I handed Lucy a see-through piece of garment that resembled a sock, with a thick plastic band around the rim. She took a moment to look away from her deck to look at my gift, then at me. “What’s this?” Lucy raised an eyebrow. “A condom for bigfoot?”

  “It’s a mask.”

  She guffawed. “What do I look like, a bank robber from a cheesy comedy?”

  “It’s tech,” I snorted. She took the mask, and then gave me a withering look.

  “If I put this over my head, and you just start laughing like an idiot, I will fucking end you.”

  I snorted. “Why don’t you scan it instead of giving me the third degree?”

  Her eyes shone blue as she scanned it. Then they widened. She donned the mask. It stretched slightly so that it didn’t squish any of her facial features at all.

  Then, the mask disappeared, including the plastic band around her neck, and Lucy’s face changed. Her face, and her hair. It blackened and turned into a bob. Unavoidable, since the mask was exerting some pressure on her head, enough to keep her hair close.

  And her face changed as well, turning more… well, Asian. Then, her eye-shape changed and her features morphed slightly, her nose lengthening so that she looked far more… Slavic.

  Then, those features combined, and she looked… still not like herself at all, but like someone with a similar ethnic background as her.

  “How do I look?” she asked, batting her eyelashes at me.

  “It all looks pretty seamless,” I said. “Unless I focus real-hard on the parts that are obviously holographic. The physics model isn’t…” I winced. “Gah, it’s not convincing at all, actually. I need to work on this thing. Hair isn’t supposed to be that light, I think.”

  “Let me borrow your eyes real quick,” she said. I let her have them, granting her access to my neural net. I gave her a good look while she swung her head side to side, testing out the hair physics.

  “Looks completely fine to me,” Lucy said. “I literally can’t see what you’re talking about.”

  [We do have—]

  “Fuck!” Lucy shouted, jumping slightly. “Ah, fuck, it’s Nanny, right?”

  [Yes. And as I was saying, we do have perception far superior to a regular human’s. And since we will be coming into scrutiny under people with comparable levels of perception, like for example, a man that managed to determine a woman’s sexuality purely from her walk and body language through a bad CCTV camera, it does behoove us to give it our all when it comes to your disguise as well. Even if your puny meat brain can’t see the problem.]

  Lucy gave me a look.

  “Ignore her,” I said. “Arrogance is her emotional outlet.”

  [Fuck the both of you.]

  “But,” I nodded. “Yeah, that’s pretty much it. It’s only a matter of time until your identity gets burned. You might have to start masking up from now on, too.”

  [Don’t ignore me! I watch whenever you have sex.]

  “Fuck’s sakes!” I shouted.

  She snorted, taking off the mask and looking at it. “I’ll… try to ignore that last bit, for my mental health. So… now I get to LARP as a freaking corpo heiress with this thing, huh?”

  “Nothing so conspicuous,” I said. “One convenient fact is that in NC, anyone can have money, and no one needs to ask any questions about it. We’ll need to work on any identification that you might have.”

  She raised an eyebrow at me. “What identification?”

  I blinked. “You don’t have anything? How’d you get this apartment?”

  “Flatlined the last guy who lived here. Been paying his rent ever since.”

  I gaped at her. “Uh, okay, but what about—“

  “David, I’m a ghost. NC’s got no idea who I am. No one even knows my full name. And you’re the only person I told what my first name is short for.” Lucyna.

  All apart of the super-secret origin story that she refused to tell me, no doubt. Not that this was any cause for distrust. Not at this point.

  “That does make things a lot easier,” I said. “At best, they’ll just have your face on record, and not anything else.” I raised an eyebrow at her. “What about your Netwatch profile?”

  “Who says I have one?”

  Fuck off! “You can’t be this good, Lucy.”

  She grimaced at me disbelievingly. “Pardon me for not being a showboating gonk who can’t go two seconds without recording every single felony I’ve ever committed.”

