When Lucy said 'sooner' David had imagined she'd make a call and he'd be hustled into a smoke-filled hideaway to make the deal.

As he approached his fifth hour of keeping watch while she klepped shards from every 'Saka corpo she could find, David reflected that the emphasis must have been on 'a little'.

Still, his attempts to get through to his mom's contact between train routes hadn't gone anywhere, and the picksocket had at least offered him a couple hundred eddies to keep an eye out for any security.

"Worse things than a free ride." He muttered to himself, careful not to vocalise through his agent. He'd pulled his weight so far. The last thing he wanted was to distract Lucy from her latest snatch and make himself look like a gonk.

Like the last guy she'd hit, so busy kissing ass on his call that he hadn't realised he was speaking out loud. Poor fuck had spent the last ten minutes reassuring his boss that he had finished whatever report they were talking about, oblivious to Lucy force ejecting his slots and snagging the shards out of the air. David hoped for his sake that the report wasn't on one of them.

Unfortunately for everyone, it must have been, because as he reassured his boss for the fiftieth time the corpo reached up to scratch at his slot and found it empty.

'Hey Lucy. We're blown.' David sent, fighting not to look nervous as he stopped leaning against the wall and started walking towards the nearest door.

'Got got it. About time.' Came her reply, calm and unruffled. From what he could glimpse at the other end of the crowded car, the netrunner was breaking off the same as he was but with ten times his chill. 'Meeting's confirmed, so we'll leave the station and catch a ride.'

'You have a car?' He tried not to let his agent pick up his surprise, but he hadn't expected somebody picking sockets on the NCART to have the scratch for their own wheels.

He must have failed, because there was an aggrieved edge in Lucy's sharp, 'Not mine.'

David was trying to figure out how to respond without pissing her off any worse when the corpo's nasal voice filled the car.

"Picksocket! It was her!"

Experienced NC-residents wouldn't turn their heads that easily, but one or two other corpos with Arasaka IDs did glance over. Then one of those slapped a hand over her own slots and her glance at Lucy became a glare. Magnified moments later when her eyes lit up with a call.

Commotion from the next compartment pulled David's attention to the doors behind him, and the two Arasaka security types who were shoving their way through the crowded train car.

'Lucy-!' He'd barely begun to warn her when the door locked itself ahead of the hired guns. When he turned to look at her he found the netrunner had one corpo on the floor and her gun trained on another, all the while the rest of the car did their best to sidle out of the line of fire without breaking the studied dispassion that pre-emptively declared they hadn't seen anything.

Then the goons opened fire and all hell broke loose.

The glass of the connecting door held, but nobody was waiting around to see how long for. David slipped into the stampeding crowd and hoped he'd been imagining one of the 'saka guns pointing at him. Then his world became chaos and the pressure of other bodies and trying to keep anyone from falling beneath the crush as it pressurised the next car, then the one after that, before finally bursting free when the doors opened at the next station.

Through the glass, he had already seen the elevated platform thick with people. A flood of them blasting out of the opening train doors transformed the exhausted tension of the evening rush into a mess of limbs and anger in an instant.

Lucy reappeared amidst the shouting and screaming and rising violence of what was rapidly becoming a riot. Her grip on the back of his borrowed jacket was the first he knew she'd come back for him, and the second was the bottom dropping out of his stomach when she threw them both off the edge of the station.

Some part of him remembered the monowire, and thankfully that kept him just calm enough not to piss himself. Screaming was a foregone conclusion though.

They plummeted towards the ground and a vehicle suddenly accelerated out of the crush of Night City traffic to skid to a halt beneath them. It slid between pedestrians like someone slipping through a crowd to grab the last half-off bag of kibble, and if he'd been less occupied with falling then David thought he'd have been damn impressed.

As it was, Lucy slowed them both just enough that they bounced off the armoured van's roof and tumbled down the front of it with nothing broken and only a few bruises.

A man with a moustache even more impressive than his driving slid his head out the window to yell, "Lucy! What in the hell?!"

She dragged the two of them up off the ground and hustled him into the back seat before diving after him. Only then slowing down enough to shout back, "Falco, drive!"

It hadn't been necessary. 'Falco' had put pedal to the floor as soon as the first gunshots sounded from the NCART station above them. David wasn't sure if they were the target or not, but he was in agreement with a policy of not hanging around to find out.

Only after they'd been driving for a minute or two did he stop to take in the other people in the backseat, and find yet another gun shoved in his face. He hadn't even noticed it.

He could hardly help but notice the person on the other side of the gun, being as they were easily the shortest person to ever pull a gun on him. Including the one time some gangoon's kid brother had tried holding up one of his building's elevators. Poor kid.

