How do you commit patricide if the target of your wrath is well connected, well protected, and can summon the law on your ass the second he starts losing?

I was glad that Amelia was championing the death of her father so vehemently. The additional complication of needing to maneuver past her interference would have made planning murder outright impossible.

As it was, I was lucky to have her on my side.

"It's the mercenaries. There's no other way," my girlfriend insisted, eyes narrowed on the scroll she had in her lap as she squirmed to make herself a bit more comfortable.

I grunted, seeing as she was effectively squeezing the breath out of me by pressing herself harder into my chest, but I didn't mind. She was very soft and cuddly. I just put my arms around her to get her to settle down.

"You keep saying that, but…" I paused. "What can we do on that front?"

"Murder them all?"

I squinted my eyes at the back of her head. "You know, I'm not sure how I feel about the fact that you're so fine with murder, all of a sudden."

"You like it and you know it," she grumbled, still obsessively going over the data on her scroll, just like she'd been doing for… a while.

"Well, it sure makes things less tense," I agreed reluctantly.

Once again, I was feeling bad about not feeling bad. I couldn't help myself. Still, I'd freely admit that Amelia not freaking out on me, after everything she'd seen me do through my own eyes, was a godsend.

"Mmhmm, I'm the best. As usual. Anyway, yeah, the mercs… I have the plans for their HQ, at least the general blueprints and stuff from before they moved in. Now, they probably beefed everything up, or maybe not if they're cheap assholes, but we do have several options for handling them. Especially if we go nuclear and pull out the shadows."

"I'd… rather not."

That was an understatement. I mean, the last time we'd done that, we'd frightened the city's authorities enough to make them put up a blockade.

A blockade which still wasn't fully lifted.

Even now, people online were actively freaking out, especially over the fact that the district where the lab used to be was still completely cut off from the world. Apparently, an idiot had tried to sneak in while his friends were filming him, and he'd actually… 'managed.' Meaning, he made it in, and then never made it out.

Worry, parental outcries, and general attempts to whip the net into a frenzy had all fallen flat when faced with curt public responses that amounted to 'fuck around and find out.'

So… yeah. I wasn't keen on the idea of repeating that. Definitely not in a district where I lived myself.

"Fine, fine. Anyway, doesn't matter. You can do Stalker things and take them down that way. We just need to pick a good opportunity when a bunch of them are away, and then take the rest on when they come back."

Now I was just feeling amused. "Why are you so sure I can do this?"

"Because you are a cheating cheater who cheats?" my lover quipped back, shifting so she could glare at me for added effect.

"What?"

"Oh, come on! You must have noticed it. You took me practice shooting, right?"

"Riiiight?"

"And I got to see what level your own shooting is at, didn't I?" she prodded.

"You did."

"Well, there you go. You're not great, Adrian. I mean, you're okay, but you're not great. What I saw when you fought those two kinky idiots, though? That was… amazing. Terrifying, but amazing. I mean, I bet you can't move that well ordinarily, but you were literally dodging bullets."

"Was not!"

"You were!"

"I was moving ahead of time so I could stay away from bullets. I wasn't dodging them. It's very different! I can't beat bullet speed, Amelia. I can barely beat human reflexes."

"Exactly. You're a cheating cheater who cheats! As long as you have Clairvoyance helping you adjust, you're pretty much perfect at any skill. Well, any skill that can synergize with Clairvoyance, I guess. You get what I mean!"

I did. I honestly did. But that didn't mean I couldn't be beaten down and destroyed in a matter of seconds, which was a fear that lurked in the back of my mind every time I imagined myself in a combat scenario.

"You know that's not perfect, right? Yes, I can keep 'ahead' of things, but… what happens when I run into someone who's too fast? Too durable? I'm a single bad encounter away from not even knowing how I died."

"I know that." Amelia's hands tightened on the scroll. "But what else can we do? I mean… should we give up? Do you want us to? We — we could, I guess. I can ask my uncle, and —"

I tightened my arms around her, pressing her into me extra hard for a second. "No. We need to deal with your father, because he has a noose around both our necks. What happens if he finds out for sure that we're alive? He could send half the city after us in a heartbeat, and it doesn't even matter which city we're talking about."

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"Yeah…" She shook her head against my chest. "Anyway, that's the reason I want the mercs gone. They're one of his main contacts for the slums. If we can kill them off, quietly, and take over their operation…"

"Then suddenly, we're one of his main contacts for the slums," I filled in, lighting up with malicious intent at the thought of all the power and access that would offer us.

We'd be able to guess what he was planning. Keep an eye on him. Fuck, even lay traps! We could potentially get him to invite us over to wherever he wanted to start a new evil lair. 'Cause I was sure he wasn't just going to stop all his operations, despite what we'd done to him.

"Exactly," Amelia agreed. "It opens doors to all sorts of useful tricks. Again, though, that would depend on being able to take the mercs down while hiding the fact that it's happened, which… isn't ideal."

"Yeah. They're not pushovers. Not even the two idiots we managed to get so far."

"That might have made things harder, actually. If they suspect someone's after them, they'll be on high alert. Still, I'm not actually worried about the whole murder part itself. As I pointed out, if we're ready to throw all caution to the wind, we can do A LOT. The problem's keeping things quiet."

"I guess a battle erupting in the middle of the city would be a lot to overlook, huh?"

