The final bell rung, and Nakajima didn’t waste any time getting in touch, although this time it was a call and not an e-mail.

  Nakajima: We should have a meeting sometime, start laying out the final plans to work on our build. And I’m gonna level with you, you also need to explain to me some of the shit you did.

  David: Right, sorry. I’ll tell you in person. Can I get back to you on that meeting time later? Need to check my schedj and all.

  Nakajima: Don’t put on airs, kid. What could possibly be more important? Fuck, fine. Let me know quick though. We don’t have time to loaf around. We’re gonna be working double time as it is.

  David: Of course. I’ll let you know in time. Was there anything else?

  Nakajima: Just an incentive; I can make the case for you to test out early on some of your subjects to the dean, but that’s only if we get a decent placement on the case comp. Your humanities and lang courses.

  My eyes widened.

  David: Are you serious? That means I could graduate a semester early!

  Nakajima: Hold your horses, scriptkiddo; you’ll still have to pay for the exams. Can’t have you getting out of an entire semester payment without some price. Anyway, just consider that incentive to take shit seriously.

  David: Oh yeah, I’ll definitely take this seriously now!

  Nakajima: You gonk, does that mean you didn’t give a shit before?

  David: My signal’s weak.

  Nakajima: Cut the shitposting, kid

  David: Audio’s buzzing. Good… bye.

  I hung up.

  I hopped onto my bike and pulled out from Arasaka Academy grounds sedately, where I eventually gave Maine a call. He picked up quite quickly.

  Maine: Heard you had a chat with Dorio. You back on the team now.

  D: Yeah. Listen, I was in a pretty rough place when I yelled at you—

  Maine: Come to Aldo’s. Bring your gear. We’re going on a gig right now. Can you make it?

  D: If it’s over before seven, yeah. That enough time?

  Maine: Should be enough time. You gotta get on the uptake quick, though.

  D: I can be quick.

  Maine hung up. He was… different.

  Well, it made sense. Fuck. How would I make it up to him? Maybe I could do this gig free of charge?

  I sped on home, got dressed and geared up, sword and gun strapped to my belt.

  I doubled my speed going to Aldo’s, managing to get there only fifteen minutes after I was called upon.

  Maine waited for me outside the warehouse with his arms folded. I bowed my head at him.

  “I’m sorry for the disrespect, Maine,” I said to him. “I’ll take this gig for free to make it up to you.”

  Maine’s expression didn’t change from his cold neutrality. “Dorio told me you went batshit for a few ticks.”

  I shrugged. “Yeah. Head wasn’t on straight after I got hit.”

  “How about now?” Maine asked. “And what about later?”

  I shook my head. “It was an extraordianry circumstance. Won’t happen again. I figured my shit out and I’m here for this team. Ride or die.”

  “Not exactly,” Maine said. “You still got that corpo dayjob you’re looking forward to. And I ain’t takin’ any issue with that. But that don’t mean you can just cut and run at any time.”

  “I know,” I said. “And it won’t happen. I promise you. I owe you guys everything for giving me a chance, and I won’t run from that obligation.”

  “Good,” Maine said, and then he finally grinned. Tension fled out from me in rivers as I saw it. “Catch,” he tossed me a chip and I caught it and slotted it in. He walked into the warehouse and I followed.

  “Kiwi did her research. Turns out the data fort y’all klepped made life a million times easier for us. The name of the game is surgical,” he took me to the back room where Lucy and Kiwi were typing away at their external decks while Pilar was off in some corner soldering some circuit boards. “We made a plan thinking you’d still be out of commission, but with you here now, things can get way easier. In and out, unnoticed. No killing. No breaking. Just entering.”

  Maine plopped himself next to Dorio on the sofa and I sat opposite to them. “So where do I come in?”

  “It’s just you, Kiwi and Lucy. They will hack the security system. You will Sandy your way through, get the payload and come out peachy keen.”

  “Really?” I asked. “And what if things go tits up? Should I cut or should I cut?”

  “You get burned, you might as well kill whoever saw you,” Maine said. “For your own good. We’re not just stealing some eddies here. Money can’t buy the Apogee, you know.”

  I nodded. Using the Sandevistan, I read through the contents of the chip in what appeared to be an instant; the building, its interior and its location as well as the people on guard duty, their rotation and movements. It was comprehensive, though that was probably because of my own efforts—or Nanny’s, if I was completely honest.

  “Got it,” I said.