Skin so pale it had to be sculpted was the second thing to catch his attention, followed by the fluorescent pink tattoos, and the combination of underwear and an oversized coat that was all she was wearing, and then she poked him in the forehead with the barrel of her gun and David's brain reset to more important things. Like talking his way out of a bullet, again.

"Uh…" The tiny woman immediately tightened her grip on the gun and David was struck by the certainty that she was far more willing to use it than Lucy had been. The barrel hadn't looked as big a moment earlier, but he was finding it hard not to stare at it as it loomed so close to his eyes. He had to say the right thing, any moment now, "...uh."

"Chill Rebecca," Lucy saved him from talking himself into a hole in his head, "He's with me, and he won't try anything. Kid's got chrome to deal."

"I ain't buying."

"Maine will."

"Wait, it's that good?" The gun dropped and David stopped thinking about the odds against it being the same Maine, distracted by the woman who had shoved her green pigtails into his face in her eagerness to say, "Actually I am buying. What do you got?"

He opened his mouth and had a near miss with another 'uh' before he got his tongue under control and said, "Just the one piece. High end."

As quick as she'd leant forward, Rebecca was back in her seat. Hands behind her head and sighing discontentedly as she muttered, "Boss man'll hog it then. Assmunch."

A swerve of the van pressed David against Lucy, but he tried not to enjoy it. Then they abruptly straightened out, then slowed to more normal speeds, and he hastened to extract himself before she could think he was taking advantage of the excuse.

The driver leant back to look at them, absently steering them through the traffic as he did it, and said, "One emergency pickup, complete. Now where you folks headed?" He drawled the words like the cowboys in one of his mom's favourite vids, as relaxed as if he was sprawled beside a campfire in the desert, despite the blare of horns as he tilted the wheel and they slipped past a transport convoy with Militech markings.

David resisted the urge to yell at him to keep his eyes on the road, fighting down the flashes of the last time he'd been driven anywhere. Meanwhile Rebecca huffed and announced, "I got some Tyger legs to break old man, better get them where they're going fast."

"Don't blow a circ." Lucy sighed, "We just need a lift to Pershing and Sixth."

The cowboy raised an eyebrow at that, "Ain't Maine camped out in a megabuilding around there?"

"Going to sell while he's on the job?" Rebecca chimed in. "Just how fancy is this chrome?"

Lucy glanced at him instead of answering, quirking her head to the side as she did it. He took the unspoken question for what it was and decided there wasn't any harm if she trusted them enough to leave it up to him.

"A Sandevistan, military grade."

The driver whistled appreciatively, while Rebecca's eyes widened and she declared, "Nova tech." Then she got a conspiratorial look on her face and shot Lucy a glance, "Maine's been after that one for years. You angling for a bigger cut? More jobs?" She mock gasped before announcing the most absurd possibility. "Paid vacation time?"

"It's not like that." Lucy sighed again, sounding like the conversation was exhausting her. "Kid did me a favour so I'm hooking him up, that's all."

Their driver had, thankfully, returned to looking at the road, but that didn't stop him calling back to them, "What about that mess at the station?"

This time the look the netrunner shot David's way couldn't have been clearer if she held a finger to her lips and pulled her gun on him, so he kept quiet while she murmured something about getting 'caught up in Corp infighting.' Not like it was any of his business why she was keeping quiet anyway.

The driver looked back at them in the mirror with suspicious eyes, but their fellow passenger just kicked her legs up onto the seats -drawing the driver's attention, and earning herself one hell of a glare from him- and leant back until she could look down her nose at Lucy and say, "Kid? Like you're an old hand, Little Miss Less-Than-a-Year-on-the-Job."

She was grinning as she said it, but if she was trying to get Lucy to fire back and argue with her, the effort failed. Lucy huffed and looked at the window while the green haired merc pouted and started fiddling with her gun.

David just kept his own mouth shut for the rest of the drive, ignoring the driver's looks and the occasional bored prod of the merc's foot against his ribs. Though he couldn't resist grinning at her after she did the same to Lucy and got a startled laugh out of the, surprisingly ticklish, netrunner.

Not that he didn't regret his laugh a bit when they were deposited on the street outside Megabuilding H10 -according to the hologram signs that flickered uneasily in the daylight- and he found himself alone with a much grumpier picksocket than he'd expected. Rebecca's wave goodbye and shouted, "See ya chooms!" still echoed in his ears despite the hum of a far more lively megabuilding than his own, and David wished Lucy would stop with the silent treatment.

