"Nice place," David complimented as he stepped inside Lucy's apartment.

Selling the stolen datashards to Lucy's contact had netted them a larger profit than he had expected, and pawning off the guns had been a nice bonus, as well, even if they weren't worth all that much. By the time they had collected their earnings, the sun had already begun to set, so they ended up buying a couple nutrient bars from a nearby vending machine and ate them on the way back to her place.

"Eh. Beats living in a megabuilding," she shrugged, closing the door behind him and meandering over to her refrigerator.

He wanted to take offense at that, but she was right. Her building didn't have scores of homeless and mountains of trash bags crowding the hallways, which was certainly an improvement over his place.

"That's fair," he nodded.

"Want a beer?" she asked him, cracking open the refrigerator door and holding up a brown bottle. "Don't have much else, to be honest."

"Sure," he accepted, taking a look around. While it wasn't quite a cookie-cutter megabuilding apartment, the layout wasn't all that different, either. The place was definitely lived in, evidenced by her trash bin full of beer bottles and cheap takeout cartons, as well as the small pile of half-empty storage boxes tucked away in one of the corners. Her walls were dotted with posters, the largest and most prominent of which being an advertisement for the lunar colonies, promising an exciting new life that nothing Earth could ever compare to.

What bullshit.

From what he'd learned at the academy, the colonies were little more than empty tourist traps only barely clinging to life through the donations of a few incredibly wealthy patrons. After the corporations' initial terraforming project had proven unsuccessful, the cost of constantly shipping the barest necessities vastly limited both its sustainability and its potential for economic growth. Most of the jobs there only paid just enough to subsist on, meaning anyone who bought a one-way ticket without enough EDs for a trip back would be stuck there for the rest of their lives.

An expensive way to imprison oneself, in his opinion.

"Here," Lucy caught his attention, offering him a freshly opened beer bottle.

David accepted it, thanking her quietly before bringing it up to his lips to taste it. She interrupted him before he could, though, clinking the neck of her bottle against his in a mock toast and giving him a small, cheeky smile before taking a sip.

He got the distinct feeling she was laughing at him, just a little.

The beer tasted worse than he had expected it to, considering its popularity. It was primarily bitter, with a mildly sweet undertone, and had a fairly chemical aftertaste. Not the worst thing he had ever drank, certainly, but it wouldn't be his first choice, either. He planned on finishing it regardless, if only for politeness' sake.

Maybe it's just an acquired taste.

"Y'know, you've been staring at my poster for a while now," Lucy teased, guiding him to her couch and gently sitting him down. "You interested?"

"In what? The moon?"

She nodded. "Yeah. Ever wanted to go?"

"Nah," he shook his head. "Maybe if the corpos ever manage to actually terraform it, but as it is, it's kinda just a tourist trap. Only real reason it's even close to being sustainable is because of the ticket prices. Most of the jobs there don't pay worth shit, either, so if you don't have enough for a ticket back, you're stuck there." He took another sip of his beer. "Sounds like prison to me."

Lucy's smile vanished. Her eyes became cold, and her posture distant and defensive, as if she had just put up a wall between them. He knew they probably hadn't held the same opinion, but he didn't think she'd take his point of view so personally.

Great job, asshole.

"Sorry, that was out of line. I didn't mean—"

"So what?" she cut him off, her voice cold and despondent. "Maybe it is. But it's still better than staying here the rest of our lives."

He drummed his kneecap with his fingertips, trying to more carefully construct his sentiments so as not to further worsen the mood. "You hate Night City that much, huh?"

She huffed dispassionately, walking over to the windowsill and taking a seat. "Take a look outside. See anyone leaving?"

He didn't. From her window, they couldn't see any cars that even suggested they were packed for so much as a road trip. Vehicles and pedestrians alike bustled through the streets, all either heading home from their jobs, driving to work to begin their graveyard shifts, buying and selling presumably illicit goods in alleyways or simply drowning themselves in the hedonistic pleasures of Japantown's nightlife, whether alone or with friends. Indistinct chatter could be heard all around the block, blending in with the low hum of the various vehicles to create an almost familiar white noise that David had always thought to be synonymous with Night City. Gunfire sounded off in the distance—presumably Tyger Claws or Animals having a scuffle with somebody. It was difficult to tell from so far away.

"Guess not," he agreed, shrugging.

She took another hit of her cigarette, exhaling a cloud of smoke. "Have you ever seen anyone leaving before?"

He didn't bother responding. They both knew the answer.

"See? That's what I hate. No one ever leaves this place. Everyone is born here, or they move here for whatever reason, and then they die here. No one ever gets out alive," she growled, flicking the ash off her cigarette, her expression still cold and dispassionate. "That sounds like prison to me."

He supposed she was right. And he was no better—he'd never even been outside Night City before.

Neither had his mother. That opportunity had been taken from her.

"I won't argue, there," he told her wryly, taking a deep swig of his beer. "Why the moon, though?"

She shrugged, still staring out the window. "It's as far away as you can get from here."

"That all?" he asked earnestly. She seemed far too passionate about the subject for that to be her only reason. No one put a poster of something on their wall only because it was far away.

Her lips thinned contemplatively, clearly debating whether or not to tell him. They sat in silence as he waited for her answer. He hoped she'd tell him the truth, but he doubted she would. He couldn't blame her, either; they had only just met today, and he'd already insulted something she clearly cared about.

"…Do you have a dream, David?" she finally asked, so softly that he almost missed it.

He wracked his mind, searching hard for an answer. The only thing that came to mind was avenging his mother, but he doubted that counted as much of a dream—nor did he think she would simply let such an answer slide without asking some rather probing follow-up questions.

Probably best not to say anything.

"Guess not," he told her, swirling the remainder of his drink halfheartedly. "My mom's dream was for me to graduate from Arasaka Academy and get a corpo job, but I was kinda only doin' that to make her happy."

He leaned back into her couch, staring up at her from below. At some point, she had shifted positions, and was now leisurely laying across the windowsill, not unlike a cat lazing in the sun, smoking the last bit of her cigarette.

