Chapter 7:
– Lucy Kushinada –
The crew's hangout and meetup spot smelled like burnt coffee, gun oil, and whatever Pilar had microwaved twenty minutes ago and then abandoned on the counter for the cockroaches to feast on.
Lucy was used to it. She'd been used to it for a while now, even though she still wasn't technically crew.
Kiwi had brought her around enough times that nobody noticed her sitting on the couch anymore, which was either a sign of trust or a sign that everyone in the room was too distracted to do their jobs properly. Lucy hadn't decided which.
Maine was near the busted door, pacing like he always did when a fixer was talking and he wasn't, one heavy hand braced against the wall and the other gesturing at nothing.
His back was to the room. Bad sign. When Maine faced the crew during a call, the news was usually good. When he turned away, it meant he didn't want to see their faces yet.
"—and then I told him," Kiwi was saying, "if you want a daemon that quiet, you build it yourself, choom. I'm not your fucking ghostwriter." She took a drag of a cigarette through her mask. How she even pulled that off, Lucy had no idea.
"You actually said that?" Lucy asked.
"I actually said that."
"He hire you anyway?"
"He hired me anyway." Kiwi exhaled smoke through her nose. "They always do. Now show me again, the loop you were talking about. The one that piggybacks on the optic refresh."
Lucy pulled her tablet out from where it had been wedged against her thigh and tilted it so Kiwi could see. The quickhack was something she'd been chewing on for a week or two, an idea more than a build, riding the natural micro-flicker of cheap optics during their refresh cycle to slip a daemon past the standard ICE without ever showing up as an intrusion. The point wasn't power. The point was that nothing on the other end would even know it had been hacked, because the payload would look like the optics' own handshake.
"It's elegant," Kiwi murmured, and Lucy felt the small clean spark of pride she always felt when Kiwi said something was elegant. Kiwi didn't say it about much. "Won't work on Kiroshis above the Mark Three, though. Their refresh is too tight."
"I know. I'm not trying to hit a Mark Three. I'm trying to hit every cheap-ass street optic in Night City."
"Hm." Kiwi tapped her cigarette against the rim of the ashtray. "That's a lot of street."
"That's the point."
Across the room, Rebecca was screaming. "You absolute gonk," she was shouting, on her toes and still not tall enough to get in Pilar's face the way she clearly wanted to. "You stupid, dick-brained, half-chromed sack of —"
"It was funny!" Pilar protested.
"It was expensive! Stop breaking my shit! I will end you, Pilar, I swear to—"
"Becca," Dorio called from the other side of the room, not even looking up. She and Falco were bent over a tablet of their own, scrolling through what looked like rim catalogs. "Don't kill your brother in the living room. Kiwi just cleaned."
"Kiwi did not clean," Kiwi said without looking up.
"Kiwi should clean," Dorio said.
"Kiwi is a netrunner, not a housekeeper. Besides, we can always find a new base if this dump we’re squatting in gets too many rats…"
Lucy bit the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling.
She didn't smile often around the crew, partly because they teased her when she did and partly because she still wasn't sure how much of herself she wanted to leave in this hangout.
But it was hard not to, sometimes.
They were ridiculous. They were warm. They argued about rims and quickhacks and microwaved noodles in the same tone, and nobody had asked her in three months where she'd come from before Kiwi found her, which was a kind of kindness she didn't know how to repay.
Falco said something quiet to Dorio about a set of wheels he'd been eyeing for the van. Preem suspension, he was saying, the kind that would actually hold up on a getaway instead of bouncing them around like dice in a cup. And Dorio was nodding and saying after the next gig, after the next gig.
Maine slammed his phone down on the counter. "What a load of bullshit."
Everyone in the room went still for half a second. Even Rebecca, mid-tirade, paused with her finger an inch from Pilar's chest. "What's wrong, boss man?" Rebecca asked, recovering first, because Rebecca always recovered first.
Maine turned around. The look on his face was somewhere between disgust and resignation, which on Maine usually meant a paycheck had just walked out the door. "Remember that Arasaka gig Faraday lined up? The one I told you about last week. Smooth in, smooth out, walk away with a fat stack of eddies for half a night's work?"
"The data grab," Dorio said.
"The data grab," Maine confirmed. "Target was a corpo named Tanaka. Mid-tier piece of shit, lots of nice juicy files on his personal deck because he was the kind of gonk who thought encryption was a suggestion." He scraped a hand down his face. "Well. Turns out our target got himself flatlined in a back alley night before last night. Like some stupid fucking gonk…"
"No," Rebecca whined, the fight with Pilar forgotten. "No no no no. That was my new shotgun money!"
"You don't need more guns," Pilar muttered. “I don’t even know where you are keeping all the ones you already have on that midget body of yours.”
"I will kill you, Pilar."
Lucy exchanged a glance with Kiwi. Tanaka. The name pinged something in the back of her head.
"So you got nothing?" Falco asked.
Maine grunted. "Got something. Faraday's already shoving a replacement gig at us. Some retrieval thing in Kabuki—harder, longer, half the eddies."
"Faraday," Rebecca said, with the particular venom she reserved for fixers and for Pilar's cooking, "is a piece of shit. We need a new fixer, Maine. I've been saying it. I've been saying it. We're a preem crew getting shit gigs because that shit of a man keeps—"
"Bec," Maine said.
"—funneling us his leftover—"
"REBECCA."
She stopped. Maine didn't snap often. When he did, the room remembered.
