The moment I was clear of the Med Center, on my way to Kabuki to get to Japantown, I called Reyes.

  D: Sorry, Capitan, I was kind of busy. What’s up?

  El Capitan: You free to talk now?

  D: Yes, I am. Anything I can do for you?

  El Capitan: You tell me, kid. You ain’t ring me for a gig for a while. You laying low?

  I furrowed my eyebrows at that. What was he getting at?

  D: Not really. Just got caught up with my crew and—

  El Capitan: I’m messing with ya, man. I remember you used to hound me for giggies, but now you’re good and quiet. Got all the cash you needed, I’m guessing.

  D: About that—I kinda need more, actually. You got any good gigs for me?

  El Capitan: I’ve got a couple. First one’s a test for the second one. If you get an A on the first, I’ll let you give the second a go.

  D: Still measuring my baselines, huh? Well, data’s data. What’s the pay?

  El Capitan: First gig’s infiltration. I want you to plant a virus into a safe house that Maelstrom put up in Rancho Coronado. With their security down, I’ll send a team to get rid of those bastardos for good.

  D: How many?

  El Capitan: Strom-fuckers? It’s a good number. Thirty to forty as far as my Netrunners tell me. So don’t get caught.

  Reminded me somewhat of Tijuana—sneaking past security, hacking, and trying to get out without anyone catching me. Not that I succeeded on that count, but we still managed to get out.

  As I considered the gig, I also thought back to my time with Jin, specifically his whining about wanting fresh XBDs since JK still hadn’t dropped any as of yet.

  I could pick up the slack on that end.

  Infiltration wasn’t… cinematic enough though.

  Thirty to forty… yeah. That’ll do.

  And they were Maelstrom anyway. Nearly cyberpsychotic as it was—and they were parked in my home district.

  D: You mind if I just kill them all for you?

  El Capitan: Don’t bite off more than you can chew, kid. Bring your crew if you wanna do that.

  D: Alright, what’s the pay?

  El Capitan: Twenty, for implanting the virus. Twenty-five if no one spots you.

  I sped up my bike.

  D: I’ll take it.

  000

  I needed borg killers for this. That meant my trusty Burya, and of course, the Achilles.

  Between those two and Eikō, I should be good to go. Thankfully, when I arrived at Lucy’s apartment, she wasn’t home. Made it easier for me to just dress up in merc mode and get back on my bike to ride away without having to explain anything.

  Still, reminded me that I still had to get a new place of my own. Couldn’t keep crashing at Lucy’s apartment.

  I drove to Rancho Coronado, blowing past the speed limit, cranking up my bike to its fastest setting, weaving through the traffic that, to my perception, stood almost entirely still.

  The time it took me to get from J-Town to Rancho must have been three minutes tops. I slotted in my BD shard, the one I’d use to record all of this, and came to a drifting stop before a dilapidated apartment block where a bunch of Maelstrom people were loitering, and hopped off.

  Standard protocol for XBD scrolling applied here—I had to keep my Sandy uses and regeneration to a minimum.

  I raised my Burya with my left hand and immediately fired at low charge, blowing through the skull of a Maelstrom member that had an open chest cavity revealing black and red chrome like a network of pipes. His two friends immediately became alerted and tried to raise their own guns.

  I skipped forward, drawing my sword with my right hand and slicing the head off the nearest Strom member before holstering my Burya and dragging his bulky corpse in front of me to block the shotgun pellets fired from the last surviving asshole outside. I held the beheaded Strom up by his jacket like a shield and approached the final guy. In-between shots, my sword arm darted towards him, cutting a shallow groove through his skull, hitting brain.

  It was enough to stun him. I watched for a moment to see if his movements would become erratic, signaling incoming brain death, but he shook himself out from the lack of control to reload the gun.

  I threw the Strom at him. While he stumbled backwards, I planted Eikō into his skull and pulled it out. Being a katana, she wasn’t really built for stabs, but the tip was sharp enough to do so if you put enough force behind it.

  With all the guys outside dead, I sent a Ping into the building to see a bunch of scurrying bodies, having reacted to the gunshot outside.

