There was an actual limit to how much money you could spend on a good suit at a moment’s notice. The priciest threads in Jinguji—which I now had permission to purchase apparently, thanks to my continued and enthusiastic patronage (that’s how you fucking do it, Rayfield) were only two hundred thousand. For anything above a million, you had to put in an order for special materials and skilled tailors (their transport and living costs were apparently also baked into the price, mind-bogglingly enough).

Or you could just fly to Milan or Paris, where the range of selections were even wider, and the price points far steeper.

I hadn’t gone out of my way to try and hit this price limit. Certainly not at the behest of Jin’s warning that ‘dress code was on’. If I had felt forced into that situation, I would have felt like a total gonk.

But thanks to my recent substantial windfalls, money concerns were… practically non-existent for me, now.

It was difficult to wrap my head around this… mental evolution. A part of me felt like I should have rebelled more at the concept of spending so much money on clothing of all things.

I didn’t.

One noticeable benefit of my brain changes. Nanny had told me that I’d be more adaptable. Learn faster. Seemingly, that also meant being able to kill old habits.

Even a habit as ingrained as money worries.

As I walked out of Jinguji’s, wearing a dark gray suit, with a white shirt and blue tie, I slid into my Aerondight’s driver’s seat and made a beeline for Arasaka Tower.

On the way, I called Lucy.

Lunacy: Made it through the whole day, huh? Did your master like your new ride?

I chuckled.

D: Fuck you, Lucy. How was sleep?

Lunacy: Woke up hungover as fuck. Don’t know how I’m not a flatline. Your family can fucking drink.

D: Here I thought you were the alcoholic.

Lunacy: Nah. Compared to them? David, they’re fucking crazy. I paged Kiwi—they’re still partying.

That…

What the actual fuck?

Lunacy: The rest are still there, too. Caught up in this fucking… mass hysteria event of partying.

D: They need to slow down, holy shit.

Lunacy: Nah. I’d let them have it for a little longer. Kiwi’s leaving, and so is Falco. Well, at least Falco ain’t skipping town, but Kiwi might actually ghost. So it goes.

I nodded, taking in the news in stride.

In a way, I was happy for them. They had gotten what they wanted out of this life.

And they were walking away better off than before.

And now the real work will begin.

GSS, QianT, Ryuzaki, Arasaka.

My life would be glass towers and breaking through glass ceilings for the foreseeable future. Laying low until all this heat died down.

And until Nanny and I could get to the bottom of our burgeoning cyberpsychosis.

“Kill them all,” I had heard Lucy say. And then I had proceeded to do everything in my power to do so or die trying, like it even fucking mattered that much.

I really needed to get my head on straight.

D: It’s good for them. All’s well that ends well.

Lunacy: You coming home?

D: In a bit. First, I gotta… go to Arasaka.

Lunacy: Why?

D: Meeting with Jin’s old man.

Lunacy: Shit! That’s today?

D: It was supposed to be yesterday, or hell, Saturday even. I dunno. Jin keeps telling me I shouldn’t be keeping the old gonk waiting. So I’ll just tackle this real quick, and be back before breakfast—your breakfast, that is. What are you thinking? Abdi’s? Or—

Lunacy: David, this is fucking serious. You’re meeting with Masaru Ryuzaki. Inside Arasaka no less. He’s not a fucking joke. You gotta take this seriously!

I sighed. She always got this way when Arasaka got brought up.

D: I promise, I’ll do my best. I’ll be polite, act the corpo, speak the language, worship the ground he walks on, whatever it takes.

Lunacy: David. This is about survival. Tell him what he wants to hear and walk out alive.

D: I will. Promise.

Lunacy: Good. I… David. I don’t know what I’d do if you…

D: You don’t have to worry. I’ll be careful.

Lunacy: I love you, David.

I smiled.

D: I know. Love you, too. I’ll see you in a bit, alright? I’ll pick up some food if you haven’t eaten yet.

Lunacy: It’s fine. Too hungry to wait. Good luck, okay?

