Priss

No, I didn't spend the whole day drinking. That's a Lena — okay, it's not really a Lena thing. A Lena thing would be more like the feed of emoji-saturated texts she sent me a few hours ago about how she managed to score a date. Nene doesn't use 'em, I don't use 'em, Celia types full sentences with proper kanji on her texts because she takes everything seriously, but Lena, even when she's in a bad mood, knows how to make these little chains of stupid-looking faces that I guess are universal on all the big media platforms — fuck it, I'm getting off topic.

I slept in late. Tried not to think about what was happening to my girlfriend. Failed miserably. So I distracted myself by looking through the song Sylvie and I have been writing for her.

It's her song, definitely. There's a sweetness in the lyrics that I've never really tried for in my own work. It's a love song, cleaner in its love than my own work. Konya Wa Hurricane, for example. I wrote that song out of weakness, not out of strength. A song about trying to forget the misery of life by just being in love with some person you hold close to yourself, that was what it was. I don't know a lot of other people who do their own music, but it's the same with them. They start to be annoyed by their own work after a few years, but they wrote it, the crowds love it, they have to keep performing it.

Which isn't to say that I hate belting out that chorus. Fuck no. I roar like a hurricane every time. But once that first album comes out I'm gonna have to start writing new songs fast. The truth of this past century is that the songs people remember are the party songs. Like, most of the stuff Show-ya did wasn't really about anything, but I got my bandmates to listen to Outer Limits a week ago and we're still talking about the metal-meets-pop speed-guitar artistry. We're a revival band, self-conscious of it, and we've gotta get some of that in.

Sylvie's song, though… It's different. It's not much of a rock song, channels more TwenCen city pop than anything else. She wrote the lyrics, so I write the bridge, the stingers, probably mostly on synth, and it's about something… I hope she's okay. Celia really thinks she can heal Sylvie by hurting her. Which is her style.

What was it she said to me when we first met, when I tried to cut her guts out and she pinned me to the hood of her Benz barehanded without even trying very hard? Ah, yes.

In that smooth voice, even with an edge: "You certainly seem determined to waste your life in the most pathetic ways. Playing gangbanger for six years, then this martyrdom where you'll be cut to ribbons before you reach the first security annex, another idiotic womanchild who doesn't know what it means to be a hero."

What was it I said? I didn't say much. I thought GENOM had sent her. When she said she wasn't corporate, I just deflated. I wanted someone to finish the job after Miya and the rest died. How could no one care about what happened to them except this well-dressed ghost?

Maybe Celia was less sharp-tongued with Lena and Nene. She became the woman she thought I needed at that moment. Whatever. I'm skimming the lyrics my girlfriend wrote and all I can think about is this other woman. Focus. Hum the lyrics for the chorus:

Pull up! Look at me! See me everywhere you go! / Pull up! Hold me close now my lover… / Pull up! Feel me! Teach me everything you know! / Pull up! Tell me that there's no other…

It's really tender, isn't it? Kinda poppy, almost. Sylvie said all the music she listened to in Anchorpoint was like that. She listened to a lot of Vision, especially after Largo. Said to me that if her music sounds like anything it should sound like that. Sweet was the word she used.

We'll be finally…

Call on my holofeed. Direct line. It's Celia. Shit.

I tap my left temple and she picks up, her voice as immediate as if she was right beside me, algorithms working overtime to make it sound like it's not just a magnet vibrating into my jawbone but something with a place.

"Hello?"

"Good to hear from you Priss. You're well, I trust?"

"Yeah. Been better. Been worse. How's Sylvie?"

"She's fine. Not even half as bad as last time. Listen, I'm inviting yourself and the others for dinner at the penthouse tonight. A few jobs have been sent to me by my contacts over the last two months, while we were inactive, and I think it might be a good idea to see what targets we're most interested in pursuing before we get the second-generation suits online."

"So when would that be, exactly?"

"Soon. It is getting late, as you've doubtless noticed."

