"If you try to give me a headache again with your weird Stalker nonsense, I'm going to brain you," Amelia groused when I used Stealth to sneak up on her after she was done with work for the day. "I'd hesitate if I didn't have a way to put you back together again, but I can give you as much brain damage as I want and still keep you pretty,"

Call me a coward, but I folded before her threats faster than a faulty cybernetic bought off a shady ripper the first time you try to use it.

"Got it. Lesson learned. I actually had a reason for doing this, though."

She squinted at me incredulously. "Oh?"

"Yep. I mean, if this gives me proper control of Stalker Stealth…" I trailed off. Then, giving her time to look away, I slowly removed my gloves.

I had to focus for a second, and it felt a little like holding my breath, but I was pretty sure I was doing my new trick correctly.

"Okay, you can look over now."

Amelia did. Her eyes went wide a second later as she latched onto my hand and started turning it this way and that, examining it. "How are you doing this? I can actually look at it, and it's not trying to give me brain hemorrhage."

I grinned. "It doesn't even cost me Essence to maintain. Turns out, our cybernetics always have some Essence streaming through them, and I figured that's what lets them maintain the passive effects. So, I'm just… holding the Essence in my arms still, for lack of a better explanation."

"No, no… that makes sense," Amelia muttered, already looking like she was about to rope me into a whole new line of testing. "My father was enough of an asshole to keep the relevant info on this from me, but I bet he knew about that. He always handled the Stalker cybernetics way more easily than I could when examining them… I bet you there's a way to…"

"Um… Amelia?"

Her eyes snapped up to mine. She had an adorable look of confusion on her face.

"You wanted to examine me while I was using some of my skills, remember? We don't have time to get stuck examining my arms all day."

"Right! Right… urm, this way…"

She led me from our apartment and back down to the clinic proper in a hurry. This time, I knew there would be no scheduled surgery to interrupt her.

Secretly, I found her enthusiasm adorable. Outwardly, though, I gave a dramatic sigh and submitted to my fate.

—

I focused on my Shadow Runner abilities while testing things out with Amelia. I did need to tackle them eventually, after all.

Funnily enough, my apprehension was completely misplaced.

I'd been half-convinced that shoving Essence into those skills would either not work, or that the effects would be horrid, on par with the Tongue of The Ravening Observer. Instead, the skills proved to be extremely useful.

I started with Programming. The second I shoved my Essence into the skill, it felt like a weird switch got flipped inside my brain. And then… then I was lost to the beauty and complexity of code.

The way I perceived it shifted, deepened, and took on a life of its own. Whole new dimensions opened up in front of me. I had to focus on the world my eyes were showing me, rather than on the scroll screen that had been more than sufficient until then.

I couldn't really put the sensation into words. All this time, I'd seen coding as a simple two-dimensional endeavor, literally. The Shadow Runner package forced my mind to shift to three, four, or even six dimensions.

Things I'd never even considered attempting before now seemed manageable. The secrets of the netspace didn't seem unreachable anymore. I felt like a god surveying his domain!

Of course, that feeling crashed and burned remarkably fast when I realized I had to relearn how to do everything through this new prism Programming offered me. It wasn't going to take forever, since a ton of my knowledge transferred rather well, but…

Well. I wasn't going to turn into some programming whiz overnight.

Quickhacks, too, benefited from the same shift in perception. I could spot so many more weaknesses now. I also noticed the best openings to apply my quickhacks, shaving down on deployment time and maximizing their efficiency.

It was only when I properly connected to the netspace and tested out Movement that I truly realized what was happening, though.

Whether it was because my puny mortal brain couldn't take it before or whatever, I had still been thinking like a human. My brain processes, with a few notable exceptions, were human.

Now? My skills were teaching me how to think and act like a Shadow.

Sure, the realization freaked me out a little. I needed a long, tight hug from Amelia.

But I got over it pretty quickly. The freedom and power afforded by such a shift in mentality were things I desperately needed. Besides, looking at the netspace through the prism of that mentality left me awestruck.

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Whoever had built the concept for such a thing was an absolute genius. The harmony of data, and the code that carried that harmony… it was beautiful. Beyond beautiful, even.

And I could now appreciate it all fully!

At the same time, I felt an odd kind of hunger kindle within me. A desire to absorb as much of the data around me as I could, using it to expand my own mind and understanding, gorging on it again and again until I couldn't take any more of it in, before finally…

I blinked and shook my head, the previous train of thought leaving me with nothing but a faint sense of unease.

Still, even with that one little incident, the rewards I was left with at the end of that day were more than worth a few moments of discomfort and panic.