D: Bye.

I breathed out as the call ended. I considered her anxiety carefully. Sure, Masaru Ryuzaki was a dangerous man, but… I had assumed that by now, she’d be more confident in my ability. Conflict was the furthest thing from my mind today, but even then, I didn’t exactly doubt my entire survival.

The closer I got to the heart of the city, the greater the police presence became, and yet none of them so much as looked my way as I drove this stolen CEO vehicle into the underground parking of Arasaka Tower. Jin had given me a visitor’s pass to the tower, that came with fully validated parking and access to floor 135.

The Executive floor.

Though the building was a hundred and forty floors tall, this neighborhood of floors was the de-facto top of Arasaka Tower.

Once the elevator arrived at the garage subbasement, I took one step in and… hesitated.

If I went up there, I’d be bolted fast to this wagon. There was no getting off that ride from then on.

This was the point of no return.

I chuckled as I took another step in. No. The point of no return had been the Nightmare Rally. For better or for worse, I was already on this ride.

I punched in the button labelled 135. The elevator validated my credentials, and I was off.

The elevator didn’t stop at any floor. In fact, the machine kept accelerating, crossing through five floors every second. Then ten. Twenty. Then it decelerated sharply, though I couldn’t feel any of it at all. In almost twenty seconds flat, I was at the top.

The elevator door opened, and I walked into the hallway, feeling… deceptively light on my feet. I felt like a ghost drifting over the ground, unable to believe that any of this was real, that I wasn’t dreaming.

The inside of the floor was dark. The air was shadowy, and choked with a dim teal light from the overhead lights provided by a grid of upside-down pillars hanging from the ceiling like stalagmites. The space looked tailor-made to confound the senses. I could hear steps echoing about with no clear source, and outside the designated, well-lit walkways, the lights became even dimmer.

And I could faintly make out armed security guards posted in the darkest corners.

Beyond anything else, however…

…this place was engineered for violence.

This main room took up only a fraction of the entire floor. To leave it, one had to traverse narrow hallways and choke-points. Giant metal planters containing bushes reminiscent of rainforests provided easy cover from gunfire, and the plants were tall and could easily obscure a tall man.

The walkways were a solid white marble that only looked teal because of the lights. Around those carefully placed paths were lacquered wood floorboards. Real wood, too, and in vast quantities. On the wooden floor stood more security guards. It made me wonder if they would open fire at me for stepping off the smooth white path.

None of the corpos inside, or wandering around so much as looked at me as I walked on ahead. One old Japanese man was speaking in his native language with another corpo, both of them discussing the contents of a document he was holding as they headed towards the elevator. Towards where I stood. I got out of the way first, and they didn’t so much as acknowledge me.

Weird. I walked forward, up the stairs, and through a narrow hallway, into another open, cavernous and selectively lit space. As I walked, I fell into the same rhythm that I always did when walking into Arasaka Academy every morning: eyes forward, ignore everyone. I was here for the CFO, and no one else.

After a bit of exploration, I finally found it. The CFO’s office. The glass walls were set to maximum opacity, and were slate gray and reflective.

I knocked on the door.

It opened almost instantly. “Come in,” I heard a voice from inside. Not a domineering growl, but… a smooth voice. I opened the door, entered, and looked at Masaru Ryuzaki.

The pictures on the Net… did him total justice. He looked like any other corpo. Smooth-faced, shiny black hair parted to the side, bespectacled, and utterly unassuming.

And inside his office were a pair of bodyguards, standing at ease, hands held together at the front, wearing sunglasses. They were suited, and I could see some chrome in the gaps of the Realskinn on their hands—

[Thomas Dixon, Joe Fikes. Entry-level enforcers in Arasaka security.] Nanny pulled up the data from all the info we had saved from Tanaka’s network with ease, attaching their faces to the names.

Wait. Entry-level enforcers? Why were they here, then? One would think that a CFO would demand better protection.

No, scratch that. Why were any enforcers in this room in the first place?