Unlucky for him, she kept it up all the way up the elevator to the sixty-eighth floor.

They shoved their way out of the elevator and into a floor that was dingy even by megabuilding standards. It felt a lot more like home, and David instinctively started to walk with a wary swagger that kept him from looking like an easy target. Instead of adopting the demeanour of a Street kid, Lucy just kept a hand on her gun and glared death at anyone who got within ten feet of her.

She didn't seem to have made up her mind about whether that including him, and he was starting to wonder if he should say something when they came to a door with flickering holos and 'Condemned' spray-painted across it in shaky letters.

"This is the place." She said, as detached as she'd been after being questioned on the ride over. "Just head on in."

She turned back towards the elevator and David felt the flare of anger at her dismissal, hot and sour and…exactly like he'd felt when his mom had lectured him. Like he'd felt when he got angry during what might be the last real conversation he had with her. When he ruined it.

'The fuck is wrong with me?' What was the point in being petty and indignant? No matter how right it felt, he was still spitting on what had, for a little while, felt like the beginnings of, something.

So David pushed down the annoyance and said to Lucy's back, "Hey. Sorry about laughing at you before. I didn't mean anything by it."

He hadn't expected her to stop, let alone turn around and look at him like, like she had no idea what he was talking about. Then confusion morphed into something more complicated, before she wrestled her way past it and shot him a rueful smile. If only a small one.

"That not what was eating you?"

Her smile died, but this time her glare was pointed far away from him. "It's not, you didn't do anything. Just hate that age crap, that's all."

Thinking back to when she'd gone quiet, he thought that maybe he understood. So he put on a smile and said, "For what it's worth, you're way ahead of me. I've only been doing this for a day."

That earned him another of those fragile little smiles, the corners of her mouth climbing a fraction higher as she shot back, "Rounding up, huh?"

Then she turned on her heel, as natural as if it had been the plan all along, and slipped past him to open the door before he could think of what to say. She asked him, "Are you coming or what?" and David hurried to follow. Leaving the question of what the hell he was feeling for another day, and focusing on what he had to do in the here and now.

'Showtime.'

With her stomach feeling more full than it had in years, Gloria wasn't surprised that she had fallen asleep. That was only to be expected, she told herself as she drifted off again, sleepily reciting the medical causes of drowsiness and common interactions with cyberware, until…she…sle…pt…

.

.

-and bolted awake to the sound of screaming.

The same streetscum who had tried to refuse their food was thrashing on his bed, begging and pleading as another of the jumble of Medtechs in Law's crew held him down. One handed and not even straining, despite how the poor gonk was sparking his rusted cyberware in his desperation to try and escape.

She was zero for one on assuming the worst of Law's crew, so she fought down her worst fears and waited to see what was going on. It was not a long wait.

Law walked in and the slight restlessness among the other patients stopped dead. All but the poor bastard who, eyes so wide that she could see the seam of his optics, started to beg with tears and snot streaming down his face.

"I'm still sick! I am! I swear!"

Without any sign that he was moved by the display, Law twitched his fingers and caught the chart that shot from its holder at the bottom of the man's bed. Gloria was one of a handful of patients who didn't flinch at the display, including -she was annoyed to notice- the 'Saka suit. That rich prick had picked up an aura of confidence while she'd been sleeping, and seemed torn between considering the show beneath his notice or sneering at the street rat begging for his life.

Still, she held her tongue and watched Law page through the chart. The tension was agonising. Not helped by the blank expressions of his Medtechs or the occasional 'tch' he made through his teeth.

Then he looked up and said, like he was pronouncing an execution, "You weren't sick to start with. Except for the cancer."

Gloria added 'worst bedside manner imaginable' to her mental profile on Law, trying not to feel for the man he'd given that diagnosis to. Then he continued.

"Watch for it coming back. Even with all the cells gone, your risk may be higher. As for your injuries-"

"I'm cured?! Are you…seri…ous…" The idiot trailed off fast under Law's gaze, looking horrified to realise he'd interrupted the taller man. It warred with the joy that she'd watched spread across his face during Law's insane declaration, making him look a bit like he was having a stroke.

He must have been pretty slow on the uptake though, because Gloria made it to the obvious next thought long before the gonk's face fell. How much would that kind of treatment cost him?

While Law summarised the injuries he'd been brought in with, Gloria watched each one hit the man like what they were. Buckets of shit pouring down on him, just like they did on everyone in Night City who wasn't like that grinning fucking corpo, who had settled on watching the show with a sadist's glee.