"Sounds like you weren't all that happy, though," she said, reaching over him and setting her empty beer bottle down on the small corner table next to the couch.

He shook his head, looking away. "I wasn't. Poor kid in a rich school, y'know? Hard to be happy when everyone treats you like shit."

"But you still went."

"Well, yeah," he nodded, as if it were obvious. "My mom was working double shifts at a shitty job just to put me through school. I'd be a pretty terrible son if I didn't go. That'd be, like, pissing on the grave of everything she worked for."

"But you said you dropped out recently, right?" she followed up. "How come?"

He shrugged. "…She's not around anymore. And I don't have the money for another semester. No point in stickin' around anymore."

"Ah," she nodded sympathetically. "I'm sorry about that."

"Not your fault."

Lucy's hand reached down slowly, gently lifting his chin with her index finger as she leaned in. "I know it's gonna be hard, but you're on your own now. You've got no one to answer to, anymore, so you've gotta find your own dream, now. I'm sure your mother was happy you were chasing hers, but if you live your life chasing other people's wishes, you'll never be happy."

David exhaled sharply, amused, staring into her eyes, her hand still cupping his chin. "Sounds like you've got it all figured out, then."

"Maybe," she hummed noncommittally, releasing her hold on him before she sat up and hopped down from the windowsill, turning to face him as she landed. She held out her hand, silently suggesting that he take it.

"Here. Let me show you something."


The moon was incredible.

Lucy had linked two braindance wreaths together, told him to put one on and immediately dragged him into the most detailed, expertly crafted landscape braindance David had ever seen. The ground under his feet crunched and deformed like the wet sands of Night City's beaches, or perhaps clay or freshly fallen snow. He could see the endless blackness of outer space, dotted with small, twinkling stars at the edges of the horizon, millions of miles away. The sun's rays burned on his skin.

"Whoa!" he exclaimed, laughing. He felt like he had reawakened some childish sense of wonder—one that had long-since been beaten down by the harsh realities of the city. "I didn't realize how clearly you could feel the sun here!"

"It's actually even stronger in person. I had to turn the heat down in the braindance. You'd probably die from the heat without a spacesuit on the actual moon," she explained, giving him an easy smile.

"Seriously?" he asked, surprised.

"Yeah."

He shook his head in disbelief, glancing back up at the sun. "That's crazy."

"Oi, come on!" she exclaimed, already walking towards a nearby black-and-orange moon rover. "You want the tour or not?"

He laughed again, turning and jogging toward her. "Wait up!"

They drove around both the colonies and the empty outer stretches of the moon's surface, avoiding some of the deeper craters as they left large tire tracks in the basaltic soil. At one point, Lucy had grabbed a helmet from the backseat and handed it to him, then slipped one on herself. He put it on, looking to her to check if he was wearing it correctly, but she just started laughing at him, so he took it off and tossed it out of the rover, doing his best to hide his embarrassment.

She only laughed harder.

After finishing their tour of the lifeless, barebones cities, and having had enough of trying to avoid falling into craters, they decided to leave the kart behind and hoof it, falling into a comfortable silence as they left the solar-powered colonies behind and ventured out into the pockmarked, unsettled lands. Lucy walked a few steps ahead of him, holding her hand out behind her back, beckoning him with a small gesture as she glanced back at him from over her shoulder. He was initially hesitant to take her hand, but eventually worked up the courage to do so, still a bit unsure what she actually wanted. She had apparently grown impatient, though—just as he reached out for her hand, she quickly caught his wrist, clamping down around his arm like a vice, and then leaped high into the air with him in tow.

David had never quite realized just how little gravity the moon actually had. They soared into the air, flying above the city buildings like a kite with a warm current under its sails. He felt like he was perceiving everything in slow motion; like nothing else mattered at that moment. The massive solar panels reflected golden-bronze rays of light onto Lucy's skin, casting her in a soft, shimmering glow that not even the highest-paid runway models of Night City could replicate.

He had never seen anything so beautiful.

Soon enough, they were both bounding across the moon's surface in large, languid leaps. It had taken him a bit to get the timing right, having never experienced lunar gravity before, but Lucy took to it like a fish to water, effortlessly floating through the air, laughing at and teasing him whenever he mistimed a rebound or didn't cleanly stick the landing. David laughed it all off good-naturedly; despite her ribbing, he was having more fun than he'd ever had in his entire life.

"Hey," Lucy called out to him. "You're pretty strong, right?"

He paused and stared at her, confused. "I guess? Sure?"

"How high do you think you can jump?"

David blinked. He glanced up at the dark sky, then back at her. "Does that translate one-to-one in a BD? I'm not sure if physics work the same here."

"I've got them at standard, so whatever you know you can do in the real world, you should be able to do here. You know your limits, so whatever those are, they'll be the same in here, just adjusted for the moon's atmosphere," she explained.

Normally, that wouldn't be a problem, but David didn't actually know what his limits were. He'd leaped across multiple car lengths earlier that day, and he didn't feel like that had taken much effort, so he assumed he hadn't come anywhere close, yet.

"And I won't, like, fly off into space and freeze to death, will I?"

She shook her head. "No. If you reach the skybox, the engine'll pull you back down, but it should be impossible to reach without tweaking the physics, anyway. You'll be fine."

"…You sure?" he asked again, just to be certain. "This isn't some prank you've set up at my expense, right? You're not just doing this to laugh at me?"

Lucy smirked. "David, I wouldn't need to set up an elaborate prank if I just wanted to laugh at you."

He gave her a flat look. "Thanks."

She winked at him.

Sighing, he glanced back up at the sky.

Guess I'll just have to trust her.

Letting himself come to a complete stop, he stood still for a second, making sure he still had his footing, before taking a few steps forward, accelerating into a run. Once he reached sufficient speed, in his opinion, he jumped high into the air—not as high as he believed he could have, since he still wasn't sure what his limits were, but he still put far more effort than he'd ever poured into a jump before.