The room was wide. Easily four times as big as my old apartment’s living room. And yet, it didn’t seem to have any windows to the outside. Either the walls were really just that, walls, or the windows were set to maximum opacity. The inside of the room was lit up by a pale blue light as well, that gave Masaru a slightly deathly pallor. The man himself sat behind a large and ornate wooden desk. The floor here was also different. Tatami instead of wood.

I bowed at Masaru as deeply as I could, and spoke Japanese as I said, “It’s an honor to meet you, sir Ryuzaki.” It came out slow and stilted, like it usually did, but my pronunciation was clear. I just needed to work on my tone and rhythm.

Or I could just slot in a preem-tier language chip. I could afford those, now.

Ryuzaki nodded and gestured at the seat on the other side of his desk. I went up there and sat. “You kept me waiting,” he said.

“My sincerest apologies—“

He reached towards a… device on his desk. A black, metallic box, with a button on top. He pressed it.

I saw stars.

At first. I felt nothing.

Then, everything. Pain the likes of which I had never felt before, and yet I couldn’t even open my mouth to scream or… anything, really.

[—AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH oh, thank god. I’m back! I’m back!]

D: Nannywhatthefuck?!

[EMP. Cyberware disabled. Dragon Spine disabled.]

I felt some hands on my shoulders holding my upper body in place, pressing my back to the chair. The enforcers were holding me up, making sure I didn’t slump over and die.

“I would applaud your audacity, boy,” Ryuzaki continued evenly. “If it hadn’t caused me such… personal irritation. Your… hesitation to accept my gracious offer has not gone unnoticed. Neither has your ignorance. Your ignorance of how things are done in this world. And what awaits such a degree of noncompliance.”

Slowly, I could feel the feeling in my body returning to me. The enforcers were no longer touching me, and so, I activated the Sandevistan, only to accelerate my recovery.

In an instant, everything was back online.

D: Nanny?

[Yes?]

D: Fuck the cyberpsychosis—make sure you fix this vulnerability.

[Absolutely. Fucker almost killed me.]

Motherfucker!

I could do it. Right here, right now. I could kill this man in the blink of an eye.

What the fuck did I ever do to this bastard?

Kept him waiting?

“In any other case, I would wash my hands of an ingrate such as you,” Masaru continued. “But today, I’m feeling gracious. And for your information, young man: I am not a gracious person by any means.” He pulled a drawer on his desk and retrieved a pistol. A bulky Tamayura heavy pistol, all metal and carbon fiber. He placed the gun gently on the desk, barrel facing me. “Luckily for you, however, you do bear some level of potential, and you have done much for my son as it is. It is only due to your usefulness that you still draw breath. It is the only reason why I haven’t used this gun to blow a hole through your heart, and dumped your body into the Arasaka waterfront with your legs encased in a block of cement.”

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Charmingly detailed, as threats went. Made me wonder how many bodies were in that water.

“You will become a vassal to the Ryuzaki name,” Masaru spoke, as if he was just reciting fact. “You will help Jin in every way, and back his rise to my position of CFO when the time comes. In the meantime, you will support him, do jobs for myself, and cultivate your own net worth with… QianT, as I understand it. By now, your spine should have reset somewhat, allowing you to speak at least. So speak. Tell me: what are your intentions with QianT?”

For one insane moment, I debated on lying.

Futile. He’ll find out. And I’ll be in even more shit.

For better or for worse, I had to be honest now.

“I intend to sell them a product,” I said in a soft rasp, pretending that I was having a hard time breathing. “A software for workflow optimization. And I intend to continue growing my skills as a programmer.”

“A programmer,” Ryuzaki said dryly. “I have read about your academic record. It is clear that your talent is immeasurable within the scope of simple schoolwork. In order to gauge your potential, you must be allowed to experiment in the real world. I take it this… programming talent of yours is how you managed to succeed in the race last Saturday.”

“My… line algorithm,” I said.