If her legs hadn't still been immobilised, Gloria would have been struggling not to dive across the central aisle at the fucker. Law had at least earned whatever payment he was going to demand for his work. More than earned it, really. Shitheads like that suit didn't earn anything, they just took whatever they could.

But that was a kind of thinking she'd buried when she realised that, if she had to choose, she'd rather her son be one of them than one of the insects they crushed underfoot.

Insects like the man who, as Law finished his summary, had shrunken in on himself like he was trying to disappear. It didn't work, and Law was merciless when he closed with a final question.

"Your arm was broken. How is it?"

The poor gonk looked at his arm like it would save him. Flexing the fingers and jerking in fear when the cast fell off it in two neatly cut halves. "F-fine." Then he stopped and flexed his fingers again, surprise lighting up his face. "It feels fine. Like, really good."

"No nerve damage then, which means you're ready to be discharged."

Gloria saw the face of despair on the man in that bed. A man who made one last, hopeless, attempt to save himself. Offering up a battered fistful of credchips that must have been left in the belongings that had been stowed beneath each of their beds.

"I can, I can, pay."

The corpo muffled a laugh.

"Or, or I can work it off. Please."

Gloria realised that he must be thinking like she had, that he'd be sold or harvested for the debt. Knowing -or believing anyway- that Law wouldn't do that did give her some comfort in the face of the misery she was seeing.

"This is just, just a down payment. I'll get more. Please. Plea…s…" He trailed off as Law bent forward slightly. Just enough to loom over the man even more as he looked at the chips in his hands.

"How much is that?"

Again the corpo hid a laugh, louder this time, probably having no idea that Law couldn't possibly have the optics to read the value off the chips at a glance. Gloria still had to grit her teeth as a tremulous voice spoke up.

"Two, two hun-, hundred. Almost." His hands were shaking so badly that he almost dropped one of the credchips. Clasping his hands tight around them and pleading with his hands together like he was praying, "Please."

Law just stood up, and sneered at him, "Do you think I need that kind of pocket change?"

It was more cruelty than she had been hoping for, but not as much as she might have expected. She supposed that, surgeon or not, he was still an outlaw with an outlaw's morals. Not that she was much better…but, still…

Even after years of seeing horror and tragedy piled atop one another, she still had to fight not to shed a tear as the poor scrap of a human being mustered the last of his broken will and said, "N-n-no. You don't."

"Then get the fuck off my ship."

And with that, Law made a gesture and the world flickered with a bluish tint, then the man was gone. Replaced by, Gloria noticed for the first time, a pebble.

The clue as to how Law's tech worked barely registered…because she was sure, she was absolutely sure, that Law wouldn't do all that work just to kill someone.

Which meant he had just-

"You let him go?! He, he didn't pay a single enny and you let him go!" The silence, born of a room of stunned patients, was broken by the suit. He yelped with all the fury of a toddler told not to crush insects, "I paid almost two mil for my bodyguards and I, and you just let that trash-"

Law looked at him, that was all he did. That was all she saw. Yet Gloria felt, for that moment, like a battlemech was pointing a cannon at the corpo.

Then his rant was cut off and he slumped across his bed, foaming at the mouth with his eyes rolled back.

Anyone else, and she'd have been concerned by those symptoms.

Any other moment and she'd have buried her feelings and made herself try and help anyway.

But the echoes of what Law had just done were still crashing through her mind and she felt like they were crushing the very foundations of her world.

Like the scumfuck said, Law hadn't taken a single enny off his patient, after giving him the kind of treatment that should have bankrupted most middle tier corpo movers.

He'd just sent him back to the city. Left him to whatever fate might await him.

It was the kind of kindness she'd never even heard of in Night City. Or anywhere.

The rest of the room was just as shocked, but one of them recovered before the rest, Gloria included. A battered joytoy hauled herself up on a bar that had been suspended over her bed, looking at Law like Gloria had never seen anyone look at another person. Not even their mainline.

The woman, who had to be around Gloria's age and from the joytoys she'd known was probably tougher than most soldiers on any other day, stuttered as she asked Law, "Um, c-can I leave too."

The look Law gave her in turn would have scared off the aforementioned soldier, but proving Gloria's estimation of her, the joytoy kept going and said, "I, I have maybe a hundred eddies-" Law grunted and she rushed to say, "-but you don't need that kind of scratch, so can I just, just go?"

Another finger twitch, another chart snatched out of the air, only this time the angle meant Gloria could see part of the page. The language might have been different, and the style too, but medical jargon was universal enough for her to have some idea what he was looking at as he paged through it.

Which was nothing.

He was pretending to need the charts.

Looking to his crew, Gloria noticed the tiniest hint of a smile as one of them looked his way, and wondered.