  I sensed quite a few turrets within as well. They were coming online in response to one Netrunner’s mental commands.

  Well, I already had El Capitan’s virus on hand, seemingly specifically tailored to this security system.

  I made to Breach the system.

  The Netrunner immediately resisted the breach, sending a quickhack that crashed ineffectually at my ICE. I already unslung the Achilles from my back and took aim. There were about three walls between us.

  Depending on their make, the rifle should be just powerful enough to—

  Still standing in the sidewalk in front of the building, I fired my gun. The bullet blasted through one load-bearing wall and cheap drywall before hitting the guy’s head. Immediately, my Ping of him fizzled out as my cyberware determined that he was dead.

  The Breach continued uncontested. I stood around for like, ten seconds. One Maelstrom member was going down the stairs to charge through the front door. I raised my Burya and shot him through the door.

  Did none of these idiots have decent optics? Wall-banging shouldn’t be that exotic. Anyone with a good pair of Kiroshis could at least give a general scan of the area, and of a single belligerent like me.

  Finally, the Breach went through and I put in the virus. I could also have just commandeered the turrets and shot them all, but… that’d be too easy.

  And not enough of a show.

  I proceeded in through the unlocked front door as a stream of Maelstrom members descended the stairs. They came in all shapes, and each looked like they had gone out of their way to chip in the most horrifying chrome you could think of. None of it was standard consumer market stuff though, that was for certain. One guy with big black pipes replacing the lower half of his face, making him look like some kind of octopus head, raised his shotgun to try and shoot me. I stepped in to his guard quickly and sliced the gun in half.

  Good fucking job, Pilar. That felt like slicing through meat.

  I adjusted my sword and took his head next, then held him up as a shield before charging into the crush of bodies in the narrow hallway.

  One slice. Two slices.

  Each time, my katana met either chrome or meat, and it cut cleanly either way. I let go of my meat-shield and did a quick count of the people in the hallway—there were ten now, with people steadily coming down from the stairs.

  My meat-shield was starting to break.

  I sighed. Guess this was inevitable, given I was fighting people in an entrenched position.

  I activated the Sandevistan and started cutting.

  One down, two, three.

  Seven, eight, nine.

  I deactivated the Sandevistan. The last man standing only had a Lexington that he was shakily aiming at me.

  I got out of the way of his line of fire as I saw him claw at the trigger. My instinct awarded me as the bullet whizzed past me without hitting me.

  Then I adjusted my position again—at the very last moment of course. If I dodged too early, he’d only readjust.

  Hey, this was… fun.

  I took a step back to make things even harder for me, letting him empty his mag, all the while as I danced away from his shots before finally, the gun clicked.

  I sliced his head off.

  I did a mental count.

  So that was sixteen.

  I counted the Strom guys in my scans.

  Twenty-three left.

  So, there were thirty-nine in total.

  I began ascending the stairs. My Ping was telling me that the bulk of them were congregating in one room, guns raised as they were ready to rain holy hellfire on me were I to approach them. All the while, a group of no less than five big hitters, packed to the literal fucking teeth with chrome, were playing vanguard, ready to rip me apart.

  I unslung the Achilles once more and started charging as I went up the stairs. Borgs weren’t something to play with. Especially if they had speedware. Might as well zero them while we were apart.

  My first shot ripped through solid concrete and—

  Plinked off the skull of one Borg. Fuck. Lost too much power there.

  I took a second to ask myself—was this worth putting on a show?

  Well, I’d come this fucking far already. Might as well—

  I heard the skidding of a heavy vehicle coming to a stop near the building outside. I sent out a Ping.

  Maelstrom.

  Reinforcements.

  Nice.

  After reloading and charging my Burya to full, I activated the Sandy again—this many uses shouldn’t be totally atypical—and ascended the stairs, walking into the hallway with the Strom, coming to a stop before the first borg. Motherfucker had two pairs of Gorilla arms and a torso as big as Maine’s.

  I sliced his head in half vertically and moved on faster than he could fall, taking out another borg with a clean horizontal swing through his neck. I then positioned myself to angle my Burya shot through two of the borgs.