David shot into the sky as if he'd been fired out of a railgun. He quickly rose above even the tallest buildings in the colonies, easily flying past them, floating through the sky as if he weighed nothing. Lucy looked like little more a speck on the ground from this far away. Even when he first learned of his newfound physical prowess, David had never felt anything like this before.

He felt free.

Falling slowly back down to the planetoid's surface, he twisted and contorted in the air, using the lower gravity to perform a few flips and spins as he descended gently downwards. It took him just over a full minute to touch down, but he landed on his feet smoothly, dropping into a crouch as he did to absorb some of the impact. Lucy stood nearby, openly staring at him, shock written blatantly across her face.

"Holy shit, David," she murmured, possibly to herself.

"Yeah, no kidding," he agreed, nodding his head. "I've never jumped that high before."

Her gaze flicked down to his legs. "You get your legs chromed recently or something?"

David shrugged halfheartedly, unable to honestly answer her question. He didn't think so, but he wasn't quite sure what had been done to him. After learning that he had a monowire and optical camo, any hypotheses he might have held were out the window.

"Or something," he joked. That was probably closer to the truth than anything else he might've said.

She gave him a weird look, but apparently decided to let it go, and they continued to walk around in companionable silence until they came across a large crater, deep enough that they could seat themselves comfortably upon its edge. She sat down, crossing her legs, and invited him to do the same. David leaned back and relaxed as they stared up at the breathtakingly beautiful view of Earth looming silently above them.

I definitely owe her an apology.

"So," Lucy began after a minute or two of silence, "any plans going forward? Today was a pretty decent haul, but it won't be enough if you wanna afford rent."

David tilted his head back, languidly rolling it in a loose circle. "Not really sure," he admitted. "I'd like to try and make it on my own, but I'm not really sure where to start. I don't really wanna join any gangs, but other than that…" he trailed off uncertainly.

She hummed, nodding. "Sounds like you're lookin' to be an edgerunner."

He sent her a puzzled glance, reminded of JK's XBD series. "Like the cyberpsychos?"

"What?" she sputtered, giving him an odd look. "No, like mercenaries. Edgerunner's another term for cyberpunk."

"Oh," he said, feeling a little stupid. "I mean, maybe. Does it make decent scratch? I've got the optical camo, so maybe I could market myself as a spy or something. Listen in on secret conversations or whatever."

She snorted, glancing over at him halfheartedly. "Don't pigeonhole yourself too early. Fixers offer a pretty wide range of jobs, so the more you can do, the more you can make."

"Makes sense to me," he replied. "Who knows? Maybe I'll make it big. We didn't do half-bad against those Animals, today, so…" he trailed off, giving her a hopeful smile.

Lucy cracked a small smile herself, before her expression turned somber. "Maybe. Just…be careful. Mercenary work's a pretty risky job. Probably got one of the highest fatality rates in Night City."

His brow rose. "Really?"

"Yeah. There's a saying that goes around some of the bars that they hang out in," she said.

"What's that?" he asked.

She leaned back, resting on her hands as she stared up at the Earth.

"'You aren't remembered as an edgerunner by how you live. You're remembered by how you die.'"

David nodded, no longer smiling. "Sounds heavy."

She glanced back at him, some unrecognizable emotion in her eyes. "Still planning on bein' a 'runner?

"Probably," he shrugged. "Still sounds like the best way I could make a living. Besides, I've got a knack for surviving things I probably shouldn't," he added jokingly.

Lucy held his gaze for a few moments, something unreadable in her eyes, then broke eye contact, sighing. "Just don't let this city eat you alive. It seems to get everybody sooner or later."

"Yeah, I'm starting to see that," he agreed. "Don't worry, though. I was thinking about leaving this place even before we met. I've got some personal stuff to deal with, so I can't leave just yet, but once that's dealt with and I've got enough eddies to leave, I'm out."

"Where're you plannin' to go?" she asked.

"Not sure yet," David admitted. "Haven't thought about it. Been focusing on the here and now for the moment."

"And what's the 'here and now?'"

"Y'know. Make some eddies, find some people, try and learn some stuff," he replied evasively. "After that, though, there'll be nothin' left here for me."

"Mm," she hummed, clearly unconvinced. "Well, stick to your goals, I guess."

He wasn't really sure how to respond. Silence stretched between them for a minute or two as they stared into the cosmos, the heat of the sun still shining down on them unrelentingly. Planet Earth loomed above them, an eternal, silent sentinel.

He found it more peaceful than he thought he would.

"Hey," he began hesitantly, glancing awkwardly at his companion.

"Yeah?" she responded.

David swallowed down both his nerves and his ego. "I'm, uh…I'm sorry I insulted your dreams."

Lucy blinked, taken aback. "Really?"

"Yeah," he nodded seriously, gesturing lamely up at the Earth. "This…it's a good dream. It's worth having."

She stared at him for a second, expression unreadable, before a small smile broke out across her lips.

"Thanks."

"Who knows? Maybe I'll end up here someday, as well," he laughed. She glanced back at him, her pupils flashing yellow in a repeated staccato.

"We'll have to see," she said mysteriously, though she didn't stop staring at him.

After a couple of seconds, he realized something was wrong.

Lucy wasn't moving. She stared at him silently, a smile frozen on her lips. Her body was still as a statue; she didn't even look like she was breathing. He waved his hand in front of her face, but she gave no response.

This isn't normal, is it?

Before he could stand up and try to move her, just to see if he could, a loud, distorted voice echoed through the air.

"You fell off the edge, punk."

Everything twisted.

David's head spun as he was forcibly ripped out of the braindance and dragged out of Lucy's bed by his ankle. Suddenly, he was dangling upside-down, strung up by the large hand of an even larger man. He glared down at David from behind his shades and shoved the end of a pistol into David's face, keeping him from trying anything.

