For the low, low price of fifty thousand eurodollars, Muamar ‘El Capitan’ Reyes was now the proud owner of thirty barrels of super-chew. The stuff was like nitrous on steroids, and edgerunners who specialized in getaways and heists paid a premium for that shit.

  Reyes’ Autofixer business would be swimming in eddies soon enough.

  So naturally, he celebrated in the Afterlife, smoking a celebratory cigar, high-end enough to be warranted in this situation, but not the best he had either. That stuff was reserved for the weddings of his children, his daughters’ quinces and the birth of his first grandchild.

  This was just a step below that. Most would have used those high-end cigars in an occasion like this, but Mu was different. Biz was just a means to an end, and that end was the happy lives of his family, and nothing else.

  Cowboy— or C0wb0y to his friends—his Netrunner on retainer, was browsing the Net, his eyes sparkling with blue, while his bodyguard brought three pitchers of beer for the table. The spindly blond Netrunner would probably only finish half of his, leaving it for his bodyguard Saul, but Mu intended to polish his up and then call it a night.

  “Thirty-five dead at the scene,” Cowboy said. Then he froze. “One of them was Kaze Oni. Highly valued Tyger Claw asset. Sandevistan of his own, and over a hundred confirmed kills: enemy gangoons, cops, hell, even other Tygers. Guy was basically a cyberpsycho.”

  Mu recognized that name. Wind Demon. Kaze Oni earned that nickname with his penchant for violence and impeccable skill at dealing death by sword. And they had killed him.

  As far as Mu was aware, no one in Maine’s crew even had a Sandevistan aside from D, and his was a cut above others. It was unlikely that they would have been able to kill Kaze Oni without D.

  And now Mu felt bad for stiffing the kid and his friends. Well, it wasn’t really stiffing, per se. Just tugging on the kid’s overly respectful nature and giving a lowball offer to see if he had the balls to negotiate for his worth, which he clearly didn’t.

  He’d figure it out soon, though, and when he did, Mu would make sure he knew which fixer to go to. It wouldn’t be hard. He just had to give the kid the respect he deserved. Most fixers would fail exactly there.

  Hell, he might just give the kid a taste of getting truly shafted by a fixer. Maine’s fuckup with Faraday was widely agreed to just be Faraday shenanigans—Maine himself had stated that their plan was bulletproof, the target should have stayed where he was, and only didn’t do it purely by random chance, and even then they managed to get away with the payload. It just happened that the target was paranoid enough to rat on himself, and his boss was even more paranoid and actually fired him and rendered the data they klepped useless.

  But that was small potatoes; Faraday still paid them, and like an overly dramatic ex-girlfriend, he’d go right back to his favorite team of mercs—it was an open secret in the fixer community that the four-eyed villain had a soft-spot for that gun-toting soon-to-be cyberpsycho and his chooms.

  For now, he’d work on getting on D’s good side. And with the new information that Cowboy supplied him with, he could do that very easily.

  He wrote a message on the Afterlife Fixer groupchat.

  ‘New kid named D on the block. Wears a Sandevistan, probably mil-spec. Took care of two gigs for me faster than fast: slaughtered a group of seven scavs on his lonesome and got away with some data. Has Netrunning skills apparently. And from the latest gig I gave him, he managed to kill Kaze Oni of the Tyger Claws.’

  Sure, there was value in gatekeeping young D and using him for himself every time, but that was the greedy and naive option.

  Giving him higher-paid gigs and ensuring loyalty? The smart option.

  Doing the above while also auctioning off D’s contact information and recommendation to other fixers? That was the captain option.

  And soon enough, there’d be a meeting with other fixers and a couple of freshies would be in attendance. He just had to pick the worst, rat-bastardest guy in the line-up and send him D’s way—with a healthy warning beforehand of course.

  And by comparison, The Captain would look like a best choom.

  000

  I didn’t stay for more than six drinks before I got woozy enough that I realized staying for longer would be a bad idea. Tomorrow was a school-day after all.

  Once I got home, I wasted no time showering and going to bed, still naked.

  I woke up to my cyberoptic alarm, which sucked ass. Always felt like my brain was replaced with a beehive. That said, I needed the extra persuasion to wake up considering last night. I activated the Sandevistan to ‘wake up’ faster, a nifty trick I had picked up quite early. I was well-rested according to Nanny. The nanites made sure that I would get enough rest by just sleeping for four hours. Thankfully, I had gotten home early enough to not need that.

  I changed to my school uniform and welcomed another day of shitty school.

  Then I received a call from Maine.

  Maine: Congratty-gratz on a gig well done, kid.

  David: Thanks!

