Switching modes from ‘work’ to ‘performance’ was always a trying task for me. I had always been more of a doer than a talker. I hadn’t gotten very far with just talking, if I was being honest. Most people, when they looked at me, saw nothing but a gutter rat was looking to trick them for every last eddie. Didn’t matter what I said; first impressions and corpo caste bigotry were the lifeblood of Night City. Couldn’t even blame them. Much.

  That’s why I always wanted to let my work speak for me. Why I had always wanted to get into Arasaka’s R&D track—more than corporate management, anyway. Because I had always trusted in my ability, if not my non-existent magnetism.

  As I made my mental transition to a performer, I found myself having to go wade through all that muck of my past, my upbringing and my status, and shove it down.

  I had to force my nerves down, tamp down on the sense of shame and recrimination, and just find it in me to speak.

  And there was a lot of sense of shame and recrimination that I had to reckon with. Too much, honestly. A lot of it, I didn’t agree with.

  The shame: my place in this world, as a gutter rat, eternally fated to crawl around the backstreets, eking out a living in the most undignified ways one could imagine.

  The recrimination: my desire to do something, even if it meant killing. My lust for killing was only rivalled by my knowledge at how much a human life cost. How much just one had cost for me.

  The entire world.

  And with each life I took, I stole a world from someone else. Over and over and—

  No. Those were subjective worlds. I destroyed subjective worlds to save the objective world.

  But that was difficult to wrap my head around. A philosophical quandary for the ages, one I was ill-equipped to answer conclusively.

  Still, I had to shelve those feelings, and put on my game-face. An aspect of myself that I hated to sell: my game-face. The same face that I had used to bail myself out of so many troubles in my past—more than I could count, really.

  Game-face.

  Qiang spirited me away via AV, nattering into my ear about the script of talking points that he had already given to me via chip, impressing upon me the importance of not, fucking, up.

  “David, David,” he had said to me in his personal Rayfield AV, while we were en-route to N-54. “I’m not trying to insult you here. I’m just telling you, this is the way: don’t get distracted. Don’t get riled up. And they’re gonna try riling you up. We couldn’t shell out for the amount that it’d take for Jordan to go easy on you. She’s gonna follow our script, but she will ad-lib. And you will be taken by surprise. Just… take it as it comes, alright?”

  I tried my best to load up on the snacks inside the AV as he said that to me, just to fuel up, and also to keep calm.

  I was at the best shape of my entire life. Physically, and mentally. But I needed this reprieve, too.

  I threw a cocktail shrimp into my mouth, and nodded. “No insults. I get you, I get you.”

  Qiang thought that I didn’t, based on his expression. He thought I was taking him too lightly. He wanted me fearful. I didn’t know how to be.

  “Qiang, it’s—“

  “They’re gonna get personal,” he said. I stiffened, somewhat. “They’re gonna talk about your dead mom.”

  Choose your words fucking carefully.

  “That dead gutter trash, and that equally absurd and ridiculous son of his, who had no business whatsoever climbing as high as he did.”

  Evidently, he hadn’t chosen his words carefully at all.

  If only I’d had a gun.

  [David.]

  D: What?

  [They’re just words.]

  Easy for her to say.

  “Stings, doesn’t it?” Qiang tilted his head, leaning towards me. “Tell me the truth. Did you want to kill me just now? You fucking whore-spawn?”

  “Get out of my face.”

  Qiang only leaned closer. “No.” He had the nerve to shove his forehead to mine. “That’s too little give,” he growled. “You’re supposed to back down.”

  [Mind games, David! Relax!]

  I knew that! I knew it was just mind games. And yet, I couldn’t help but react.

  Slowly, I eased my head back. All the while, I fought to prevent my temper from flaring. “You’re out of line,” I growled.

  “No. Not nearly.”

  I’ll fucking murder you.

  “I get it,” I whispered, even as every fiber of my body demanded to throttle this corpo bitch. I could terminate him in an instant. “You’re just looking for a reaction. But Qiang—you’re going way too far.”

  He sighed. “Perhaps I did. And for that… I am sorry.”