“And your cybernetic load-out of reflex boosters,” Ryuzaki said. “Nevertheless, I am thoroughly impressed. You manage to find a way no matter what task my son places ahead of you. You defeat his rivals with ease. You have only had two occasions to truly prove your worth, and you performed stellarly both times.” He knew about that bender Jin and I had? Of course. “You will of course provide me with all the details of how you managed this. All the knowledge of your cyberware, and where you came to gain all of this skill.”

I furrowed my eyebrows. “Sir—“

“It’s not up to you.” One of the enforcers approached Masaru and gave him a chip. “This chip contains all the information. While you were out, we jacked into your neural network.”

[Don’t worry. They only reached the dummy network, disconnected from our actual cyberware load-out.]

Dummy network? When the fuck had she made one of those? And why?

[Just in case someone ever tried to jack into you to retrieve your information while you were unconscious. This seemed like a rather obvious precaution to take.]

Shit. Well, good looking out.

“Fine,” I said. “I’m… honored for your mercy,” I said. “Thank you very much.”

Masaru narrowed his eyes at me. “I’m afraid the punishment has not ended just yet. On your feet. Face these two enforcers. Give it your all. They will not kill you, but they have been instructed to beat you to an inch of your life.”

What the fuck?!

“But the art of corporal punishment is… not an exact science,” Masaru said. “Accidents can happen. For all intents and purposes, you should act under the assumption that your life is on the line. It very much is.”

I pretended to stagger up to my feet and face the enforcers as they approached me. They were young. Recruits fresh from basic training: this year’s intake according to the data Nanny was floating into my HUD.

Despite myself, I was morbidly curious to see what these guys could do. I wasn’t reading much cyberware from them. They had the usual suspects: arm and leg implants. Other than that, I couldn’t guess at their loadouts. Did Arasaka huscle have reflex boosters as a general rule? Or was that only reserved for those who could handle that sort of stuff? After all, reflex boosters were supposed to be rather difficult to adapt to.

I took a stance, waited for Thomas Dixon to approach, and immediately received a gunshot to my kneecap.

Masaru fucking shot me.

The ballistic properties of my very expensive dress pants deflected the bullet. My skin and subcutaneous fat further dispersed the shock. By the time the energy reached my bone, it was too diffuse to even so much as bruise me.

Thomas roared as he approached me with a punch.

I waited for it to hit me. He struck me right on the cheek. I staggered backward. The second guy capitalized, and immediately struck again, not giving me any time to mount any resistance.

Or, at least that’s what they thought.

They hit hard, but they were slow. They reacted slowly, too. Just by adjusting my body carefully, I could turn devastating hits into uneven ones that failed to transfer the full power of their strikes.

I spent a minute getting pummeled before I made my move.

One step forward, and Dixon ate a fist to his mouth. He reeled backwards, giving me the space necessary to deflect a barrage of Fikes’ strikes, before I managed to land a hit to his throat.

They won’t stop until they beat me within an inch of my fucking life?

Fuck that.

I screamed and ran at Dixon, tackling him and contorting around his body, latching onto his back and making him lose balance. He fell back-first to the ground, landing heavily on me while I held his neck in a headlock that he tried to fight off for dear life. He planted his feet on the ground and managed to stand straight even with me weighing him down. He jumped and landed on his back, in an attempt to crush me underneath his weight.

It wasn’t shit to me.

My spine was chrome. At worst, he would have broken a rib, but those held on without so much as vibrating from the force of his body’s descent. My suit gave me a leg-up that none of these disposable freshies could possibly match with their standard-issue gear.

Fikes started stomping on my skull, kicking my head, trying to get me to let go of his buddy. He cut my cheek up. And my scalp. And my throat. Each kick was vicious, like he was trying to kill me.

But I didn’t let go until I could finally sense Dixon slackening.

I pushed him away from me, rolled away from Fikes, got up to my feet, and ran at him, body held low. He met my tackle with his own bear-hug, and we locked arms for a moment.

With a shout of exertion, I pulled his head down to my waiting, rising knee. It landed with a satisfying thunk. Blood from his nose coated my kneecap as his head sailed backwards. He staggered backwards, trying to stay on his feet. I didn’t give him a chance to regain his bearings.