"I haven't. Shit, what time is it?" I realize, belatedly, that I've been inside the trailer most of the day. I made myself lunch with some 3D-printed veggie protein and some rice but the rest of the time…

I get up, stumble out of the trailer. The narrow winter sun barely shines in most of Megatokyo. Even in the outer reaches of the Fault, like where I am, most of the light is ambient, ghostly, barely there. It's almost dark.

"About four in the afternoon, Priss. Songwriting, I take it?"

"Eh. Napped a bit, played around with some ideas… yeah." I squint, track the fragments of ghost-city skyscrapers out along the high horizon. "I'll just come right over and do some work in your living room, how's that sound? Help you make dinner if you want."

"Thank you, Priss. I'll contact Mackie and Nene and they'll send the meal plan your way."

I laugh, harsh, almost barking. "Mackie and Nene cooking? So the meal plan is which upscale restaurant we order out from when it falls through? Or will it just be omurice?"

She laughs back, softer, smoother, hm-hm! "How cruel of you, Priss! To slander my baby brother's culinary skills. He had to take care of himself for quite a long time. Perhaps he has an overreliance on curry as a go-to meal, but he's quite earnest about getting better."

"Right, because the only thing Nene knows is that awful borscht she says is an old family recipe or whatever."

"That is a point." I can practically hear the smile play across her lips. "Ah, but we'll see what comes out of the hotpot once it's all over. No use worrying about it."

"Yeah. Yeah." A thought occurs to me. "So, about the pseudocortex — you're still going through with it?"

"It's time-intensive to design, but not to actually print, so yes. I just want to see if I can get it working on Sylvie, Priss, I'm not overriding your wishes."

She says it like a therapist. "Not yet, anyway."

Fuck, why did I say that? "Have faith in me, Priss," she drawls out. The smile's gone. "I don't want to hurt her, and I don't want to hurt you. The team wouldn't function otherwise, it's as simple as that. You're irreplaceable. Take heart in that."

Irreplaceable… the word lingers in my head. I guess you don't fix a girl up from near-lethal wounds if you think of that person as disposable. But does that mean Celia's going to listen to me when I say 'I don't want that goddamn thing in my brain' and mean it? Probably not.

"Alright," I get out. "I'll be over there in a bit." Let's avoid the conversation topic , I want to say, but that would make me look weak. And if it comes up I'm just going to be honest. Simple as that.

Celia hangs up. I duck back inside the trailer and move to throw some clothes on. Something relatively nice, it is a penthouse dinner after all – except all my nice clothes are things Celia handed off to me on the grounds that, and I quote, "You're surprisingly beautiful, but you almost want to conceal that beauty offstage, and as a woman whose day job is making other women look beautiful I can't bear to watch you squander that potential with every waking moment." She said it as a joke, backpedaled a bit after that, but she meant it in earnest.

So… Something less nice? Just as a little middle finger in the face of her expectations? Nah. Let's go for it. Barely-blue blouse, button-up red leather jacket… yeah. I've had this combo for what feels like years even though it's barely been that long. It's not riding gear, which is the best gear, but you don't wear a full set of riding gear into a public place unless you wanna get accused of cosplaying some tokusatsu fuck. The bug guy, whatever his name was.

The shadows seem to lengthen in real time as I go out to the little cubby where my bike is. I unlock it, pull the fairing up to slip into its contours, flick on the starter switch, and whiz out into Megatokyo.

Sylvie

"Gulf and Bradley Petrochemicals are still of the opinion that GENOM intentionally sabotaged their research partnership into autonomous nanomachine colonies, they want us to find proof that they can use to sue the North American division-"

"Pass," Priss says. "We may both hate GENOM but I'm not gonna help a buncha Qtard petrogarchs incite a corpwar."

Lena, Nene, and Mackie nod furiously. Celia swipes the hologram showing the job off into nonexistence.