  Fuck him. Sorry didn’t—

  “But does sorry cut it?” Qiang asked. “Sorry? It’s just words. I said something unforgivable to you. And I did it as an exercise, to get you to understand what you are facing. As long as I’ve accomplished that particular task, I’m content.”

  So he knew, then. He knew that—

  “We will never be friends,” Qiang said. “If we recover from this episode, then that would be an incredible feat of empathy on both our parts. But truly, know this, deep in your bones, David: we are not friends. I will strive towards my personal mission to not befriend you. Not unless you marry into the family. I do not have friends, you see. Only family.”

  Point fucking taken.

  I whipped my hand to his face, and slapped him hard enough for the sound to echo in this AV.

  He looked at me in shock.

  “Don’t talk about my mom,” I said.

  And that was all I would say on the matter.

  He looked at me in shock and disgust.

  Then he giggled, as he cupped his poor, abused cheek.

  “Well played, Martinez,” he said. “Well played.”

  I reached for a bottle of vodka, uncorked it, and downed a deep measure in one go. “To ease any hurt feelings,” I said as I then handed it to him. “You got what I paid for, Qiang. Don’t pussy out now.”

  He looked at the bottle, giggled, and took it for himself. “Salud!” he exclaimed as he took the bottle and downed a measure.

  “[

  Qiang lowered the bottle with a grunt, and he stared into my eyes.

  And he just stared.

  Waiting.

  Waiting for me to admit my fault.

  I detected the gaps in knowledge. He needed to know whether or not I was apt to slap a news anchor in her face.

  And the answer was: “I’m good.”

  He grimaced. You gotta do better.

  I slapped his cheek, way softer this time. I grinned as I did it. “Code-switching is an old art for me, Qiang. Relax.”

  “Then what the fuck was all that—“

  “Oh, you wanna know why I got pissed because you talked about my mom?” I asked. “Easy! Because you know better! Gillean Jordan doesn’t! But here’s the thing. Jordan won’t work with me. You will. Stay on your best behavior, and I won’t slap my paws on your designer cheeks. As far as the rest goes: I’ll swallow my bile, nod like a good little bitch, and I’ll serve the company’s interest. Always. And to make things better, I won’t bitch back when we’re in public! So there’s that: your one line of defense. Fuckin’ cameras. So keep that in mind, Qiang. Make sure there are cameras before you bitch me out.”

  “I fuckin’ hate you,” Qiang growled.

  He didn’t mean it. But if he really did… “And I hope we make a shitton of money together.”

  His grimace turned into an expression of glee. “Well, at least you have your priorities straight.”

  Despite all my best efforts, I couldn’t help but see in him someone that… I should reach out to. And become tighter with. I liked Fei, and this was her brother, and she hadn’t warned me against him. That told me that, as far as she knew, he was alright.

  “Dammit, Qiang,” I sighed. “Listen.”

  He looked at me sternly.

  “I know there’s a fucking language,” I began. “I know there’s all these codes, all these ways that we have to communicate with one another as boss and employee. As trainer and master.”

  “Let me guess: you’re too smart and sophisticated to need to bend to all that bullshit,” Qiang said dryly. “And therefore, you want us to be on an even register. Associate to associate.”

  “You say it like it’s too crazy to even consider,” I frowned.

  “Do you know how much that costs, David?” he said. “How much it costs for me to let you in like that?”

  “More than your company?” I asked. “No, stop. Don’t argue just yet. I wasn’t finished. Here’s how this is going to go down: you treat me like I’m a fucking human being. That means, you don’t say shit about my mother,” I ruined the life of the last corpo asshole that did that, “And you don’t try to make shit harder on me just to test me. I’m inexperienced. I’m green. I know that. You think I fucking don’t, Qiang? After all I’ve been through? Getting gobbled up by Arasaka, dicked around by the Ryuzakis, and now you? I’m here to make money, goddamnit! And you are, too! So let’s stop pretending like I’m your fucking lapdog for one second. And let’s be partners.”

  “Fine,” he said, waving his hands at me and sitting back. “No more games.”

  “Good. Thank you.” I leaned closer to him, and emphasized my words, “Thank you. Do you want a progress report?”

  “You made progress, did you?”