  I fired the bullet. While it whizzed through the air, too fast even in my Sandy mode, I did a wide diagonal slice through the last borg’s body, bisecting him from shoulder to waist. I deactivated the Sandy and whistled in appreciation as the two borgs I had shot with the Burya fell.

  Everyone hit the floor at the exact same time.

  That was good.

  I activated all the turrets in the building.

  It wasn’t as though I was nervous about the eighteen gangoons left inside that tiny room, or the eight more streaming out from the truck to enter their busted safe house. It was just that—things were bound to get too boring if I continued using the Sandy and the sword. My killing needed a bit of diversity.

  I connected my optics to all the cameras and awoke the turrets—the once in the hallway downstairs and the ones in the room with the Maelstrom waiting to do their last stand.

  I watched them mow those motherfuckers down in mere seconds, turning them into a mist of blood that blended together, almost obscuring the cameras. That would likely be the blood on the lenses.

  A few of the gangsters had enough subdermal that they didn’t immediately die, but were instead crushed by the pressure of the machine gun bullets. Took me a bit longer to take care of them, but there was really no being bulletproof to hundreds of fifty caliber bullets raining down at you for several seconds at a time.

  I deactivated the machine guns when the last gangster finally died, and stood there.

  I faced one of the security cameras that I was connected to and saw myself. I raised a thumb and said, “Mission complete.”

  Fuck, that was corny.

  I ended the virtu there. If it was good enough for me, it should be good enough for Jin.

  Then I started leafing through the system, looking for any goodies like—cash. Perfect. Some offshore bank account details were stored in this system—money allocated specifically for this cell, apparently a venture to push for more territory within Santo Domingo. El Capitan was right to have mounted this campaign against them. They were the worst of the worst, and if they managed to get a foothold here, they would make this already fucking shitty district even fucking worse.

  This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

  I took solace in that fact—that I had done a good deed for my home.

  I accessed the accounts and nodded in appreciation. Not bad. Two-hundred and fifty. A pretty enny.

  All mine now, of course.

  Now, to send it all through a few chained ghost accounts, scrubbed clean by an AI-driven mixer. By the time the edds hit the GSS account I had set up down in Tijuana, they'd have gone through more digital back alleys than a fixer on the run—untraceable, untouchable, and all mine.

  I rung Reyes.

  D: Job’s done.

  El Capitan: You got the virus in?

  D: Yeah. Then I took care of the Strom. Forty-seven dead all told.

  El Capitan: Jesus Christ, kid—are you serious?

  I took some stills of the carnage and sent it to him.

  El Capitan: Madre dios.

  I raised an eyebrow.

  D: I took care of the problem, Capitan. Why are you angry?

  El Capitan: I’m not fucking angry-angry. Just didn’t expect this—fucking fast, kid! You took your crew for this? You know I set up a whole thing with other mercs too, right? Gave ‘em a ton of data, we had a whole battle plan, and now that’s out the window.

  D: And all it cost you was twenty-five. Listen, you promised that pay, and that’s all I’m willing to take. Should make us even, no? And I had my own reasons for doing this anyway.

  El Capitan: tell you the truth, I don’t like cancelling out on people out of nowhere. Doesn’t signal reliability.

  D: You were never going to give me a gig fitting my skill if I didn’t show you exactly what I was capable anyway, on my own.

  El Capitan: So, you splitting off from your crew now? You could do it, you know. Or, you could even work for me if you wanted.

  D: I’m strictly freelance. Sorry. And, no. Not splitting from the crew—they’re my chooms and always will be. But sometimes, I want to take out a solo gig, just from time to time.

  El Capitan: Alright—do what you want. I’ll give you big gigs if you ask. You sure you don’t want more scratch for this?

  D: fucked with your rep just now, didn’t I? Far as I’m concerned, twenty-five’s generous as long as we can still work together.

  El Capitan: Ain’t that big a deal anyway. Cancellations happen. But if that’s what you want, that’s fine. I like to work with a man with honor.

  I had been paid for this gig already, so I couldn’t really call myself honorable per se. But I liked that I had that rep to begin with.