"Next up," Celia says. "The Kurdish International Liberation Fund recently reached out to GENOM to request assistance with an agricultural development initiative so they could feed themselves and terraform areas where their aid networks operate. Not surprisingly, GENOM ignored them, they don't want to jeopardize relations with recognized governments like the Iranians, so the Kurds want us to steal blueprints for printable technology that they could use to operate the initiative on their own. They seem to believe that the relevant files are airgapped in a less-secure storage site outside the Tower, so we'd just have to find the site, plug Nene in, and leave. Sixty million yen on completion"

Nene perks up. "If we just make the blueprints public and open-source would they still pay us? To make sure it can't be traced back to them?"

"But isn't it too hot there most of the time?" Lena asks. "Or are they gonna build small-scale stackfarms?"

"I'll reach out to them, then," Celia says. "Valid concerns, but we're interested." Another swipe. A ghostly face, hair and skin the same shade of bluish silver-white. I can't quite place her age — she looks almost Sexaroid. "Lucyna Kushinada, Fabrication Coordinator for Tycho Base and the under-construction Tranquility City. Came to us publicly, drawing on individual wealth for her contact fee. She wants us to infiltrate Hanako Arasaka's Chiba compound, copy and wipe her entire server framework including her stemjack computer. Once she gets that data, she'll provide us with a live link to anything that goes on in Tranquility and two hundred million yen."

Priss raises an eyebrow. "Sounds like you want the former more than the latter, Celia."

"I do. Fargo keeps feeding me information about inexplicable breakdowns on supposedly rock-stable Boomers up there, and months before the Lunar Centennial Exposition at that. Something's going on, and if we can get someone as high-ranking as Kushinada as a confidant, we may be able to prevent a disaster of some sort-"

"Of some sort?" Lena chimes in. "So we're talking about Largo again, then?"

Celia nods. My blood runs cold — but not as cold as it usually does when he's brought up. Did that ghost somehow make me less afraid of him? Or was it Celia's words, that promise that I would be the one to avenge myself on him for Anri's sake? I'm not sure. "Lunar and orbital Boomers are grown to even tighter specs in their neural hardware compared to ground-based Boomers, and we know how little even terrestrial Boomers actually malfunction — more often than not it's one organization or another seeking a coverup. If genuine rampancies are afoot, it's not inconceivable to think that the entity that manifested as Largo might be behind them. What better way to humiliate humanity than to destroy the two blocs' ostensible crowning achievement? Not to mention the lunar massdriver…"

" Dozhe moi, " Nene gapes. "They never said anything about a massdriver in the PR kit. Who's building it?"

"What ever ," Priss cuts in. "Back to the job at hand. Why does this woman want us to humiliate an Arasaka? Didn't the megacorp go under after the Quake, the Cyber Boom, and GENOM in quick succession? They're like the fuckin' Musks now, no one gives a shit."

"Maybe she has a grudge against the family? Or Hanako in particular?" I say.

"Correct," Celia says. "Most of her identity is erased from public records, but the middleman she contacted did some independent research for me and found she was likely involved in Arasaka's attempts to weaponize AI infoweapons as a child, as well as the Night City Massacres of '58."

"Wait," Lena says, "Wasn't that one of the times they had to publicly deploy that one super-cyborg? Adam Smasher? No, that was like the last time. Then they had him fight a 55C in '62 and he lost."

"Yes, yes. I suspect she wants to avenge her — lover from that time, on whatever she can."

Silence. Why did Celia's breath just hitch? Odd.

"Waitaminute," Priss says. "They used to tell legends about the guy who tried to fight him. Martinez or whatever his name was." She nods her head. "It's coming back to me now! He stole a bunch of military-grade cyberware, including a reflex-booster, and went absolutely batshit! Some guy commissioned me to write a song about that moron!"

"Oh yeah," Nene says. "I remember you complaining about having to write that one without getting to perform it yourself. And you tried really hard to do a sort of corny ballad style?"