As for Law, he threw the chart back into its holder and said, "That metal crap where your chest should be, it broke your ribs. Two of them went through your heart."

Shock, horror, and sheer awe fought for control of the woman's face, but Law was unmoved as he continued, "Two more days. Then you can fuck off too. Now stop moving around or," He didn't quite stumble over his words, but there was a pause, "Or it'll be three days."

Then he turned on his heel, glared at one patient who looked like he had been about to speak but thought better of it, then walked out of the room like he hadn't just done the unimaginable.

If there hadn't still been three jumpsuit clad Medtech's hanging around, Gloria was certain the room would have exploded with chatter. Instead they all gave each other very significant looks, even including Gloria in the interplay this time.

Right up until one of Law's crew wandered over to check on her and started talking to her.

Red haired, if not as vibrantly so as her, and with sunglasses and a hat that looked like a killer whale, he was one of the friendlier looking Medtechs but that didn't stop everyone else carefully looking away when he decided to chat with her about her chemplant, loud enough for everyone to hear the initial question.

Unthinkable displays of charity or not, she would still bet he'd put scavs into all their minds with his chosen topic. So she was careful to answer in a low voice and a fearful look on her face, despite his questions being entirely about how to recognise someone was chipped with one and how to turn them off manually.

No reason to risk anyone getting any stupid ideas after all.

The low stakes conversation kept her focused on something other than the impossible hope that she might actually be able to afford her treatment by Law and his crew. She was grateful to Shachi -as he had suddenly remembered to introduce himself- for that much.

She was ready to bow down and kiss his feet for what he'd done afterwards though.

Ikkaku was the only woman she'd seen among the Medtechs, a woman who kept her mass of curly brown hair under control with a bright striped bandana that contrasted her gruff persona. She was also the person Shachi had asked to help Gloria clean herself up, after more than a day of waking up feeling more and more grimy everytime she fell asleep.

"We've been giving the rest of 'em wipes." Ikkaku told her as she finished cutting away some more of Gloria's casts, giving her most of her mobility back, though her left leg was still 'too fucked up' in Ikkaku's estimation.

After dumping the casts in the trolley she'd brought along, Ikkaku wrung out a cloth that had been soaking in a steaming tub of water, and began to work with Gloria to get her clean.

The other woman had the practised demeanour of an old hand when it came to embarrassing medical tasks, but -spurred on by the impression of privacy the drawn curtains gave her- Gloria couldn't help but ask about a task she hadn't seen any trace of.

"What about using the toilet?" She asked, lifting herself so Ikkaku could dab the sweat off of her back, "Nobody else has been allowed to leave this room, right?"

The other woman actually looked confused, then a grin cleared it from her face and she said, "Oh we gave you all-" the translator failed to catch the word and Gloria just heard a mess of syllables, "-when we got you here." She stopped to consider her words as she let Gloria wipe down her front, already softer than she had been a minute earlier, "Still not re-using these sheets though. I think the Captain had to clear fleas off of one girl."

Law again. Gloria supposed that whatever tech he was using must have made it a simple task to vanish insects, since he could apparently eliminate cancerous cells from someone's entire body, and Ikkaku had met her concerns about using so much crystal clear water with a chuckle and the declaration 'Our Captain can purify water no problem'.

But the idea of someone getting their hands on something like that, and using it like Law was…

Again she found herself dwelling on the thought of her bill, and if she had it right that Law would be willing to take ten thousand or so, and settle accounts with that.

He'd definitely charged the corpo the expected amount for him and his security, but the other two who couldn't afford anything like enough had been let off entirely. She thought that he'd judge her to have enough saved to be worth charging, and she didn't dare to pretend to have less than she did, but there was no way to be sure…except…

As Ikkaku finished the sponge bath and tossed her washing and drying cloths alike into the tub, Gloria mustered her courage and asked her, "Can I speak to him? Your captain?"

It earned her a return of some of Ikkaku's roughness, but the other woman nodded and told her, "I'll be back in a minute." Before she pushed the trolley through the curtains and left.

By the time displayed in the corner of Gloria's vision, it was barely forty seconds before the other woman came back. Not with her captain, but a pair of crutches.

"If you wanna speak to the Captain, you've got no excuse not to be standing." Ikkaku said. Except despite her words, she took the time to help Gloria shuffle into position and caught her the first two times she tried to stand up. She even looked a little proud when Gloria managed to heave herself upright for the first time in days, and stayed close enough to catch her as she took her first swinging step.

Gloria was careful to keep her left leg off the ground, and her right felt horribly weak, but less than two days ago she had been a shattered ruin and now she was standing.

