Out of all the things I thought I'd be excited about, discovering that the mercs could sort out my ID problem wasn't on my bingo list.

When we first went combing through their mission logs, I actually missed it. Then Amelia suddenly stiffened next to me, let out a sound of sheer delight, and smooshed her scroll into my face.

"Look, look, look, look!" she squeaked, beaming like a little kid trying ice cream for the first time.

When I finally managed to get my hands on that scroll and, you know, unstick it from my face, I admit I froze up myself. There it was, in rather plain words: exactly how they'd been shipping people in, sorting out their IDs so they wouldn't get caught on a stupid technicality, and then selling them off.

I'd latched onto the first and last bit of info before, sliding right past the ID stuff. But suddenly, it was all that mattered.

"This would…! I mean…"

I could barely talk. But who could blame me? Imagine living in a city district very heavily patrolled by Peacekeepers and occasional cops, where deportation would be the least of your worries, and trying to ignore that you were there illegally.

"I know! If we get you a proper ID upgrade, I won't have to worry about you getting shot if I show you off. Isn't that great? I mean, I was sort of working on a solution, and I think it would work, but you know, this is easier!"

I squinted my eyes at her. "A solution? What solution?"

"We'd need to get you shipped off stealthily back to the slums first, and I'd follow shortly. We'd need to find a way to hide from my father, buuuuut…" She flushed, cleared her throat, and looked away. "I mean… if you marry someone, your ID automatically gets upgraded to the highest ID holder. If you can 'convincingly prove you're not doing it just for social advancement', or some such."

My heart did a funny little jump. My face was on fire. I felt a tiny bit dizzy, like I'd just run a mile. "Y-You'd do that? For me?"

"I mean, obviously!" She tried to come off cool and collected, but her cheeks were betraying her as much as mine were betraying me.

It was honestly a surprise to me how quickly that embarrassment turned towards mischief.

"Oh wow… Well, then. However can I replay you for the wonderful feelings you have for me? And which I reciprocate, of course…"

I leaned forward, cupping her chin and making her look me in the eyes as I slowly closed the distance between us. When I could feel her breath on my lips, I paused for just a second, and she let out a cute little whine of protest.

We were out of commission for the next few hours.

—

Say what you want about them being lowlifes (and I had a lot to say on the subject), but our subverted mercs really came through. Only two days later, they had exciting news for us, delivered with glassy eyes and faces completely devoid of emotion. Four days later, in the middle of the night, they carried a Very Large BoxTM into our clinic through the back door.

"Is it done? How soon is the change going to go through?" Amelia snapped off, tapping her foot on the ground and staring at them with her arms crossed under her chest.

"In three days, approximately. Our man in the department will push it through alongside a bunch of other changes in citizenship access," replied the woman whose eyes had been replaced, her voice flat and monotone.

Amelia squealed and threw her arms around me in a crushing hug.

"Yes, yes, yes! Now we just need to off my daddy dearest, and we can openly go on dates and stuff. Maybe we can introduce you to some of my extended family, just to watch them have heart attacks."

She giggled maliciously, getting me to laugh right along. I could just imagine some stuffy corpo family getting told one of their precious descendants was marrying a former slum rat.

"I can't wait," I replied sincerely, stealing a quick kiss. Then I walked over to the box and opened it.

Inside was a man in his early thirties, scruffy and kind of unremarkable. Amelia and I just stood there for a second, eyeing up the former merc.

Former, because he apparently couldn't handle the scrutiny and hostility the company had been facing recently and decided to pull a runner. He didn't make it very far, on account of our subverted mercs catching up with him, but I wasn't sure he'd have lasted long even if they'd let him go. The other members of the company would all have been eager to shank him so they could tie up loose ends.

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"He tried to run, hmmm?" Amelia confirmed.

"Yes, ma'am," the drone replied in a flat voice. "We used a promise of assistance to lure him out and bag him."

"Good work. You can go back for now. Be careful, don't get caught, and get us some actual members of the company next time. You can feel free to spin this as 'taking out the trash', or whatever cliché term you want to use to help Patch keep the rest of the lowlifes in check. I don't want any of them skipping out on the punishment they deserve."

Amelia's voice was extremely cold, and I didn't blame her. I had absolutely no good feelings towards the mercs myself. Doubly so after finding out they had a habit of 'sampling the merchandise before shipping it off', to keep themselves entertained.

Really, the only reason Amelia and I hadn't reacted much more explosively to everything we'd learned so far was because the district lockdown triggered by our escape had also cut the mercs off from continuing their business. Couldn't exactly smuggle people discreetly when the authorities were scrutinizing everyone. Thankfully, they didn't have connections to people high enough up the corporate food chain to just ignore the rule of law.