  “Coroner’s report,” I chuckled.

  He bared his teeth in a grimace. “Shouldn’t have poked you, huh?”

  “I’m not gonna sugarcoat it,” I said. “It’s a mess.”

  “Cliff notes.”

  “You got saboteurs fucking up your update roll-outs. The firm is bleeding from a thousand cuts. There’s moles prowling about. We even got a name. Huerta. I’ve got my guy on it currently, and honestly, I don’t even know how to justify going to sleep—or even staying in school at this point. So much work to do. So much unfucking.”

  He laughed. “Ahhh. That’s music to my ears, Martinez.”

  “That!” I pointed at him. “That fucking ‘work-hard’ fetish of yours. It’s… dude, it’s retarded. I’m up my neck in shit and piss and all you can do is take solace at the fact that I’m aware of what I bought into.”

  “And do you regret it?”

  I laughed. “Are you stupid? This is… this is better than I could have imagined! I’ve got so, so many opportunities to show you what I’m good for. That’s why I’m giving it to you like it is. The situation is shit. I can fix it. And until I start showing you signs that I’m not up for this monumental task, why don’t we hold off on any consequences for my battery?” I grinned. “What’s a slap in the face between a guardian angel and a lippy trustfund nepo baby?”

  “Careful, David.”

  I put the bottle back on the table, and let out a quiet burp. Good food. “My bad,” I said flatly.

  Then he slapped me in the face. It actually stung.

  “I deserve more credit,” he said. “Than being called a ‘trustfund nepo baby’. That’s my trigger. Understood?”

  I chuckled. We were making progress. That was good. “Loud and clear. Sorry.”

  He took a deep breath and fixed his jacket. Just as he did, I noticed that the AV was slowly sinking into a waiting pad atop a skyscraper. “We’re up,” he said. “You’ll probably need make-up for the slap. Bruise might not show until we’re on-air. I know you like to show up to meetings all rough and fucked up, but…” he cracked a grin and chuckled at that.

  “I’ll sort it out,” I said as the AV doors slid upwards, letting in the night air. Out we stepped, a procession of corpos ushering us into the elevator as we proceeded onwards.

  Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

  For Qiang’s big comeback, and my own formal introduction to the corpo scene.

  000

  Dinner with father was a solemn affair.

  It was a weekly arrangement, and one Jin dreaded every time. It was a sanctified dread, however. The way some people probably looked at going to church every Sunday. It sucked, but you were obligated to do it nonetheless. It wasn’t a matter of desire, but duty.

  Father would invite him to his house, and they would eat in his dining room. The table was long and rectangular. Eight seats that went unsat, except for the two on each short end. Where they both sat.

  Even after all these years, father still insisted on having the chairs there, knowing that no one would sit there. It was remembrance, he claimed. Remembering all the members of the family that had been lost.

  One to divorce, and seven to the city, now ashes whose bones he had personally picked through with his father. He still remembered them working quietly, nary a tear between them as they went about that grisly tradition.

  But they never talked about them, Jin’s siblings, or his mother, now up in the wind.

  Instead, it was progress reports. Corporate gossip. Every Sunday was an occasion for Jin to show his old man what he had accomplished. What information he had gleaned from his games, rubbing shoulders with others like him.

  Even in spite of his recent windfalls, he still couldn’t shake the feeling that it would never impress his father. David’s onboarding had made Jin look like a fool. It hadn’t been as smooth as he had wanted it to be. Masaru still viewed him as nothing but a wild-spirited beast of burden, and Jin as an idiot for failing to harness him properly. Faltering and failing to achieve perfection.

  “My sister’s son,” Masaru said abruptly, in between bites of his rare steak. “He has chosen a rather interesting path for himself.”

  Katsuo. Jin almost hadn’t caught that tidbit in time for this meeting, having only heard the whispers days prior. He’d sent David to task on pulling his papers and seeing how the poor fuck did. “Psycho Squad recruitment,” Jin intoned evenly. “Not surprising, considering how he turned out. And from what I’ve gathered, he tested stably enough on the Freud-Laing test to continue being processed. He will be shipped out to Fort Ferris on Monday, to undergo basic training.”