"We take what we get," he said. "For now…"
The for now sat in the air like a held breath. Nobody picked it up. Nobody wanted to.
Beside her, Kiwi sighed. It was a small sound, almost soundless, the kind of exhale that wasn't meant for anyone else. But Lucy was sitting close enough to hear it, and she knew Kiwi's regrets the way she was starting to know her own.
This one had a name.
Sasha.
Lucy had never met her. Sasha had been gone before Kiwi ever brought Lucy around. But she'd heard the story in pieces, the way you heard everything in Night City.
Sasha had been on the crew. Sasha had fucked up. Not small. Not the kind of fuck-up you laughed about later over beers, not even the kind you absorbed and moved past. The kind that scorched a reputation down to bone.
The kind that made fixers like Wakako and Padre and Regina Jones mark a crew off their boards and never quite take them off.
And Sasha had died for it, which would have been justice in Night City's accounting except that Sasha's death hadn't paid the debt. The crew was still paying it.
In Night City, reputation was currency, armor, weapon, and leash. Sasha’s death had cost Maine’s crew more than grief. It had left them with fewer calls, worse calls, and fixers like Faraday acting like they were doing the crew a favor by tossing them scraps wrapped in razor wire.
Lucy understood why Sasha had done it. That was the uncomfortable part. There were files someone could see and never unsee. There were corporate sins that crawled under the skin. There were moments when survival and rage stopped fitting in the same body.
Lucy understood. She also understood the cost.
Kiwi closed the shared workspace with a blink. “Rebecca is not wrong.”
Maine looked at her.
Kiwi did not flinch. “Faraday gives us work because better fixers hesitate. They hesitate because clients hesitate. Clients hesitate because the crew’s history makes them wonder if another job will turn into another message.”
Dorio’s voice went low. “Kiwi.”
“She knows,” Kiwi said, nodding toward Rebecca. Then, after a beat, toward Lucy. “They both know.”
Rebecca folded her arms, scowling hard enough to hide whatever else she felt. “Yeah, well. Sasha’s dead. We’re not. How long we gotta keep paying for it?”
No one answered immediately.
That was answer enough.
Lucy watched Maine. He looked angry, but beneath that was something heavier. Responsibility, maybe. Guilt. The stubborn refusal to admit a wound still hurt because that would mean it had not scarred over properly.
Finally, Maine said, “Until we land something big enough that people remember the win louder than the fuckup.”
Pilar pointed at him. “Exactly. Big job. Big money. Big reputation. Easy.”
Rebecca stared at him. “Every time you talk, the city gets dumber.”
Falco leaned back, voice calm. “Question is where that job comes from.”
“Not Faraday,” Rebecca said.
Maine snorted. “You got Regina Jones hiding in your pocket?”
The name landed harder in Lucy than it did in the rest of the room. Lucy kept her face neutral, but her thoughts shifted immediately back to John Welles. Cute reckless John Welles, who had apparently stumbled into Regina Jones’ attention.
A fixer with real reach. Watson’s queen of controlled damage. Former media. Good information channels. Enough conscience to make her unusual and enough power to make that conscience matter. Crews wanted steady work from Regina because Regina’s jobs could lead somewhere. Not always somewhere safe, but somewhere better than bleeding for Faraday’s leftovers.
And John had gotten a personal call. Because, according to him, he had survived something messy enough to impress her.
Lucy still did not know the full story. He had dodged around it when they talked.
John Welles had no idea what he had.
A family in Heywood. Jackie Welles as an older brother. A corpo Counterintel sponsor who wanted him close. Regina Jones opening a door. Fresh chrome at the back of his neck. Enough courage to warn a girl he barely knew that Arasaka had noticed her.
And tonight, a date with Lucy. The thought warmed something in her before she could stop it.
Annoying. Dangerous. She imagined him across a cheap table under bad lighting, trying not to stare and failing. She imagined his blush. The way his eyes widened when she stepped too close. The way he had looked when she called him a good boy, like she had reached into him and pulled some hidden wire tight.
Lucy should have found it funny and nothing else.
“Lucy.” She blinked and realized Kiwi was looking at her. “You drifted,” Kiwi said. “Where did you go?”
Lucy looked back down at the tablet. The cursor blinked at her in the middle of a function she didn't remember opening. "Nowhere," she said.
Kiwi let it sit for a second. "Whoever HE is," she said, "don't be stupid…"
Lucy’s fingers froze over the tablet. Only for a fraction of a second. Unfortunately, she was sitting next to Kiwi, which meant a fraction of a second was basically a confession. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lucy said.
That was when Rebecca appeared.
Lucy had no idea how the girl crossed the room so fast. One moment Rebecca was arguing with Pilar near the kitchen, and the next she was there, leaning over the back of the couch like gossip had physically grabbed her by the pigtails and yanked her across the room.
“Wait, wait, wait,” Rebecca said, eyes bright. “Hold the fuck up. Lucy has an input?” Her chin was practically on Lucy's knee. Her pink eyes were doing something Lucy had previously only seen in cartoons.
"I—" Lucy said.
"Who is he? Is he cute? Of course he's cute, look at your face, oh my god, Lucy, your face—"
"Rebecca!"
"You are blushing!"
"I am not."
"You are blushing, Kiwi, look at her, look at her face, she's pink—"
"She's pink," Kiwi confirmed, without looking up from the tablet, the traitor.
"Kiwi!"
"I'm just observing."
"You're not observing, you're—"
"Pictures," Rebecca interrupted, leaning in further somehow. "Do you have pictures of him? I want to see. Show me."