Shadow Runner Package:

Clairvoyance 4 (36/100) → Clairvoyance 4 (47/100)

Programming 1 (99/100) → Programming 2 (85/100)

Movement 2 (46/100) → Movement 3 (31/100)

Quickhacks 1 (99/100) → Quickhacks 2 (21/100)

Assault 3 (95/100) → Assault 3 (97/100)

Tongue of The Ravening Observer

Unseen Stalker Package:

Stealth 1 (99/100) → Stealth 3 (11/100)

Tracking 2 (99/100) → Tracking 3 (43/100)

Focus 3 (97/100) → Focus 3 (99/100)

Grace 3 (17/100) → Grace 3 (41/100)

Faultline 2 (20/100) → Faultline 2 (69/100)

I felt infinitely more useful and capable, even if I couldn't really show off in everyday life. Amelia was the one who got to save people and help them improve the overall quality of their existence. I was there for when someone needed to be killed or we had to steal something.

I mean, I'd never been particularly good at the latter. I never did get to test my skills past stealing a few items from a vending machine. Still, I was fairly confident that I could finally play the role of a competent netrunner. I was essentially cheating by relying on unnatural abilities and cybernetics, but corpo runners with top-of-the-line, beefed up equipment did basically the same thing!

When I cuddled up to Amelia that night, I went to sleep with a large smile on my face.

—

The following morning was nowhere near as idyllic.

Sure, it started alright. I woke up to find that Amelia had crawled on top of me at some point during the night, pinning me to the bed with her warmth and softness. But then I realized that the reason I had woken up at all was a persistent pinging from my eyes.

I barely remembered to cut out the video feed before sleepily accepting the incoming call.

"Mmmhwfr?" was the best approximation of the noise jumble that came out of me.

Mela had just opened her mouth to say something, but she paused.

"What in the world was that?" was the question she settled on instead.

Checking the time, I saw it was barely past five in the morning. "Early. Warm. Cozy. What do you want, you asshole?"

"So… I've been thinking…"

"Revolutionary for you, I know."

"Oi! Don't fucking cut into my speech!"

"You had a speech prepared?"

"Yes!"

"Oh… in that case, I'm hanging up on you."

"Don't you fucking —!" Mela cut herself off, grumbling when she realized I was chuckling at her instead of actually cutting off the call. "Yer a little shitter, you know that, right?"

"Sure, sure… Anyway, you were 'thinking.'"

"I don't like the way you said that."

"And I don't like your face. Seriously, what's up? Can I help?"

She was silent for almost long enough to make me worry.

"Yeah, that's kind of why I called ya. Listen, I know it's stupid, I know it's dangerous, but I want fucking revenge. The Zerx… it's not that they just almost killed me. They're spitting on everything the Kittens did and stood for."

That sure did a good job of shaking sleep out of me.

"Mela…" I cleared my throat. "I don't know how to say this, but last time —"

"Last time, I was a fucking idiot, yeah. I fucking promise that won't happen again, okay? I was just… My brother was in the back of my mind, and I saw the state of the slums, plus finding them near our homes like that…"

She trailed off, but she really didn't need to clarify. I got it.

A part of me, though, wanted to tell her gently that our homes were no longer there. Not for me, at least. Even if there was a gutted apartment for me to go back to, I'd never choose to do that.

My home was with Amelia now. And while the ripper and I never explicitly discussed it, our future was together, too. Even if someone came along and renovated the slums into what they used to be before all the chaos, I still wouldn't ask her to follow me back there. The slums had no future for us. Or, and I blushed at the thought rather heavily, any children we might have one day.

But that's not what Mela needed to hear right now.

Instead, I took a deep breath. "Okay. So. Assuming you promise never to do something as idiotic as that again, and I believe you, what do you even want to achieve? Just go back and murder all the Zerx we can? Find this mysterious boss of theirs?"

"I want to make the slums a little safer, dammit. There's gotta be something we can do. They can't just fucking use the place as their personal playground, abducting anyone they want and selling them to corpos!"

"Mela… Are you seriously telling me you don't believe horrid things like that happen in the slums every day anyway?" I forced the words out, only able to do it because I didn't actually have to say them out loud. For the call, willing them into existence mentally was enough. "Let's face it: the slums don't need outsiders to make them an utterly abominable place to live."

"They were a nicer place under the Kittens, though! We kept order in our territories. We kept people safe. Sure, it wasn't perfect, but it was so much better than this bullshit!"

"Yep. And while the Kittens did keep people relatively safe inside their… I mean, our territory, what about the rest of the slums? They didn't start this shit up recently. They've been kidnapping and selling people like merchandise for a long time now already. I'm sure Patch wasn't the only lowlife leading an operation like this. I can pretty much guarantee it."

"I know! I fucking know that!"

"What do you want to do then, Mela? What is this really about? Because while I agree the situation is horrible, what do you want us to do?"

"I just… I need something, okay? I at least need the Zerx gone. At least them. I don't know what else we can do, but… just them, at least. Please?"

I felt my breath hitch at the weakness and vulnerability in her voice. I wasn't sure if she was aware of the tears sliding down her face, either. Honestly, I didn't have the heart to reject her plea.

I spared a glance at my slumbering ripper, hoping she wouldn't resent me for it.

"Sure, Mela." I sighed, staring up at the ceiling. "We can at least do something about them. We can at least do that."

Mela thanked me profusely, but I didn't say anything else. I just lay there.

No matter my personal feelings on the subject, I couldn't help thinking that I might have just made a huge mistake.

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