  Apparently, MaxTac, and every other Psycho Squad unit in North America, received training in only a handful of spots on the continent. Each training camp was a joint operation, headed by Militech and the other big corps. And they all had a gentleman’s agreement to treat those camps as neutral zones. No matter what corp you were affiliated with, only one color—whether it was skin or corp logo—mattered: chrome.

  That, and a fanatical devotion to killing cyberpsychos. The corps never agreed on anything, but they did agree on that one thing. Taking down skezzed-out chrome junkies was just good for business.

  It escaped him, why the corps couldn’t just focus more on preventing the inception of cyberpsychosis itself, but whatever the answer was, Jin predicted that it likely boiled down to money. Or agendas, which was just money in longer terms.

  Masaru looked at him for a moment before refocusing on his food. He said nothing. Jin breathed a sigh of relief and kept eating. No news was good news when it came to the old man. His silence was the greatest compliment out there.

  Unless it wasn’t. There were levels to his silent responses. This one was ‘good job, son’.

  Jin couldn’t help but treasure the compliment.

  “And your man David,” Masaru said. “His work in the Task Force.”

  “He made friends quite quickly,” Jin said. “Vincent Valeri. The same person you sent in on David’s first interview with you. It seems like all it took was that one meeting, and he came out of it with a solid connection to Counter Intel.” David was a charismatic fuck when he had the mind to be. Something about that gutter rat-ness couldn’t help but give him this unspoken charm.

  A real classical rogue, he was. Silver-tongued, unexpectedly competent, and… really fucking annoying at times.

  “Do you value David’s skills in diplomacy?” Masaru asked.

  Somehow, he felt like the question was a trap. It was in the tone. Or the quiet periods between each word. Had he missed something? “He’s charismatic, and I would not be opposed to sending him as my envoy. Though, given his performance at your interview, I still say that he has a way to go. But that’s natural, father. It’s all a part of the process. You don’t civilize someone like him in a mere day. Just two days past, he finally moved away from Arroyo. He lives in a penthouse in Charter Hill now, and his practical work experience in QianT will eventually straighten all those… idiosyncrasies of his out.”

  Like making a man of Masaru Ryuzaki’s stature wait, for instance. Idiotic.

  “I imagine you’ll have ample opportunity to see his charisma in action tonight,” Masaru said, taking a sip of his wine.

  What? What was going on tonight? He had missed something!

  Jin blinked. “I’m eager to see,” He said as he covertly sent David a text.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing?’

  Masaru put down the glass. “How do you expect he will acquit himself?”

  What the fuck was going on?!

  He received the text a second later.

  ‘What? Oh… fuck, dude. Yeah, forgot to mention it. I’m on TV in a sec. Doing a promo thing for QianT. Telling everyone I’m investing. And that Qiang is alive.’

  Wait, what?! Qiang is alive?!

  Fuck! David! David, what the fuck is wrong with you, David?! What the fuck?! Are you trying to fuck me, here?! David, I will rip your fucking heart out--!

  “Adequately, I’d imagine,” Jin said. “I can’t speak for his media training, but I imagine that QianT has that well in hand. And with Mei Jing Qiang’s reappearance on the docket, I’m sure that he will be more the focus of attention than David will.”

  Masaru looked at him for a while longer than he felt comfortable. He must have sensed the hesitation. He’d be stupid not to. Jin had gone quiet for several long seconds on end. If it hadn’t been for David’s timely response, father would have actually voiced his displeasure.

  “The boy is ours,” Masaru said. “Do make certain to remind him of that point. Or I will.”

  Irritated. He was irritated.

  Fuck.

  Well, this called for punishment. Obviously.

  Jin suppressed a grin as he came up with a fun idea. Always good to make punishments fun, or they would just become duty. Well, fun for the one administering the punishment.

  He hit up his contacts: the Arasaka kids, not the others. And on a lark, he hit up Fei as well.

  ‘Party at David’s new digs. Wear something nice.’

  David was going to hate that. Perfect.

  Jin turned his face to a wide screen on the wall. “I assume you’d want to watch,” he said to his father.