  Pilar stood up from his workstation with a sigh and spotted me. “D, my man! Check out this dongle!” He raised the USB stick in the air and tossed it to me. I caught it. “The girls’ll load it with some hacks, and you can use that to gain entry into the Tyger fortress.”

  “Gradual entry,” Kiwi said, not taking her eyes off her cyberdeck. “The dongle has a receiver, we’ll be installing keys on the go. That way you get instant access with each use, lets you take advantage of your speed.”

  “Nova,” I said. “This’ll be easy then.”

  “Idiot!” Maine roared as he smacked me on the back of my head hard enough that I saw stars for a moment. Didn’t do any real damage, but it’d turn into an annoying headache in time if I let it, so I just healed from it. “Don’t start gettin’ a big head before a gig or you’ll jinx it!”

  “Sorry,” I muttered. Lucy chuckled, and I glared at her. “What’s so funny?”

  I almost completely forgot about her.

  Tough luck that I couldn’t heal from this headache. Now I was back in with the queen of hot and cold herself, Lunacy.

  “You, you gonk. You look like a kicked puppy,” she sneered. “Oh, by the way, you still haven’t been cut in yet.”

  Her eyes flashed blue and I received a payment request for a hundred and twenty five thousand. Fuck, that was a lot.

  Also reminded me that I still had to pay Reyes back. Fuck. I’d have to do that in-between finishing the gig and going to the yacht party. I might even run late at this rate. Katsuo said eight PM. I probably should have saved Jin’s contacts; that way, I’d be able to inform him if I was running late. Instead I’d have to run that through Plastic Dick.

  Whatever. This would be quick anyway.

  “So who’s in the gig?” I asked Maine.

  “Lucy and Kiwi will follow you, help breach the building. Falco will drive.”

  “Pass the dongle,” Kiwi said, raising a hand. I tossed it towards her gently and she grabbed it, plugged it into her deck, and started a transfer. Then she stood up. “Alright, let’s go. Double time it.”

  000

  The location was a large courtyard building that doubled as a martial arts training center, a meeting place for Tyger Claw bigwigs, and a ripperdoc clinic for only their best rank and file. Officially it was called the Deravaja Dojo and it was open to the public, though the data said it wasn’t a good idea to go in unless you had a good lay of the place’s culture or enough Tyger friends to either cover for you in case of a faux pas—those were quite often deadly in this place.

  Falco parked us a block away and I was psyching myself up for the mission, cooling down like Falco had advised me to all that time ago.

  “Alright,” Kiwi said. “Go time.”

  I activated the Sandevistan, exited the car and made my way into the facility. A prior Ping had already informed me about the reachable access points, one of which was in a corner of the facility without cameras or people; a deadspot right where the dojo connected to a larger building right behind it.

  With my sword and nothing else—a stealth OP wouldn’t be that stealthy if I let my gun fire—I made my way to the access point and plugged in the dongle, resuming time.

  Kiwi called.

  Kiwi: ETA fifteen seconds. No one’s on you yet.

  I waited fifteen seconds, and Kiwi gave me the confirmation to pull out and make my way to the first restricted area: the dojo’s backrooms, where the bigwigs had their meetings. Kiwi had already looped the cameras from when I had plugged in the dongle, so all I had to worry about was people spotting me.

  I sent out a Ping, getting an overview of who was around me, activated the Sandevistan and zoomed past Tyger Claws, both the office variants and the heavily tattooed and chromed out rank and file, making sure to stay in their peripheral view if I could help it.

  Reaching the second access point, I plugged the dongle in again and waited patiently while Kiwi informed me of the wait time.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  My Ping told me someone was coming. I zoomed out of the way, stopping around a deadspot without any guards or Claws. The camera I was in front of was looped, though, giving me enough time to stay put and wait.

  Then a door opened and out strolled a little kid. Utterly invisible to my Ping.

  She had a pair of pigtails and was dressed in a little dungaree dress. And she looked up at me with wide eyes. I looked at her as well. She looked at my sword. Then she said, in Japanese, “I want that!”

  I chuckled uneasily and replied. “I’m sorry, but it’s dangerous. I can’t give it to you.”

  “I want it!” she shouted. Fuck!

  Kiwi: What’re you doing, D? Upload’s done, we have access.

  D: Gimme a sec.

  “How about a magic trick instead?” I asked. And she smiled now.

  “Magic! Magic! Show me magic!”

  Bodies were starting to move in on us, hearing the noise.