  “So Netwatch has no idea who you are?”

  “Kiwi taught me good,” she said with a shrug. “I mean, she didn’t teach me Netrunning or programming or anything like that, but she did teach me how to run gigs in NC. And the answer is ‘ninja’. Every time. Without fail. The moment you let the badges get a bead on you, it’s the beginning of the end.”

  I groaned. “That doesn’t seem as fun.”

  “It totally is.”

  I recalled Nanny’s warning, and sighed. “I’ll take your word for it.”

  Then, I recalled something else about my day.

  “I got to meet Us Cracks today,” I said with a shit-eating grin.

  “Really?”

  “Got a picture with them. And their numbers. They’re apparently fans of my racing,” I shook my head with a grin.

  “Alright, smooth operator,” she threw a throw-pillow at me. Smooth operator? Never heard that one before.

  “Not my fault I’m so freaking nova,” I bit my lower lip and made a cocksure face at her. I sent her the picture.

  She threw another pillow at my face, but I could make out a grin at the sight.

  000

  David had made good on his promise to tweak the holographic hair physics to his satisfaction, which had taken him until midnight, all the while as Lucy did some idle tweaks on her quickhacks while listening to old songs.

  Turned out that David much preferred her collection of old-world music than the new stuff that she herself liked: Lizzy Wizzy, Us Cracks, and the Pretty Kitties. As far as homegrown NC artists went, he was more into edgy rock and streetkid music, like Rat Boy of all things, and Aligns and Rubicones.

  But it turned out that he did have some amount of chill in him. Like when she played In The Shadow of the Valley by an old forgotten country band, or Be My Baby by a trio of racially ambiguous singers known as the Ronettes.

  David could relax, it seemed. He just had to be coaxed into it by melodious lo-fi tunes from an age gone by.

  The morning after, he was gone, as usual: off to work, or to entertain his overlord. Leaving Lucy with a brand-new tech mask, and a whole new identity that she could play with.

  In the early, early morning, eleven AM, she took David’s Caliburn (sorry, Murkmobile) to see the city, and get ahead on this stupid double-life plan that David was pushing her into.

  The mask was somewhat uncomfortable to wear, and she was leery on ever touching her face, for fear that it might screw something up. The mask felt fixed to her skin like magnetism, and it did require a fair bit of force to pull it off from her head. Not an overwhelming amount to be sure. Just enough that she was unlikely to ever remove it by accident. But she’d rather not take the chance.

  At least it didn’t cause her face to overheat. Instead, just to be safe, it kept her face at an even and cool temp of twenty degrees. Far too warm to get her to shiver, but it was nothing that would cause her bio-systems to leak good old saline coolant. Or sweat, as normal people called it.

  The Caliburn stopped right next to David’s favorite clothing shop: the acclaimed Jinguji. He kept calling it Jinguji’s for some reason, which Lucy thought was pretty funny. Made the place feel more down-to-earth than it actually was.

  But words did have power, and Jinguji’s namesake was everything but down-to-earth. According to a quick search through the Net at least. Jingū-ji, the name of a type of combination temple and shrine that existed two hundred years ago in Japan, meant to pay homage to both the local Shinto tradition and the Buddhism tradition.

  And this place claimed to have an equal claim to divinity. Interesting.

  The Caliburn’s door opened upwards, and Lucy stepped outside, wearing sneakers, black leggings and a purple hoodie. That, and her mask, now set to look like a combination of someone born from the union of a Slav and an East-Asian: A fairly common combination wherever an Arasaka branch was located in Eastern Europe.

  A valet approached her, and she threw him the cloned keyfob for the Murkmobile—not the stupid design meant to look like a bastardized cop badge, but a more sensible winged shield with a fancy silver R in the middle: Rayfield’s standard fob design. The cop badge that belonged to that failed superhero was somewhere in the apartment, atop some shelf or other. David kept it around as a memento. She didn’t begrudge him. It was a rather amusing situation, all in all.

