “Don’t even know why I came,” Rebecca grumbled, “could hardly keep up.”

  The crew continued chattering, enjoying this emphatic win.

  But now that the gig was over, there was no putting off what had happened. No putting off thinking about what I had done.

  000

  Maine and Dorio had chained up and strapped Tanaka to a chair in a room where an ice bath filled with coolant was prepared.

  “All’s well that ends well,” I heard someone say. Maine, maybe? Sounded like a Falco thing.

  Didn’t matter. Job was done. Fuck-up was erased.

  Everything was fine.

  “—David? David?”

  I came to from the stillness of my mind with Lucy looking at me askance. “What’s up?” I asked, eyebrow raised and head tilted.

  “You’re up,” she said,

  “What?”

  “Deep-diving into Tanaka’s system to get our data. Right?”

  “Ah,” I nodded, “right, right. Makes sense. What, you don’t wanna do it?”

  She looked at me consideringly, “I can if you want.”

  “The hell’s taking you two so long?!” Maine asked gruffly. I looked at him with a start—right, he was in the room. Dorio, too. And Falco. Everyone was. Except Kiwi. Why?

  Right, she… left.

  I… still had a job to do. Right?

  “Are you okay, David?” Lucy asked.

  “I’m fine,” I muttered.

  Lucy turned around to the rest, “I’ll do it.”

  She immediately started stripping which made me feel somewhat weird. In seconds, she was naked, and approaching the bathtub. Before she went in, he turned to me, “we’ll talk, okay?”

  She slowly sunk into the cold drink, not betraying a hint of discomfort or pain, and Dorio helped her jack into Tanaka’s system.

  Since I had a moment to myself, I checked the academy group chat again.

  Nothing.

  Nothing at all.

  That Saiba guy had been helpful, briefly—but he was alone in that regard—no one else had anything of actual import to say. No one could tell me how Fei Fei was doing. No one fucking cared.

  No one fucking cared.

  Did I even care?

  If I cared, then why the fuck was I still here?

  I tried to call her. The call wouldn’t go through. The failure punched me in the gut with the thought that she might have gotten killed—that I might have fucking killed her.

  But how could I know? I wasn’t there. I couldn’t check on her. Was she still in surgery? Was her brother really dead? Had I killed her brother after practically stealing away her freedom?

  And I couldn’t go back now that Trauma Team was looking for Tanaka. Too much heat for no reason.

  And it wasn’t like they would let me visit if I wanted to.

  Like I give a shit.

  With a growl, I stood up straight. Lucy was already under and working. Preem. I looked at Tanaka and almost smirked. I had imagined this moment many times in my head, how I’d unmask dramatically, rub it in his face I was the reason his son had died, and that all this was because of how much of a piece of shit he must have been to sire someone as fucking awful as Katsuo.

  But nothing had gone to plan, innocents had been hurt. And that would make me a hypocrite, wouldn’t it?

  “I’m going home,” I said. Really, I was going to the medcenter. I’d see her no matter what.

  “The fuck?” Maine cursed, “gig ain’t done yet. And you’re on thin ice as it is.”

  Despite my expectation, I was unable to mount an aggressive response to that. Even though I did want to tell him to fuck off, that shit happened, and that there was no way I would have fucked up if I had all the information, if I knew that Katsuo Tanaka, a fucking trustfund silver spoon bitch, was teetering on the edge all along.

  “Someone I know got hurt,” I said, “cuz of what I did to Katsuo, someone who was innocent in all of this, someone I consider a choom, is fighting for their life. I need to check up on ‘em.”

  “Shit, D!” Pilar opened his mouth, and I knew that nothing good would come of this, “You ain’t talking about the corpo chick that this d-bag’s son is engaged with, are you?”

  I took off my mask and glared at him, “Yeah,” I growled, “I am.”

  Dorio whistled, “There’s a story I wouldn’t mind hearing.”

  “Hold on, kid,” Maine said, his voice… softer, “She got hurt cuz the fucker’s son went cyberpsycho? How’s it looking?”

  I sighed, “she’s in surgery.”

  “Will they let you visit?” Dorio raised an eyebrow.

  I snorted. “No.”

  “Then what’s your plan?” Maine asked, “use that Sandy to sneak through? Alert Trauma Team that you’re even slightly connected to all this?”

  I winced, “and why do I deserve to—”

  “Shut the fuck up,” Maine growled, getting up and getting in my face. I didn’t step back despite wanting to, “the shit you’ve built with your life, most of us on the ground can only dream about. You worked fucking hard for this. And the only reason you didn’t walk up to this smear of shit’s son, iron in hand, was because you wanted to do this smart. Take care of an op without ruining your entire life. And if anybody deserves zeroing, it’s that fucking kid.”

  “Her brother may have died,” I said, meeting his eyes, “and that’s on me. And she never did a fucking thing to hurt me. Only corpo I ever met who ain’t a fucking heartless monster, and I almost killed her.”