  D: So what was that second gig you had in mind anyway?

  000

  Hacking.

  Just hacking.

  I drove my bike outside a nightclub in Rancho and used the Sandy to run past security, up the stairs, into a back office, and locked myself inside. Then I connected a link cable to my socket on my neck and then to a terminal before uploading a virus.

  After a few seconds, I took the Sandy back downstairs, back to the streets, hopped on my bike, and rode off.

  Then I called Reyes.

  D: Done.

  El Capitan: That’s a fucking lie. I don’t fucking believe it. It hasn’t been five minutes since we last spoke.

  D: Bike is fast, remember? You’re the one who sold it to me. And I’m fast, too.

  El Capitan: you’re giving me a fucking headache, kid. This is—this is weird.

  I laughed.

  D: Well ask your Runner if it’s done or not.

  El Capitan: I believe you—I’m just taking a moment-moment. Shit, alright, here you go.

  Forty thousand eddies hit my account.

  Then another ten.

  D: Bonus?

  El Capitan: Express service deserves a tip, no? You did good today.

  D: Alright, thanks.

  El Capitan: Still in the mood for gigs?

  D: Got some other stuff to do for now.

  El Capitan: Alright then, call me when you need-need anything.

  D: Sure. Also, Capitan, uhhh

  El Capitan: spit it out, kid

  D: I come from Santo too, so, if you got anything you need done, like killing Maelstrom fuckers, making sure those bitches don’t come and ruin shit even more, or maybe some other stuff to help people, call me, even if it ain’t worth my while money-wise.

  El Capitan: you a community man, huh? I can respect it.

  D: I’m making more money than I ever thought was possible. Might as well do some gigs for cheap. Call it a Santo discount.

  El Capitan: well, if you’re serious about that, call me, okay? You know how many people I get begging me to save their loved ones from kidnappers and they don’t even got two ennies to scrape together? Nobody in this town wants to work for cheap. If you wanna do—you wanna give that a go, then you’re gonna turn into some kind of a goddamn hero-hero in no time.

  I shrugged.

  D: aight, then. Not doing it for that, but, shit, I’ll take it. Keep me posted.

  I took a turn and headed up north back to J-Town, on my way to Kabuki in Watson. This time, I took my time driving. Not quite under the speed limit of course, but slow enough that the journey would likely take me ten to twenty minutes. Maybe longer depending on traffic. Didn’t matter anyway. Mostly, I just found myself taking the longest ways I could find, extending the journey until I was able to focus on the shadow in the room of my headspace. The one thing I’d been avoiding thinking of.

  So…

  Fei-Fei.

  Still didn’t know what to think.

  I was happy she was okay. My mixed feelings came down more to the goddamn Trauma Team more than anything else. Learning, knowing that these corpo sons of bitches might as well be a different goddamn species from us normies. Death barely even existed for them. It wasn’t fair. For me, for her. For anyone.

  What I had learned today was… relieving in a way. Terrifying in another. This would likely change her. Probably not for the better. But that was necessary—goodness couldn’t survive for very long in Night City.

  There was something else, though.

  The elephant in the room, as the saying went.

  I was dating Lucy, now.

  But I still liked Fei-Fei. A lot. Even despite it all.

  Was that wrong of me? Probably. Would a better man have already broken it off with her? Probably.

  I should probably even tell her that.

  …The part about liking her, at least.

  But I wondered what that would do to our relationship, which had been more physical than emotional up to now. She’d warned me about catching feelings. Not to do it. Not to let it happen. But now, here I was. Feelings caught. Like a plague. I had an inkling it was mutual, even.

  Before, we’d been forced to stay hidden, discreet. But with Katsuo out of the picture now, what did that mean for us?

  …and with what Katsuo had done to her and her family under my influence, what did that mean for us?

  I couldn’t tell her, obviously. I wasn’t that much of an idiot. What was the right thing to do, though? Cutting ties? I… didn’t want to do that, either.

  It didn’t help that my own increasing fascination with her family’s company made me want to not do that either, for an entirely different set of reasons.