  Maine: That’s not all, though. I’m still waiting for my cut

  My stomach sank. His cut? We hadn’t even thought about cutting him in. Why was he asking for it from me?

  Maine: Hah! Just messin’ with ya. Bet you just shat bricks now, didn’t you? You did, didn’t you?

  David: That wasn’t funny.

  Maine: Serious about the congratulations, though. Kiwi said you only almost got flatlined once, too. And that was after taking out the lion’s share of the gangoons.

  David: Got cocky and careless. Not proud of what I did.

  Maine: Good. That means you learned. Don’t appreciate hot-headed gonks with something to prove in my crew, so keep that temper under wraps for next time, got it?

  David: Loud and clear. Still angry at myself.

  Maine: No need to brown nose either.

  David: Anything you needed?

  Maine: You took out a lot of gonks. You alright with that?

  Did he want the truth? I would give it anyway.

  David: Too alright with it. Is what worries me.

  Maine: That’s a new-new one. Explain.

  David: Too much over a holo call. Next time I see you?

  Maine: Fine.

  David: Also, got any gigs for me?

  Maine: Dammit, kid.

  He hung up.

  During my lunch hour at school, I decided to go to the guidance counselor.

  She told me that dropping my university courses wouldn’t reduce my chances of getting a scholarship, but if I somehow didn’t get one, I’d have to pay more money to enroll in those courses once I was in the NCU. She had a lot to say about the case comp, though. According to her, it was the sort of stuff that Arasaka recruiters would value highly, let alone the admissions board in the university.

  In the end, I decided not to drop out. I already knew so much about coding that none of the lessons or the assignments meant much to me to begin with in the first place. I could just zone out for those lessons while working on Nakajima’s project.

  I got started on his code review during one such lesson as well.

  It was… stimulating, to say the least.

  The ICE review showed me what real ICE was supposed to be. It was a shame that it had already been cracked. Just modifying some parameters and values wouldn’t reset its foolproofness. It needed an additional layer of complexity to be salvaged. Higher maths, mathematical theorems that pushed even my own limits on the subject.

  I got to working on that, testing my revisions against the key that Nakajima had included with it repeatedly.

  Once it got sturdy enough to resist the key for an estimated hour, I began the work of incorporating it, or what I had learned from it at least, into my own ICE.

  This work continued well into the evening.

  And the next day.

  Once I was finally satisfied with what I had, I let Nanny replace its former ICE with that. It was now three times stronger. Could make it even stronger in time.

  Had to get started on debugging the other stuff that Nakajima gave me.

  And get started on what Kiwi had sent me.

  I found that I couldn’t, though. My brain was just… exhausted. All of that focus must have overheated some part of my brain. Just thinking about coding more sent disgust through me. Needed to take a break.

  That meant a gig.

  Maine was helpful for once.

  Maine: Go to Aldo’s and retrieve a package. Deliver it to Pilar’s address. I’ll give you a thousand edds for it.

  What a useless gig.

  I did it anyway.

  I met the old man in his warehouse near the desert.

  “What’s your name?!” Aldo shouted.

  “D,” I replied.

  “B?” he asked.

  “D,” I said again.

  “What’s with the cocksucking mask, B?!”

  “D!” I yelled. “D for dog!”

  “B for bog?!” he shouted.

  “Dog! Like a dalmatian!”

  “What in the fuck is a balmatian?”

  “D!” I screamed. “It’s D! A, B, C, D! Fourth letter of the fucking alphabet, D!”

  “Yeah, I get it,” he shouted. “No need to scream, you inbred fucktard.”

  “I’m here for a package,” I said.

  “Here ya go!” he threw a wrapped-up object my way. “Heard you did pretty well on your last two gigs with the crew. Flatlined a fuckload of fuckers, didn’t ya?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Probably just beginner’s luck,” he said.

  “Hey, fuck you!”

  He scoffed. “Hope you do as good next time, D. Let’s see if you’re hot shit, or just another shitstain.”

  I stalked off from him, having already secured the package.

  Some cops were chatting with each other on my way. I walked past them.

  “Hey, masked fucker,” a cop said. I turned to them slowly. “What the fuck are you doing?”

  “Just walking,” I said. “Is there a problem?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Show me what’s under your jacket.”

  I reached into the inside of my jacket, and pulled out my middle finger.

  Then I activated the Sandevistan, bolting far away before they could even react.

  I arrived at Pilar’s apartment pretty soon. I knocked on the door, and got a faceful of a pink lexington aimed right at my forehead. I froze. Behind it was the diminutive Rebecca wearing nothing but her underwear.

  “Oh hey, D, my man! Didn’t see you there!”