I punched him softly once. Twice. Thrice.

He backed away, blood streaming from his nose. I kicked him on his chest. He staggered back and hit the wall hard.

And I kept wailing on him. In the ensuing rain of blows, he must have fallen unconscious, but my punches kept him nailed to the wall, keeping him standing before gravity could do its work.

After I had my satisfaction, I stopped. He finally slid down the wall, back first, and I turned my eyes to Masaru, forcefully schooling my expression.

The gun on his desk was gone.

He was interlocking his fingers, both elbows on the table. Then, he nodded at my seat, indicating for me to sit down. I did as instructed.

Nanny materialized next to him and throttled him ineffectually. He was like an unyielding bronze statue, utterly immune to her physical abuse. She put him in a headlock next, but that also did nothing.

I let the ridiculous sight seep the tension out of me.

“Where did you learn to fight?” Masaru asked me. Nanny huffed and disintegrated into a shower of blue voxels before disappearing.

“From the streets,” I said. “Sir.”

Just… get through this. Doesn’t matter how long it takes. Just get through this.

“You are not running combat chipware,” Masaru observed. There was not a shred of uncertainty in his impassive expression. “You get into a lot of fights, I see.”

Was that a fucking question? “My neighborhood is quite rough, sir.”

“And thus, you think you are uniquely capable of braving this new neighborhood,” Masaru said dryly. “Is that it, boy?”

“No, sir.”

Masaru snorted. “Hesitate to fall in line once more and I will have you and your extended family slaughtered.”

What the fuck did he just say?

[Calm down.]

I clawed for tranquility, and continued the act. “Of course, sir.”

“Don’t fret,” Masaru said. “I will gift you an opportunity to turn my opinion of you around.”

“I’m honored, sir.”

His eyes glowed gold for a moment, and then they returned to their usual darkness. The door behind me opened, and in walked what looked like another enforcer, wearing a dark gray suit. He was a grizzled-looking man, probably in his mid-to-late thirties. He had short-cropped brown, almost blond, hair with an undercut, and a closely shaven beard, and he didn’t have any eyes for me as he approached the CFO’s desk.

[Vincent Valeri. Twenty-seven years old. Arasaka Counter-Intel.] Tanaka’s data just kept paying its dividends.

Twenty-seven? Fuck me. Talk about a toxic workplace.

I caught sight of the two downed enforcers in the corner of the room, and felt stupid for even thinking that.

Curiously enough, Vincent had ignored them altogether.

“What do you know about the situation surrounding Tanaka?” Masaru asked me.

I blinked. “Katsuo’s father, sir?”

“Precisely.”

“His son succumbed to cyberpsychosis, I believe,” I said. The latest_epɪ_sodes are on_the nοvelfire.net

“I asked about the father.”

“He’s… gone missing,” I said.

“Who told you this?”

“My contact at QianT did,” I said. Fei-Fei, that was.

“Vincent,” Masaru said, nodding at me. Vincent looked at me and handed me the tablet. I saw a block of code, and parsed through it in moments.

Then I fought to stop my eyes from widening in recognition.

This was… my virus.

The one that Lucy and I had implanted into the Tanaka household network, using Katsuo as a mule.

“A data scraper,” I said. “Attached to a Daemon that…” I scrolled through the page. “Feeds the data it finds into the Net, where it goes…” I kept scrolling. “Disappears into a satellite uplink.”

Vincent raised an eyebrow. Masaru looked entirely impassive. “Arasaka Counterintelligence have worked on this case for weeks without making any headway. Vincent, explain to the boy the nature of your department’s difficulties.”

Vincent cleared his voice and spoke in a gravelly tone. This guy was supposed to be twenty-seven? “We’ve only managed to recover a fraction of the code used in this cyber-attack. Very little traces were left. The approach was light-weight, modular, skillful. Like nothing I’ve ever seen before. It looks like it was programmed by an AI, but that can’t be: the virus is far too well-rounded. There’s intention in the programming that most AI can’t replicate.”