  …If we really could stay friends without the sex, that’d be well and good, really. Clean, uncontroversial.

  But did I want that? Did I want to just be… friends? I didn’t know.

  God, I’m such a piece of shit.

  I should have this conversation with Lucy.

  I didn’t want to, though. Didn’t want to essentially reveal to her how much of a scumbag I really was. That I was considering two-timing her—or was it the other way around, but with Fei Fei… ?—for the sake of upwards mobility? Because I couldn’t decide on who—that was rotten.

  I was rotten.

  But then, what the fuck else was new.

  Forty-seven dead today, all told.

  Two-hundred and eighty-eight now.

  But I didn’t regret the last forty-seven. Sure, my reasons for killing were purely mercenary, but I had done good by doing so. Gotten rid of a burgeoning Maelstrom infestation. And soon enough, I’d be doing gigs with El Capitan on the cheap, just helping out. Just… reminding myself of the options that I had in life—that it was possible to prosper without destroying everything around me…

  —Deluding myself into believing that I wasn’t doing the same thing the corpos did. Climbing to the top, when the top was nothing but a never-ending mountain of corpses—

  …Reminding myself that I had to be connected to a higher purpose in life, something that would motivate me to do good once I was up there in the corpo hierarchy.

  To never forget my roots.

  But that was then, and this was now.

  I didn’t know what to do. Who should I even talk to?

  Talk to Lucy, tell her about Fei Fei and the details of my corporate life that she had steadfastly refused to learn about up to now? Fuck.

  Talk to Fei Fei, tell her about my edgerunner life, and about all the worst parts of myself I couldn’t even talk about with Lucy? Fuck.

  …

  I owed Fei Fei. I had to help her as well. Pay her back for all I had taken from her. Allow her to live the life she wanted to live.

  I owed her for the Sandy that mom had klepped.

  Owed her for the kindness and acceptance she had shown me.

  And owed her for the harm I had put her through.

  But what did that mean for me, for Lucy and her and—fuck.

  Out of desperation, out of need to ask someone, I had to ask.

  D: What do you think, Nanny?

  I had no idea why I was asking her specifically, but she seemed to have developed something of a personality as of late. Might as well test it, see how much counsel she could provide me.

  [You don’t want to know what I think.]

  I frowned. Turned a corner, wind in my hair as I sped through another street. Frowned harder.

  D: Spit it out.

  [I don’t think you owe Jing Fei for the Sandevistan. Your mother took it. Not you. And you used it to make your life better. And even then, chances are that it was already stolen before then, by that NUSA-soldier. More than likely, it was Militech that put her in that situation, not you. I also don’t think you owe her for the ‘kindness and acceptance’, either. She used you to feel better about her own situation. It was purely transactional. She had said as much when you first met her.]

  D: I don’t think she really meant it. Maybe then, yeah, but probably not now.

  [But that is the reality. And you are not in debt to her for that. You gave as good as you got. And as for the harm you put her through… you don’t want to hear this.]

  I clenched my jaw. I already knew what she was gonna say.

  D: Shit happens, huh?

  I felt rage bubbling up in my stomach. Fuck that noise.

  [Katsuo gave you no choice. And Katsuo’s own situation was not something we could have predicted. It was far too extreme, this wetware issue.]

  I almost crashed into a car then, but quickly activated my Sandevistan to do a last-minute adjustment. The car abruptly slammed the breaks and got rear-ended by another car—though the collision wasn’t too bad. Shit.

  D: well, you were right. I didn’t want to know what you were thinking.

  Even though I had asked. I should have believed her.

  [But by all means, you should continue trying to cultivate a relationship with Fei-Fei. She is our key to the top. Far more so than Lucy, a girl with no higher connections or education or ambitions.]

  I almost growled in anger.

  D: I don’t like any of that. I don’t like you talking about either of them like… Nanny, they’re people, not tools.

  [That’s too bad, and all too sad. But you did ask for my opinion.]

  The worst part was, no matter how angry I tried to get at Nanny, I almost literally couldn’t do it. She was half of what made me me, and she had my best interest at heart. It was difficult to argue against that.