  “Okay, blink and I will disappear,” I said

  She blinked emphatically, I activated the Sandevistan and ran up to the access port where I took out the key and ran up to another door. I slowed down my Sandevistan to open it, slipped in and went straight ahead to the final access port.

  Fuck, that was close.

  D: Some kid caught me. She didn’t have any chrome, so my Ping came up empty. Can you tap into the airwaves, see if that raised any alarms?

  Kiwi: Kid walks around in a Tyger Claw stronghold, chances are they’re related to a bigwig. If we stay cold the rest of the gig, nothing will come of it. But that’s only if we stay cold. You better make sure the Ripper doesn’t catch you. He’s in there right now, watching a braindance. No traps as far as the scans can tell, but those could be air gapped. Use your eyes, D. And go.

  I took out the dongle, rushed up to a new door and opened it.

  Kiwi tapped me into the camera feed that showed the ripperdoc spacing out in his clinic, deep inside a BD.

  Now all I had to do was find the Sandy. I cranked up mine to the maximum and immediately got to work turning the entire clinic upside down, inside out, spending subjective minutes on the task all the while making sure that the ripper was still snoozing.

  By the end of it, I isolated its possible location to three different safes, all of them old school analog shit.

  I let out a snort. This motherfucker was smart. I snapped some stills of the safes with my eyes and sent them to Pilar along with a message. ‘You think the Masamune could do these in?’

  Pilar responded quickly. ‘If those are what I think they are, then yeah. Only problem is they’re made to squeal when you try to break in like that. Even with super speed. Fuck, you guys should have brought me on this. I could crack it easy. Thing was obviously built to counter netrunners without any techie skills.’

  I gave him a call.

  D: You think I could break in?

  Pilar: Press your ear against the wall and I’ll help ya out, but you gotta be fast on this shit, okay? The moment I say turn or stop, you turn or stop, got it?

  D: Got it.

  Pilar gave me painstaking instructions and I followed each and every one until the safe finally clicked.

  It came up with some chrome, but not a Sandevistan.

  D: Wrong safe. Gotta try again.

  Pilar: Fuck!

  I glanced nervously at the braindancing ripperdoc and got started immediately on the second safe.

  Halfway through my attempt on the second safe, it made an unexpected snapping sound.

  Pilar: Ah, fuck. Start again. We were too fucking slow.

  D: Shit.

  Second attempt, same story.

  Pilar: Motherfucker!

  D: Shit.

  Kiwi sent me a message. A Tyger Claw was coming in injured. The Ripper would be called upon.

  D: Again! Fast!

  I blazed through the third attempt, getting further than before, but in the end, Pilar couldn’t keep up before the safe snapped and reset once again.

  Fuck.

  D: Again!

  Another message from Kiwi. The injured was pulling up fast.

  I activated the Sandevistan and carried the safe out from the clinic, just in time too as the ripper was starting to rouse awake.

  In a deadspot, I began on my fourth and hopefully my last attempt.

  Snap. Another fuckup.

  I was starting to realize I had been very lucky to have gotten it right to begin with. I lifted the Safe and carried it to another deadspot in the facility as I heard shouts of urgency; the Tyger Claws were carting their injured here already. Only a corridor away, I began on the fifth attempt.

  Pilar: Two clicks right, three left, two right. Stop. Two right. Two left. Three right. Stop. Two right. Three left. Two right. Four left. Five right. Stop. Three L. Two R. Three L. Four R.

  The safe clicked open satisfyingly and I held my breath as I gazed inside. In a see through plastic bag was a metallic spine. I let out a sigh of relief. I stood up and pushed myself in Sandevistan mode to my maximum, carrying the heavy safe into the room where the Ripper was thankfully working hard to save a gangster’s life while his friends were watching. I put the safe back in the cabinet I found it in, and remembered to close the other safe as well, having forgotten that I had left it open. With the piece of unknown chrome as well as the Apogee, I ran out.

  Each time I was met with a door, I spent only the fraction of a second standing still necessary for the door to open enough that I could pass through. I was fully out of the Deravaja Dojo and its surrounding building around two and a half real-life seconds after I had gotten the Sandevistan. I popped back into Falco’s car, and he didn’t waste any time driving away, gently of course.

  Then once we had fully left the Tyger Claw building’s sightlines, we took off.

  Falco looked over his shoulder. “We happy, kid?”

  I grinned. “Very happy,” I said. Lucy, who was right next to me, looked at the two bags of cyberware with narrowed eyes.

  “What’s that other thing?” she asked.