Blonde and Dark-skinned, the man cut a powerful, imposing figure with his sizable muscles and contemptuous sneer—to say nothing of the inordinate amount of cyberware he had installed. His pistol was no less bulky, David noted, staring down its barrel at it was pointed between his eyes. Two others stood behind him, though the man's broad figure blocked his view, so he couldn't get a good look at either of them.

David's head whipped around, Lucy's name on the tip of his tongue, but it died as he spotted her leaning against the wall of her bedroom, staring at him dispassionately as she exhaled a cloud of smoke from a newly lit cigarette.

…Oh.

"Really?" he asked her sarcastically, trying to sound less indignant than he felt. "This again?"

She ignored him, instead looking at the man holding him hostage. "Don't take your eyes off him. He's quicker than he looks."

"Mm," the man nodded. "You don't normally call us for this sort of thing. What's so special about this gonk?" he asked, shaking David back and forth for emphasis.

"Can't hack him. He's got some sort of ICE I've never seen before. It's like he's not even there," Lucy explained. "I'd pinged him as an Arasaka student in Corpo Plaza once or twice before, but now, there's nothin'. I tried to force-eject his shard, and when I couldn't, I tried to klep it with my monowire. When I did, the veins around his neck turned black, and it wouldn't budge. Just yanked his whole head backwards. He's also got optical camo and enough muscle reinforcement to put a roided-out Animal halfway through his own car."

One of the crew members behind them whistled.

"What the fuck are you talking about?" David asked, beyond confused. He'd never heard of anyone being entirely immune to hacking. That was why Arasaka invested so much into their netrunners, according to the academy. "That kind of tech doesn't exist. If it did, NetWatch would be all over it. No one with that kind of tech would be dumb enough to go out in broad fuckin' daylight with it, would they?"

"Clearly you were," Lucy sniped back at him. He was about to refute that, but he did give her gun back to her after she threatened him, so he supposed she wasn't wrong.

"I think your ware's just on the fritz. Seen a ripper lately?" he countered acerbically, trying to subtly peek around his captor's legs to get a good look at their friends. While he didn't get the full view of them, he was just barely able to make out a scrawny-looking bearded man with long, metallic hands and a muscular woman wearing an open jacket, showing off both her abs and the oversized revolver holstered on her hip.

He had initially thought Lucy was with the Tyger Claws, but upon seeing her allies, he began to reevaluate that assumption.

Either way, that revolver might be my only out. Just need to distract the big guy and figure out how to reach it before they can react.

Unfortunately, that was easier said than done. Perhaps he could talk himself out of this, instead. It would certainly spare him the risk of getting shot.

"He's also probably trained in infiltration and deception. He knows how to make his bullshit sound reasonable, and he knows how to get on your good side. Don't listen to anything he says," Lucy told her crew, glaring at him distrustfully.

Well, there goes that idea.

"Well, hold on. If that's the case, why didn't you guys just shoot me while I was still in the braindance?" David asked, trying to stall for time. "You haven't killed me yet, so you obviously want something from me, right?"

They all hesitated.

"Well?" he asked, holding his arms out for effect. Being held upside-down was getting old quickly, and if they all just sat around and did nothing, then none of them would be any closer to their goals and this would all just be a giant waste of time.

Besides, the more they focused on what they wanted, the less they would be focusing on what he wanted.

His goading finally galvanized them into action.

"Who do you work for?" Lucy took point in the interrogation.

"I was working for you, today," he told them unhelpfully. He knew it wasn't what she was looking for, but what they were looking for wasn't the truth, so he didn't feel bad about it.

Lucy just glared at him, realizing she wasn't going to get anything out of him with that line of questioning.

"You said that you were looking for someone. Who are they?" she changed direction.

"A group of people. I don't know who they are, other than that they're a mercenary group that all wear a specific patch on their shoulder," he answered honestly. No point in lying about a question that didn't actively involve them. "Looks like a swirl with an eye."

"What's Arasaka want with them?" she asked.

He tried to shrug, though he was fairly sure it didn't look quite right, being upside-down and all. "How should I know? They could be on Arasaka's payroll, for all I know."

"And you're not?"

David snorted. "I'm an academy dropout. Arasaka's never paid me shit."

"Uh huh," his captor responded sarcastically. "Where'd you get the mods, then? Camo like that don't come cheap."

He had to hold back a grimace. There wasn't really a right answer to that question. There was no way they would believe the truth, and lying with a gun to his head was a dangerous game. He wasn't the worst liar ever, but he had no clue how good any of them were at reading people.

Two unrelated truths, then.

"I used to sell some XBDs at the academy for extra scratch," he told them, hoping they wouldn't try to probe his answers too deeply. "Plus, my ripperdoc likes me."

Lucy narrowed her eyes doubtfully. "That might explain the camo, but some peddling and a discount doesn't cover a full-body muscle reinforcement treatment."

While she was probably right, he had already stated his story. Backtracking would only make him look more suspicious.

He smirked slyly at her, trying to play up his cockiness. "Corpo kids don't haggle prices. Makes 'em look poorer. I can upcharge 'em out the ass and they can't say no."

One of the guys in the back—the bearded one, he was pretty sure—laughed. "Not bad, kid!"

"Shut up," Lucy snapped, glaring at him for a second, before turning her attention back to David. "What's the name of your ripperdoc?"

David blinked. Now that he thought of it, he wasn't actually sure.

"Don't know his real name. He just refers to himself as the old man. Scrawny, Jamaican accent, wild hair. He's just off the highway in Santo, a bit north of the megabuilding, if you wanna find him," he told them honestly, shrugging as best he could while upside down.

"You live in Santo, then?" the large man holding his ankle asked.

"Yeah, in H4."

"What apartment?" he immediately followed up.

"Thirty-four eighty-one," David recited.

"Who do you work for, again?" the man repeated. A blatant chump check to see if he would slip up.

"Nobody. I'm jobless right now," David told them honestly. He wasn't sure what they were looking for, but telling them they were barking up the wrong tree didn't seem like it would convince them. Until he could find an opportunity to escape, he was stuck answering their questions as best he could, even if the answers weren't what they wanted.