  D: does… does helping people mean anything to you, Nanny?

  [I… don’t really know. On a fundamental level, I find creation and innovation to be far more interesting and stimulating than destruction. That should, in theory, be the root to altruism, but… given the context in which you exist, I cannot ignore the importance and utility of destructive action. Selfish action.]

  …I could relate to that, in some way.

  [I know that the pain that this world has caused you is unforgivable, and that by and large, we are not aligned with the core interests of the corporations. I doubt that our desire to change or destroy aspects of this world will ever reduce as a result.]

  I snorted.

  D: That’s good enough for me, then.

  The worst case scenario would be getting swallowed up by the city and turning into another corpo-rat. Might as well just kill myself right now if that would be how my story turned out. But I couldn’t achieve anything in the bigger sense if I stayed a gutter rat, an edgerunner, even. To get to the top I had to be—both. But different at the same time. Not fall for the same traps.

  [Then I suppose this negative identity—to be different from the corpos—is one of our core values.]

  D: It’s vague, but… might be the right step, yeah. Should I talk to Lucy?

  [And if she tells you to cut ties with Jing Fei? Lucy’s least favorite aspect of you is your corporate side, you know.]

  I tried to visualize that conversation. How I’d react to it. How she’d react to it. Couldn’t.

  Well, I could.

  She’d feel like SCOP probably. And it might kill what little we had managed to develop thus far. Couldn’t spring this convo three days after we had just gotten together.

  I loved her.

  I guess I was fucking crazy in the head for that, considering all the grief Lunacy had given me over the weeks I had known her, but then again, what else was new?

  D: Can’t risk scaring her off, Nanny. We’re supposed to be in this together. Can’t do this without her—or the crew. But… can’t do this without Fei-Fei, either.

  [Togetherness. Family. You were serious that night, when you said you wanted to achieve great things with Maine’s crew. It was not just the alcohol talking.]

  I felt embarrassed at the sudden reminder. God, that was corny, too. But…

  D: Yeah. It was true.

  And in the end, Maine’s crew was essentially family at this point. They knew both sides of my life, and had done everything to help me get a start.

  Fei-Fei knew… nothing about me. She didn’t know the first thing about me. But… she was different. Despite her lack of knowledge, she still somehow understood me, on some level. And she deserved better. Better than me, certainly, but also just better in general.

  I’d do my best to give her that as well. Her and I were still chooms after all. She understood me, even if she didn’t know much about me.

  Fuck. I shook my head.

  No. No conversation. Not yet—maybe not ever. Shelve that to another day entirely.

  D: Alright, thanks for the chat, Nanny. Appreciate the brutal honesty. Anything new on the Blackwall?

  [Not yet. I’m still decrypting this latest message, but I’m almost certain now that we are communicating with a rational being.]

  I grimaced.

  D: I don’t… like this.

  [I didn’t like it when you went inside a den of gangsters entirely on your own with two guns and a sword.]

  D: This feels worse.

  [Don’t be such a baby.]

  Fuck off!

  I chuckled.

  Well, we definitely needed to sit down together so I could put my own eyes on this project. The Blackwall, huh?

  The fucking old net.

  Fifty years ago, the place went to shit after Rache Bartmoss released a cybercancer that, within days, corrupted over ninety percent of the data in cyberspace. The amount of data and research that was lost—pure knowledge and innovation—was astronomical. It was the reason why the twenty-first century hadn’t seen appreciable lurches in technology since then. A decades-long dark age had spawned from that event.

  But if Nanny and I found a way to fucking sanitize the data, neutralize the AIs, and recover parts of the Old Net, we…

  We wouldn’t just get rich.

  We’d be powerful.

  D: Well, risk mitigation’s half the game, then.

  [I knew you’d come around. Look at how your adrenal glands are working overtime. You degenerate adrenaline junkie.]

  D: I’ll fucking rip you out of my brain and throw you in a glass of water.

  [No need. Your skull is already full of water.]

  D: you’re obnoxious.