Amelia scoffed, tapping idly on her scroll. "That would be less troublesome than you'd think. No, the real problem would come after. These people have families. Connections. Debts. Contracts. If they just… disappear, then people will come snooping around."

"Oh. Yeah."

I felt a cold pit in my stomach, suddenly wondering if the duo I'd already killed didn't have a kid or someone else relying on them. Again, though, why did that thought make me feel worse than the murder itself?!

"So, yeah, lots to plan." Amelia twisted around again briefly to look at me. "You'll be a lot of help, which is why I want you to focus on your running again, if you don't mind? That and the shadows. Because, well, I don't see any way to pull this off without, erm, producing a few. And we can use a few more failed ones for you, anyway."

I didn't deny that. I was getting a lot better, especially as my mind stats sank in and slowly stabilized.

Idly, I brought my status up and marveled at it.

Adrian Flinn

Strength: 9

Reflexes: 20

Acuity: 20

Physique: 10

Recovery: 3

Stamina: 8

Soul: 16 → 19

Adaptability: 16 → 19

Tolerance: 16

Cognition: 16 → 20

Essence: 28/28

Mind Synchronicity: Reluctant Symphony

Body Synchronicity: Sharpening Harmony

The only one of my mental stats that hadn't gone up was Tolerance, and I was pretty sure that was simply because I hadn't been pushed particularly far out of my comfort zone recently. Really, after the stress over my cybernetic enhancement went away, it had almost felt like I was on some kind of brief vacation from everything.

Or, you know… a honeymoon.

I very carefully kept parallels between that particular event and our current situation out of my head as I refocused.

"I don't have anything against working on my netrunning. Honestly, I should have been tinkering with it more. I, uhhh, got distracted?"

Amelia's face flushed, showing me she knew exactly what I meant. Hard not to, of course, seeing as she'd been 'distracted' herself.

"Right." She cleared her throat and shifted her position in my arms. "Anyway… you need to work on that. I need to plan things some more. We need a proper cover and a chance to approach the mercs. Plus, you know, we can't just keep ourselves locked away in this apartment forever. Unfortunately."

I squinted my eyes at her. At that point, I had become very familiar with her 'foxy scheming' voice.

"Amelia? What did you do? Or are planning to do?"

"Well… you know how the merc HQ is in a slightly seedier neighborhood?"

It was my turn to scoff. Saying the place was 'seedy' was hilarious if you'd ever seen the slums.

She ignored me. "Anyway, turns out, there's a pretty ripe market there for a ripper to open up a practice."

I blinked. Then I blinked again as my stomach dropped. "Amelia… you didn't."

"I did not! I had Yuri do it through a bunch of proxies."

I groaned, feeling even more stressed out. "Yuri. Your uncle. The same uncle who hates your father. The one who moved to be closer to his sister, your mother, who is dead. Leaving you as the sole relative he cares about. The one who's terrified your father will catch you through him. That Yuri?"

"Yeees?"

"And you made him, what, rent out a space and set up a clinic for you?"

"Kind of, yeah. I mean, I'll pay him back! Good rippers make a ton of money!"

"And what happens when you father catches on, seeing as, you know, a 'good ripper' just violently left his dubious employ?"

"I get what's stressing you, I really do. But nothing bad will happen. I promise."

Amelia dropped the scroll on the bed and turned so she could put her arms around my neck. Seeing as that left her straddling me, she almost managed to distract me on the spot.

Almost. I happened to take her health and survival pretty seriously.

"Amelia… if he's looking for us —"

"He can't check every new ripper in the city! And even if he does, he won't find anything. As I said, my uncle used proxies. His proxies used proxies. If you're worried, then trust me, he was downright paranoid. No one will connect either of us to the clinic."

"Other than the people who visit the clinic and see you working as a ripper, obviously," I snarked, which didn't have the expected effect at all.

If anything, her smile only grew and turned a little venomous. "Oh, no. Not at all. Though he just about enslaved me, my dear father also taught me a bunch of useful lessons. Like, say, how to operate a ripper clinic without ever letting people see your face."

I leaned back a little, or tried to. She followed after me doggedly. I ended up flat on my back with a scowl on my face as she giggled and bumped her forehead into mine.

"This isn't funny!" I protested. "So, what? Someone else will pretend to be the ripper?"

"Yep! Officially, at least. We're going to have someone working at the front desk, fielding appointments, meeting with customers, running our clinic's net presence, that sort of stuff. We'll also have a nurse who will, eh, prep the clients for me. My uncle was very eager to supply the people for the posts once I explained I wouldn't be frontending the clinic at all. That's what got him to agree to the plan, actually."

"Well… okay. And this clinic is going to be close to the merc HQ?"

"Practically right next to it." Amelia's voice was a malicious whisper. Focusing on it was a pain, since she'd also started trailing small kisses down my neck. "Which is great. If they come in as customers… ooooh, the options I'll have."

I shivered, reminded once more exactly why I feared the city's rippers almost too much to use their services. The level of freedom they had over your body once they had you in their clutches… well. For once, I agreed with the corpos on something. Rumor was that they either raised baby rippers up to maturity so they could fully trust them, or had their rippers under so many contracts and so much oversight that they couldn't fart without five people reporting on it.

"Now, you gonna take these clothes off and let me distract you, or what?" Amelia whined with a playful glint in her eyes.

I sighed dramatically. "Well… I mean, if you insist?"

I'd worry about her recklessness later.

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