"Yeah." Priss shrugs. "I knew three dozen different guys who idolized guys like that back in the bad years. Wanted to be meat-for-hire hyped up on the glamor, the promise of a samurai-ish death. The whole Edgerunner culture, those turbo-mercenaries, that was just another market for shitware." She laughs. "You know, they say the Sandevistan was one hell of a piece of reflex-boosting hardware, but even it could only operate twice a day before fucking up the brain with ionic-exchange accelerators. Gave people who spammed it epilepsy. Remind you guys of anything?"

Silence. Even deeper than last time. Mackie, who's been busy going through his meal, looking around at us girls, all too busy watching Celia to eat, drops his chopsticks. They don't fall on the floor, just clatter on the table.

Lena sighs. Nene leans back and mouths a silent prayer in what I assume is Russian. Mackie draws into himself. And Celia?

Celia's eyes narrow. Like she's been ready for this.

"You really want to have this fight, don't you," our leader says in a low voice.

"Who said it has to be a fight?" Priss isn't smirking or sneering or anything. As if she killed her own good mood.

I don't want this. I never even got the chance to tell Priss that things were going good, that Celia has a plan, that she doesn't want to hurt anyone — but would it even matter to my lover?

"You brought it up, Priss. I wasn't going to bring it up until I'd optimized Sylvie's own hardware-"

"Fuck me and all the gods and saints and dead prime ministers, listen to yourself! Optimize a human being, will you? Fix every goddamn weakness with machines, why don't you?" She rises, hunched over the table. "Optimize us down to Boomers if that's what you're after!"

"You know what I meant, Priss. Sylvie's doing fine, for the record." She turns to me. Priss told me once that the only memory of her parents that she has is them fighting, screaming, battering each other with empty sake bottles. Why does this feel familiar? Why am I taking on her memories? Why am I involved in this?

Well. I know the answer to that last one.

"Aren't you? Since she won't listen to me, tell her about what you experienced?"

Priss glares at Celia. "Still can't stop using her as an object, can you? What was it you said to me when you wouldn't let her out of biostasis? 'She's an object made for people to desire?'"

"I know she said that," I say. "She told me that while you were comatose. And she apologized for trying to impale me in the Nosferatu, and she said she was wrong ."

Priss glares at me. "You can't possibly believe her when she says shit like that. She still hooked you up to that goddamn machine the first time, didn't she?"

"That was a mistake," Celia growls. I've never heard her growl before, her deep voice getting even deeper. "I atone for my mistakes, Priss. I've done it several times. You, on the other hand, seem to think that as long as you bottle your self-loathing up and run your shame on continuous play, that's somehow better, even after you've done everything you can. Why else would Sho be in that mess of an orphanage?"

Priss jerks back. Are those tears in her eyes? "Don't you bring up Sho. Don't you ever fucking bring him up. I visit him every goddamn week. I'm not his mother and I could never be his mother, because every time he looks at me I know he sees his mother buried under their fucking house and I'm not going to hurt him like that. Not the way you insist on hurting everyone-"

Wait, Sho's mother… was buried? Priss took me to meet the kid once, but she never went into what happened between them. I lean over to Mackie. He can't meet my eyes, but finds it in himself to speak anyway. "Look, girls, we're fighting over nothing here, can we just maybe back up a second-"

"Whyever would Priss do that, Mackie?" Celia husks, sarcasm flowing from her mouth like vomit. "If my read of Sylvie is correct, she hasn't even told the woman she says she loves the most in all the world about the woman before her. Sho's mother, poor poor Kaori Shimada."

What? No no no. She said there'd been other girls before her, but no one ever like me. She lied to me.

What else has she lied to me about, just to feel good about herself? I expect something like this from Celia, but her? Priss, whose heart I thought was open as blooming flower? Does she really not trust me?

Who am I to her?

"Look," Priss says halfheartedly, "I never told Sylvie because it wasn't important, I wanted — I don't know what I wanted, I just didn't want to live with what happened, I-"

Of course. I'm her innocence. Her pure thing. Something to sully but never stain. I see it now.