Some part of her wondered if her whole shitty life had just been saving up her luck for this.

The rest of her stayed focused on following Ikkaku out through the curtain into a room of people who looked even more wary of her than before, despite the flashes of wonder that crossed their faces now and then. She supposed it would take more than a couple miracles to stop Night City residents assuming the worst.

Yet, somehow, she couldn't help but do the opposite.

Miracles sang to the streetrat that had once dreamed of a better world.

They whispered to the girl who fought and studied and hoped to make a fragment of one.

They roared at the woman who had held her baby boy, and thought that he was the closest she would ever get.

She hardly dared to, but despite herself, as she thanked Ikkaku for holding the door for her, and they set off down the oversized corridor, Gloria was filled with hope.

Even if it turned out to be false, she would still be grateful for that.

For a full ten seconds, David thought he'd run into another anti-climax. Only a sliver of blue light ahead of them let him see the dim outlines of the room, but there was nothing worth seeing in the barren apartment.

The adrenaline was just starting to die down when the dark room they'd entered lit up and a woman the size and approximate build of a tank was standing behind him with a gun pointed at the side of his head.

Through the door that had spilled blue light into the room before the lights flicked on, he saw a glimpse of red and blue and someone lounging in a bathtub, then an even bigger merc came into the main room.

Somehow he knew, this was his customer. Built like an army packed into a single dude, and chromed like he was expecting the next corporate war any second now, the merc had brown skin, white hair styled into a flat top, and a syn-leather vest-jacket to go with his syn-leather pants and the shades that didn't quite hide the glow of his optics.

And he also had a gun levelled on David. A fucking big one.

"You hacked the wrong door, pu- Lucy?! The fuck are you doing here?."

Instead of letting Lucy bail him out again, David took a breath, and stepped up. Metaphorically. He was pretty sure taking a literal step would get him a fun opportunity to try breathing through the hole where his head used to be.

"Chill choom. I'm here to trade." He wrestled with himself for a moment, then decided it was an obvious enough question not to count as screwing her over. "Didn't Lucy tell you we were coming?"

He caught the big guy's eyes bouncing over to the netrunner, then he ignored David and said to her, "Your message said you found something I'd be interested in. I don't recall inviting you to bring anyone to meet us in the middle of a job."

The anger in his voice was palpable, and the guns weren't moving, but in the corner of his eye David could see Lucy had lit up and was taking a drag like she was bored of the conversation already.

"Not like there's much risk, and there's a timer on this one." She said, explaining, "I got him to bump another customer to sell to you, so if you're not interested…"

It was more support than he'd expected. Enough that the merc was relaxing his gun hand a little. Not that David was dumb enough to test him by moving. He just let his shoulders slump and tried to sound as relaxed as he was trying to look, "She's not wrong about the demand." He lied. "If you're wasting my time, I can delta."

That got the gun to lower, if only so the merc could take a better stance for throwing a punch, which he looked sorely tempted to. "Oh, am I wasting your time, ya little piss sniffer?"

The big guy was as scary as he thought he was, meaning he was fucking terrifying, but things had fallen into a pattern that David was familiar with. The merc might not be his usual kind of customer, but David knew how to make a sale. So he stared right back up at the human mountain until he grunted and, without taking his eyes off David, stowed the gun.

"Maine?" The woman beside him asked a question without saying it. Either they knew each other well, or they just had a voice line open.

The big guy, now confirmed as Maine, shook his head a little.

"Keep an eye on Kiwi will ya?" He addressed the giant woman. Though as she lowered her own gun and walked closer to her boss, David realised that their relative sizes made them look almost normal together, especially when she grabbed a handful of Maine's ass on her way to the other room. Not that you could tell by his voice, he sounded rock steady when he asked Lucy, "You wanna go with Dorio? Jack in and lend a hand?"

"For what cut? Not like Kiwi will share."

"Hang here then, but butt out."

Then Maine beckoned him over to stand by the window, pulling an airhypo from his pocket then injecting it as he leant against the glass and said, "Well, what do you have for me that's so interesting?"

"Sandevistan. Milspec. Preem."

The first word had gotten the reaction David wanted. By the third, he was worried that Maine might be a little too interested. Especially when his eyes lit up and David got the distinct impression he was being scanned.

Maine was obviously no netrunner, but his eyes still settled on the small of David's back, even if the shielded packet was probably keeping any deets from leaking, at least from what Doc had said.

'Good thing I made that call.'

Then Maine laid a hand on his gun and David didn't feel nearly so prepared.

