"Uuugh, you are utterly, completely, ruining the mood!" Amelia complained.

I just squinted at her scroll, absently digesting her words as I fiddled with the connector cord I'd spun out of my port and plugged into the device. I was tapping into her Reality Enhancement program to access her stats. It hovered around me in multiple windows that my cybernetic eyes were tricking my brain into seeing,

I'd tried working solely off of the scroll screen, but I quickly ran into limitations that frustrated me to no end. Pairing the device with my eyes still didn't give me the level of access I needed. So, the cord.

Man. Funnily enough, I still sometimes missed my old, chonky, external cyberdeck. I had no idea what had happened to it. Either the asshole who'd kidnapped me had kept it, or they'd destroyed it just because. I doubted they would leave a piece of tech lying around for some random street urchin to find it.

But that wasn't my main frustration at the moment. That honor went to the fact that the program I was now working with was extremely limited.

Sure, it fed Amelia her stats, but it was so very crude. Comparing it to my eyes' diagnostic abilities was extremely insulting.

"Are you even listening to me?"

"No."

"You answered my question!"

"A lucky guess?"

"You just did it again!"

I sighed, mentally moving the windows out of the way so I could properly appreciate the put-upon expression on the former lab assistant's face. It was delightfully pouty and made me want to taste her lips again, but I was in serious work mode and had no time for such shenanigans. Not yet…

"Okay, fine, I'm listening. What's up?"

She stood up like she was getting ready to leave the room in a huff. "What's up is you derailing my carefully made plans, Adrian!"

"Your 'plans' were made up in twenty minutes and twice as much time in make-out sessions. Also, they sucked."

Amelia flushed, but refused to back down. "They didn't and you know it!"

"No, I don't. Weren't you the one who wanted to be careful? Who was going on about the importance of equipment? We made up that list of 'necessary acquisitions' together."

"Yes, and I stand by that list. It is solid."

It really, frustratingly, was. She'd thought of everything. Armor, a more convenient weapon than my claws… even several useful gadgets that could potentially bail me out if everything went wrong and those wild scenarios we were making up came to pass.

With my luck? They would, and she'd get to rub my nose in it.

"Yes, the list is solid," I was forced to admit. "I have no problem with the list. I even approve of your method of getting the items on the list."

Amelia was privy to a list of vendors of… questionable moral fiber. Her father worked with plenty of them, sure, but he'd marked just as many 'to be avoided at all costs' because they dared assist his corpo rivals. Or just because of random grudges he was set on holding way past the point a normal person would drop them. This made those vendors relatively 'safe' from his influence, which spared us the trouble of having to track down a local black market.

I had lucked out with Catill. His contacts had let me just waltz into the last black market I visited. But the process of gaining entry was typically lengthy and expensive and required extensive checks of your character.

Not identity. Not when visiting an illegal and dangerous place of trade like that. But character? Oh yeah. They didn't let anyone stroll in without a ton of checks. Unless you had connections willing to back your entry, of course.

"Then what's the problem?!"

Amelia's voice forced me back into the present, with my pouty new sort-of-girlfriend-but-not-really-because-we-hadn't-discussed-things and her frustrating stat-based Reality Enhancement software.

Which was refusing. To. Give. Up. Its. Secrets!

"The problem is you suddenly decided you should tag along, that's the problem!" I shot back. "I was more than fine with having you inside my head on a call. You could whisper distracting things to me and laugh at me while I went shopping. But letting you tag along doesn't appeal to me."

"Oh? Is that so?" She sent me the most bland disappointed look ever. "You're ashamed to be seen in public with me now? Where was this attitude while you were trying to suck my soul out of me earlier?"

My nearly full-body flush was something I just had to ignore and push past. "T-That's not it! Come on! You know I think you're brilliant. But you told me this yourself: you only know what your father wanted you to know. You can't tell me he signed you up for self-defense classes! So, I know you're a brilliant ripper, cybernetics engineer, and even a programmer… but… you… Oh, fuck you!"

Her smirk was a slow, dazzling thing. "You finally caught on, didn't ya?"

"You made this fucking software, didn't you? And you let me tinker away at it for like what, half an hour? An hour? What the fuck, Amelia?!"

"You're the one who decided to go all protective on my ass and insist on helping me get my package installed if I wanted to go with you."

"And I stand by it! Maybe it won't do a whole lot immediately, but you can't tell me a dash of eldritch fuckery wouldn't be a helpful thing to have up your sleeve!"

"No, no, I totally agree, it's just…" She finally gave up her 'angry stalking out of the room' ploy to collapse onto the couch next to me, pressing into me as she did. "It reminded me of my father, seeing you tell me 'no' so decisively and without any room for argument. I didn't run away from my former life to have someone else in charge of me again."

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

"Amelia, I'm not 'in charge of you'. If anything, you're in charge of me. You've been the one planning things, finding targets for me, helping me scout them out, orchestrating everything that landed me a party invite for this weekend… I just didn't want you to risk yourself pointlessly. I know for a fact you're not going stir-crazy the way I was from being stuck inside."

"Maybe… but it doesn't mean I enjoy it. Just cause I'm used to being a prisoner in my own home doesn't mean I want that perpetuated in our relationship."

'In our relationship'…

I felt something catch in my throat as that phrase echoed in my head over and over.

"Oho, so we're in a relationship, are we?" I asked teasingly, managing to work past the sudden dryness of my mouth.

She sent some truly bombastic side-eye my way. "I sure as fuck hope we are after I let you get your hands all over my —"

"Okay! Yes! I was just kidding," I said hurriedly, then cleared my throat. "Sorry. And… yeah. I like to think we're in a relationship, too. Wanted to confirm it before I got ahead of myself, though. Don't want to get in trouble for just… assuming things."

