"I… Can I, real quick…" Amelia swallowed. Just asking the question seemed to cause her physical pain. "Can I borrow the scroll you've been using?"

I knew what she was talking about, of course. The 'Shadow Buddy's Scroll', as I had taken to calling it, was something I carried around with me regularly. Not because I had a reason to use it. I didn't, not with my eyes in play. I just liked having my shadow pal near me.

It was a feeling of belonging and support that made me do it, really. I wouldn't say I was 'sensing' the shadow's feelings or anything. But every time I tapped on the scroll while I wasn't using it, his eyes would pop up and squint at me in those smiling half-moons, and I'd immediately feel a little better.

Besides, the security of knowing I had a friendly shadow right there if I ever needed them for something was a genuine relief.

"Well?"

I snapped out of my own head and blinked owlishly at Amelia, then flushed at the expectant look on her face.

"Oh! Sorry, I was just — I mean, yeah, you can borrow the scroll, obviously. It's technically yours." I stretched an arm down to the floor, where I'd left the scroll when I cozied up to her for our cuddle pile study session. "Not that I mind, but is there a particular reason you need it?"

"Yeah, protection. That's something the shadow can do, right? Stop hacking or snooping attempts?"

"I… think? No one's getting into the scroll without losing their mind, that's for sure. Not sure about whether he could actually hide what you're looking up, though. I can ask."

"That would be… appreciated." She stared at the scroll in my hands. "Should be possible, though. You kind of have some level of protection with those eyes already, ya know?"

"I do?"

"Yep. It's kind of… you're not perfectly invisible or anything, but yeah, it's harder to pin down who's looking things up. It's one of the weirder effects of the eyes, especially because we never actually coded in anything of that nature. The effect just appeared when we were doing what little rudimentary testing we could without installing them in someone."

"That's good to know, I guess." It certainly explained why I hadn't gotten in trouble for looking some stuff up already. "Anyway, you may want to cover your ears for this next bit."

Amelia did so with an expression halfway between a grimace and a frown. Then I let myself slip into shadow speech freely, trying to get my shadow pal's input on what Amelia wanted from him.

Communicating with a shadow was, as I'd found out in the lab, kind of frustrating on the best of days. They understood speech, obviously. They were eager to chatter back at me. The problem came from a fundamental misalignment in the way we thought.

For most shadows, existing in real space was something close to torture. The laws of reality didn't make sense, their bodies were all confusing, and their natural inclination to soak in all available information was massively hindered by their environment. There were no easily accessible data caches. No information highways for them to stream down and hijack. Just their flesh and confusing, limited modes of communication.

When shadows talked to me, I was nearly overwhelmed by the fullness of their speech. It came complete with emotional undertones, flashes of images, and even words that bizarrely echoed into three or more meanings all at once.

In comparison, although my speech did seem to be accompanied by some intent and emotion, it felt… flatter. More linear and limited. I even suspected that the way I was using 'The Tongue of The Ravening Observer' was wrong, somehow. My intent wasn't registering quite right.

I had a strong feeling this was partly why every shadow I came across, including my best buddy, referred to me as 'the shattered one.'

"Bud, I was wondering if you could help us out?"

I talked right at my scroll. The screen flickered a moment later as a pair of eyes popped up on it, immediately 'smiling' at me.

"We need to look some stuff up, but it could be a security risk. Could you hide us while we do it?"

They eyes tilted to the side in an adorable gesture, showing off just how much the shadow had managed to pick up on my mannerisms over the duration of our friendship.

"Hide?"

The word came pouring out of the speaker, crackling and worming its way into my ears persistently. Immediately, I was assaulted by the impressions of data being cushioned behind layers and layers of static and useless info… of a shadow melting into code to lurk there, waiting for careless runners to come close…

The flood of images would have been overwhelming a few days ago. Now I just squinted my eyes slightly in response.

"Yeah, hide. We don't want anyone to find out where we are. Please, bud?"

"Help! The Shattered One will be safe/hidden/undevoured/unobserved!" One word fractured into four inside my head as the shadow enthusiastically agreed, and I grinned back at the happily squinting red eyes.

"Thank you, buddy. You're the best!"

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"I am!" he happily agreed, making me chuckle as the speaker went quiet.

I knocked my shoulder into Amelia's to let her know it was safe again. When she removed her hands from her ears and risked peeking at me from the corner of her eye, I offered her the scroll.

"Here. He promised to help! Not sure how much he can do, but I think he'll keep people from tracing the search data back to us? Probably."

"Probably," she grumbled. "What does that even mean?"

"It means I'm doing my best to communicate with an eldritch creature who is convinced I'm the same species as him. It's not an exact science, you know?"

Not that my shadow buddy was difficult to get along with, of course. Really, communicating with him was a breeze compared to a fresh shadow. He was consistently learning. I had even spent a few hours showing him how to use the net through a scroll like a human, and I'm pretty sure he was looking things up regularly on his own.

That did make me wonder what he would be like if I unleashed him on the real again, though.

Would he be able to handle himself way better than a regular shadow now? Probably. At the very least, I was confident he'd be way more 'in tune' with his body than ninety-nine percent of shadows out there, especially since Amelia's father had forced him to spend so much time in the real already.

It was kind of hilarious to imagine a shadow going on an errand for me. I bet he'd get all sorts of 'please don't eat me' discounts…

I sighed. I could only distract myself from the anxiety that had started to churn away inside my stomach for so long.