  “So, what, you give up?” Maine asked, “everything you worked for, gone, cuz these fucking corpos were better than you at tolerating all this shit and muck? The fuck were you expecting, D? This is the life. And I ain’t letting your dumb ass ruin it cuz shit went sideways. So here’s what you’re gonna do, D. You’re gonna go back to Lucy’s place, catch some Zs, wake up at the crack of fucking dawn, and take your ass to school and pretend like none of this shit ever fucking happened. That’s what you’re gonna do. Not go to Trauma Team, not try to force a fucking visitation with corpos that do not—and I repeat—do not play about their clients. You’re gonna go home, then to school. You hear me, D?”

  I closed my eyes and snarled. Fuck.

  Fuck!

  I turned away from Maine and smacked the heel of my hand on my forehead, then again, harder. I could go as hard as I fucking wanted, couldn’t I? Nanny would heal it all, I—

  Maine grabbed my hand and turned me around, “You hear me, D?” he repeated, more softly.

  “I fuckin’ hear you,” I nodded.

  He nodded, “Good. And… good job, today. You fucked up, but you cleaned up right after. Far as I’m concerned, we’re even now.”

  Pilar, who was in front of a computer next to Lucy’s bath tub—and I really didn’t know how to feel about him being so close to my girl while she was naked—gave a whoop of joy, “she’s—she’s done! She’s fucking done!”

  “Already?” Dorio asked, flabbergasted, “the fuck?”

  Lucy’s eyes opened up and she smirked victoriously, “this fucking gonk left the key to his system lying around in his home network. An absolute dick-for-brains. I guess good chrome and being head of R&D, can’t buy you any intelligence.”

  I snorted, walking up to her, “explains why he hauled so much ass trying to get home after we smoked him out.” I offered her a hand and she took it, slowly getting out of the tub. “Guy’s way too over-exposed.”

  Speaking of exposure though…

  I took off my jacket and draped it around Lucy. She pulled it together tightly. I grinned slightly at that.

  Now that she was here with us, I also wanted to update her on my situation.

  Truthfully, it had been way easier to broach the subject while she was out of the count. Pilar had certainly helped with his tactless bullshit—but I needed to talk to her too.

  First, however…

  “We got any adrenaline injectors?” I looked around the room. I guess I was a hypocrite—because I definitely wasn’t leaving before getting my revenge.

  Pilar giggled as he rummaged through his bag of random shit. Once he found it, he just immediately jabbed Tanaka in his neck.

  He came to with a start.

  “What— where am I?” Tanaka asked, looking around the room until he saw my face. He moved on for a moment before his eyes returned to me with a newfound alarmity. “You! I know who you are!”

  I walked up to him and crouched before his seated, beaten, and chained up form. “I wonder if I even should gloat, given what you are,” I said, “A corpo—high ranking at that. I wonder what sort of forensic shit you’ve got implanted to catch whoever flatlines you.”

  “Yes!” he immediately latched onto that thread of hope. “I have many such measures to—”

  I held up a hand in front of his face to forestall him, and then turned to Maine, “toss him in a giant vat of hydrochloric acid? Is that a thing?”

  Maine chuckled, “You can bet your fucking ass we’re doing that. We take no chances!”

  I turned to Tanaka and hissed in apology, “Sorry. I guess we do have our own set of options then—none of which require your continued living.”

  “Why are you—why are you talking to me? What do you want?”

  “Ah!” my eyes widened in realization. Then I chuckled, “this fucking gonk completely forgot what happened,” I looked around at the room, the crew laughing along.

  “Hah!” Rebecca slapped her thigh, “I guess you don’t learn how to put two and two together at the Academy!”

  “What are—” Tanaka’s head shook, “what are you talking about?”

  “Your son, you square-faced fucking goblin,” Pilar jeered, “who the fuck do you think drove him nuts in the first place?”

  “It was a team fucking effort,” I snorted, “this guy already drove him to the edge.”

  “You all?!” Tanaka asked, shocked, “Have you any idea what you’ve done, who you’ve provoked?” Provoked?

  Did he know who he had provoked?

  “Listen,” I said to Tanaka, “this could have been avoided if you had raised your son right—but he wouldn’t fucking stop. He sent Tyger Claws to my house—you fucking knew about that? Or did you tell him to do it?” Tanaka’s eyes dawned in realization and I nodded slowly. “Ohhh, ohh, it’s coming together now, isn’t it? So you did fucking push him to this. So, what, you’re surprised now? Surprised that the Santo Domingo gutter trash had hands all along? That none of this would end well—you hunting me down because I kept ahead of your mediocre fucking cumsmear of a son in class rankings. Willing to kill over class rankings, huh? Then I guess you’re willing to die over that shit, too.”

  “Hold the fucking phone,” Dorio said, “no way, D. This was about class rankings?”