  “Got a package for Pilar,” I responded, the gun still in my face.

  “Bro! Got a package for you!”

  Pilar wheeled up to the door on his swivel chair and grabbed the package from almost six feet away before tearing into it with happy techie noises.

  “Oh!” Pilar said from places unseen, showing nothing but his hands. “Don’t forget to tip the kid on his way out!”

  Rebecca shot the hand. “You tip him, you asshole!” The bullet pinged off the golden fingers easily. He shouted in ecstasy about the bulletproof nature of them.

  I was just grateful that the gun was no longer on my face.

  “That it?” she asked me, and I nodded.

  “Nothing else Maine asked me to do,” I confirmed.

  “Here you go, then,” she said, looking at me with a flash of golden eyes.

  Five hundred eddies dropped into my account. “Holy fucking shit, this is a tip?” I asked. This would pretty much erase my expenses for the next three weeks unless I continued training my body some more.

  “You’re fucking adorable, you know,” Rebecca said. I sputtered. “Well, be seein’ ya, D. Try not to get in any more swordfights with Tyger Claws.”

  “I won’t,” I replied, quite smoothly I might say.

  We parted ways shortly after. I hadn’t even gotten to the pavement before someone named Stupid Bitch pinged me.

  Stupid Bitch: Meet me at the pier at seven.

  She sent me coordinates to go with the info as well.

  What the fuck? Was she planning to flatline me or something

  David: Why?

  Stupid Bitch: Don’t be scared. Maine bullied me into it. Said I had to tire you out or some shit. I don’t know. Don’t care. We’re going jogging. Be there or not, I don’t give a shit.

  I sent a message to Maine.

  David: Stupid Bitch—I mean, Lucy wants to jog with me. If I don’t turn up after this, then you know what happened to me.

  Maine: Don’t be so fucking dramatic, goddamn. Make nice. She will, too. Done told her to.

  I groaned.

  000

  Lucy was facing the ocean when I arrived, unmasked of course since we weren’t working and she already knew my face. “You came,” she said.

  “I’m not a bitch,” I shot back.

  “You certainly don’t look the part,” she said as she turned to me with a twirl. “Pretty broad frame. Bigger than when I met you. You juiced up or something?”

  “None of your business,” I replied.

  “You won’t be able to handle more implants that way,” she said. “Not when your organs are struggling under the strain of your muscles and that poison.”

  “Whatever,” I replied. “Like you know anything.”

  She chuckled derisively. “‘Whatever’ is right. See if I care when your heart pops like an overfilled balloon.” She began stretching her legs. Then she looked up at me. “You might wanna soften those muscles up if you don’t want a quick trip to a ripper.”

  I scoffed. I started stretching as well, one leg bent and the other stretched as far to my side as I could.

  I immediately found that to be way more of a problem than it had to be.

  Lucy was stretching so much farther than me.

  So much easier, too.

  I could copy that. Heal from whatever damage I did as well.

  I forced my body to comply, feeling something tear and cause immense agony as I copied Lucy’s maneuver perfectly. This hurt, but not nearly as much as getting stabbed did. I could handle this.

  I activated the Sandevistan to take care of the damage, and did the same to my left leg, slowly stretching—

  “What the fuck are you doing,” Lucy asked. “I’m not calling an ambulance if you hurt yourself.”

  “Fuck you!” I groaned as I opened my joints up to the full range of motion that they had the potential to reach.

  I went even further this time.

  Then I healed.

  Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

  I sat on my butt and stretched my hands towards my feet as well, and pushed even harder while I did. That was a far harder stretch to force, but eventually, I managed to fold myself completely, resting my forehead in-between both knees. Something in my back and hamstrings had snapped as well, but that didn’t matter, either.

  I checked my Critical Progress. This was hardly an exercise at this point so much as it was hurting myself physically and regenerating from it. As such, I sat at an impressive fifteen percent already.

  I did splits after, forward splits first for both legs, then sideway splits.

  I started doing exercises to bend backwards, my legs laying flat at the front as I pushed myself up to curl backwards as far as I could. Thankfully, my one piece of chrome made this exercise far less risky for my overall health. The Sandevistan curled easily with me, and it was only my back muscles that strained.

  Then I got started on my arms.

  I popped my left arm out from its shoulder socket. I gritted my teeth, refusing to scream as I pushed it back in place and regenerated the damage.

  Against my better judgment, I repeated the action with my right arm, stretching it behind me as far as I could with the help of the ground.

  The same happened.

  Didn’t matter. It was only pain.

  Lucy stared at me in clear disgust while I flexed my newfound increased range of motion. I grabbed both my ankles from behind and pulled my feet towards my shoulders, turning into a human wheel as I did.