  Ordinarily, this sort of thing would be beneath Masaru, but he sighed and glanced at the screen. “Oh well. I have nothing else on my schedule than this. Who knows? Maybe this will prove… entertaining?”

  Jin’s hairs raised on their ends at that near-overt threat. You better pray that it fucking doesn’t, went the unsaid second half of that statement. David making a spectacle of himself would prove entertaining to others, but embarrassing to the family.

  And that wasn’t something David could survive.

  He sent his own warning.

  ‘Act right. Your life depends on it.’

  David’s response was swift. ‘Nothing new, there. Don’t worry. I’m not a fucking idiot.’

  Jin prayed that he wasn’t.

  000

  I lied to Qiang that I accepted the make-up. The pre-process went by in a flash as I received a handful of my talking points and the expected questions that I would be asked by the show’s anchors.

  Gillean Jordan herself, apparently.

  I’d seen her a couple of times on the news, though I rarely sat down to watch it. Most of the time, it just played on the TV while mom sat on the couch, dazed from a long day of work. I doubted she paid much attention to that SCOP either. She got most of the inside scoop from her work, probably. Especially when it came to the more violent goings-on of the city.

  That was Jordan’s bread and butter. Sensationalist news. The N-54 had released an exposé about a Biotechnica fuck up about a year ago. One of the few times I had watched the news. Something about a drug or other, that apparently included neural degeneration as a side effect. Back then, I had hoped that it would do something to affect Biotechnica in some way. Maybe even sink them.

  A five percent drop in stock value followed by a couple of lay-offs was all that really ended up shaking out from it all. Of course. If that nanomachine vaccine roll-out seven years ago hadn’t been able to sink them, why would that have?

  The megacorps could not be sunk by gossip. The news was only good for one thing: to boost stock value.

  On the way down to the studio, I had asked Qiang why we weren’t taking this scoop of ours to the WNS instead. I’d heard that their reporter, Arif Iqbal, was far more partial to serious news than this station was.

  “Retail investors love a good circus,” Qiang had said. “Serious players tend to trust their hedge fund managers to do actual analytic work, but your average NC shit-for-brains is gonna want to throw their money at anything that warms their cockles, like a feel-good story. Corpo heir back from the dead, and you. The freak oddity. Listen, just—stick to your script and you’ll be alright.”

  It didn’t make any sense—people making big money decisions based on faith alone—but that was clearly the point.

  In three more months, provided we had gotten past the storm, he and I would return to the media, a different media, and then we’d have more than petty tricks and circus performances to report on. Actual, measurable growth.

  The beginning of a new era for QianT.

  Until then, let the people point and ogle at the show.

  [Just turn off your brain, David,] Nanny said. Qiang hung back as I was escorted to one of the chairs next to the big desk where Jordan was currently downing cup after cup of coffee. Something was off about her. She looked twitchy. And it wasn’t just the caffeine.

  Dear god, she’s probably high.

  As I sat down, Nanny sat next to me, wearing a maroon pantsuit that matched my own. [Probably cocaine. Look inside her nostrils.]

  Nanny had probably used my optics to do just that, but I wasn’t nearly as interested in finding out for sure.

  Turn off my brain, huh?

  Easier said than done.

  Gillean Jordan spared me a look, then went back to fiddling on her tablet.

  “Hi,” I said to her. She ignored me.

  Odd. Was I not worthy of her notice or something? Even now, after everything I had done to get to this point? No, there was something else there.

  Qiang had called this a circus. Jordan was treating me like a sideshow, apparently. A fancy thing that my betters had filled her Sunday evening slot with in order to entertain the masses. I wasn’t real, in her mind. In the same way that I wasn’t real in the opinions of most of the corpos I had experience with. I was either well-connected via Jin, and if it wasn’t that, I was just good at racing and other activities. If it wasn’t that, I was just good at tech.

  The Nightmare Rally winnings of mine were luck in the minds of many. Luck, and connections. Or maybe Hiroto had thrown the race. Or maybe I had cheated.

  Doubt. A constant, never-ending barrage of doubt fought to keep my head down in polite company. Only QianT had any faith in me, and even then, it was more out of desperation than genuine belief.