"I didn't catch any iron with that scan. No real cyberware neither." His fingers crept around the grip of his weapon, and Maine continued, "Were you really dumb enough to bring that chrome here, alone, without any kind of protection?"

'More like desperate enough.' But that wasn't something he was going to say. And anyway, "Lucy already had the drop on me and didn't take it. I trust her not to set me up."

Maine's eyes found Lucy again, and he said, "Sounds like her." David could hear her clothes rustle as she shifted in place, but he didn't risk looking away to find out how she was taking his words. Didn't make any sense for her to be lying though, so he wasn't sure what problem she could have with what he'd said.

Any more thinking he might have done on the subject ended pretty fucking quick when Maine leant forward and, looming over him with his shards tilted down to glare at him optic to optic, said, "Only problem is, I ain't Lucy."

Then a hand the size of David's head settled on his shoulder, and Maine's arm plates reconfigured to point a cannon directly at David's head. This time he was certain he wasn't imagining the size of the barrel. Forget shooting the thing, the merc could probably just brain him with it.

"Let's say I decide to just take that Sandy from you. What then?"

There was a louder rustle of cloth, but David didn't dare to look away, or back down.

"Then you'd be shit out of a supplier."

"Already got one choom. Try again."

"Th-then," 'Fuck!' "you'd-"

"Will you knock it off!" Lucy was suddenly right beside them, barking at Maine with enough force to drive him back a step. "I vouch for you, and this is how you handle it?" David was pretty sure she was talking to Maine, but he still felt a flush of humiliation at how badly he'd played his hand. Meanwhile the merc just let his shades fall the rest of the way down his nose and looked at Lucy with something between amusement and apology.

"Chill girl, I'm just messing with him. Getting him back for that shit about wasting his time is all it is." Maine's words were a relief, but they didn't help him feel any less pathetic. Especially when he followed with, "Plus, teaches the kid a lesson. Gonk move to bring the goods and no kind of insurance. You hear?"

He'd aimed his last words at David, but there wasn't much fire to them. The merc seemed content with the fear he'd put into David, and Lucy just went back to leaning against the wall and smoking. Though he thought he saw her lips tighten around the cig a bit.

However mad she might be, David was grateful for the help. He was also smart enough to let Maine's threats go. No different then ignoring the shit kids at school said when he was trying to hook them up.

His pride still tasted bitter when he swallowed it and nodded to Maine. "I hear."

"Good. So how about you show the goods and we get a move on."

After swallowing again, David reached back and yanked the Sandy from the hidden pocket in his mom's jacket. Then, with only a little hesitation, he offered it up for inspection.

Three seconds later he had a gun in his face. Again.

"What the fuck are you trying to pull!"

"Hey-!"

"Sit your ass down Lucy, this little shit klepped my supplier!"

"What?!" David and Lucy yelled the word in sync, but Maine ignored them both.

He leant close enough to dig the gun into David's temple and spit, "My calls haven't been getting through. That 'cause of you? You flatline her to get it?"

"The fuck are you talking about?!" Out the corner of his eye, with the attention that wasn't fixed on yet another gun in his face, David distantly noticed Lucy making a face of realisation.

Maine ripped the seal open on the Sandy and that got every scrap of his attention focused on the merc immediately.

"There. Check the deets on it if you don't believe me Lucy. They'll match the one I told you all about."

"Of course it does." She said.

Maine's anger gave way to confusion for a second. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Lucy let out her biggest sigh yet, "What's your supplier's name?"

"Gloria, why-?"

"My mom's your chrome dealer?" David couldn't help but blurt it out.

There was silence. It stretched out, with Lucy burying her head in the hand not holding her cig, while he and Maine stared at each other. Then the gun went back in the holster again, and Maine rolled his head back with a sigh that made all of Lucy's sound like gentle whispers by comparison.

"So what, you klep the thing for extra allowance? Gloria's gonna owe me big for dealing with her brat like this."

"Hey, I didn't take it if that's what you mean!"

"So what, you expect me to believe she just gave it to you to sell?"

"It's the truth!"

For the first time, Maine looked worried. "Wait, is she pissed at me? I know she needed the eddies fast, but I was all ready to make the drop tomorrow morning. Cutting me off over two days is short-circed."

Before David could reply, something about that response struck him and he couldn't help but ask, "If that's true, then why weren't you answering your agent? I've been trying to get in touch and sell to you since-"

Pain

After all the times he'd had guns pointed at him that day, it was typical that it was when he didn't have one in his face that David got sucker punched.

Maine's fist felt exactly like he'd expect a chunk of chrome bigger than his head to feel like. Some part of him was aware that he'd been hit gently, and a larger part of him was aware he'd been punched in the face and fallen to the floor.