To be honest, I was terrified of fucking everything up. I didn't have a ton of experience with the romance stuff.

Surprisingly, Amelia's eyes softened. "You're not in trouble, promise. Not yet. But if you keep trying to get in the way of me looking after your stupid ass, you will be."

I sighed and looked back at the code strings. I knew I could ask her for advice now, but a part of me wanted to crack her work and maybe gloat about it a little.

It could be useful for my stuck Programming skill, too.

Adrian Flinn

Strength: 5

Reflexes: 10 (-10)

Acuity: 20

Physique: 5

Recovery: 3

Stamina: 5

Soul: 10

Adaptability: 10

Tolerance: 10

Cognition: 10

Essence: 10

Mind Synchronicity: Reluctant Symphony

Body Synchronicity: Blooming Acceptance

Shadow Runner Package:

Clairvoyance 2 (89/100) → Clairvoyance 2 (94/100)

Programming 1 (99/100)

Movement 2 (0/100)

Quickhacks 1 (8/100)

Assault 2 (21/100)

Tongue of The Ravening Observer

Unseen Stalker Package:

Stealth 0 (0/100)

Tracking 1 (0/100)

Focus 0 (28/100) → Focus 0 (42/100)

Grace 1 (0/100)

Faultline 0 (31/100)

It was still stuck at 99 out of a 100, taunting me with that next level-up and the appreciable deepening of my abilities.

"Why do you even want to come along all of a sudden?" I asked, keeping my eyes on the code.

Several moments of awkward silence later, though, I chanced a glance at her. She was fighting with the hem of her jumper's long sleeves, picking at the stitching.

"Amelia?"

"Urgh," She sounded like she was choking on something, but then she forced the words out. "I'm worried about you, okay?! With what happened the last time I forced you to go out, I feel guilty and a little freaked out and —"

"Hey, it's fine, I promise." I dropped the scroll next to me on the couch and shifted just far enough to hug her. She melted into my embrace, laying her head on my shoulder.

"I shouldn't have immediately pushed you into going to the club. And… I shouldn't have made fun of you while you were there."

"And I should have been calmer and more focused and less reckless. But hey, we'll both make way more mistakes before we get used to how things are now." I took a deep breath before slowly letting it out. "And I should be less petty about all this coding stuff. How did you even link the cybernetic with the program? Point of fact, how did you code the cybernetics at all? My eyes are amazing, and their code still freaks me out."

It did. It was inhuman. Literally. And way more advanced than anything else I'd ever come across. I could handle the modern programming in the Reality Enhancement software and other new code samples I'd stolen off of various devices, but I was nowhere near even starting to work on the eyes' own coding. Not the stuff I strongly suspected was at least part eldritch in nature.

"I… urm… didn't," Amelia confessed, flushing scarlet. When I shot her a confused look, she hurried to clarify. "Oh, I added newer connectors, bits of bioware to bridge the gap between cybernetic and human parts. I definitely coded those. But the cybernetics themselves? Those, I didn't touch."

"Then… who did?"

"Honestly? I'm pretty sure no one did it. The bodies of eldritch life forms aren't like ours. They're less… organic, and more biomechanical. You saw what happened to failed shadows. Even like that, their bodies had completed the transformation. Weird tar-like blood, metal and plastic-like bones and skin, and a whole mess of weird shit for muscles."

I shuddered at the memory of the remains I'd been forced to consume by the friendly shadow I now carried around in a scroll. Then I shuddered even more violently, remembering I had found the odd shadow corpse… appetizing.

"In a way, their bodies are the peak of what all cyberware creators strive for," Amelia continued, ignoring or unaware of my unease. "They're perfect similes of flesh and blood bodies, just… replicated in what would typically be defined as machine bits. The cybernetics, if you can call them that, barely required any work to be converted into something I'd feel comfortable grafting onto a patient. Connectors, yes, and several other bits of wetware and bioware, but they're mostly there to bridge the gap and properly link people to their cybernetics."

"That sounds really suspicious and kind of like… aha! There!"

I finally found vulnerabilities in the code and triggered a breach quickhack. The defenses shattered and fell away, revealing the raw code meant to interface the cybernetics to their user.

Programming +1 exp

Programming 1 has levelled up!

Upgrade to level 2 deferred.

Would you like to accept the information packet?

Y/N

I dismissed the notification for the moment, too immersed in what I was looking at.

"I see there's some sensors and such you installed in the arms, or did your father do it? I guess that's how you can access your stats without specialized eye cybernetics scanners? And…"

I trailed off when my eyes finally landed on the code native to the cybernetics themselves. I had to fight the urge to look away or crumble on the spot.

The code was… wrong, on so, so many levels. It wasn't the alien perfection and twisted logic of my eyes' code. It was something… biological, flesh and blood and sinew given form in a digital language of morbid, organic perfection. I swear I could taste its metallic undertones on my tongue.

And the longer I stared at it, the more the world around me squirmed.

The walls were starting to bleed. They were also growing flesh-like, pumping with the force of some distant heart as it forced lifeblood through unseen arteries, and —

Amelia was cradling my head in her lap, whispering something at me urgently. A sheen of sweat covered my everything. Some deeply buried, new part of me made me snap my eyes away and close out of the code.

"I-I'm fine. I'm fine," I murmured, barely keeping the words steady and legible.

"No you're not. You're crying tar. Bleeding tar? Black gooey stuff's coming out of your eyes and it's freaking me out. Plus you went all wonky at me. Froze and started trembling and whispering creepy things in that odd language of yours."

"Oh…"

"Yeah, fucking 'oh.' What happened?"

"I… looked a little too closely at the code for your arms."

"What the fuck? Explain," Amelia demanded.

I just sighed.

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