  “All that Juice burn out your pain receptors or something?” Lucy asked. “Didn’t know it could even do that.”

  With my stomach flat on the ground, I bent my legs and flattened them against the ground so they made a W shape. Something tore at my knees, but I repaired that as well.

  By the end of it, only the memory of pain remained. I sat up and crossed my legs before pulling them up by the ankles while my knees were still touching the floor.

  I didn’t stop until I could feel tearing there as well.

  I couldn’t think of any more things to increase the flexibility of, except maybe my neck, but that felt like a fucking ridiculous thing to do.

  And my neck was actually extremely flexible as it was. I was decently sure the Sandevistan let me turn my head almost a hundred and twenty degrees or so.

  Pushing that any further just felt dangerous.

  But I’d try it anyway.

  Eventually, the Sandevistan itself prevented me from twisting my neck any further than a hundred and sixty, maybe seventy degrees, but the strain of overshooting my limits remained.

  I did it both ways and healed the resultant damage before getting up on my feet.

  “Let’s get started,” I said.

  She scoffed. “Freak.”

  I clenched my jaws. Stupid Bitch indeed. We started jogging alongside the water.

  It only took ten minutes when something weird happened. I was breathing too hard.

  Ten minutes after that, and my legs were getting numb.

  I paused for a moment to activate the Sandevistan, but the numbness remained, and so did my shortness of breath.

  [Your muscles lack oxygen. This cannot be rapidly regenerated by the Sandevistan the same way you can not regenerate from dehydration or malnutrition.]

  Fuck!

  Lucy was getting way ahead, too.

  She looked over her shoulders and with a disdainful sneer, slowed down so I could catch up.

  My lungs burned.

  I activated the Sandevistan to take care of that. Thankfully, that at least worked. I was still panting like a dog, it just didn’t hurt as much.

  I was fucking thirsty, though. I stopped near a vending machine to get a bottle of Real Water. Only too late did I realize that it was sparkling. Fuck. Why would anyone in the entire world drink fizzy fucking water? Such bullshit. I groaned through the pain to finish up the drink and kept going.

  Hitting the gym was simple. The exercises were quick, and the Sandevistan made the pain a bygone memory by the time it would start to really bother me. Hell, getting diced up by that sushi chef of a Tyger Claw wasn’t nearly as bothersome either. It fucking hurt like nothing else did, but it didn’t hurt for long.

  This did.

  I couldn’t stop panting, couldn’t get rid of the numbness.

  [Your exercise has not prepared you for this category of physical activity. An oversight on your part.]

  David: Oversight my ass, what the fuck, Nanny?!

  [You’re projecting your irritation, David. Look inwards for a culprit to your troubles. You only did anaerobic exercises. It should be no surprise to you that aerobic exercises would be difficult, especially considering your added weight.]

  Motherfucker.

  This lasted another two hours.

  Two whole fucking hours.

  I’m pretty sure Lucy did that on purpose.

  By the end of it, we were back where we started, and I was doing everything not to fall on the ground and become a panting mess.

  “Spit it out,” she said. “What cyberware are you sporting that let you keep up like that. Some kind of hormone regulator? Synth-tendons? You chipped in pretty fast after getting the Sandy.”

  Only a network of nanites that made sure that whatever I did to my gonk-self, I’d at least walk away from it. And look at that, I was 50% on Critical Progress as well.

  “A minute,” I said. “Just need… breathe…”

  Then I felt a tingle in my brain.

  [Detecting scan!]

  I glared at her.

  David: Can our ICE take care of it?

  [From a remote intrusion, yes. She would need to jack into our system to breach our ICE for a full data scan of your cyberware.]

  David: Would she be able to find you if she scanned you?

  [Unlikely. Unless she did a full-body thermal scan, she wouldn’t be able to find me as I can quite easily sever my connection to the rest of your cyberware.]

  “You should just give that up,” I said.

  “Self-ICE?” she growled.

  “Soon a cyberdeck,” I said, and then chuckled. “Who knows,” I panted. “Might replace ya… someday.”

  She scoffed. “Fuck off. You’re just an amateur. You might have scored an old quickhack from Kiwi, but that won’t help you.”

  I stood up straight. “I don’t wanna keep fighting,” I said. “You’re the one who wants to keep starting shit, you know.”

  “You realize how suspicious you are, right?” Lucy said. “You come out of nowhere and flatline eighteen gangsters on your first week as a solo, and that’s not even mentioning your backstory. That doesn’t add up. So tell me; what are you really hiding?”