Yet.

Apparently, Patch Six was a busy little bee trying to 'advance' his company by any means possible. The number of people that had been kidnapped and offered to high-up corpos as gifts was both staggering and sickening, but it had bought the mercs a measure of safety unless someone really shone a light on their operations. Were they allowed to continue operating for another decade or two, I could easily see them worming their way into the good graces of corpos powerful enough to let them run their business with impunity, which genuinely terrified me.

I mean, this was just one 'tiny' mercenary company.

Was I really supposed to believe that the bigger players in the city were all squeaky clean? How many of the others were running similar shit on the side? Probably not the largest and most influential merc companies, solely because they needed to worry about their image and had access to more profitable gigs, but still.

On a shitty rock floating through space like Kadar, you really had no guarantee of safety and peace of mind unless you had money and power backing you up. That was all the more true for one of the less influential cities like Zanos.

It hurt. It sucked. But then again, that was why we were currently lugging the insensate body of a lowlife merc to the surgery suite. And planning the takeover of a merc company, followed shortly by the murder of a sketchy scientist.

"Sorry, should have ordered them to get him to the suite first." Amelia grimaced as she helped me support our victim.

"It's fine. Need the workout, anyway. I've been doing what I can, but I'm really starting to miss a proper gym setup," I grunted, finally heaving him onto the operating table and letting out a long sigh of relief. "Might need to order in some workout equipment… and I can't believe I actually want that."

If someone had told me I'd be enthusiastic about torturing myself before the whole mess with my eyes, the Kittens, and everything that followed, I'd have laughed in their face. Now? Now I was just eager to keep myself in the best shape possible so I could make our survival at least a tiny bit more likely.

"Ugh, don't remind me, please. I get why we need to work out, and I get why you've been dragging me into it, but…" Amelia blew out a frustrated breath as her arms lit up green. Once they began to ripple, she shoved them into the merc's skull. "It sucks and I hate it. Not the results, and not you, but come on! There's gotta be a better way. Some cybernetics, maybe?"

"Honestly? I think Essence is doing us a favor here. I've been way lazier than I should, and I haven't really noticed myself getting flabby or even losing my progress. I think Essence is slowing down the process? Or maybe even keeping me fit? I can't properly describe it. Now that I think about it, you're developing stamina way faster than I thought you would."

"Yes, yes I am," Amelia purred, sending me a lascivious smirk that made my face erupt in flames.

I cleared my throat. "Aaaanyway, I don't know how much of a difference you've noticed, but yeah. There's definitely something there."

"I mean… Essence is supposed to make you immortal eventually, right? That checks out, then. Of course it would have beneficial effects on a person's body. Wait, give me a sec, this is just…" She grumbled under her breath, eyes squinting as she gave her fingers a twist. The merc jerked and thrashed for a second before falling still. "I swear, trying something new with these arms is like trying to push a wall aside, sometimes."

"You've got this. I believe in you."

"You don't need to charm me, Adrian. You're already firmly in pants," the menace teased, but at least the playfulness was distracting her enough that she genuinely didn't seem bothered by what she was doing, for once.

Oh, I knew that was unlikely. She was probably just bottling it up. I sure did, whenever I had to do some sketchy eldritch shit. But I sincerely hoped I was helping at least a little.

"Oi, you seduced me, not the other way around! I'm just a poor slum boi getting corrupted by his depraved inner district GF."

"Depraved, am I? Ooooh, wait till I catch your ass. And I mean that literally!" she shot back. She had to pause for a second to focus, cursing quietly as whatever she was doing wasn't working out quite the way she wanted it to. "Also, it's core district GF, not inner district. Only the best for spoiled corpo descendants, you know? Don't worry, we'll be bumping you up in the world soon enough."

"Gasp, she now wants to keep me around legally? Be still, my heart! Whatever shall I have to do to earn my keep?"

"Well… I saw this nice 'male apron' set when browsing clothes the other day. Might just get it for you and have you prance around the house in it."

"What kind of clothes were you looking up?!"

"The fun kind." She winked at me before her expression went back to deadly serious. "That should do it. I think I got the modifications right. Let's wake him up and see, I guess."

She drew her hands back, cracked her shoulders, and then went to wash her arms off with a grimace. That caught me a bit off-guard.

"I'll never be against basic sanitation, but I've seen you go elbow-deep inside people before, and you didn't make that face," I pointed out. "What's up?"

"Yeah, well, I wasn't exactly mucking about in the brain of a murderous rapist monster back then, was I? It's not like I can see his memories or anything, but it still feels… icky."

"Icky," I snorted. "But I guess I get what you mean. Did it work, then?"

Amelia lifted a syringe and shot me a malicious smirk. "Let's find out, shall we?"

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