"What do you know about the old net?" Lucy interjected, staring at him as if she were trying to analyze every minute detail of his expression.

"Uh, it crashed, like, decades ago. Some hacker released a bunch of AIs into the net, so it's basically gone now," he answered, trying his hardest to remember what Arasaka Academy had taught him.

Maybe those lessons were good for something, after all.

"What about the Reclamation Project?" she asked seriously.

"Never heard of it," he responded truthfully, looking her directly in the eyes. She met his gaze evenly, clearly analyzing him to see I he was telling the truth. After a few seconds, she broke his gaze, clearly dissatisfied.

Lucy exhaled another cloud of smoke. "He's pretty good. Everything seems to check out, he's stuck to his cover story…he knows we got nothin' on him."

"Should you be saying that while he can still hear you?" The blonde woman in the back spoke up.

"It's nothing he doesn't already know," Lucy shrugged.

Silence held in the room for a few seconds. David didn't dare make a move, since at least two pairs of eyes were still trained directly on him—or he assumed so, at least. It was difficult to tell, given the man holding his leg was wearing shades.

"What's the plan, then?" The large man asked. "This is your show, Luce."

Lucy was still for a while, clearly deep in thought, before she finally came to a decision. "His ripper needs investigating. The apartment, too, but we can bring him there ourselves, so that's lower priority."

The large man nodded. "I'll call B, have her handle it," he told her, his eyes beginning to glow behind his sunglasses. Whoever he was calling presumably picked up, since he began murmuring under his breath, turning his head away from David.

Lucy was now looking out the window, inhaling another lungful of her cigarette. The other two sat on her couch, their view of him almost completely blocked by their massive companion. No one was paying attention to him at the moment. If he hesitated, his window of opportunity would be gone, and he doubted they'd be taking any more chances with him if he failed. They'd probably just outright kill him for trying.

Well, here goes nothing.

His monowires silently snaked out from his jacket's sleeves, slowly unfurling as they crept quietly across the floor in accordance with his will. If he didn't know better, he would have thought them to be just another muscle; a part of his body that he could move and control as easily as breathing. They felt incredibly natural, as if he'd been born with them, and they twisted and turned and coiled like prehensile tails as he inched them closer to his targets.

His first target was his captor. The wire in his left arm crept up the large man's right boot and pant leg, sliding quietly up to his shoulder and down his sleeve, gently wrapping around the wrist of his cybernetic arm and waiting. The other wire slithered across the floor—just outside Lucy's line of sight—and up the side of her couch. Reaching around the armrest, the wire wrapped around the grip of the muscular woman's revolver undetected, and then sat still, waiting to be reeled in. All he had to do now was pull, and hope that he was fast enough to catch his captors off guard. Failure most likely meant a bullet to the head.

David took a deep breath.

Showtime.

He quickly retracted the first monowire, dislodging the revolver from its holster and pulling it towards him. By the time Lucy's allies realized what he was doing and tried to react, the gun was already out of their reach and would soon be in his awaiting hand. Lucy shouted a warning at his captor, but as soon as she did, he yanked his other arm sideways with all his might, using his other monowire to pull the man's gun to the side. Two shots rang out right next to his ear, temporarily deafening him, but both had missed, and his grip on the man's wrist held firm, leaving his captor unable to twist his hand or move his arm at all.

Barely a full second later, David snatched the revolver out of the air and aimed it directly at the blonde man's face, right between his eyes. Lucy and her friends were still drawing their pistols, but upon hearing him cock the hammer, they both froze.

Got 'em.

"Everyone relax," he ordered, trying to sound more confident than he felt. The balance of power had tilted in his favor, but he was still facing four people who would ventilate him without a second thought, given the opportunity. He had a hostage, but he doubted that would buy him all that much time. He still wasn't out of the woods just yet.

"Can you please put me down? Slowly?" David asked his captor, quickly amending his request as soon as it came out of his mouth. If the man decided to suddenly drop him, it might buy his allies enough time to draw their weapons and shoot him while he was disoriented. "I don't wanna shoot you if I don't have to."

"Gonna give the iron back if he does?" Lucy snarked at him, one hand still behind her back.

He shot her a sidelong glare. "Funny."

His captor stared him down at him for a couple seconds, arm still bound by his monowire, which spoke volumes of either his courage or his bravado (David wasn't entirely sure which), but he held the man's gaze, keeping the revolver aimed steadily at the bridge of his new hostage's nose, refusing to back down. After a few seconds, the man caved, lowering David down just enough that he could catch himself on his free hand and half-cartwheel himself upright, monowire still strung around his wrist and pistol trained on the man's head the entire time.

"Thanks," David said sincerely, withdrawing his wire and releasing the man's wrist. "Could you drop the gun, please? I don't know what you guys have against me, but I don't really have anything against you, and I'd really rather just talk this out."

The blonde man stood still, probably evaluating his options, but eventually conceded and made a show of slowly letting go of his pistol, his finger far away from the trigger. It fell, hitting the ground with a deep thump.

"There," the man bit out, defiant and unafraid. "What do you want?"

"Mainly, I wanna know why the hell you guys kidnapped me in the first place. I doubt that ghost ICE or whatever Lucy was talking about would be enough to convince me to team up with her, then drag me all the way back here to be interrogated. Especially since I don't even know who the hell you guys are," David told him. "You guys got some kinda beef with 'Saka?"

They all gave him quizzical looks, with the exception of Lucy, who just glared at him even harder, her eyes narrowed suspiciously, lips pursed.

That answers that question, I guess.

"Alright," he nodded. "Well, like I said, I'm just a dropout student. Whatever beef you have with them, leave me out of it. I don't know shit about super ICE, or black veins, or whatever the hell you were talking about."

"Uh huh," Lucy intoned sarcastically. "Where'd you get the monowire, then?"

He shrugged helplessly. "Fuck if I know."

He knew the wouldn't believe him, but he doubted they'd believe any lie he came up with, either, so he didn't see much point in trying.