"I don't have pictures of him."
"You're lying."
"I am not lying—"
"Everyone has pictures. You're a netrunner. You probably have his entire SIN file. Show me his face, Lucy, I need to see—"
"NO!" It came out sharper than Lucy meant. Rebecca didn't even flinch. She was still doing the cartoon eyes.
Lucy made herself breathe. She was aware, with the kind of awareness that lived in the back of her neck and never quite shut off, that the rest of the room was now extremely quiet in a way that rooms full of mercs were never quiet. They were all pretending not to eavesdrop.
Lucy looked at them. They all looked, immediately and badly, somewhere else.
"It's just a first date," she said, and stood up.
"Just?" Rebecca repeated, like the word had personally wronged her.
"It's just a first date, tonight, and it is no one's business." She tucked the tablet under her arm, which she immediately recognized as a tell, and then she didn't know what to do with her free hand, which was worse. She made it into a fist. Then she un-made it. "I have to go. I have to get ready."
"It's three in the afternoon," Rebecca said.
"I have to get ready," Lucy said again, more firmly, and then she was leaving. The door clicked shut behind her.
In the hallway, alone, Lucy pressed her forehead briefly against the cool metal of the wall, closed her eyes, and said one extremely specific word in Japanese that her mother would have slapped her for.
She could still hear Rebecca through the door. She could not, mercifully, make out the words.
She took the stairs down two at a time.
– Rebecca –
Inside, Rebecca rounded on Kiwi the second the door clicked shut, her grin spreading wide enough to show teeth. "Damn," she said. "Your little netrunner protégé has it bad for whoever this boy is."
Kiwi finally looked up from the tablet. She did it slowly. "I hadn't heard about any boy in Lucy's life until now," Kiwi said.
"Right?"
"Lucy doesn't have boys in her life."
"Right?"
"Lucy barely has people in her life."
"Exactly," Rebecca said, jabbing a finger in the air. "Which is why this is suspicious. Right? You're a netrunner. You're trained to be suspicious. Be suspicious with me."
Kiwi tilted her head. The mask hid most of her face, as always, but the part Rebecca could see looked thoughtful in a way Rebecca didn't entirely like. Kiwi thoughtful usually meant Kiwi already three steps ahead and not telling anybody where she was going. "It's suspicious," Kiwi agreed, slowly.
"Suspicious," Rebecca confirmed, satisfied. Then, brighter, "Also I am super freaking jealous."
Dorio sighed from across the room. “Here we go.”
Rebecca spun toward her. “What? You’re not curious?”
Dorio looked at her.
Rebecca pointed accusingly. “That face means yes.”
“That face means I know better than to encourage you.” Dorio replied calmly.
Falco tipped his bottle in Rebecca’s direction. “Encouragement’s never been required.”
“Exactly.” Rebecca turned back to Kiwi. “WE SHOULD GO SPY ON THEM!”
Kiwi’s composure cracked upon hearing that. Her eyes went wide and she actually let out a small sputter underneath that lower face mask of hers.
Rebecca’s grin went nuclear. “Oh my God. I broke Kiwi!”
“You did not break me.”
“You sputtered.”
“I did not.”
“You did. There was a little—” Rebecca made a strangled, delicate sound that sounded nothing like Kiwi and everything like a dying kettle. “That.”
Kiwi stared at her. “Never do that again!”
“Come on,” Rebecca said, hopping over the back of the couch and landing beside her. “It could be fun.”
“No.”
“It could count as girl time?”
“No.”
“Protective surveillance? You said it yourself. Suspicious boy. Sudden date. Lucy blushing like Pilar accidentally opened a romance shard instead of porn.”
“Fuck you, Rebecca!” Pilar shouted.
Rebecca flipped him off without turning around. “Jack it quieter in your room tonight and maybe I’ll consider it!”
“I don’t—”
“You do, and the wall is thin!”
Maine coughed into one fist.
Dorio turned away, but her shoulders were shaking with silent laughter.
Falco lowered his hat a fraction, which was Falco for laughing his ass off.
Pilar looked wounded. “This is a hostile work environment.”
“This is your sister showing mercy,” Rebecca said. “A hostile work environment is me throwing a grenade into your room next time you start moaning like a dying synth-cow.”
Her brother sputtered. “Jesus, Becca!”
Kiwi pinched the bridge of her nose like she was physically holding back regret.
Rebecca leaned in close again, lowering her voice only slightly. “Come on. This is a much better way for me to spend my night than listening to Pilar jacking it in the room next to mine. Come with me, I won’t be able to track Lucy and spy on her without our team's best Netrunner!”
Kiwi stared at her.
Rebecca stared back even more intently.
The room waited.
Maine, the bastard, looked amused now. Dorio had fully given up pretending not to enjoy this. Falco watched like he had paid for a ticket. Pilar, still offended, muttered something about privacy and respect, which Rebecca ignored on principle.
Kiwi exhaled slowly through her mask. “Spying on Lucy’s date is invasive, reckless, juvenile, and very likely to make her angry.”
Rebecca nodded solemnly. “Yes.”
Kiwi stared at her for a long moment. Then, very quietly, she said, “You are a terrible influence.”
Rebecca beamed. That was not a no!
– John Welles –
I had no idea how to dress for a date in Night City.
That sounded stupid, considering Night City had advertisements every three feet trying to sell me clothes, sex, status, weapons, chrome, synthetic alcohol, authentic alcohol, fake memories, real trauma, and at least four different brands of pants with “combat-ready” in the product description.