“No leads, then?” I asked, scrolling through the page.

“Nothing conclusive.”

I nodded.

“What we know,” Vincent continued. “Is that at approximately two AM, Mr. Tanaka received an alert that someone had breached into his household network. While rushing home with his security detail from the hospital that his son was in after going cyberpsycho, a group of gunmen attacked him and his security, killing everyone and disappearing the executive. No witnesses, no surveillance footage. The street camera feeds were corrupted beyond repair, and nobody stuck around to give us their first-hand testimonies. Tanaka’s presumed dead at the moment. Dead, or imprisoned. Either way, it’s very likely that he has been fully compromised by now.”

I turned to Masaru. “Respectfully, sir: where do I come in?”

“You’ve made entreaties with QianT, our current prime suspects,” Masaru said. “Keep deepening that bond. Keep searching for answers. Failing that, you could perhaps hold your ear to the ground and search for answers in the streets. Recall, young man, that I am gifting you this opportunity to make things right with me. Your success will elevate you.”

I sighed. “I desperately look forward to succeeding, then.”

“And regarding the matter of QianT,” Masaru went on. “If you manage to find conclusive evidence of their wrongdoings, I will gift you a substantial stake of the firm after we acquire it. You will be its sole proprietor, answering only to me.”

Holy shit.

“That’s… very generous, sir,” I said.

“Leave. Both of you.”

I stood up, and left the room, alongside Vincent. Once we left the room together, the door closing behind us, Vincent spoke to me. “You did all that by yourself?”

Was he talking about the enforcers? “Yeah.”

“Bigshot racer, grade-A student, and you got hands,” Vincent went on. As I headed to the elevator, I noted that we were both going the same way. “Quite the resume for a seventeen-year-old.”

“Thanks,” I muttered. “I try.”

“No shit,” he chuckled. “And you do programming too, by the looks of it. You a Netrunner as well?”

I looked at him with a blank expression. “I dabble.”

“Heh,” he said. “So do I. But I’m not gonna lie to you, kid. That investigation’s a dead end. Whoever pulled this shit was a fucking pro. And I’ll tell you right now, it wasn’t anyone from no QianT,” he said the name of the company like it was barely even an entity in his eyes.

“Militech?” I suggested idly.

“Could be,” he said with a shrug. “Don’t have a clue about any assets of theirs that are this good, though. Listen, David, right? Money’s money. All the megacorps have it. But the only thing that gets shit done, the lifeblood of any corp, is its talent. Guys like you and me. Militech likes to flood their problems with money, but this doesn’t carry that signature.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “What if it’s all talent, no money?” I hedged, wondering how close he was to the answer. “Freelancers?”

Vincent grinned at me. “You mean edgerunners?”

“Well, yeah,” I said. Was that his working theory?

“You’re getting warm, kid,” Vincent said. “You read any screamsheets or watch the news lately?”

Fucking hell. He wasn’t just close. He had already guessed it. “You talking about… D?” I asked.

He shrugged, looking ahead. “Got no evidence. No motive. Just a hunch. Guy’s a fucking monster. Who’s to say he don’t got a monstrous Netrunner hiding behind him? Power attracts power, you know. And he’s as strong as they come.”

“What the fuck?” I feigned outrage. “How am I supposed to bag a fucking terrorist?”

Vincent looked at me like I was stupid. “You’re not. The CFO wants to sweat you, obviously. Keep holding you in low esteem just to have you try extra hard to win his approval, which strictly speaking, you never will.”

My eyes widened at his candor. “Why’re you being so honest?”

We finally reached the elevator. He pressed the down button, and waited for the elevator to arrive. “I’m from Heywood,” he said, which was quite the surprise. “Grew up in Vista.” Real shithole. Not as bad as Arroyo, but it came close. “I know what it’s like to crawl up from the bottom with my own two hands. I see you. I respect the hustle.”

I nodded. “Appreciate it, choom.”