"So… what did you have in mind?" I asked, trying for 'casual interest' in my tone and failing miserably.

Amelia shot me a quick look, then snuggled a bit further into me like she could see right through me. There was, of course, a good chance that she could. We had spent a whole lot of time together recently.

"There's this group my father hired on and off. A bunch of thugs, mercs, gangers and such. They were all kicked out of whatever other organizations they used to belong to, for being a bit too… eh, 'of dubious character', and then they banded together. They needed money, my father needed people who wouldn't ask questions, and, well…"

"A perfect match made in corporate heaven," I scoffed, and she giggled.

"Exactly. Now, there's a few softer targets that I'd prefer we go after first. But these idiots are actually in our district, so we wouldn't need to risk life and limb just to get to their base."

I thought back to all the checkpoints and shit we'd read about. "That sounds good, honestly. I'm… not exactly here legally. If someone takes a look at my citizenship records, I'll get arrested on the spot. Or, all things considered, they'd probably shoot me first and ask questions later."

Amelia didn't deny that. Instead, she opened up a site advertising the 'Ubiquitous Problem Solvers Inc.' I blinked at the name, then failed to hold in a snicker.

"Wait, don't tell me these are the guys you want to send me after?"

My laughter died when she swiped onto the 'Our Teams' page and a bunch of heavily armed, merc-looking individuals popped up on the screen.

That… was a lot of firearms. And I do mean a lot. An excessive amount, really.

"Yeah, that's them. They've got an HQ relatively close to us. That's how I managed to 'sneak out' and get this apartment in the first place. My father sent me to pick up a… shipment they had for him."

"A shipment?" I couldn't hold myself back from prompting her, just based on how bitterly she'd said the word. Disgust was doing a lot of heavy lifting there.

"People. From — from the slums, I think." Amelia kept her eyes fixed forward, very pointedly not letting them wander anywhere near me. "I don't know how they kept supplying my father with test subjects, but they're the group he went to the most whenever he needed more."

I didn't say anything. I just sort of… seethed.

It wasn't the loss of life itself that bothered me, honestly. Or the callousness. That was fucking expected of corpo types like Amelia's father, and I'd been in his lab myself.

No, what really pissed me off was yet more proof of how these people saw people like me: the perfect victims. Who would ever bother to investigate some missing slum dwellers? Even if the mercs had gotten caught, the real trouble they'd get into was bringing unauthorized people into the inner districts.

Kidnapping and human experimentation? Old news. Getting an F rank citizen into an inner district? How very fucking dare you?!

My hands balled into fists as Amelia scrutinized every bit of the group's site. At one point, she even looked up the layout of their HQ building, leaving me flabbergasted when she managed to find it.

I mean, I'd always known that privacy was a lie, but the amount of info she managed to dig up on the group members was a little scary. Especially when she looked into the individuals listed as leaders and promptly found pictures of them with their spouses, kids, or latest flings.

I was basically getting a large dose of culture shock.

Back in the slums, spending all day on the net posting and stalking each other was not the sort of thing people had the inclination, free time, or credits to do. We were all more worried about our next meal than posting flattering pics of ourselves.

In the inner district? Well, while the questionable mercs weren't posting much themselves, the people they were involved with were all too eager to broadcast their lives to the world. Most of them seemed to be nepo babies with parents willing to fund their lifestyles fully, and who'd encountered the 'rough and mysterious' mercs in whatever establishments they frequented.

Unfortunately, those 'rough and mysterious' mercs were the people Amelia was apparently eager to send me off against. I did not need to see them fully naked and engaged in all sorts of 'activities', but that's what I got several eyefuls of when Amelia carelessly scrolled through all the photos they were tagged in.

"Is — is this normal?"

"Hrmmm? Is what normal?"

"Just… all of this? All the photos? The videos?"

Amelia scoffed. "Be lucky you're not viewing the XPRs, really. I only tried those once, and I don't think I'll subject myself to the experience ever again."

It was my turn to flush and look away, fixing my eyes on the opposite wall.

I'd heard of those, of course. XPRs, or experience records, required specialized equipment to interface with. If you went to the effort of getting it all set up, though, you could fully immerse yourself in the memories of the person who'd recorded the XPR. Including the full physical experience of what they'd felt in the moment.

So, obviously, instead of using the tech for education or whatever, the overwhelming majority of the masses used it for porn.

Not that I'd ever had a chance to come across the tech before. That sort of stuff was way too expensive for slum kids to play around with. Sex itself? That was depressingly cheap. Any kind of tech that advanced, though? Nah.

"Okay, moving on!" I cleared my throat, trying not to think about anything sexual while cuddled up to Amelia. "You really want to send me after these guys? The professional mercenaries?"

"Maybe? You do have some experience with fighting, right? My father complained a bunch about the trouble his hired muscle had. Which wasn't these guys, by the way. He never paid them such a high rate."

I hesitated for just a moment. "Yeah, yeah I do. Still…"

"I'm not saying we rush into this. You said you just need a couple of people to test things, right? It's not like they all live in their HQ. We can hit them individually outside of it. We just need to plan it right."

Amelia sounded way more confident than I felt, but the need to finally make some progress was overwhelming.

I nodded.

"Yeah, okay. That sounds great."

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