But standing in front of the mirror in my bedroom, I realized none of that helped.
A suit was out.
That was the first thing Cortana and I had agreed on without argument. In a normal city, maybe a suit would have been classy. Mature. Respectable. The kind of thing a guy wore when he wanted to look like he had his life together.
In Night City, a suit meant corpo.
A suit meant Arasaka.
A suit meant someone who thought poor people were furniture with worse hygiene.
I had worn an Arasaka Academy uniform for half a day in this body, and Lucy had told me to fuck off within five seconds of seeing me in it. I was not testing fate by showing up to our first date looking like I belonged in an office tower deciding which neighborhood got poisoned for quarterly growth.
So no suit. Instead, I wore a nice pair of blue jeans that actually fit, a clean white T-shirt, and a black synth-leather jacket that was mine instead of Jackie’s. That part felt important. I had a bit of money and was able to start buying my own clothes. My own look. This jacket fit my shoulders. It sat close without being tight. It made me look leaner, maybe a little more like someone who could survive one bad decision after another.
Or at least like someone who had learned how to buy clothes.
The pistol tucked inside the jacket ruined the clean lines a little, but not enough for me to go without it.
Walking around Night City unarmed was stupid.
Walking around Night City unarmed on a date was still stupid.
Maybe especially on a date, considering my date was Lucy Kushinada and trouble seemed to orbit her with the same loyalty Cortana had for hijacking my blood pressure.
I adjusted the jacket again and looked at myself in the mirror.
Sandy blond hair, blue eyes, pale skin, strong jaw, nineteen years old. I still didn’t look like Jackie. I still didn’t look like someone who belonged in the Welles family until I remembered the way Mama hugged me and the way Jackie slapped my back hard enough to qualify as blunt force trauma.
Then I looked like myself. Whatever that meant now.
“You’re overthinking,” Cortana said.
“I am absolutely overthinking.”
“I know.” Her voice warmed with amusement. “I live here.”
I smoothed the front of the T-shirt. “How do I look?”
There was a pause. Not a long one. Just long enough for me to become aware of my own heartbeat, which was rude of both my body and my passenger.
Then Cortana said, softer than I expected, “Very handsome.”
I froze. My face went hot immediately. Of course it did. My stupid body had exactly two modes around attractive women, panic and medically concerning panic.
Cortana laughed in the back of my mind, low and pleased. “There it is.”
“Don’t sound so smug.”
“I am smug. You asked for my opinion. John,” she said, and suddenly she was there. Her avatar appeared beside me in the mirror, blue and luminous and impossible. Not really in the room. Just projected through my Kiroshis, painted perfectly into my vision with enough detail that my brain kept trying to insist she was standing next to me. She had adjusted herself again.
She was leaning against nothing, hip cocked, one shoulder tilted, the blue of her glowing softly enough to make the rest of the bedroom look gray. Her hair was down. Her smile was small and dangerous. Her eyes met mine in the mirror—in the mirror, which was a detail I hadn't yet had the bandwidth to unpack, because mirrors didn't reflect things that weren't there, except the one in front of me apparently did when Cortana wanted it to.
“Hi,” I said intelligently.
“Hi yourself.” Cortana stepped closer. Her reflection moved in the mirror beside mine, and for one very strange second, we looked like a couple getting ready to leave together. Me in jeans and a jacket. Her in light and code and shameless confidence.
Then she reached up and touched my cheek. I felt it. I felt the soft pressure of her fingers against my skin, the warmth of them, the slight drag as she stroked along my cheekbone.
My breath caught.
Her fingers lingered against my face.
Neither of us moved.
Something flickered across her face. Satisfaction, maybe. Or something deeper she hadn’t decided what to call yet.
Then she leaned closer. My brain knew she wasn’t physically there. My eyes knew she was an optical projection. My nerves knew the sensation was Cortana stimulating parts of our shared brain with the kind of skill that would probably make Viktor either horrified or fascinated.
None of that helped when her mouth came near my ear.
“Wouldn’t it be better,” Cortana whispered, “to stay in tonight?” I swallowed. Her fingers traced my jaw. “Just you and me,” she continued, voice soft as velvet over a knife. “No Lucy. No crowded restaurant. No awkward small talk. No dangerous moon-obsessed netrunner deciding whether to steal your wallet, your attention, or something more inconvenient.”
“Cortana.”
“Mm?”
“You’re doing that on purpose.”
“Of course I am.” Then she blew gently into my ear.
Somehow, impossibly, I felt that too. Warm breath brushed over skin that should not have been reacting to something that did not exist. A shiver ran down my neck and straight through the rest of me before I could stop it.
Cortana saw. Obviously Cortana saw. Worse, she felt the reaction through whatever shared biological-cybernetic nightmare miracle counted as our nervous system now.
Her smile turned absolutely wicked. “You are so easy,” she murmured.
“I am being bullied by the supercomputer in my head.”
“That’s what we’re calling this?”
I turned away from the mirror because looking at her and myself at the same time was becoming a hazard. “I have a date.”
“Yes,” Cortana said. “You do…” The playfulness in her voice dimmed just a little.
I noticed. She noticed me noticing. For a moment, neither of us said anything.
Then she stepped back, the glow of her avatar softening. “Go on, then.”
“Cortana…”
She waved one hand, airy and dismissive, like she had not just tried to make my knees forget their job. “Have fun with your picksocket.”
“Lucy.”