  Death aside.

  The valet gave her a quick bow and she gave him a tip. “Snoop around and I’ll know,” she said for good measure before heading inside the overly bright clothing shop.

  Ahead of the entrance was a relatively narrow hallway, with glowing tall signboards of clothing models, and a bouncer stood besides them. As she passed him, he recited in a dull monotone, “Welcome to Jinguji.”

  The hallway gave way to an expansive dark gray room lined with golden lighting in thin strips that snaked across the ground, up the walls and over the ceiling. Lucy made out more white signboards with models, as well as moving mannequins sporting stupidly expensive suits: the kinds that David had taken to wearing as of late.

  A suited lady walked up to her, looked her up and down, and hummed. “Welcome, honored customer,” she said. She was… a long-looking person. Like she was meant to be shorter, but someone had stretched her out digitally and inserted her into reality. A narrow face, narrow nose, and red hair styled into a pony-tail that made her front-view even narrower. “You seem—”

  Nah. Don’t like that tone at all.

  Lucy held up a hand to forestall her. “If you’re gonna roast me cause I didn’t come here wearing a fucking wedding dress, why don’t you save your pre-rehearsed lines for someone else? I’m not the bitch to fuck with.”

  Her eyes widened. “A-ah, of course, my sincerest apologies for giving you the impression that I would mock you. A patron of Rayfield is always welcome in our establishment.”

  “There we go,” Lucy gave her an encouraging nod. “Alright. Give me something that’d let me walk freely in Paris’ surface.”

  “We can of course accomplish that,” she said with a grin. “My name is Ingrid—“

  “Didn’t ask.”

  “Of course.”

  Wow, this is fun!

  000

  First dress was a double-splitted purple piece with a V neck so deep that her tits needed to be taped to the inside of the dress to not pop into view. The double-slits around her legs were at least low enough to not expose her panty strings, or her underwear.

  …She couldn’t quite tell why that was somehow more embarrassing than what she usually wore, which left her hips almost entirely exposed, except on the black belt she used to hold her holster. It just was, really.

  Ingrid, or whatever her name was, tried to upsell her on a bunch of jewelry that she thought would make her stark blue eyes ‘pop’ more. Lucy felt leery on making herself out to look like an easy mark, or a fat one that promised a huge payout. That sort of thing was a lot more of a concern when you were a woman, which was why a lot of the higher-ranked corpos in full dinner regalia tended to drag around a huscle or two just as a matter of course.

  She could defend herself easily enough, but it was a drag having to look over her shoulder all the time.

  She compromised by wearing a sapphire necklace, and silver bracelets with one sapphire on each. Didn’t really move the needle much in terms of how much she was spending in comparison to how much money she now had, which was… a substantial amount.

  Outfit number two was one that she was more partial to. A blue dress with a snow white fur-coat on top, which she could modify to have as many pockets as she would need for all sorts of shit: guns, cyberdeck, random gadgets. The neck-line on this blue dress was a lot more modest, but it cut off above her knees, which gave her a lot more freedom of movement as well. She ditched the recommended joytoy boots for a pair of sensible flats to complete the look. Pretty, but ultimately, practical.

  The third outfit was a suit dress. The above half was slightly similar to a suit blazer, only that it extended down below her waist like a coat, and cut off at the knees. It was entirely black with gold buttons, and spacious, functional pockets.

  She had to specifically request that last part. Apparently, it wasn’t fashionable for women to have working pockets.

  The last dress was pastel pink, and came with a cape. She got it because she found the cape amusing. It made her look like a billionaire’s trophy wife. She was sure that David would find it amusing, too.

  The last thing that she got before leaving was a pair of sneakers, black leggings, and a purple hoodie. Exactly the clothes she had come in with, but fancy now, because she bought them for fifty times the price of those items. A whooping three thousand alone on those threads.