  “No idea,” I admitted. “Had to play loot boxes to get the Sandy. Got this weird old thing instead. Figured I’d bring it with me anyway.”

  Maine called.

  Maine: Heard the good news! Got in and out no problem! No alarms or anything either!

  D: Got a couple of close calls near the end, hahah! Heart’s still pounding like crazy! Fucking nova!

  Maine: All’s well that ends well, kid.

  D: Also, hope you wouldn’t mind cutting Pilar in. Without him, I wouldn’t have been able to do shit. Pay him what you would have paid me.

  Maine: Kid, this ain’t the yakuza. You sure you don’t wanna be paid?

  D: Nah. I was being a gonk. I deserve this.

  Maine: Fuck, kid. Ain’t every day somebody that came up your way turns down a cool one hundred K for less than an hour’s work.

  Oh.

  Okay.

  No. No turning back now. This was a principle thing. It didn’t matter how high the pay was. Besides:

  D: Now that you’ve got your own Sandy, we’ll be swimming in edds.

  Maine: Ain’t that the truth! Swing by Turbo’s and we’ll do a quick afterjob celebration, aight?! And I ain’t hearing any excuses, you will be there or I’m hunting your scrawny ass down!

  Maine hung up and I sighed. Oh well.

  Pilar gave me a call.

  Pilar: You magnificent motherfucking maniac, D! One hundred K?! Listen, I’m busy cumming buckets right now thinking about all them Lizzies’ hookers I’m gonna rent out, talk to you at the party!

  I grinned uneasily at that. What have I done?

  I took off my mask so my face could breathe, then I looked down at the Apogee Sandevistan, and then at Lucy. I schooled my expression as I popped out a shard from my neck and handed it over to her.

  “What’s that?”

  “Proof,” I said simply. “Maine’s chipping in again, and I’ll need more people on my side to convince him to take it slow.”

  Lucy slotted it in while Kiwi looked over her shoulder. “Maine told me you said something about mixing chrome being bad for you,” she said. “That’s supposed to be proof?”

  “Yep,” I said. “It’s textfiles highlighting the mathematical inefficiencies, how they can be resolved, and why I’m convinced it’s supposed to work like that and not just some shitty human error.” Falcon made a confused grunt and I explained the basic concept to him. At the end, he just whistled.

  “Wouldn’t put any o’ that past the megacorps,” he said. “Seems a little obvious in retrospect; corpshooters are chromed up to the gills, so is MaxTac, but they don’t lose their marbles that easy. Must be good brand loyalty.”

  “Good programmers, too,” I said.

  Lucy ejected the shard and handed it over to Kiwi. “Saved a copy,” she said. “I’ll figure it out at some point.”

  I was confused as to why she couldn’t just do that right now, but the textfile had thousands of lines of code—thousands that were highlighted at least—and she couldn’t process through all of that in just a couple of seconds.

  “In any case,” Kiwi said. “Maine’s not gonna rush to chip the Sandy in once I tell Dorio to have him hold off.”

  My eyes widened. “Wait, you mean you’re taking this seriously?”

  “Don’t pop a boner on that account, kid,” Kiwi said. “I’m pragmatic, not gullible.”

  “Not that it be any of my business,” Falco said. “But tiptoeing around Maine ain’t good form.”

  “I told him to his face already,” I said. “He didn’t believe me. Would be more credible if it came from the Netrunners in his crew and not just me.”

  “Ain’t you a netrunner?” Falco asked, and I felt my face heat up.

  “I mean—”

  “Are you blushing?!” Lucy asked. “Falco, you got this kid flustered!”

  My good mood evaporated. “Shut up, Lunacy.”

  “Or what? You’ll quickhack me, netrunner?”

  “Bitch, who exactly was it that saved your entire life in the net?” I asked. “If I’m not a netrunner, what does that make you? A scriptkiddie?”

  “Don’t call me a bitch, you dumb corpo cunt!”

  “Then stop acting like a bitch, Lunacy.”

  Falco was howling with laughter while I went at it with her. There was something infinitely satisfying with seeing Lucy’s mocking smirk gone, and instead replaced with indignation and anger.

  000

  Three beers later and one extremely awkward conversation with Rebecca about how I used my Sandy while fucking, and I was pretty much ready to blow this popsicle stand. I let Maine know I was gonna delta and made my way to my bike, only to find Lucy leaning against it with her arms folded.

  “Gimme a ride home,” she said.

  “Magic words first,” I said.

  She rolled her eyes. “Please gimme a ride home.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I thought you said the bike was a death trap.”