“Picksocket.”
“She has a name.”
“So do viruses. I don’t have to like them.”
Despite myself, I laughed.
Cortana’s expression warmed, and then she blew me a kiss with all the theatrical arrogance of a goddess granting a blessing to a doomed mortal. “Try not to get kidnapped, stabbed, seduced into betraying basic operational security, or emotionally compromised.”
“That’s a long list.”
“It’s Night City. I could make it longer.” Then she faded from the mirror, vanishing back into the glowing edges of my vision and the quieter places behind my thoughts.
I stood there alone in my room.
Well. Alone-ish. My cheek still tingled where her fingers had been. My ear still felt warm. My heart was still beating too fast. And somehow, in a city full of guns, gangs, corps, fixers, chrome, and murder, the most dangerous thing in the room was the jealous AI who had just told me I looked handsome.
I stopped in the hallway and pressed the heel of my hand against my eyes.
Compose yourself, John. I had been telling myself this for forty-eight hours.
It was not working.
Cortana's teasing had gotten worse since the Regina gig.
There was no other word for it—it had escalated. The cheek kiss had been one thing. The avatar adjustments had been one thing. Whispering in my ear and blowing on my neck through nerves that did not technically exist was, I felt, a new and unwelcome thing, and the worst part of it was that she knew it, and the second-worst part of it was that I had not, in any moment of any of it, actually asked her to stop.
I took a breath. I held it. I let it out. My ear had finally cooled down. The blush on my neck was retreating to something a person could plausibly attribute to the heat of the hallway.
"You're going to walk into the kitchen now," I told myself, very quietly, "and you're going to say goodbye to Mama, and you're going to leave like a normal person, and you're not going to think about—that—until at least the tram."
I straightened the jacket. I checked the gun for the second unnecessary time. I rolled my shoulders. I walked down the hall.
I was three steps from the kitchen when I heard the voices.
Mama Welles, I expected. Mama had been in the kitchen when I'd come upstairs, humming to herself while she did something at the counter, and I'd registered it the way you register the weather. I was pretty sure she was making cinnamon rolls earlier.
The second voice I did not expect, and the last time I had heard that voice it had been on the other side of a diner table offering me ten thousand eddies and a date with an onee-san.
Mama Welles was at the kitchen table. There was a small pot of coffee between her and her guest, and two cups, and a plate with a few of the little cinnamon things that I could almost classify as rolls.
V was sitting across from her.
V was in jeans.
V, Arasaka Counterintel V, polished-corporate-black-suit-and-heels V, was sitting at my mother's kitchen table in jeans and a soft dark sweater that fit her in a way I was not going to think about, with her dark hair loose around her shoulders and her boots crossed at the ankle under the chair.
They both looked up at me.
Mama smiled.
V smiled.
They were not the same smile.
Mama's smile was the smile of a woman who was delighted to see her son in his nice clothes and was already mentally cataloging which photo of him she would force on whatever girl he was going to meet.
V's smile was small and pleased and unhurried, and her red eyes did a slow, frank, entirely shameless sweep from my boots to the line of the jacket to my hair, and when they got back to my face she let me see her do it.
“Oh, you have got to be kidding,” Cortana said in the back of my head, with feeling.
"What," I said, "is going on here." It came out flatter than I'd meant it to.
"Mi'jo," Mama said warmly, like she didn't notice. "V decided to stop by for a chat. It's a shame she doesn't come around more often."
"It's a shame," V agreed, holding her coffee in both hands, eyes on me over the rim. "I keep telling her I'll come by more, and then work eats my life. Hi, John."
"Hi," I said. I did not move from the doorway.
"You look nice," V said.
"Thanks."
"Very nice!"
"Thanks."
"That jacket's new."
"It's—" I cleared my throat, which had decided, without consulting me, to be a little dry. "I got it this afternoon. New."
"It fits you well."
"It was on sale."
V's smile twitched at one corner.
Mama, who missed nothing in this kitchen and never had, looked between us with the small placid expression of a woman who was watching something she found extremely interesting and had no intention of letting either of us know how interesting it was. She picked up her coffee. She took a sip.
"Sit down, mi'jo," she said. "Have a cinnamon roll before you go. V was just telling me about her work."
"I really have to—"
"Sit down, John."
It was not a request. Mama Welles' kitchen had two rules that I had learned in my first week, and one of them was that when Mama said sit down in that exact voice, you sat down and you figured out the reason for it later. I sat down.
There was, of course, a chair at the table that was not the one next to Mama. There were, in fact, two empty chairs, one of which was beside Mama and one of which was beside V. Mama gestured, blandly, to the one beside V.
I sat in the chair beside V.
V did not move. V did not so much as glance at me. V took another slow sip of her coffee and the corner of her mouth did the thing again, the small private thing, the thing she did when she was winning a game I had not realized I was playing.
She smelled, faintly, like something expensive and warm. I did not catalog what.
"So," V said pleasantly, turning her head just enough to look at me from a much shorter distance than I had calibrated for, "where are you going tonight?"
"Dinner," I said.
"Dinner where?"
"A place."
"A place?"
"In—uh. The city."
"In the city," V repeated, gravely, like I had said something fascinating.
"Mi'jo," Mama said, in the warning-amused voice, "answer the woman."
"Cosmo's," I said. "It's a—it's a little place in Watson. Lucy picked it."
"Lucy…?" V said. “That's the pretty picksocket?"