The blonde woman whose revolver he had stolen snorted, amused. "That's so stupid I almost wanna believe him."

"Believe me or don't. I don't really care. Regardless," he began, glancing pointedly over at Lucy. "You thought I was enough of a threat that you decided to lie to me, drag me back here and try to interrogate me at gunpoint, and I'm still not sure why." David swept his gaze across each of them, scrutinizing their expressions in the hope that one of them would potentially give something away. "And I don't buy your little spy theory. Was this all your little group's idea? Or were you hired by someone else?"

"It was my idea," Lucy immediately replied.

He might have believed her if she hadn't already proven that she couldn't be trusted whatsoever. She had given him no reason to believe she was being honest, even with a gun to her friend's head. From what he could see, Lucy looked less like she was concerned for her ally's well-being and more like she was plotting how to turn the situation back to her advantage. His gaze darted over to her monowires, quickly verifying that she wasn't trying to pull the same trick he had just performed a minute ago. Neither of hers were extended at the moment, which was good, but that could change at any point. He'd have to keep watching her, just to be safe.

He would also have to trust that she was actually unable to hack him, as she'd claimed. He couldn't imagine why she would be lying, considering he had no clue how to fight off a quickhack, so he had to assume that she was telling the truth. He doubted he would still be standing if she wasn't.

"Because of the hacking thing?" he asked, just to make sure.

Lucy nodded.

"And I assume you won't just believe me if I tell you I'm not with Arasaka."

She nodded again.

He sighed. "Shit."

They were at an impasse, then. His only options were to either distract them and try to make a break for it, or just kill them all. Unfortunately, he was in an incredibly poor position to do either of those. If not for his hostage, he would have almost certainly been shot by now.

"Well, you guys got any ideas?" David asked. "I'm willing to just call this all a wash if you are. But, uh…."

"Not gonna ask for your cut, first?" Lucy asked facetiously, eyes narrowed.

"I would if I thought you'd actually give it to me," he shrugged, meeting her eyes evenly, still holding the taller man at gunpoint. "I'd really rather just go, though. I can figure something else out. I'm, uh, keeping the iron this time, though."

"Hey!" the woman he'd stolen it from protested.

"Sorry! You can use my cut of the profits to buy a new one!" he offered as consolation.

"Sorry, David, but your cut isn't enough to pay for a new Overture," Lucy interjected.

He shrugged unapologetically. "Yeah, well, you guys kidnapped me, so…."

He caught a flicker of movement in his peripheral vision. David's former captor had used his moment of inattention—the very mistake that he himself had just capitalized on—to subtly turn his arm just enough that his fist was now pointed at David's face. A panel on the man's bulky forearm slid open, and a wide-rimmed, gold-plated forty-millimeter cannon surfaced, aimed squarely at David's forehead.

Fuck.

Before he could even think, David flicked his pistol down at the cannon and pulled the trigger. His revolver fired just before the wrist-mounted launcher could, striking the hinge connecting the cannon and the man's arm. Said arm exploded violently, creating a deafening noise and throwing shrapnel every which way. Everyone ducked, covering their heads with their arms, except for the cannon's owner, who was thrown forcefully to the ground. Much of the shrapnel had hit the man, but none of it looked like it had caused any significant damage. He would be fine.

David, however, had been injured more severely.

Three or four large shards of shrapnel had embedded themselves in his stomach, piercing straight through his shirt and lodging themselves deep within his abdomen. The pain was sharp and biting—he could feel the jagged, uneven edges of the shrapnel digging into his flesh—but it wasn't nearly as bad as when he'd gotten shot yesterday. The pain of the bullets in his chest had been debilitating, agonizing, rendering him unable to even stand. The shrapnel, however, was little more than an unpleasant inconvenience. Painful, certainly, but not unbearably so. He could still move. He could still fight.

Ignoring the metal shards in his stomach, David jumped forward, taking advantage of the crew's distracted states to rush the dark-skinned man, sliding smoothly behind him and wrapping his monowire around the man's neck. Yanking him up, David positioned the man between him and Lucy's allies, using him as a meat shield as he aimed his stolen revolver at Lucy—presumably the most dangerous of the group.

"Guns down!" he yelled as Lucy and the bearded man both clumsily reached for their pistols, still clearly half-blind. He cocked the revolver's hammer again to punctuate his command.

That seemed to do the trick. Both of them stopped, slowly raising their hands as their vision cleared, palms empty. The blonde woman did so as well, despite no longer having a weapon anymore.

The blonde seemed to recover first, being presumably the hardiest of the three. She rubbed at her eyes fiercely, doing her best to remove any dust or fragments before assessing the situation. Her eyes widened as she saw his monowire around her ally's throat.

"Maine!" she exclaimed, stepping forward almost reflexively, reaching out with her right hand. He quickly pointed his revolver at her, stopping her in her tracks.

"Back off! Don't take a—" David paused, registering exactly what she had just said. He narrowed her eyes at her suspiciously.

What are the chances…?

Maine wasn't a very common name, from what he knew. He had never heard any of the locals in Coronado with the name, at least. In the academy and general Corpo Plaza area, naming conventions were far stricter: the only two types of names that were particularly popular were Japanese names, given Arasaka's dominance over the sector, and distinguished or historical European names from those with ties to the more western corporations. Other names existed, certainly, but those were the most common by far, and a name like Maine would have stood out like a sore thumb—just like the man himself, apparently.

"Maine, huh?" he asked quietly, giving his monowire a gentle tug to remind the man not to try anything. "You wouldn't happen to know a woman named Gloria Martinez, would you?"

The man gave nothing away. He stayed entirely still, holding an impressive poker face even with a wire wrapped around his neck.

The same could not be said for the blonde woman, however.

Got 'em.

Recognition was written all over her face. She quickly tried to school her expression into one of neutrality, but it was too late: he'd already seen her reaction. She definitely knew the name.

"That ain't exactly the rarest o' names, kid," Maine gritted out, twisting his head slightly, trying to adjust the monowire constricting his throat. "You're gonna have to be more specific."