  Huh. I felt a weight leave my shoulders at this realization. I was still in a position that I was long used to. The position of being doubted, underestimated. It was a long-practiced role of mine, nothing out of the ordinary.

  Just as I gained maximum composure, I received a text. From Fei.

  ‘Why am I only now getting this party invite to your place? And from Jin of all people.’

  What the fuck?!

  ‘One sec, Fei. I’m almost on the air.’

  Then I sent a message to Jin. ‘What the fuck is this I’m hearing about a party in my place?’

  ‘Your punishment for holding out on me with this TV thing. I won’t hear any excuses, David. This is happening. And fuck you.’

  I tried sending another message, but he had my number blocked. What the fuck?!

  I sent a message to Lucy. ‘Jin’s on his bullshit. He’s forcing me to host a party. Clean the house, please! Lock the runner room, but clean the stuff inside, too. Just in case.’ We kept a clean operation in the penthouse. Don’t shit where you sleep and all. We didn’t keep the vast majority of weapons, drones, and equipment that we needed for merc work in the house. Maine had a safehouse somewhere in the city for that.

  But my personal arsenal was a problem. She’d need to find a place for the guitar case. Dammit.

  ‘Fuck this, David. Seriously, fuck this. And fuck you.’

  ‘Fuck you, too. Just get it done.’

  ‘Fuck. Fuck you. Fine. Good luck, David. And fuck you. Bye.’

  ‘Fuck you, bye.’

  [There’s something seriously wrong with you two.]

  “Learned the script, kid?” Jordan asked, now looking herself over with a hand mirror.

  “Yeah, I learned the fucking script. Get off my dick,” I said so quickly and so automatically that I only realized a beat later that I had said it to her of all people. Ah, dammit. Between Qiang and Jin nattering at me about how important it was that I don’t shit the bed, her comment drove me over the edge.

  [So you’re not super-comfy with people underestimating you after all. You were just coping.]

  Not quite. In fact, it was Jin’s party bullshit that had shaken me out from my composure. But just because I was comfortable being underestimated didn’t mean I liked it.

  Jordan gave me her attention now, her eyebrows scrunched up as she wore a mocking grin. She looked downright evil as she looked at me. “Cute. Just for that, I’ll fuck your shit up, gutter-pissboy.” It shouldn’t have been a surprise that she knew my background. Now Qiang’s comment that things could turn ugly made a lot more sense.

  [HAH!]

  I took a deep breath, and sighed.

  Oh well.

  000

  It started the way these things normally did. The news jingle came on first, and Jordan somehow transmogrified her entire attitude to one of consummate professionalism as she delivered the introduction with an even tone and a perfectly normal body-language. You’d never assume that she was probably off several lines of Columbian marching powder just by seeing her on-screen.

  “And for today’s guest, we have a recent NC sensation. He’s young. He’s talented. And not only did he finish the Nightmare Rally last week on his first recorded try—winning first-place as he did—but he chose to invest his earnings in QianT. This young man is an Arasaka Academy student, only seventeen years old, but he is also a shareholder of a major company. David Martinez, how are you tonight?”

  I gave a light-hearted chuckle. “I feel like a glazed donut sitting here, listening to you sing my praises. Thank you. I’m glad to be here.”

  Jordan’s expression barely twitched at my attempt at charm. “So tell me, racer-extraordinaire. How come you’re so good at racing?”

  I gave the pre-rehearsed lines easily, following the script loosely, but faithfully. It was just deflection, really. ‘Honest passion’, ‘hard work’. I got into the self-made line algorithm at the end, even though the script didn’t specifically call for it. I went in detail about it for a minute before Jordan steered the conversation back on the rails.

  How much did you win?

  A fuck ton.

  Why’re you putting it in QianT?

  “All in on red thirty-seven,” I said. A roulette deflection, just to get the studio chuckling good-naturedly. Then I went on about what I admired about the corp, and what I thought I could provide for it.

  “And an investment that large must have been a welcome influx of funds, right?” Jordan said. She was doing a bit of the old ad-libbing there. She wasn’t supposed to point out how much we were hurting for funding. “I’m sure QianT’s leadership was appreciative of your show of faith.”