  “Quit fucking around—”

  “I’ll give you a ride,” I acquiesced as I pushed past her to sit on the bike. “Hold on tight.”

  Lucy hugged my waist gingerly, her grip far too soft.

  So I began the bike with a quick acceleration that jerked her grip off me so hard that she had to grab onto her seat to not fly out from the bike. I slowed down, giving her enough time to make her wrap her arms around my waist with a death grip.

  Then I sped up even more. Her fingers clawed for a hold on my shirt and her arms were squeezing my sides tightly, but I could tell she was fighting tooth and nail to hold on. I couldn’t help but laugh as I dodged through traffic, jerking the bike erratically and taking sharp turns that would have thrown Lucy off if I hadn’t been holding her hands tightly.

  Before she knew it, I started to slow down as we were pulling up to her apartment building.

  Lucy hopped off before I even came to a stop and started growling at me. I laughed. “Couldn’t keep up?”

  “You fucking gonk!”

  “C’mooon,” I said. “You were talking all that good shit a few days ago. What the fuck happened?”

  She laughed in incredulity. “Maybe if I was blackout drunk I’d enjoy it!”

  “Sounds like a skill issue,” I said.

  “David, you’re retarded.”

  “And you’re too slow!” I cackled as I pulled a wheelie on my bike and spun around the street.

  Lucy’s face began to twitch, her lips quirking up and down. Then her eyes flashed blue as something crashed into my ICE.

  I slowed my bike down just in time for the short circuit to hit my spine and drive the wind out of my lungs. I tried to heal by using the Sandevistan, but found that it was offline for the moment. Wow. I definitely had to fix that vulnerability. Healing was my biggest trump card.

  Twitchingly, I glared at Lucy, and she just smiled back with self-satisfaction. The Sandevistan went back online and I activated it to heal my jittery nerves. Then I just grinned. “Nice one. Won’t always work, though.”

  “Wanna do an arms race?” she challenged.

  “I don’t race slow people,” I said, and her smile fell. I shrugged forlornly. “Nobody can keep up with little ol’ me. I’m just too fast.”

  “Fast in bed, too, probably,” she said.

  “Is that a fact?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at her. “Why don’t you find out for yourself?”

  “Fuck off,” she said. “Gonks who talk big can never deliver.”

  “Not this gonk.”

  “Uwu I have sex really good, I swear!” she mocked.

  “You’re the one who brought it up! You know what? Fuck this. Fuck you. You’re home. Go home now.”

  I turned my bike around and prepared to go, only for Lucy to stop me with a “Hey!”

  I turned my head to her. “What?”

  “I’d probably find it more preem riding that death machine if I was drunk,” she said, her arms folded and her expression neutral. “How about Friday?”

  My eyes widened at that, but I schooled my expression quickly. “On you this time?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Sure. Would only be fair seeing as you’d never be able to beat me in a bet.”

  “Fuck off,” I muttered. “Fine. See ya around. And do read that chip. I can’t explain anything to you via call, so you got any questions, save it for a face-to-face meeting.”

  I expected her to scoff at that, but instead she just nodded, her expression still serious. It made me happy to see how seriously she took this.

  I peeled away from her street and considered my options. First, Reyes.

  After hitting up a bank, I swung by him masked up and delivered to him his cash as promised. We exchanged pleasantries and parted on good terms. From there, I went home to get changed into a non-merc outfit and hit up Jinguji for some new threads.

  Yamanaka kept faithful to the yellow and white theme after I told him that the neomil suit was okay, but only okay. He seemed to take that as an affront as well as an opportunity to upsell me on more neokitsch, this time a bright yellow suit with white cuffs, a white belt with golden buckles, a white shirt underneath with a neon blue tie that had a dancing circuitry pattern on it.

  The shoes were also yellow, and as for glasses, this time they were white-lensed and horn-rimmed, a little nerdy looking, but I didn’t fully mind it.

  All that done, I made my way to a luxurious part of the docks where a huge yacht was moored, just in time for the sun to set over the pacific, leaving behind my solo life and stepping into another every bit as treacherous and high-stakes.

  I took a deep breath, remembered Falco’s words about keeping cool, and remembered my training before exhaling slowly. Classes, know-how, street smarts and confidence. I had it all. What mattered was wielding my weapons with skill. I got lucky in the last party. Things worked out for me without much trying. It wouldn’t always be like that however.

  Things would work out this time, too. Not because of luck. Because of skill.

  I could do this.