I felt my ears go hot, again, for the second time in twenty minutes, which had to be some kind of personal record. V's eyes flicked to them and registered the color change and her smile widened by perhaps a millimeter.
"She's not—she's not a picksocket anymore," I said. "We talked. She stopped. That was the job."
"That was part of the job."
"It was—"
"You completed the job, John. I'm just teasing you." V set her coffee down, finally, and turned in her chair to face me properly, and that was somehow worse than the sideways look had been. Her knee almost brushed mine. Almost. The almost was, I was learning, V's preferred mode of operation. "I really am happy you handled it cleanly. And I really am here to see your mother."
"Are you?"
"I really am."
"You happened to come over the night I have a date?" I asked with narrowed eyes.
"That part," V allowed, "is a coincidence."
"Is it?"
"Mostly."
“Mostly!” Cortana hissed in the back of my head. “MOSTLY!”
Mama, watching this with her coffee, made a small noise into the cup. It might have been a laugh. She covered it well. "V was kind enough to bring me coffee," Mama said. "The good kind. From that place she likes. We were catching up."
"That's nice," I said, weakly.
"It is nice. She also brought up something we should talk about, you and me, before you go."
I looked at Mama. Mama looked back at me. Her expression was unreadable in the particular way that meant she had decided something already, and the conversation was a formality. V watched both of us with the polite attention of a guest who had nothing whatsoever to do with what was about to be said and had absolutely set it up.
"What's that?" I asked.
Mama set her cup down.
"V says," Mama said, "that she is willing to give you some lessons. Self-defense. Shooting. The things you'll need." Her eyes did not leave mine. "Jackie has been training you, and Jackie is your brother, and Jackie is good at what he does. But V says there are things Jackie cannot teach you, and she can. And V says she would like to." She paused. "I told her," Mama said, "that I would let you decide. Because you are a grown man now, mi'jo, and you are making grown decisions, even when I do not like them. So." She lifted her cup again. "It is up to you."
V did not look at me just yet. V was, very deliberately, looking at her coffee. I felt her knee, finally, brush mine under the table.
It did not feel like an accident.
Finally, V's eyes flicked up to mine. She was waiting.
Cortana did not say anything for half a second. That was how I knew she was annoyed. Cortana always had something to say. Sometimes several somethings. Sometimes entire tactical briefings delivered in the tone of a jealous goddess with access to municipal traffic cameras.
But this time there was only silence.
Then, very coldly, she said, “Shameless.”
I kept my face still.
“Shameless and clever,” Cortana continued. “She went to your mother first to win her over.”
V sat beside me, calm and beautiful and apparently innocent, while Mama Welles watched from across the table with the patient expression of a woman who was letting me make my own decision but absolutely intended to remember what that decision said about me.
I glanced at V. She had dressed down. Just jeans and a sweater and loose hair and red eyes that made my brain briefly forget every warning label ever printed. It was unfair. It was probably meant to be unfair.
“She understood the battlefield,” Cortana said, sounding more insulted by the competence than the flirtation. “Win over your mother. Present herself as useful. Make the offer practical enough that refusing it looks immature. Then look at you like that while you try to think.”
I swallowed. V’s knee was still lightly touching mine under the table.
“The worst part,” Cortana added, with visible emotional damage in her voice, “is that you should accept.”
That surprised me enough that I almost looked toward her, which would have been hard to explain since she was not visibly in the room.
You think I should train with V?
“Yes,” Cortana said, and somehow managed to make the word sound like it had been dragged out of her at gunpoint. “She has access to training shards. Corporate combat doctrine. Shooting ranges normal mercs cannot enter. Equipment that would be inconvenient, expensive, or dangerous for us to acquire through Jackie or Regina right now.”
I looked down at the table.
“V is dangerous,” Cortana said. “Manipulative. Possessive. Professionally dishonest. Very good at reading people. Almost certainly planning six different ways to insert herself into your life.”
That sounds like an argument against accepting.
“It would be,” Cortana said. “If she were not also useful, well-connected, highly trained, and genuinely interested in keeping you alive. Something she and I begrudgingly have in common…”
I felt something complicated twist in my chest. Because I understood all of that too.
Jackie could teach me how to fight like Jackie. How to stand, how to throw a punch, how to shoot, how to move through Heywood without looking like food. Regina could give me gigs that taught me how the street worked one bad decision at a time.
But V could teach me a different kind of survival. The corporate kind. The kind where the knife came before the smile or after it or somehow as part of it. And whether I liked it or not, Arasaka was already in my life. V was already in my life. Lucy was being hunted by the edges of the same machine. David was still trapped in an academy that treated students like investments and discarded assets. Jackie and Mama were vulnerable to people who could hurt them with paperwork before bullets.
I needed every teacher I could get. Even if one of them was looking at me like she wanted to eat me alive in my mother’s kitchen.
“I would,” I said. My voice came out too quickly. I cleared my throat and tried again. “I mean, I would love to train with you.” Half of that statement was nerves. The other half was probably hormones.
V smiled. Not the sharp little grin she used when she was teasing me. This one was warmer. Brighter. Actually pleased.
It hit me harder than it should have.
“I’m glad,” she said.
Under the table, her hand settled on my thigh. My entire body locked. V’s face did not change. Mama was looking down at her coffee and either did not notice or had chosen the most terrifying possible moment to respect my privacy.
V squeezed my thigh. Much higher than she should have.
Cortana made a sound in my head that was not a word so much as a declaration of war. “This shameless bitch...”