David's glared down at him, unimpressed. "Sure. Approximately three or four days ago, an EMT by the name of Gloria Martinez contacted you, stating that she had a phial of an unknown substance taken from the corpse of a scientist. No identifying symbols or markings were found on either the man or the test tube. She offered to sell it to you. You told her you weren't interested, but you'd look around and see if you could find her a buyer. Sound familiar?"

"Nope," Maine denied, his voice taking a harder edge. "Sorry, kid."

"Your crew's faces say otherwise."

Even with shades covering his eyes, David could see the daggers Maine was glaring at his allies.

He glanced up at the rest of them himself. "You guys wanna chime in? I got all day."

A tense silence held between them all, like a rope pulled taut around each of their jaws. For a moment, none of them spoke. Then two.

Finally, someone broke the stalemate. "She's a small-time chrome dealer. Sells some shit to the junkie you're holding. There, happy?" Lucy explained antagonistically, rolling her eyes.

"Lucy!" the blonde woman hissed at her.

"What? He has her chat logs. If they have that, they clearly already have her in custody," she argued pessimistically.

"Not Arasaka," David muttered, mostly to himself. That didn't stop the rest of the room from hearing him, however.

"What do you want with her?" Maine growled. "She's a civvie. She ain't done nothin'."

"Whoever made that sample clearly didn't agree," he shot back.

The blonde woman's eyes widened. "What? What happened to her? Is she being targeted?"

David's lips thinned. "Already was. She was assassinated by a mercenary squad yesterday afternoon."

"Fuck," Maine exhaled quietly.

"Any idea who?" the blonde woman asked him.

"No clue. They were definitely corpo-backed, though. Had some new APC model I've never seen before."

"How'd you find out she died?" Lucy followed up.

"I was there with her. This jacket was hers," he told her.

"Was she wearing it when…?" the man with the mohawk asked, trailing off as he gestured vaguely towards the various holes and tears in the jacket's body.

"Yeah."

"Shit," the guy exhaled under his breath, his shoulders sagging. "How'd you know her? Were you her mainline or something?"

"I'm her son."

If the fact that his mother had died hadn't sent the room into a stupor, that certainly did.

"Gloria had a kid?" Maine coughed out, wire still around his neck.

Oh, right.

David lowered the revolver and released his hold on the man's neck, retracting the monowire back into his arm. Maine slowly stood, massaging the side of his neck with the arm that hadn't been blown apart.

"Sorry about that," David gestured loosely at Maine's arm. The man sighed, staring down at it forlornly. "If you guys were on good terms with my mom, I got no beef with you guys."

"Don't worry about it. Been meanin' to get an upgrade, anyway," Maine shrugged halfheartedly. "Just surprised she had a kid. Never told us about you before."

"If it makes you feel any better, she never told me about you guys, either," he joked halfheartedly, eliciting a small bark of laughter from the man.

Lucy huffed, unamused. "Well, at least we know how he got his chrome. His mom probably had the good shit chipped into him, then sold us the scraps."

"Yeah, makes sense," the scrawny man scratched his beard with his spidery, metallic hands. "I don't blame her. If I had a kid, I'd probably do the same."

David smiled wanly at them both, not bothering to correct them. As long as it didn't make him look too suspicious, they could believe whatever they wanted.

"So," Maine began, moving over to Lucy's couch and gracelessly collapsing on it, causing the furniture to creak and groan under his weight. "You lookin' for work, then?"

David blinked. Out of everything he had expected Maine to say, a potential job offer was not on the list.

Maine's crew was apparently on the same page.

"Hold on, Maine," Lucy interjected, concern lining her features. "Two minutes ago, he had a gun to your head. You can't seriously be offering him a spot in the crew."

"Yeah, that seems a bit fast, don't it?" the bearded man agreed.

"Sure I can. He's Gloria's brat. Gloria's been good to us. If she's gone and flatlined, least I can do is help her kid out," he said. "Besides, he got one over on all of us. Kid's good. You even said so when we got here, Lucy. Could be worthwhile to keep him around."

"And the part where he threatened to kill you means nothing?" she deadpanned.

"In my defense, you guys tried to kill me first," David pointed out.

Maine grinned. "See? We try to kill him, he tries to kill us, everything works out."

"So fucking stupid," Lucy muttered under her breath, taking another drag of her nearly spent cigarette.

"Relax, girlie. I ain't sayin' he's guaranteed in or anything. I'm just givin' him an opportunity. He'll come with us on a gig, and if he can pull his weight, then we'll see about bringin' him on board," Maine waved her off with his busted arm, before glancing down and suddenly remembering that his hand was now in pieces. David would have laughed, but he didn't feel like getting on the guy's bad side so soon after they had made peace with each other.

"So, whaddaya think, kid?"

"Sure, I'm down," he agreed lightly. "Long as you don't stiff me afterwards."

"Long as you don't fuck us over," Maine smirked at him.

"I'll do my best."

Maine nodded. "Also," he rapped his knuckles on Lucy's table, "gimme your number real quick. We've got a gig comin' up pretty soon. I'll call you and fill you in on the details as soon as we get it all sorted."

"Sure," David agreed, rattling off his number. Maine gave him a thumbs-up once he had it saved, then waved his hand in a shooing motion.

"Aight, nova. Now go home, kid. It's late, and I gotta talk to my crew for a bit. I'll let ya know when we need you," Maine dismissed him. David was about to protest, but on second thought, it was probably a good idea to follow Maine's orders. Immediately arguing with the guy who was offering him a job seemed like a good way to have that offer rescinded.

Plus, he'd had enough excitement for one day. A good night's sleep would probably be best for him right about now.

Lucy stepped forward; her hand held up to stop him. "Hold on. Just because we know where he got his chrome doesn't mean—"

"Lucy," Maine interrupted her forcefully, turning and glaring at her behind his shades, silently ordering her to stand down. "Let the kid go home and get some rest. You can flirt with him later."