  Ultimately, she had to call it quits after that one. Her attention span could only take so much upper-crust bullshit before it felt like her forebrain was being burned out by a Brainwipe hack. She had no idea how David even had the patience for this shit.

  “I’m very glad to have been of service to you,” Ingrid said with a respectful bow as she stood behind her receptionist’s desk. Her eyes glowed blue as she sent Lucy the details of payment. “Would you like for me to bag the garments you brought with you today?”

  She was trying to play it cool, but she clearly wasn’t confident that Lucy could pay, despite rolling in with a Caliburn even. Lucy knew that from the meaningful looks that Ingrid kept throwing to the bouncer far behind her. Bitch.

  “Why don’t you wring them out for pheromones and sell the essence of me on the Net?” Lucy asked with a grin. Then she winked, and made a kissy face. “You can always just keep it for personal use. Might spice up your bedroom antics a smidge.”

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  Ingrid tried her best not to grimace in utter disgust.

  “I will be sure to give them their due respect,” she said. Hah.

  “Okay, pervert.” Before Ingrid could even react, Lucy turned ninety degrees away from her and looked into the air, accessing her contact list and sending a message to David.

  ‘Went and got some new threads today. Price is ninety-eight thousand. That okay?’

  ‘Real funny. Don’t even ask next time, just buy whatever. Unless it’s more than a mill, then maybe we should discuss beforehand. Anyway, just closed the deal on the new house. You can swing by if you want. I’m still getting some biz done, so it’ll be a few hours before I see you again.’

  He pasted the new address along with the message.

  Preem. She’d give that new place a look, and scout for some good spots to keep their mainframe on.

  “Did your sponsor give you the go-ahead yet?” Ingrid asked, tilting her head and grinning in this distinctly corpo way: eyebrows bent into faux sympathy, looking like she was on the verge of crying and laughing at the same damn time.

  “He did. Said I could pick up something nice for my favorite receptionist,” Lucy looked around. “You sell any pet equipment, too? A collar and leash would totally complete your subby little routine. For colors, I’m thinking… hot pink, with fur lining. Sounds good, right?” Lucy did her best approximation of a bitchy corpo laugh, all the while feeling oddly dirty that this act was so easy to slide right into. All it took was combining bitchiness with affluence.

  Before she could clap back, Lucy paid the corpo bitch for the threads. That had the effect of stopping her in her tracks. “Do you validate parking too, or are you going to beg me for spare change, Griddy?”

  A part of Lucy wanted her to fire back. She could do this all day.

  “Of course. Please come again, honored customer,” she bowed repeatedly.

  Sweet victory.

  000

  Fei-Fei finished unloading her magazine on the thirty-yard target in the shooting range with a disgruntled sigh. I just examined the target, and the bullet spread, nodding in comprehension as I made out her little habits and foibles; the small things that kept her from being able to keep her arms, hands, fingers, and eyes in lockstep.

  [She needs more chrome,] Nanny sarcastically remarked. [That’s clearly the answer. More metal.]

  I read Nanny’s intent clearly: less was more. And Fei-Fei might have been better served with a lighter implant than one that essentially replaced seventy percent of her entire right arm.

  “This is starting to get tiresome,” Fei-Fei complained.

  “That means you’re learning,” I said.

  “No, I’m not.”

  “You are,” I said.

  “I’m landing fewer bullseyes.”

  “The ones you landed were lucky shots. Right now, you’re slowly converging towards the center of the target with each magazine. You’re not hitting the bullseye, but you’re hitting around it. You’ve got accuracy, but no precision.”

  She huffed, and put the Unity pistol on the counter, before looking up at me with a small grin. “Don’t you wanna see what this arm can do?”

  We’d been at this for almost forty-five minutes now, and truth was, I was starting to get kind of curious about that. I pushed some buttons on a keypad on the wall to get a new target at the far end of the firing range. “Actually, I am. Go ahead. Show me what QianT cyberengineers can do.”