I coughed. It was not subtle. Nothing about me was subtle. I was beginning to suspect that God, or whichever Random Omnipotent Being had thrown me into Night City, had built this body with a blush response specifically to make me suffer.
Mama looked up. “Are you alright, mi’jo?”
“Yes,” I said immediately. “Fine. Totally fine. Throat. Dry. Cinnamon.” I grabbed one of the cinnamon rolls and bit into it because apparently I had decided food was easier than speech.
V’s thumb moved once against my thigh.
I nearly inhaled the cinnamon roll.
“I can disable her hand,” Cortana said.
No.
“Temporarily?”
No.
“Just enough to make a point.”
Absolutely not.
V leaned slightly closer, her voice smooth. “We can start tomorrow, if you’re free.”
Tomorrow? Training with V tomorrow? Date with Lucy tonight. Cortana in my brain threatening light cyberwarfare against anyone who touched me. This was my life now.
“I’ll check with Jackie,” I said, because bringing my brother into the conversation felt safer than acknowledging the hand currently sitting on my thigh like a hostile occupation.
V’s eyes narrowed with amusement. “Afraid of what your brother will say?”
“No. I just—he’s been training me too.”
“Good,” V said. “He should. Jackie can teach you things I can’t.”
Mama nodded approvingly. “That is true.”
“And I can teach you things Jackie can’t,” V continued. “Between us, maybe we can keep you from getting killed before you learn what you’re doing.”
“That’s the goal,” I said.
“That is the bare minimum,” Cortana muttered.
I looked at the time in my optics and seized the escape route like a drowning man spotting land. “I do have to go, though.” I stood a little too fast. V’s hand slipped away from my thigh, and I felt the absence of it with embarrassing clarity. “I have a date.”
The words landed. For a fraction of a second, V’s grin dipped. It was tiny. Almost nothing. If I had not been staring directly at her because my survival instincts had become deeply confused, I might have missed it.
Then the smile came back. “Of course,” V said. “You wouldn’t want to keep Lucy waiting.”
Mama stood too, immediately shifting into mother mode. “Be safe.”
“I will.” I smiled despite myself and leaned down so she could kiss my cheek. She did, careful and warm, one hand touching my shoulder like she could keep me in one piece through force of will.
Then V stood. The room changed slightly when she did. Like attention had gravity and hers had just moved. “Well,” she said, stepping closer. “Have fun tonight, John.”
“Thanks.”
Her eyes flashed orange. A system notification bloomed across my vision before I could react.
CONTACT RECEIVED: V
The information slotted into my interface with obscene smoothness. Number, encrypted channel, priority tag, profile marker, all wrapped in a neat little packet that my Kiroshis accepted before Cortana could decide whether to bite it.
“She just uploaded herself into your contacts,” Cortana said, scandalized. “Without asking. I could have blocked it but that might have made her suspicious…”
I stared at V. V smiled like she had done nothing wrong in her entire life. “Call me anytime, John,” she said.
My mouth opened. “Okay,” I managed.
V’s smile became satisfied.
I backed toward the door before anyone could make the situation more awkward. “I’m leaving now.”
The NCART ride to Watson had given me time to calm down.
“She is very good…” Cortana murmured in the back of my head.
I stared out the train window at the blur of neon, concrete, cable, advertisements, and dirty gold evening light smeared across Night City’s towers.
“V?”
“No, John. The vending machine we passed three stations ago.”
“Right.”
“Yes, V.”
I watched an AV sweep past the trainline, lights blinking under its belly like an expensive insect. “You sound annoyed.”
“I am annoyed.”
“At V?”
“At several things. V. Your blush response. The fact that she has objectively useful resources. The way your mother likes her. The way she touched you. The way you reacted to the way she touched you. Night City’s public transit security. This train’s hygiene. Shall I continue?”
“No.”
“Coward.”
I rubbed one hand over my face. “I have a date with Lucy.”
“Yes. Your moon-obsessed picksocket.”
“She’s not a picksocket anymore.”
“She has been retired for approximately one day.”
“That still counts.”
“I am sure her pension ceremony was moving.”
Despite myself, I smiled. That helped. A little. By the time the train pulled into Watson, I had managed to get my breathing steady, my face mostly normal, and my internal screaming down to a manageable background hum.
The doors opened with a tired mechanical hiss. I stepped off the NCART into the station. Then I immediately lost all of that progress.
Lucy was waiting for me.
She stood near one of the support columns under a wash of flickering station light, one hip angled casually against the concrete as if the whole platform had been built for her to lean on. There were people everywhere, commuters pushing past, vendors shouting, a couple arguing near the stairs, someone blasting music from a speaker that sounded like it had survived three wars and lost all of them.
None of it mattered. Lucy made the station disappear.
She was wearing a very short skirt that showed off her thighs and the long pale lines of her legs. Her boots made her look taller than she already was, sharper too, like every inch of her had been designed to walk straight into trouble and make trouble thank her for the privilege.
Her top was worse. Or better. My brain did not have the bandwidth to decide.
It was a black tank top with a Japanese logo across the front that I could not read, which was unfortunate because staring at the logo gave me a theoretical excuse to stare at everything else. The fabric clung to her chest in a way that made my thoughts trip over themselves and fall down a flight of stairs. It was cut short enough to show her stomach, flat and pale and smooth under the station lights.
Her hair fell around her face in white and pastel colors, soft against her eyes. Her makeup was dark and perfect. Her lips curved slightly when she saw me.
Lucy’s eyes tracked my face, then followed my gaze downward, then back up again. Her smile grew.