I rise. I look at Priss. She's frozen. Lena and Nene are scooching their chairs away from Priss.

"You're sick," are the words that come out.

"Listen, I-"

And then comes the rest. All at once.

"Is that how you treat me after everything I've been through? Everything you know has happened to me? You lie to me about some other woman who you swore everlasting love to? But then she dies so you just turn to me instead? And don't tell me for your own convenience?"

"Celia's using you, Sylvie," she breathes, "It's not like that, I mean the whole point of this is that she can't stop manipulating you, right? Turning you into a, a weapon again…"

" AND WHAT ARE YOU DOING, THEN? We have sex almost every night, because you know I'm built for sexual attachment, don't you? You know that, of course you do. So all your talk about liberation from purpose or whatever doesn't mean a fucking thing! Because you can't stop using me the way I was meant to be used, the same as everyone else! A pretty little thing to use, to forget! You — you—"

And it's at this point that I fuck up.

"You're no better than Kaufmann! Or Largo, for that matter! It's all what you want out of me and nothing else!"

I know I've made a mistake the minute her face seems to fall open, every muscle released at once. I'm not sure I care, though. Because I mean it. How can she talk the way she does?

How can she look at me like this is shocking to her?

("Oh shit," Nene whispers.)

Five seconds pass before Priss breathes again. Before her face hardens back up, impregnable.

"Okay," she says. Her voice is barely there. "If that's how you feel, then… yeah, I guess I'm just gonna leave. I'm sure Celia will make up a room for you."

She gets up. Celia rises, and Priss whirls on her. "Don't try to stop me on this one, you psychopathic empress. Just don't. You have her, don't you? Haven't you won?"

"No, wait-" Mackie gets up, but it's too late, Priss is already running out the dining room door, back down to where her motorcycle is. Maybe it's just my imagination, but — is she crying? No. She can't be. Not after this.

She's gone with a slam that seems to echo through the room, sound folding in on itself, louder with every pass.

Celia sighs, leans back. "Fine then. I'll just have to lock down the security system, shut the garage door-"

"Sis?" Mackie turns to both of us. "Don't you fucking dare ."

"Oh? You're opposing me, little brother? What do you propose I do?"

"Let her go, Celia," Lena singsongs, "as surely as you did when she said she couldn't handle what she did to Sylvie, the last time she tried to quit. Then once you're in better frames of mind, I'll pick her up, okay? Keep her in contact, if not in the Sabers proper."

I've never seen Celia deflate like this. It's almost fascinating to watch. "Fine. I'll let her go, but I'm keeping her mastimike on. I've no intention of letting her leave this city without me knowing."

"Cool," Nene says. "Great. And, uh…" she turns to me, "you can either have Mackie's room, the spare room that Celia uses for storage, or the couch. Pick your poison."

"The couch," I say. It feels so innocuous, and yet I feel almost high on something, giddy with a sense of horrible finality. Something has just ended, I ended it, and —

And I hurt her. More than Celia ever could hurt her, I hurt her and I tore the Knight Sabers apart.

I don't know how to be strong anymore. Is this what my strength gets me? My desire to be more than just an anatomically correct lovedoll? Does being free mean you have to just cut out everything in life you don't like? Silence your human feelings?

No. I'm not a Boomer. But I'm not a human, either. I'm human enough .

I don't want to cry. But it happens anyway. Sick and heavy and choking as I try to stop. I'm only vaguely aware of Lena coming up behind me and holding me softly. Of Nene and her bringing me over to the living room, down to the couch, and just sitting beside me. Nene's singing something soft and lilting and Russian. I don't know it then, but later I find out it's a lullaby, something her mother sang to her when she couldn't sleep. Two concepts I never had.

But even though I'm blubbering like something about to die, I'm aware of Celia stalking out of the room like she's ashamed she ever entered it, and Mackie trailing after her, saying things to her I can't hear.

And I can catch it in her face. Something I've never been able to read before.

Shame.