  She grinned toothily and pointed her right fist at the target. The PLS system rose from her arm, and the interior of the bore collected light, and then….

  A tune played.

  Twinkle, twinkle little—

  BOOM.

  The target was no more. And the wall on the end now had a very big hole.

  The entire firing range quieted down.

  “You… might have to pay for the wall,” I said with a grin, staring at the wall in fascination. That was some pretty good artillery, actually. A fair bit stronger than my Burya. I looked down at her arm. She was a few steps behind where she initially stood, from the recoil of the weapon, but otherwise she didn’t seem harmed at all. Skeletal reinforcements, perhaps? I heard that MoorE sold some pretty sturdy bones.

  Come to think of it, I already had her cyberware data. I definitely needed to get around to working on it at some point. Never seemed to be able to find the time for such periphery concerns these days.

  But Fei-Fei could wait. She had world-class ripperdoctors tending to her, and no one was going to infect her with a cyberpsychosis virus either.

  “Dang,” Fei-Fei chuckled. “Yeah, that… never gets old. I really should be more careful not to set it to full charge.”

  “Charge, huh? Is it a railgun?”

  “Yup. Fires magnetic tungsten core rounds, too. Pure kinetic bombardment.”

  Damn. “How do you reload this thing?”

  “Right, so what I do is, I shovel granulated tungsten and steel down my throat. Then I digest it, and it goes into my bloodstream, and the blood deposits all those tiny particles into the ammo chamber in the arm.”

  I chuckled sarcastically. “Real funny.”

  She opened the arm and showed off the ammo chamber. Two bullets the size of jawbreakers, sitting on steel rails. “As long as the rounds are magnetic and the correct dimensions, I can pretty much put anything in there. It only holds three rounds, though.”

  “Shit,” I said. “With the amount of punch you’re packing, do you even need more than three?”

  She grinned. “That’s the idea. The family does good work, doesn’t it?”

  “What’s the model name?”

  “It’s called the Liuxing: Wallbreaker model,” I pulled up the data I had already taken from her as she introduced it. “It’s not exactly experimental tech, but it’s not on the market yet. The company’s been going through a bunch of scaling issues, you see. We haven’t been able to make enough of these to market them properly.”

  “I’ve heard,” I said. That Kang Tao princess, Ruomei, had told Jin that her corp viewed QianT as a fundamentally unscaleable enterprise, that they were more of a high-tech boutique than anything else. “But it’s a pretty preem piece.”

  I received a message from Jin then. “Ugh, Jin’s here.”

  “Right, you said he wanted to meet you. Any idea why?”

  “No idea,” I said with a frown. “Hopefully, it’s nothing. God knows I already have my plate full. I’m moving houses and everything, and all my friends are… out of town.” I sighed. “Gotta figure that one out on my own.”

  “Wait, you’re moving houses?” Fei-Fei asked, eyes wide. “Where are you going? North Oak?”

  “Charter Hill,” I said. “Grass and I don’t go well together.”

  She snorted. “That’s weird. Grass is awesome.”

  “It’s a two-story penthouse,” I said. “Nova, right?”

  “Hey, you should totally throw a housewarming party,” Fei-Fei said.

  I chuckled. “A party would require that more than two people show up,” I said. “I might be hot shit right now, but I still only got two people I could remotely call friends who’d take me up on that offer. I mean, other than my other friends.”

  “Your mystery friends,” Fei-Fei grinned. “Why not bring them in? Do you think they wouldn’t like me very much? Or… are you still on good terms with them? You know, after everything that’s happened with you?”

  I raised an eyebrow, wondering what she meant.

  “You know… all the money.”

  “Oh!” I chuckled. “Yeah, they’re still my chooms and all. They haven’t gotten weird about it if that’s what you’re asking.” Except for Maine, whose weirdness had gone an entirely different way than I expected. “But they’re out of town partying right now. For the foreseeable future, even. Celebrating my big win.”

  She smiled. “That’s nice.”