  She materialized in my vision, running besides my bike in her ICON form, arms dangling behind her back—red and high vis white fireman jacket, undercut, and a face eerily like mine. [I could be even more obnoxious, you know.]

  No, fuck that. This couldn’t be a normal occurrence.

  She ‘jumped’ behind me and—fucking hugged around my body and I could feel it. I could feel her arms around my waist. “That is so fucking trippy,” I growled, taking a sharp swing to exit the highway. “You wanna get us killed?”

  [I’m merely demonstrating my point.]

  D: Fine—you’ve honestly been extremely non-obnoxious until now, if this is your true potential.

  [Heheh.] But she did disappear—thank fuck.

  A minute later, and we were finally at Lizzy’s Bar.

  I parked the bike near the entrance and walked up to the entrance. The bouncer with the baseball bat was still there. She stood in front of the entrance, glaring at me, “you here to start something?” She looked down at my… equipment.

  And—okay, it did not occur to me how bloodied up I’d get from that gig. It definitely should have, though. All that meat-shielding was bound to have painted me red.

  “Ah, sorry,” I muttered, “just came back from a gig.”

  “Afterlife’s down in Little China,” she snarled.

  “Right, but I got some biz with Judy. She edits my BDs.”

  Her eyes widened, “wait, you’re that fucking kid.”

  I gave Judy a ring.

  D: Are you at Lizzy’s?

  Judy: Yeah, what’s up? You got another XBD you need tuned?

  D: Yeah, I’m right outside. Freaked out your bouncer a little. My bad about that.

  Judy: Shit, be there in a sec.

  Then she hung up.

  “Don’t mean to ruin the vibe,” I said to the bouncer, “I’ll just drop the virtu off and be on my way.”

  One virtu and one already-tuned XBD, actually.

  The bouncer nodded at me. A minute later, Judy came out, then stopped in her tracks when she saw me.

  “Just came from a job,” I muttered.

  “Uh-huh,” Judy looked me up and down, then at the hand I had outstretched towards her, holding a baggie containing the uncut virtu and my first BD, the, uh, ’Wraith Killer’ one, as Jin had come to dub it. “Two virtus?”

  “No, one’s the first one I gave you,” I said, “it, uh, got more traction than I expected. I want you to make more. The other one’s the virtu of the job I just did.” Then I paused, “well, the job I did right before the job I just did.” Come to think of it, had I tracked blood into that night club? “There’s some info on what I want censored in the shard, too, so I don’t really need to be here.”

  “Right, right,” Judy nodded, taking the baggie and looking it over. There was a fleck of blood on it. “How many copies you want?”

  “How many are normal?” I asked. “I mean, I’m not looking to replace JK or anything, but… my audience seemed to really dig it, so… as many as people wanna buy? A hundred?” How many people really bought XBDs in this city anyway? I only ever sold to the academy kids.

  “Not to piss on your parade or anything,” Judy said, “but this ain’t a booster bar. People don’t come here for Edgerunner XBDs. You might have better luck elsewhere. Maybe even JK himself.”

  No fucking way JK would take my stuff. “He’s probably too busy. You’ll do.”

  She folded her arms and looked at me, “I don’t want to push your XBDs. It brings the wrong sort.”

  Shit. “That’s fair. Sorry. Yeah, print me a hundred maybe. I’ll go to some booster gang bar and see what they say.”

  “Afterlife, kid,” Judy said, “trust me on that. You want eyes on your BDs, you sell ‘em to those guys.”

  I nodded. “Thanks. How much?”

  “Listen,” Judy said, “I’d be crazy to gouge you, so trust that I’m not, but your stuff’s a lot heavier than I’m used to—”

  “Twenty,” I said. “Sounds good?”

  She sighed and nodded. What a good actress. She really looked like she was doing this against her will. But on the off-chance that she actually was, then so fucking what? Job’s a job. Nobody liked to work anyway.

  I sent her the cash, concluded that biz, and was on my way once more.

  On a whim, I decided to hit up Dorio, to see if she was down with boxing. The moment I started ringing, I realized—I should probably clean up before then or something. The blood was kind of starting to stink.

  https://discord.gg/W5BqBBym28