  “Even if I was hiding something,” I said. “Why should I trust you with any of that? From day one, you’ve wanted me fucking dead or gone. You think I’m some sort of Arasaka plant or something, right? Then why the fuck would I be so open about my connection to them? And why do you think my mother worked so hard to get me through school if I was just an asset to them all along? Or do you think they somehow approached me after my mom died and I chipped the Sandy in? How many days would they have had to train me, then?”

  “Fine,” she said.

  “Can we, can we just fucking truce already?” I pleaded. “You said a lot of shit to me, you know, so I shouldn’t be the one to ask for this. Just… chill.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Fine. I wanna know more about you, find out what’s the deal with you. Why not play a game of twenty-one questions?”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Okay,” I said slowly. That was suspicious.

  “You hungry?”

  I was fucking starving.

  Might as well spend some of Rebecca’s tip on a real meal than to choke down another SCOP bar. “Sure,” I said. “What are the rules? We alternate on question-asking?”

  “What are you hiding?” she immediately asked.

  “Some porn BDs under my bed,” I said. “What’s your beef with Arasaka?”

  “Don’t like their media and marketing department. Tacky adverts and all that.”

  “Hmm,” I replied. “Insightful. How old are you?”

  “Nineteen,” she said. We passed by a street corner with a sign that read ‘34th’. “What do you feel when you kill people?”

  I clenched my jaws. Then I turned my head at her. “I feel a sense of reward. I feel good.”

  She crinkled her nose at that.

  “Where’d you learn how to netrun?” I asked.

  “In a basement,” she replied. “Did you cry when your mom died?”

  I clenched my hands into fists. She didn’t have to go there. “Not at first,” I replied. “Between the rent, utilities and the late payment penalties, and the fact that I’d barely come out of it alive myself, I didn’t really feel much until the next morning. That’s when I cried.” I turned to her again. “Did you ask me that to hurt me?”

  Her eyes widened. She faced forward and didn’t say anything.

  “Okay, then,” I said. “Different question—”

  “My bad about that,” she interrupted. “It was a low-blow. Don’t need those to make you feel like shit about your choices.”

  I tried to parse that for longer than strictly necessary. This was the first time she’d been anything but downright nasty to me ever since I told her about my dream. “Just… don’t do it again.”

  She hummed.

  “You know any good places to eat in the area?” I asked.

  She grinned slyly. “You used up a question just now. But yes. I’m taking you there right now. My turn: what do your classmates think of you?”

  I guffawed. “Half of them want me to die. The other half don’t give a shit one way or the other.” We crossed the road and passed by a storefront that advertised a fake furcoat at 34% off, probably itchy as all fuck. “Say, how many people have you killed?”

  “You keep count or what?”

  “Answer the question.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe twenty. I usually don’t end up flatlining people unless I’m up against another Netrunner.”

  I nodded. “Okay.”

  “What about you? Other day your first time?”

  I shook my head. “I’ve… I killed thirty-four people since my mother died last week.” I clenched my jaws as a wave of self-disgust washed over me. “I should be handling it worse than I have, but… I think I’m handling it well. Too well.”

  No nightmares or breakdowns or anything like that. I hadn’t even shed a tear or anything. I just… didn’t feel badly enough about what I did to even react emotionally at all.

  “Think I might be some sort of psychopath,” I muttered. Then I realized what I had said, and who I had said it to. “That was a joke.”

  “Maine’s probably killed hundreds by now. The rest of the gang have more blood on their hands than the average gangoon. You’re in good company.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But Maine still hit me up asking me how I was feeling after zeroing those people. Tells me I’m not supposed to feel so balanced about it.”

  “What does it matter?” she asked, her tone utterly dismissive. “You feel guilty anyway, so you’re not the monster you think you are. Kind of a cringeworthy thing to bitch about, you know.”

  I growled. “Whatever,” I said. She scoffed.

  “Why do you want to netrun?” she asked.

  “It’s my turn,” I said. And then, because I couldn’t think of anything to say, I just asked “What was your first piece of chrome?”

  “Fuck off,” she replied with far more venom than I had expected from her.

  “You’re the one who suggested this fucking game,” I replied. “Don’t be a bitch.”

  She walked up ahead and stopped in front of me with a look of murder. “David, you piss me off so effortlessly that I can’t help but wonder how you’re even real,” she said. “You are such a scumbag that it would almost be funny if your scumbaggery wasn’t directed towards me.”

  I stopped and glared at her. “Ah yeah? Right back at ya? You’re a goddamn lunatic is what you are! Literally!” All I asked her about was her chrome. Why was that such a touchy topic? What, was it a Midnight Lady or something? Not the first time someone had chipped in a chrome pussy or dick for their first. Pretty sure Katsuo had long-since thrown out whatever tiny thing he was packing the second he was old enough to; like hell those strongarms were his first. “I don’t need to take flack just because your first piece was something embarrassing! What are you, a fucking kid?”