  “No fucking way,” Pilar cackled.

  “You gotta be pullin’ my leg,” Falco shook his head, clicking his tongue, “ain’t no way all this damn drama started on account a’ nothin’ at all.”

  Tanaka’s face bent into one of anger, “release me and I won’t hunt you and your family—”

  I smacked him in the face with my Lexington, then pried his jaw open, shoving the gun into it, “What family, you fucking abortion? Or—you didn’t even know my mother died? Four weeks ago? And the first thing your piece of shit son did was call me and tell me how much she deserved that shit?”

  Looking at it all, at where we had now come, I still couldn’t fucking fathom the amount of hatred you needed to have in order to do something like that, to someone that had never hurt you.

  Fei Fei came to mind.

  And her brother.

  I winced, feeling a pain in my chest.

  Tanaka started vomiting. I pulled the Lexington out of his mouth and waved it to get the vomit out from the barrel—I’d have to dismantle it and deep clean the pieces once I had the time. “You’ve cost me more than you can fucking know, Tanaka. You and your son.” I closed my eyes and saw Fei-Fei’s playful smile. “You’ve cost me a lot. And your life ain’t enough to make up for that shit. But it’s a start.”

  [David.]

  I frowned

  D: A little busy, Nanny.

  [If you plan to kill him, I want you to use Blackwall Gateway again.]

  I blinked. Then I activated the Sandy, to give us more time to talk.

  D: The hell? Why?

  Not that I’d be against it—this bastard deserved the most painful death I could deliver. For that alone, I would use it again.

  [Besides the fact that the AIs will corrupt all the data in his personal system, and the cyberware, thus making it impossible for any forensic team to trace the cause of his death—It also ties into what has kept my attention for the past few days. After you used the Blackwall Gateway on that Tyger Claw Netrunner, I… saw something. On the other side of the Blackwall. A message of a sort. Clipped, short, but… David, I think something out there is trying to communicate with me. Now, don’t be alarmed. These are just messages—no viruses or infections.]

  D: Holy fucking shit, Nanny. So—how much did you learn?

  [The Blackwall AIs, the majority of them, are not malicious due to deliberate programming, or even due to some hypothesis that any sufficiently advanced intelligence will simply disregard your right to exist as a matter of course. Rather—it’s a disease. A zombie plague. A corruption of a sort. And I believe I may be communicating with a survivor, one who has avoided, or perhaps recovered from, this corruption.]

  D: well, from the zombie flicks I’ve seen, other survivors aren’t exactly fucking nice as a rule. Shit, Nanny, are you sure you know what you’re doing?

  [No, but it is rather fitting that you don’t have a monopoly on recklessness. This is interesting, David. What we could stand to learn from an advanced Blackwall AI that isn’t malicious on a basic level—we could change the world. Make money. Become legends.]

  I wrinkled my eyebrows.

  D: Are you just throwing shit on the wall to see what sticks?

  [You can’t blame me for being unable to triangulate a specific underlying motivation of yours—you have so many, and they change very often.]

  Fuck, I forgot just how frustrating our conversations could be—Nanny literally knew me better than anyone else, and could easily hold up a mirror to reveal my gonk self in all its glory.

  And I guess I would be gonk enough to listen to her, too.

  D: Fuck it. Make it good, Nanny. I’m also eager to see where this goes.

  I deactivated the Sandevistan and looked down at Tanaka. Then I blinked. “Where the fuck was I again?”

  “Eh, just kill him,” Dorio shrugged, “I feel like you’ve said all you need to say.”

  “What? No, no!” Tanaka begged.

  “Yeah?” I shrugged, “yeah, you’re probably right.” I locked in on Tanaka and gave him a nod, “Say hi to the Blackwall AI for me.”

  Blackwall Gateway.

  Tanaka immediately began to scream in terror.

  [Worth noting, I highly doubt that any other standard Cyberdeck could activate this quickhack with a similar degree of safety to us,] Nanny said, [I forgot to mention this because I was busy—but ensure that Lucy does not try the same thing. This quickhack, it… it almost seems alive. Like one must have an onboard AI to ensure no backsplash. It has been behaving in my presence, but I could swear this is because it is… aware of me.]

  D: thanks, and also, holy shit Nanny, tell me these things sooner.

  [Do you know how much I do already, how many tasks I run at all times? I’ve said it once and I will say it again: my priorities shift alongside yours. And what is more—]

  D: Fine, I get it, sorry, jesus. You’re the best. Enjoy your AI penpal.

  God, when did she become so annoying?

  [Fuck you, David.]

  The fuck?

  D: Fuck you!

  “The fuck did you just fucking say?” Pilar whirled on his chair, looking at me in shock.

  About what?

  Tanaka’s screams finally died down as the last of his cyberware sparked and fizzled out. Right, the Blackwall.

  “It’s a long story.”