A/N: Back in 2012 a few friends and I started an online Shadowrun campaign. As roleplay games do, it sort of died before we got too far, but my friend Lily Zen and I loved our characters so much, we decided to just continue their stories via pieces of fiction. Years later and we're still doing it. While Lily has already published a few of our collaborated stories, I've kept an archive of my solo works alllll to myself. I figured it was time to share so that those who are following the stories on Lily's page can have some missing blanks filled in, considering all of our works tie together to form an entirely new universe. For those hardcore Shadowrun folks, as we wrote we started deviating more and more from the canon universe and began making things up on our own that fit what we wanted better, so you'll notice that this world gradually steers away from most rules you'd need for game play. Consider it an AU.

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Will Bradleys.

Eight.

"Stay here and be quiet, alright?"

Will barely acknowledges his dad, simply nodding and sitting down on the floor in the far back corner of the building. It's his usual spot in any of these types of fancy functions, and he's done enough of these to know that his job is to disappear against the wall. He's already got his music playing in his headphones, his Captain Gizmo goggles displaying his favorite Shadow League cartoon in overlay on top of the room full of chairs where people in suits are filing in, and his fingers are curled around his tiny Moon Mobile that he'll inevitably have whirring in circles around him to keep himself occupied.

"Good boy," his dad says, patting him on the head before making his way over to the doors to greet his boss, Damien Slate.

Will listens to them exchange friendly greetings before his dad starts in on new things that may have come up just before the conference, things that Damien may need to know about current trends or concerns or any number of other business-related items. It's all nonsense to the boy, and he quickly tunes them out as they make their way to the front of the room. He'll be left to amuse himself for the next hour or so, after which his dad will be back to claim him. Mr. Slate will give him a bar of real chocolate - Will's favorite part of these meetings - that he'll hang onto and share with his friends back home. It's worth the price of having to sit by and behave while his dad does his job as Mr. Slate's favorite assistant.

He's partway through his third cartoon when the walls in the room start exploding in on themselves, showering the screaming businessmen and women with dust and pieces of plaster. Will ducks his head as another large hole appears in the wall above him, and a long shaft of metal from a shattered support beam nearly skewers him to the floor, missing him by mere inches. Breathing heavily at his realized near-death, the boy looks up to see a lone man step through the doorway, unnoticed amidst the panic and chaos the explosions are creating. Calmly, the man lifts up some sort of weapon, aiming it at the front of the room.

Will's eyes track the aim, seeing Mr. Slate being helped up off the floor by some other man, and his father standing up a few feet away.

"Dad! Look out!" he screams, sending the alert through his comm, worried that his dad might get caught by whatever the man is about to send in that direction.

His father looks back, sees what has his son so frightened, catches the moment when the assassin pulls the trigger, and makes a split second decision to put himself between his employer and the oncoming projectiles.

Will watches in almost slowed time, makes eye contact with his father for the briefest moment before the unbelievable happens. His dad doesn't move out of the way. Instead, he throws himself in front of Mr. Slate, back turned to the assassin, and catches all four launched blades through his back.

Everything freezes for what seems like an eternity.

At the front of the room, Damien catches Will's father against hard against his chest. "Jack?" he whispers, before his own pain sets in. Looking down, he sees that the blades have caught him, too, impaling the two men together.

Jack becomes dead weight in Damien's arms, and gravity pulls them both to the ground, separating them as they descend. Jack falls to the side, Damien lands on his back, and time starts up again.

Armed troops rush in, instantly killing the assassin. Medics swarm the room, making their way to the downed Slate, first, bypassing the numerous other injured people still scattered throughout.

Will slowly forces himself up on shaky legs, sees the way his father is ignored, but makes no attempt to scream at them to help. His PAN has already showed him his father's vitals. There's nothing. No movement, no breath, no heartbeat. The blade running through the center of his chest took care of all that within seconds.

The boy makes his way to the front of the room, doing his best to ignore the pool of dark blood surrounding his father's body. He kneels down at Jack's head and closes the lids on his father's sightless eyes. He doesn't cry.

He left me, he thinks, taking a glance over at the medics lifting Damien onto a gurney. He left me for him.

Damien turns his head then and meets the boy's eyes. He whispers something up at one of the medics, who nods and approaches young Will.

"Son, Mr. Slate wants you to come with him to the hospital."

"Why?" Will asks absently.

"Because you have nowhere else to go."

The words hit him like a bat to the stomach, sending him into a further state of shock. The medic gently grasps the boy's numb hand and leads him away, taking him away from his life as the assistant's son. Soon, his new life will begin, and he'll make headlines as the boy who Mr. Slate so generously took in following his father's heroic sacrifice.

It takes some time before Will cares about any of it, longer for him to adjust to it, and longer still for him to grow comfortable with it. What time never does is to allow him to accept it. He will never accept the decision his father made to put his boss, to put the success of a company, over his own son. It is for this reason that Will never aspires to step into Damien's shoes. He doesn't want to be involved with the corp. He doesn't care about the notion that one day the entire thing could fall. There are real people out there with real problems, people that need saving.

He's just got better things to do.