  “It’s not embarrassing,” she said. Quietly. Too quietly. I got a bad feeling at that. “It just… wasn’t my choice.”

  All the anger faded away from me. “Oh.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  She turned around to walk ahead, saying nothing else. Not for several more minutes, in fact.

  Eventually, I just had to break the silence. “You wanted to know why I wanted to learn how to netrun, right?” I asked. She didn’t react. “I told Kiwi it’s because I’m a paranoid netizen who’s scared of corporate oversight. Actually, the reason is just… because I’m good at coding. And it feels nice to be good at something. So I want to be better. Staying safe in the Net and making sure the corps can’t screw me is one thing, yeah, but I’ve been told my entire life that I’m gifted, even if I’ve never really been rewarded by it. So I want to use my gift to take what I deserve, to reward myself, and I can only do that by being the best. Already hit the ceiling of what I can learn in school, just need more.”

  “Cute,” she replied. “Restaurant’s right up ahead,” she said. The facade was neon green and blue, the word Turing’s writ large over it. It gave the impression of a strip club as much as a restaurant. Once we entered, the confusion only grew. There were a lot of skimpily clad men in there of all shapes and sizes, some dancing with each other at a far dance floor, or making out near the bar. There were tables were people were eating as well. Lucy led me to a booth where she just sat. “Connect to the Local Net,” she said.

  I did, using my optics to reach the nearest modem and get started. It took a while, my eyes not really being the fastest interfaces in the world, but once I got in, I was met with a vast ocean of data that slowly slowly configured themselves to a series of different front-ends, forums and chatrooms where the topics all seemed to be coding-related.

  “This is a programmer hub,” she said. “Not exactly a Netrunner bar—can’t really buy any hacks or ICE here—but it’s more like an entryway into that world.”

  Holy fuck. “Why are you showing me this?”

  “An apology,” she said. “For bringing up your mom, just so you don’t think that I’m the bad guy.” I frowned in shock. “Don’t even go there, you’re the one who wants to become a fucking corpo. Flatlining you in your infancy would be a mercy.”

  “Fuck you,” I replied. “But… thank you.”

  “Fuck you too, and you’re welcome.”

  A waiter—one that was modestly dressed at that in a pair of black pants, a white shirt with black suspenders above and a bowtie—slapped a menu down on our table. Before he could leave, Lucy just piped up. “We’ll both have the barbecue burger with fries.”

  “Drinks?” the waiter asked, clearly disinterested.

  “Water,” I said. “Still water.”

  “Don’t have that,” the waiter replied.

  “Anything that’s not fizzy?” I replied.

  “Why?”

  “I can’t stand that stuff.”

  “What are you, retarded?” the waiter asked.

  “What’s it to ya?” I challenged. He rolled his eyes.

  “We have synth juice.”

  “What flavor?”

  “Juice-flavored.”

  Okay, Martinez, what would it be? Mystery juice or carbonation?

  “Just give me the juice,” I muttered. And then I looked through the menu. The double burger didn’t even look that big, and the weight was laughably low. Needed more. “And a number eighteen,” I said, eyeing the side of chicken legs. “Number twenty-eight,” the spicy chicken wings. “And… thirty-four,” a large beef burrito.

  Lucy put a hand over my menu. “You do realize you’re paying for that, right?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Of course.”

  The waiter looked at me expectantly. “Anything else? A whole cow to go with all of that?”

  I looked at Lucy askance. “Is this, like, the theme of this restaurant or something, what’s wrong with him?”

  “My deepest apologies, valued customer,” the waiter butted in. “I didn’t mean to reveal my irritation since you guys came in five minutes before the kitchen closes, ordering enough to feed a fucking army.”

  Before I could apologize, Lucy slammed the table with her hand. “Look, you underfucked dickhead, are you gonna do your fucking job or am I going to have to kick your ass before you do it?”

  The waiter backed away and nodded hastily before leaving.

  I hummed. “Glad to see you’re not just crazy with me. For a second there I thought I was special.”

  “Funny joke,” she replied in a deadpan. Then she stood up. “Alright, newbie. You said you’re good at coding, right? Any good at math?”

  I scoffed. “Probably better than you.”

  “You want to put money on that, big boy?”

  “What did you have in mind?” I stood up. She took me to a corner of the restaurant that had some old-school arcade games with names I couldn’t recognize at all. There was one that was called Robocode, and then one that was called ‘Graphwars’. We stopped in front of that one.