Most of him was just trying to get his bearings while the world rolled and his face throbbed.

When he got his shit together enough to come up with fury on his lips, David found Maine looking at him like he was an absolute gonkbrained child.

"You called me, more than twenty times, on an unsecured line. To talk about an illegal chrome deal? Forget everything I said before, you're dumber than I ever imagined, and Gloria really is going to owe me for putting up with this. Now where is she and what the fuck is going on that her piss sniffer of a son is the one fumbling his way to selling the best piece she's ever gotten her hands on?"

Despite himself, David hesitated to answer. He'd been fine telling Lucy, but something about explaining to Maine, someone who knew his mom, made it all feel ten times as real. As crushing.

"Scavs got her." Lucy looked like she regretted speaking up when they turned their eyes to her, but she kept going. "At least that's what he said to me. Sounded honest too."

Mentally logging another thing to thank her for, David picked up where she left off, ignoring the rising sympathy in Maine's eyes. "Shit went down on the highway. Gangoons jumping an armored corp limo. We got caught up in it, and the scavs grabbed us with everyone else on the road."

"Wait, the corpo too?" Asked Maine.

Lucy, hearing the full story for the first time, chimed in to ask, "If they had that kind of protection, why didn't Trauma Team show up?"

"They grabbed everyone," He answered Maine, then powered through the really crazy part, "And they went through Trauma Team to do it."

"SCOPshit."

"I saw it myself. Then they, teleported us."

"Teleported?"

"...so they drugged you, or what?"

It wasn't that David didn't understand why they were both giving him looks like he'd lost his mind, but as out of it as he'd been after the crash, the rest was crystal clear. He was sure of what he'd seen.

He turned to face the window while he replied, looking out on the air traffic -surprisingly heavy for Watson- he said, "Unless you know a drug that can make people appear at the end of the Wellsprings pier, no, I'm pretty fucking sure they teleported us."

In the reflection of the dark glass, he saw Maine take a minute to look at him, while Lucy went straight to looking like she'd had her world turned upside down. Maine joined her before long, muttering, "Teleporting scavs."

Not like he could be blamed for the reaction. David felt about the same when he wasn't dwelling on the more immediate terror of them having his mom.

"I'm sorry kid." Maine was looking at him again, shades taken off and bare optics full of sympathy that David didn't want or need. "I was gonna say we'd pay for the Sandy by getting her out of there, but if that's true."

"Yeah. I get it."

One thing that all the lectures about the Corporate Wars at Arasaka Academy had been good for, was realising what a difference a tech advantage could make. Not to mention the implications it had about who might be backing the gangoons.

Teleportation was just too crazy for anyone to want to fuck with. Not without any intel. David got that much. He didn't want to have anything to do with those jumpsuits either.

He just didn't have a choice, so long as they had his mom.

"Even so, Gloria's one of ours." David spun to stare at Maine at the words, hardly daring to hope. "Least we can do is keep an eye on the exchange. Offer you some backup." Then before David could tie himself in knots trying to thank him, he continued, "As for the Sandy, you get the same offer I made to Gloria. €$20,000. Not an enny more."

David's call to Doc had covered more than just the basics of transporting chrome. He'd asked about the price of a Sadevistan on the level that he had found. He was even pretty confident Doc had answered accurately…once he made it clear that there was no way he was selling to the greedy old RipperDoc.

The total should have been fifteen at the highest, given the rates out of the latest night markets. Maybe sixteen, or seventeen if he argued his damndest and sold like he'd never sold before.

Twenty was, it might really, truly, be enough.

He might have a shot.

Maine picked up the Sandy and fixed the packaging as best he could, then he handed it back to David and gave him a moment to tuck it away in his jacket, though he found it awkward enough that he had to shrug it off to do it.

"We'll finish up here and then we'll make the trade for real. Until then just sit tight and," Maine glanced between him and Lucy, then grinned like a shark, "maybe try getting to know one another."

Before he could get embarrassed, the view out the window drew David's attention.

He wasn't sure how he'd picked it out of the AVs cluttering up the sky around the megabuilding, but something about one speck in particular was giving him a real bad feeling.

He put his finger on it right as the sound of splashing and yelling drew Maine into the other room at a dead sprint.

'That AV is coming straight towards this place.' He leant forward, absently dropping his jacket over the back of a battered old chair as he did, and zoomed in as much as his shitty optics could manage.

He identified the logo on the military AV at the exact moment that Maine kicked down the door and roared.

"Ambush incoming! It's Arasaka!"