  I was about to suggest that she could meet my girlfriend, but stopped myself in time. I had no desire to make the air awkward, or even pressure her into meeting Lucy, whom I was almost certain did not like her at all.

  Jin finally entered our booth in the shooting range, wearing his usual get-up of a haori, a black tee underneath, baggy pants and wooden clogs. “Yo. Nice seeing you again, Fei-Fei. Shooting guns, huh? Got something special planned for school on Monday?” he chuckled and walked between us to get at the gun. “Yo, Davey.”

  “Jin,” I said with a nod. “What do you got for me?”

  “Don’t worry, it’s not that deep—wait, holy shit. Who made that hole?” he turned to Fei-Fei. “Was it you? Was it your PLS? Can I see, actually?” He got weirdly excited.

  Fei hissed sadly and shook her head. “Just ran out of ammo, actually.

  “Shit!” Jin cursed. “That’s a damn shame. That piece’s gotta be better than an anti-tank rifle if that hole over there’s anything to go by. And the walls are made of nu-concrete, too, so that’s saying something.” Jin turned back to the target, hefted the Unity, and aimed carefully.

  “No ammo in that one,” I told him.

  He ejected the magazine and grabbed another one from the counter to insert it into the gun’s well.

  Then, all of a sudden, his entire body snapped into place. Even his feet slid into position, and he fired. Bullseye.

  His body reset, almost preternaturally. Same footing. Same positioning of the arms. It looked like he was only comfortable shooting in that very, very particular way, like he had trained for that position and nothing else. How was that even possible?

  Chipware. He was running chipware that only came preloaded with these preset movements.

  Half a second after the first shot, he fired again. Then faster. At the peak of his firing rate, he was firing three shots every second. Finally, the magazine emptied.

  “Easy,” He chuckled, before tossing the empty gun on the counter.

  “That’s chipware.”

  “That’s totally chipware,” Fei-Fei said half a second later.

  Jin, despite all that I knew about him, actually had the audacity to look scandalized. “Bullshit. You guys are just sore losers.”

  “Jin, that was one-hundred percent chipware,” I said. “You moved like a total robot.”

  He snorted. “Fine. Fine! So maybe instead of busting my ass for ten thousand hours, I went and copped myself the highest-tier Arasaka pistol chipware we had available? You know that our executives use these chips, right? This is the best that you can get. And it sure as fuck won’t fall short against any old skezzed out chrome junkie out of a shit-infested alleyway.”

  I hummed. “That depends, honestly. Some psychos experience time entirely differently from you. Sure, your movements are stiff, but you totally are combat ready against anyone that doesn’t have a reaction time less than fifty milliseconds. Against those types, you really just ought to trust in your subderm, or try not to put yourself in those positions in the first place.”

  Jin raised an eyebrow at me. “Okay, Morgan Blackhand. Why don’t you show us how good you are?”

  I looked at the gun and sighed. “I just told you it’s smarter to not put yourself in those positions in the first place. What do you think I do? Train for a situation I never want to find myself in, or learn to avoid bad circumstances?”

  “That’s a lot of yap just to tell me you’re too scared to try against me.”

  I took the gun and sighed.

  Once upon a time, these things had been my trigger for PTSD. Now, I could fire them without even thinking. Accurately, too. Where others had to sink in thousands of hours of practice, I only had to spend a handful to reach true expertise.

  I reloaded the pistol and fired the gun an average of four-hundred milliseconds slower than Jin’s rate of fire, at a spread that hovered around the savaged bullseye, two to three inches off.

  Slower than Jin. Less precise and less accurate than Jin.

  Jin laughed once the show was over. “Bruh. If you and I were ever in a firefight, I’d flatline your ass in a goddamn instant, David. Holy shit. How do you feel about that?”

  “I’ll try not to get in a firefight with you,” I said with a scoff. “Can’t see what the payoff to that would be, anyway.”

  “Bragging rights, maybe?”