  “Functions,” she said. “You any good with those?”

  She booted the machine up and selected a game-mode called ‘No Turns’.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Game takes place on a Cartesian plane. You’re supposed to write functions in an input field that turns into graphs that emanate from your player characters like beams, and they’re supposed to bend around obstacles and hit my player characters. The game is usually turn-based, but I made it so that you can spam inputs, meaning you don’t have to wait any turns. Got it?”

  The game loaded, revealing the Cartesian plane with its player characters, three for each of us, and the obstacles represented by large black shapes that likely couldn’t be traversed by the beams.

  I already began to calculate the correct functions. “When do we start?” I looked around the console for controls, but all there was was a couple of buttons and a joystick.

  She pointed at her eyes and I nodded in understanding, connecting my optics to the game. It had a convenient little wireless port I could hop into for that, and the input field worked at the speed of thought.

  “Now,” she said. A few seconds later, a beam sent by one of Lucy’s characters bent around a circular void and hit mine dead-on, killing it instantly.

  The same character whose function I was just about to plot, too.

  I selected a different character and wrote in the function as quickly as I could, sending the graph just as one was sent out from another character of Lucy’s, just not the one I was targetting. I killed hers, and she killed mine, and I was left with one, while she had two.

  I sent out another graph, killing her lowermost character and her last remaining one fired out a shot. I frantically formulated a function so that I could at least make it a tie, provided my graph didn’t suddenly die en-route if my character was killed.

  Mercifully enough, she missed.

  I fired the graph off and hit her dead-on.

  I whooped in joy.

  And then I realized with shock that I had forgotten to put money on this game. Dammit.

  Lucy looked at me with narrowed eyes. “Using cyberware, are we?” she asked. “Two can play that game.”

  “What? No!”

  We started a new game, and she instantly destroyed my first character.

  I had no choice. I activated the Sandevistan.

  I formulated functions for both my remaining characters, let my speed return to normal as I watched them destroy two of her characters instantly. Then I used the Sandevistan again and fed both of my characters each different functions to hit her last remaining player.

  I gave her a shit-eating grin. “That was cyberware. Trust me, you don’t want to play that game with me.”

  She clenched her jaws. “Still doesn’t explain how you’re so accurate. You using some kind of mathware? A chip?”

  I laughed. “It’s all natural. Shocking, isn’t it?” I always got something of a primal rush every time I had the opportunity to show up someone that thought they were better than me. In Arasaka Academy, that was pretty much everyone. Lucy was no different. Even her accusations of cheating were pretty old-hat to me already.

  “You expect me to believe that?”

  “I actually don’t,” I said. “We can play with a handicap if you want, though I’m not really sure on how to do that. I could recite the ABC’s out loud on repeat or something.”

  “You want to cheat on a video game, David, that’s your prerogative; just know that it’s really fucking low, even for a corpo.”

  I laughed. “I don’t have to prove anything to you, Lucy. And trust me, you have no idea how much these accusations feed my ego. I’m feeling so nova right now.”

  “Rematch,” she said. “No neuralware either. Natural speed. We start when the next game loads.”

  I won that round.

  And then the next.

  And the next after that.

  “Aw yeah!” I shouted. “Fucking nova! That’s what I’m talking about, baby!” That last round had been close, too. Really got my heart pumping. Even made me miss once.

  “So you’re good at math,” Lucy muttered. “Doesn’t make you special.”

  “Makes me better than you,” I replied. My stomach rumbled, and I was reminded of the food. I turned to see the waiter bringing us our order. “Right on time! Time to get my grub in!”

  I ran over to help the waiter put down the food, and just started digging in.

  I could hardly recall the whirl of feasting, and only really came to mentally at the end, to find Lucy staring at me with disbelief. “How can you be so smart and yet come off as such a huge idiot?”

  My eyes widened. “You think I’m smart?”

  “You’re just gonna ignore the last part, then.”

  I chuckled. “I won’t just toss out a free compliment. Not like I ever get much respect from anyone to begin with.”

  “Is that maybe why you want to become a corpo bigshot? Because you never got respect as a kid?”

  “Why, does that make more sense to you, net-shrink?”

  “You’re not exactly setting yourself up for anything good if everything you do is for validation,” she said. “You have to at least know that much.”

  My turn to be a dick, now. “Lucy, mind your own business, will you? You don’t fucking care either way, so why start running your mouth like you know me?”

  000

  Lucy looked into David’s perennially sad and angered eyes, not for the first time wondering if this was some sort of corpo mindgame or just how the guy was.

  He let himself be raw and vulnerable for seemingly no gain, and was prone to fits of passionate outbursts that gave him the impression of a childish idealization of a punk, rebelling against anyone that gave him shit.