"Hey, I wasn't—"

"Get outta here, kid. I'll call you about the job soon," Maine told him, ignoring her.

"Sure thing," David agreed easily. "And, uh, sorry for threatening to zero you."

"No biggie."

With a smile and a wave, and one last forlorn look at Lucy (who was still eyeing him suspiciously), he left her apartment, trudging back down the cement stairs and stepping out onto the streets.


The walk home to Santo from Japantown was a long one, made even worse by the frigid midnight air and shady crowd, but he wasn't about to risk taking the NCART so soon after committing mass robbery on it only hours earlier. If he had stolen a valuable enough datashard that someone would put out a bounty to get it back, then whatever was on it was probably fairly important. It was highly likely that they had alerted the NCART operators, and if they recognized him from any security footage, he'd be permanently barred from using he monorail entirely.

Of course, that was assuming the whole thing wasn't just a complicated scheme set up by Lucy to get him to trust her and follow her back to her place. His first instinct to dismiss the theory out of hand, but he couldn't put anything past a skilled netrunner—and Lucy already had a track record of lying to him.

He supposed he shouldn't have been as angry as he was. She clearly thought he was some sort of corpo spy, and given both his inability to explain where he got his cyberware and his apparent immunity to being hacked, he couldn't blame her. He wasn't sure what she thought his goal was, given she approached him first, but she clearly thought him enough of a threat that she had called in her entire crew just to deal with him.

The ironic part was that she was apparently right to do so. Even with her crew there, he had somehow managed to entirely flip the situation to his advantage, at least temporarily. He doubted he could've held that advantage for very long, admittedly, since two of them were still armed and ready to drop him at a moment's notice, but the fact remained that he had still done it. Little wonder Lucy had lied to him; he wouldn't have felt remorse tricking an undercover corporate agent, either.

That didn't mean it didn't hurt, though.

Even from just today, David had honestly thought he and Lucy made a great team together. Between their NCART pickslotting spree and their fight against the group of Animals they faced in the parking garage, he thought they'd had some genuine chemistry. Clearly, she hadn't felt the same way—or perhaps she had, but she wanted nothing to do with someone she believed to be a spy. Either way, she had still betrayed him, and from the look she had shot him on the way out, she still didn't seem convinced he wasn't on corporate payroll or something.

He wasn't. He knew that. But given everything that had been done to his body, he was starting to worry that the corporations had a much larger interest in him than he initially believed.

Speaking of hurt, the pain from the shrapnel he'd taken earlier had long since faded. He'd absently noted it while interrogating Maine and Lucy, but he was more concerned with trying to get out of there alive at the time. It was possible that the nerved had simply been deadened after yesterday's incident, but he was pretty sure he would have still felt the blood running down his body.

Slipping a hand under his shirt to survey the damage, he felt up and down his torso, but found…nothing. No blood, no wounds, not even shrapnel. The only evidence he was hurt at all were the tears in his shirt where the metal shards had pierced him.

That's…not right.

He had definitely been hit. The gashes in his shirt proved it. He lifted up the hem, double-checking to make sure he hadn't missed something, but his skin looked absolutely flawless, just like it did last night. It was as if he'd never been hurt in the first place. There was no way that was natural. Nobody healed that fast.

The whole situation felt suspiciously similar to what happened to him yesterday.

David felt a strange sense of déjà vu wash over him.

Rolling up his sleeves, he examined the two monowires on his wrist, hoping to find some connection between his inexplicable healing factor and his inexplicably acquired cyberware. The housings were a glossy, reflective black, and their shape matched the ones he'd seen on a few corpo suits in passing back in the Plaza, but that was where the similarities ended. His arms didn't look remotely cybernetic, as evidenced by the various blood vessels visible just under his skin, running up and down his arms and hands like spiderwebs in an old rain gutter. The monowires looked like they had been implanted directly into his flesh, and upon running his fingertips across them, David found that they were not nearly as cold as he expected them to be—nor as metallic.

As far as he could tell, they felt like nothing he had ever touched before. They were not steel, he was certain, but he couldn't quite figure out what they actually were. Something along the line of a carapace, like that of a particularly sturdy insect or crustacean; perhaps even bone. Upon reeling out about a foot of cable and studying it, he found that while he couldn't begin to guess what the blade was made out of (given its edge was only a molecule thick and he had no desire to split his hand open), the actual wire was more along the lines of an extremely dense muscle fiber than a synthetic cable.

There's no way that this is what these things normally feel like.

He willed the wire to retract, watching as the wire pulled itself back and restrung itself inside his arm—and kept willing, for some reason. He wasn't particularly sure why. Perhaps he was simply exhausted enough that he was willing to try any idea at this point, even stupid ones.

He quickly found himself regretting that.

After the wires had finished retracting, the wires' outer shells began to retract back into his arms, sinking deep down as his flesh steadily knitted together over their surfaces, working their way across the shells until they had entirely disappeared, and his arms were flesh once more, showing no indication that the cyberware had ever even existed in the first place.

What the hell?!

David swallowed down the panic that reflexively welled up in the back of his throat, staring down at his shaking, entirely organic arms.

"How the fuck…?"

He entered his megabuilding absentmindedly, paying no attention to the crowds of homeless lining the sidewalks and hallways, nor the stench of sweat, drugs and decay. Getting back to his apartment was his only priority.

David quickly reached his apartment after a bit of creative maneuvering to climb up to his floor, all while avoiding the mounds of trash piled high in the hallway. Scanning himself in and shutting the door behind him, he collapsed onto the couch, his mind racing. He slid forward, reaching toward the nearly empty bottle of tequila and poured himself a glass, quickly downing it. The burn in the back of his throat helped him refocus, even if the alcohol itself didn't seem to have too much of an effect on him. He felt like his mind was running at a million miles an hour, forcing him to rewatch everything he'd been through over the past couple days, but out of order, spliced and cut up like a psychedelic music video. The more he learned, the less everything made sense.

David set the glass down gently.

…What the hell happened to me?