The elevator finally arrived, and we both stepped in. To combat the awkward silence, I said, “Got any other pearls of wisdom?”

Vincent snorted. “Know when to try hard, and when not to. If you can recognize the difference between bullshit work, like what the CFO just saddled you with, and real work, you’ll be golden.”

I snorted. “Sounds risky. What if I don’t give it my all where it counts?”

“That’s where experience comes in,” he said. “At first, you try hard every time. Keep doing that until you’ve seen just about everything. And once you have, start thinking for yourself.”

Alright, alright.

“Thanks,” I said. “Appreciate it. Vincent.”

He nodded. “We ever meet again, call me V.”

His stop arrived—the thirty-fifth floor. He walked out and kept walking without looking back.

1. V. He used a mononym, too.

Interesting.

000

Jin: So? What’s the score?

Just as I drove out of the corpo district, I activated my Sandevistan to heal my savaged face.

David: Still alive.

Jin: I’m not gonna lie, I half-expected you to not be.

David: Nah, your dad’s preem.

Jin: …you’re joking, right?

David: I’m serious! He was super chill.

Jin: David, if he was chill, I’m telling you right now, you’re… ahhh. Well. It was preem knowing ya.

I laughed.

David: Fucking hell. If I never see him again, it’ll be too soon. You know he had a couple of enforcers kick the shit out of me, right? 2v1. Chromed up fuckers raining blows on me, kicking my head while I was down. And the old man shot me in the knee midway through. I could have died.

Jin: HAH! Classic dad. How’d it go?

David: I won. Duh. Wait… I almost forgot. He never even so much as brought up the topic of company chrome. Nothing I had to chip in for him to keep tabs on me.

Jin: Heh! Nah. Don’t worry about that. He doesn’t need bullshit to get to you. You’ll listen to him because it’s good for your health. That’s enough reassurance for him. But listen, David. Here’s some more good news. You are exceedingly unlikely to see that guy again for months. I’ll be the first point of contact between you two, and you’ll be answering to me for the most part anyway. And you know just how chill a boss I am!

David: Yeah, you’re a regular bouquet of daisies. Anyway, let’s talk cribs soon. I need a bigger place.

Actually, I needed several places. But I’d work those out by myself. Right now, I just needed to skip the line and get myself to a nicer subdistrict.

North Oak?

…Nah.

Too much bullshit greenery and Beaver vibes. I could do without that shit for the time being.

Lucy and I had gravitated towards Charter Hill, but a lot of the most luxurious condos and penthouses required corpo connections to move into, it wasn’t just a matter of money.

Jin: Sure—drinks tonight, alright? I ain’t taking no for an answer.

David: I need to sleep, dude. Plus, your dad’s boys banged me up real hard.

Jin: Fuck—fine. Tomorrow then. Go to the med-center, heal up, and tomorrow, let’s fuck ourselves up! Pre-drinks at my place at eight in the morning.

David: The fuck? What about school?

Jin: The fuck do you mean about school? It’s Memorial Week! No school for the next six days.

Huh?!

David: Ah shit. Forgot. So fucking weird that they didn’t just give us this Monday, too.

Jin: Then we’d have nine days off in a row, which is too crazy for the higher-ups to even consider.

David: Four of those days are the weekend. Those don’t count.

Jin: They do in Night City.

I snorted. To think that soon, even the concept of a weekend would cease to exist in my head as I entered the work force. Weird.

David: Alright, then. Tomorrow. See you.

Jin: Peace, vassal. Heheheh.

I grimaced.

David: Don’t do that.

Jin: Heh!

I hung up on him a second later and called Lucy.

Lunacy: David!

D: I’m good, babe! Promise!

Lunacy: That’s… that’s good!

D: I’m heading home right now. See you soon, alright?

Lunacy: See you soon.

First, I’d need to clean all the blood off my face.

Maybe change into some new clothes as well. Just because the suit was combat rated unfortunately didn’t mean that it had an option to prevent itself from absorbing blood.

What a drag.