  I looked at Fei-Fei and gave her a nod. “I’ll see you around, alright?”

  “Thanks for taking the time, David,” she smiled. “I had a lot of fun.”

  “If you were having fun, then I obviously wasn’t a good enough teacher,” I chuckled.

  “Guh. Fine. Let’s skip bootcamp and just grab some food next time. That okay with you?”

  “Sure. I’ll be signing on with QianT tomorrow. Let’s catch breakfast or lunch before then,” I said.

  “That’s tomorrow?” Jin asked. “Damn.”

  I grabbed Jin around his shoulder and walked us both out. “Catch you later, Fei.”

  “The fuck?” Jin shook himself away from me.

  “You were gonna say something awful just then,” I said. “Like, I dunno, ‘can’t wait to see someone burn tens of millions of eurodollars’ or some shit. Would it kill you to be more chill around Fei-Fei? She’s been through a lot.”

  “Don’t forget who calls the shots in this partnership,” Jin said. “I’ll talk shit however much I want.”

  “Uh-huh, sure,” I rolled my eyes. “Now tell me,” we both walked through the lobby of the gun range, a pretty upscale place in North Oak, where all the corpos and celebrities came to test out their gold-plated revolvers and pistols. “What’s the situation?”

  “Just wanted to give you a heads up about something,” Jin said. “I also just need you to dig through the info available to you in the Task Force, to find something for me.”

  I frowned. “What is it?”

  “First, let me tell you about this little-known fact regarding this fair city’s Psycho Squad. You know. MaxTac.”

  “I’m listening,” I said as we reached the door. Out in the street were a bunch of parked hypercars, including my own Aerondight. Jin was headed towards his Caliburn, however.

  “While they mostly recruit from their own pool of promising NCPD officers, or they get cast-offs from the security wings of other corpos, they also, very rarely, tend to prioritize the recruitment of their live captures.”

  “Live captures?” I asked in shock. “Wait, you mean actual cyberpsychos?”

  He chuckled. “Yeah. Cyberpsychos. Turns out, once you drag those motherfuckers back from cloud cuckoo-land, they get a… buff of a sort, to their cyberware capacity. Sure, they’re never the same again. Once you go batshit, you never really go back. But they can become cognizant enough to be reasoned with. That, coupled with their cyberware capacity, make them ideal candidates for Psycho Squad recruitment.”

  That… sounded rather insane. But also really interesting, too. I definitely had to ask Regina Jones about this at some point.

  “Anyway, so my dear cousin finally got discharged from the loony bin,” Jin continued.

  My thoughts screeched to a halt. “No fucking way, Jin. You’re not telling me—“

  “That Katsuo got headhunted by MaxTac’s school for shortbus-riding youngsters? Yeah.” He chuckled, shaking his head as he leaned his back against his Caliburn. “Yeah, I know. It’s fucking insane. So fucking weird.”

  “What does this have to do with you?” I asked him.

  “Long story short, dad thinks Tanaka owes him for the shit he pulled. He’ll want Katsuo working for us, basically. I wanna know how likely it is that his sped-ass even managed to pass whatever spelling bee those meatheads put in front of him during his examinations. Pops has his channels, but I wanna be in the loop as well. That’s why I’m asking you.”

  “Can’t you just ask your dad?”

  “Can’t you just do what you’re fucking told?” he scowled at me.

  “Right. Asking him is embarrassing, or… what, it’s beneath him to satisfy your curiosity?”

  He groaned. “If I have my own avenues of finding an answer, he’ll expect me to use them. It’s called practical training. Something Katsu-Fuck clearly never got enough of, else he wouldn’t have been such a candy-ass bitch.”

  “Fine,” I said. “I’ll see if I can pull his papers and tell you how well he did. But Jin… what exactly does it mean if he did pass?”

  “He’ll spend a year or two in some facility or other, getting trained,” Jin said with a shrug.