  “Indeed,” I said. “I have one man to thank for allowing me to purchase the shares that I did—“

  “Class A, right?”

  “Exactly,” I said. “Thanks to that, I’m quite close to a seat on the board itself. My hope is that with my continued work, I will be able to earn my way to that seat in good time.”

  “Which brings us to the topic of your mysterious benefactor,” Jordan said. “Long thought dead after an unfortunate cyberpsycho incident in North Oak, he’s back, and he’s making quite the moves. Ladies and gentlemen, may I please welcome the one and only son of QianT’s CEO: Mei Jing Qiang!”

  He walked in with an unspoken swagger. I stood up and greeted him, like we hadn’t seen each other in a while, and then we sat down together.

  This was the part where I didn’t have to say anything else. Qiang went on about the product that I was peddling, and how confident that he was in my efforts, lying bold-facedly to the world about that.

  All the while, Jordan threw lowball after lowball at him. And then one lowball question disguised as a highball, just to make things seem fairer.

  Qiang had an answer to everything. More to the point, the way he characterized the company made it seem like we weren’t on a head-on collision towards the earth from orbit. It was fascinating to see how a person could create such a massive lie from only a thousand isolated truths.

  [You’re doing good, David.]

  D: I’m surprised the crew isn’t texting me non-stop.

  [Your agent is on, but I turned off notifications. I’m reading it. Hmm. Fifteen back-to-back texts from Rebecca. Nothing important.] I’d read them later, but I also trusted Nanny’s judgment.

  “And David here is not just a budding entrepreneur, is he?” Jordan said. I blinked. What? That wasn’t in the script. “I’ve received reports that he’s also in the Task Force charged to bring the wanted terrorist D to justice.”

  Shit.

  That wasn’t, strictly speaking, a secret. The Task Force personnel were divided, obviously, between the spokespeople that met the media—lightning rods, I’d heard them called under hushed whispers—, and the ones who did the real work: the intelligence agents and security operatives. They were meant to be secret, in a gentleman’s code sort of way.

  And that code certainly covered a talking head announcing it to the whole city that I was spearheading an attempt to nab D.

  Was this what she meant by fucking my shit up? That was… wildly irresponsible of her. I also wondered how exactly this wouldn’t come back to bite her in the ass.

  Fuck it. Guess it’s time to own it. “The city is in uproar. I’m just trying to do what I can for the people, whenever I can. I’ve offered my meagre talents to the Joint Special Operations Task Force in the hopes that we can go back to the quiet days, before all this… ceaseless violence and murder began. And I know how much risk I’m putting myself under, trying to stand against this wave of terror. I know.” I glared into the camera. “And I don’t care. D, wherever you are, I will find you. And I will bring you to justice. If you want to make this city a better place, if you really believe in all the ideals you keep spouting, then you’ll return peace to the city.”

  “Ideals?” Jordan chuckled, now looking somewhat frazzled by my issuance of a challenge. “D is a mass-murderer, he doesn’t have any ideals! Are you just saying that because you’re also from Arroyo? Having grown up under struggles and hardships?”

  “Whatever ideals he has don’t compare to the ideals that people have attached to him,” I argued. “But you’re right. It doesn’t matter. Talk won’t resolve any of the issues that our city is facing. Only action will. And while I will continue to tirelessly work on my project that may potentially save countless jobs down the line, I will continue to strive towards peace. You’re right that I grew up under struggles and hardships. This is no different to me, the struggles and hardships I’m currently taking on.”

  “That’s really admirable, Martinez,” Qiang said, giving a proud and warm grin that looked all too fake. “The city is, obviously, in need of straightening out. I can attest personally to how dangerous it is. Martinez’s work is not only commendable, but also vital. Just as vital, I’d say, as the global supply chain—” He continued on in that vein, steering the conversation back on track.

  Jordan let go of me after that, mercifully enough.

  Nanny materialized in front of my chair crouched, her hands pressed together and pointed at me. [I don’t think picking a fight with your own alter ego counts for acting right, David.]

  Let the stock prices see where we stood, then.

  Also, this bitch was going on my list.