  Weird that a guy like him was so hellbent on climbing the corpo ladder despite his deficiencies and his complete lack of guile. Corps ate guys like him up and spat them out without a second thought.

  “Just because you’re good at things doesn’t mean you’ll be respected,” she said to him. “It just makes you more easily exploited. People use the useful.”

  “They can fuck off,” he said. “All of them. I’m not fucking here to get used. Not even by Maine and you.”

  She scoffed. So much bravado, and yet it had no basis in reality. “Ain’t that the terms you agreed on so Maine wouldn’t literally rip your spine out? The reason you’re still breathing is only because you’re useful to Maine.”

  “You really think I wouldn’t be able to run away if I wanted to, tracking chip or not?” he asked, clearly baffled by her lack of confidence in his ability. “Maine finding me worked out in my favor. Now I’m gainfully employed and can pay my way through school. And once I pay that off, I’ll have more time to worry about getting better at the craft and make more eddies.”

  “And then you retire once you get a corpo job,” she said dryly. “You just… leave all that edgerunnin’ behind. You really think it’s that easy, don’t you?”

  “Who said anything about easy? I don’t give a shit how hard it is, I’ll still do it!”

  There it was again, that boundless confidence. Where did he get off thinking of himself so highly? He had skills, she’d give him that, but here he was suggesting that he’d give Arasaka and the entire solo world the runaround and come out smelling like roses. He wanted to con the world for his own benefits.

  “You want to be impressive, David? A great edgerunner?”

  “I know I will,” he said.

  “The impressive ones die. That’s the nature of the game. You make a name for yourself by how you die in this line of business.”

  He tapped his foot repeatedly, arms folded and face turned the other way with a frown. “Just watch me. I’ll show everybody.”

  Something about that bothered her fiercely. She wasn’t trying to give him fuel or anything, and seeing him dig his heels down on this one-way journey to hell shouldn’t have bothered her at all. She hated David, didn’t she? He was a corpo bootlicker, the worst kind of them too; a gutter rat who still worshipped money. A traitor to every downtrodden person where he was from.

  Arasaka’s fucking lapdog.

  And yet, the thought of him being ripped to pieces by Night City… well, he was an awful person, but he didn’t have to die.

  The waiter came around with the bill. David grabbed it quickly and after glancing at the bill, his eyes flashed blue. The waiter looked at him in shock. “Sorry for coming in so late,” David said.

  “N-not at all!” he said before scurrying away.

  Lucy couldn’t believe her ears. Did that fucker tip him after all the shit he said? “How much?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How much was the tip?”

  David regarded her coldly. “None of your business.”

  “Why would you tip him anything?”

  He frowned. “He’s a working man. And we made him work for longer than he had to. Why wouldn’t I tip him for that?”

  “He called you retarded, David.” And he’d had the dumbest comeback to that that she’d ever heard. The memory almost brought a smile to her face. What’s it to ya. Idiot.

  He shrugged. “Doesn’t bother me any. He doesn’t know me. Plus, the juice wasn’t really that bad. It was just synth-OJ after all.”

  Lucy just snatched the bill from him to regard the price of her own order and then sent him back that money. “Don’t try to be a gentleman in Night City. Makes you an easy mark.”

  “Was just paying you back for today,” David said. His expression eased up into a slight and honest smile. “I haven’t really had a moment of non-solo-related fun this entire week, and hellish jogging session aside, beating you at Graphwars was pretty preem. And showing me this place. You know, you’re not so bad when you lay off on your weird hate-on you know.”

  Her face began to heat up, but she quickly killed that response with her biomon before it could manifest on her pale skin. “Fuck off, David,” she said with a venom that shocked even him. “We’re not friends. Never will be friends. Only reason I showed you Graphwars was so I could humble you. Only reason I hung out with you today was because Maine told me to. So no, you haven’t made your first friend in the world, unfortunately. Keep looking.”

  David looked stricken. “I have friends! At school…”

  “Didn’t you tell me everyone there hated you?”

  David got up. “Well, your humanity was good while it lasted. I’ll delta. See you around, lunatic.”

  “Up yours, corpo cunt.”

  Yeah, that had a better ring to it than the string of profanities she already had him saved as, so long that it maxed out the character limit.

  Guess she’d better change it to that.

  000

  Before I went to sleep, I made sure to change Lucy’s name in my contacts. She was a bitch, but there was nothing stupid about her.

  Lunatic had a better ring to it; it was more thematic, and more accurate as well. She wasn’t just mean, she was straight up insane.

  Lucy the Lunatic.

  Lunacy.