  “He won’t just get dispatched after a few weeks, right?” I asked him. “I don’t have to worry about MaxTac Katsuo airing my new apartment out?”

  “This is MaxTac, not the NCPD pig pen. They actually have standards in the Psycho Squad, low as they are. So no, his training will actually take an appropriate amount of time, and also no, he won’t ever touch you if he knows what’s good for you. If he gets into the system, it’s a wrap for him: he belongs to our house now. That makes him your colleague.”

  Fuck.

  FUCK!

  What the fuck is this shit?!

  [He’ll be in training for a while longer, David. During that time, we can figure out a more permanent solution to our problem.]

  D: That’d be our last shot to get him. Once in an accident, twice is happenstance, and thrice… everyone will know that someone was gunning for him all along. And that’s going to reveal my connection to the Tanaka job.

  [Don’t be so dramatic. I’m sure MaxTac training has a pretty steep death rate attached to it. The problem might take care of itself in the end.]

  D: I won’t count on luck to save me. He needs to fucking go.

  “What’s wrong?” Jin chuckled. “What, you ain’t professional enough to let bygones be bygones?”

  “May I remind you that he sent gangoons after me?” I asked.

  Jin looked suitably struck by that. He shrugged. “Okay, fine. Jeez. I was just exaggerating about the ‘colleague’ part. There’s no way he’ll ever be on your level. Not after what he pulled. He’s our dog. Nothing else. That means he’s your dog, too. On the hierarchy, you’ll always be above him, even if he’s technically family. He’s nothing more than glorified huscle now, but you’re money. That’s different.”

  D: Fuck that. He needs to go.

  [Don’t make it too obvious, now.]

  “Alright,” I said to Jin. “Thanks for the heads up. I’ll see what I can pull on him.”

  “Good. Anything else on the Task Force?”

  I thought for a moment. “Varian Freeman ran into D. Almost got killed by him.”

  Jin’s eyes widened, and he cracked a wide grin. “Holy shit. That’s fucking crazy.” I ejected a shard from my chip slot and handed it to him.

  “That’s the recording,” I said. “Also, needless to say, but try not to go out too often. Things are getting hotter, and an exec’s kid like you might sell for a pretty enny.”

  He slotted the shard in, and his eyes glowed blue as he viewed the recording. Then he grimaced in shock. “Holy shit, that’s gnarly.” His expression split into a grin again. “Can’t see the look on that cowboy sisterfucking retard next time I see him.” Then his eyes returned to their usual dark brown, and he looked at me in something almost approaching concern. “You be careful too, choom. Don’t go around doing big-boy work when you can be sitting pretty on a desk or something. Let the grown-ups get turned into sidewalk paintjobs. But I’ll let pops know that you’re still going strong. He’ll appreciate it, even if he won’t show it.”

  “That’s mighty sweet of you,” I said to him with narrowed eyes.

  “What’s a lord for?” He grinned cockily, raising his shoulders, hands in his pocket.

  “Anything else, Jin?”

  “You tell me. Any other details on the job?”

  “Nothing I’d tell you all out in the open,” I said to him, looking around at the street. If this had been somewhere in Santo, I might have felt safer talking about this. But this street was infested with fellow corpos, who probably had their ears craned for any juicy intel regarding the D case.

  “Aight, bet.” He stepped forward as his Caliburn door opened, then without looking, he fell into the seat and turned his body smoothly towards the windshield. “Catch you on the flipside.” The door closed again, and he smoothly slid out of his parallel-parked position before burning rubber down the street, towards where I assumed his home was. Now that the Memorial Omatsuri was over, I hoped he’d do the sensible thing of staying home more often instead of testing his luck in Japantown or somewhere in Watson for cheap thrills.

  Not because I cared about him in any way, but because having him flatline would force me to interact with Masaru more regularly. I appreciated the kid’s role as a buffer more than anything.

  I got into my own Aerondight, and headed to my new home. In Charter Hill.