She pushed away from the column and started toward me with an easy, lazy saunter that should have come with a public safety warning. Every step made the skirt shift around her thighs. Every step made my ability to speak get farther away.
“John,” Cortana said, warning in her voice.
I blinked. Lucy was closer now. Close enough that I could see the tiny gleam of light along her lower lip. Close enough that my Kiroshis, traitorous pieces of expensive garbage, decided to render every detail with perfect clarity.
“You are staring,” Cortana said.
“I know,” I thought, horrified.
“Stop staring.”
“I’m trying.”
“Try harder.”
Lucy stopped in front of me and tilted her head. “Hi,” she said. It was the same word I had used on the train.
“Hi,” I said back. A miracle. A whole word. Civilization continued.
Lucy’s gaze slid over me in return, slower than necessary. My jacket. My shirt. My jeans. My face. She was not as shameless as V had been.
No, that was not true. She was just shameless in a different direction. “New jacket?”
“Yeah.” I blinked. “You noticed my other one wasn’t mine?”
“You looked like a kidnapped puppy wearing his handler’s clothes.”
“I don’t think that’s a normal thing to say to someone.”
“It was a compliment.”
“It was?”
“No.” Lucy’s smile sharpened. “This is.” She stepped closer and tugged lightly at the front of my jacket, smoothing one lapel with her fingers. “You look good, John.” Lucy watched the blush climb my face with open satisfaction. “Don’t apologize for staring at my tits or legs either,” she said.
“I wasn’t—”
“You were about to.”
I closed my mouth.
She leaned in, voice lowering. “Don’t. I was going for this kind of reaction from you.”
My brain made a faint dial-up noise and then stopped.
Cortana, meanwhile, made a sound like she was preparing to commit digital arson. “She is insufferable as always...”
Lucy’s fingers released my jacket, but she did not move away. “Although I did change our plans.”
That finally shoved enough blood back into my brain for me to understand words again. “You changed our plans?”
“Mm-hm.”
“We’re not going to dinner?”
“We can eat later…”
“That sounds ominous.”
“It’s Night City. Everything sounds ominous.”
“That’s fair.”
Lucy glanced past me toward the station, eyes moving with that constant awareness I had noticed before. She looked casual, but it was the kind of casual that had teeth under it. Like she was tracking exits, cameras, sightlines, and people who were trying too hard not to be seen. Her mouth curved again. “Also,” she said, “I’m pretty sure some shameless members of my crew might try to spy on my date.”
I stared at her. “What?”
Lucy sighed, but there was affection buried under the annoyance. “I made the mistake of talking in front of Rebecca. And when that girl is bored, she causes trouble…”
“I don’t know who that is…” I lied, smoother than I had expected myself to be able to do in this situation.
Lucy shook her head slightly and then chuckled softly. “You’ll know if you hear gunfire and a girl screaming ‘that she’s not short, she’s fun sized.’”
I looked around the station a little more nervously. “Your crew is spying on us?”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” Lucy’s eyes glittered. “But if they are, I’d rather not make it easy for them.”
“Excellent. Wonderful. This date now includes possible surveillance by unknown mercenary assets.”
Technically all dates in Night City probably include possible surveillance, I thought back.
“Do not normalize this.”
Lucy reached out and took my hand, tugging me toward the stairs with casual confidence, like she had already decided I was coming with her and the universe could file a complaint later.
I followed. Obviously. “Where are we going, then?” I asked.
Lucy looked back at me over her shoulder. The station lights caught in her eyes. “Somewhere more fun.”
“That also sounds ominous.”
“John.”
“What?”
“Do you want safe or fun?”
That felt like one of those questions where every possible answer revealed something embarrassing.
Lucy laughed softly. “Relax. I’m not dragging you into a scav den.”
“That’s good.”
“On a first date…”
“That’s less good.”
Cortana’s voice went flat. “I dislike her sense of humor.”
No, she didn’t. She understood it perfectly. That was probably part of the problem.
Lucy led me down the stairs and out of the station into Watson evening. The city hit immediately: hot air, exhaust, frying oil, wet concrete, cheap perfume, old blood, ozone from bad wiring, too many bodies, too many signs, too many sounds. Holographic ads flickered above storefronts. Traffic snarled. A couple of Tyger Claws leaned near a vending machine and watched everyone like they were sorting the street into prey and problems.
Lucy did not even glance at them. I did. Then I remembered I had a pistol under my jacket and no idea if that made me safer or just more optimistic.
Lucy squeezed my hand once. She hummed, amused, and pulled me closer as we moved through the crowd. Lucy stopped near the curb, still holding my hand. “Question. Have you ever seen any Night City street races in person?”
For a second, I just looked at her. Street races. Night City street races. Illegal cars, armed drivers, screaming engines, crowds full of criminals, probably bets, probably gangs, probably cops who had either been bribed to stay away or were waiting to shoot someone for fun.
“No, I haven't,” I said carefully.
Lucy’s smile became bright and wicked. “Want to?”
Every sane part of me said no. Every survival instinct I had developed over the last few days said absolutely not, John, this is exactly how people in Night City die in interesting new shapes.
Cortana said, “Absolutely not.”
My hand was still in Lucy’s.
She looked excited. Like she had found a way to turn the city’s danger into a private joke and wanted to see whether I would laugh with her.
I squeezed her hand back. This was my new life now and I wanted to be the kind of guy that could laugh at danger too. “Yeah,” I said. “I want to.”
XXX