"You gotta brush your teeth."
I smiled. "Funny. I could swear I felt some food bits myself."
Her eyes widened. Her tongue made one quick pass over her teeth before she caught me watching.
"Is it gone now?"
She kissed me again before I could answer.
This time I got my arm around her. She found my other hand and put it on her waist, on the side without a cracked plate underneath. Her fingers slid into my hair. Whenever I pulled back far enough to breathe, she brought me in again.
I had been keeping track of everything. Her injured spine. My bandaged thigh. The zipper digging into my palm. Whether she could feel how badly my hands were shaking. She shifted closer, moved her knee away from the bandage without looking.
Nothing spoke from inside my head. Nobody reached for the controls. There was her mouth, her hot skin where the jacket had fallen open, the small click of metal in her fingers when she tightened her grip. She bit my lower lip, and I stopped waiting for somebody to interrupt.
When we finally separated, she stayed close enough that her nose brushed mine.
"Before you start talking again, I don't know. I believe that you believe it. And I don't think you're lying to me." She dragged both hands through my hair and pulled it down over my eyes. "Understanding it is going to take longer."
She began putting the hair back where she thought it belonged. I caught her wrist when her hand passed in front of my face. Metal clicked under my fingers, and I let go immediately.
"Don't." She put her hand back against my hair. "You grabbing me isn't going to break it. I'd be in a lot of trouble if my fingers were that easy to snap off."
"I wasn't trying to stop you."
When she finished, she leaned against me and pulled my jacket closed around herself. Across the street, a red light blinked on a rooftop antenna. Below us, somebody tried the same locked door of an abandoned minimart three times, then kicked it.
"I won't forget you," I said. "No matter what."
Her hand stopped inside mine.
"You just told me you lost your own name." She turned my hand over and ran her thumb across my palm. "So don't just say that. If I start going missing, you tell me. If you wake up and my face doesn't fit anywhere, you tell me that too. Don't sit there being polite about it while I turn into somebody you think you should recognize."
She reached into the jacket pocket, found nothing useful, and nodded toward the roof hatch.
"You can try writing it down. A journal for yourself, maybe."
I recalled the bit of paper I wrote on in the garage. Why did I do that? It's not even in code.
"You can be my journal."
"Nope." She tapped my forehead. "That's not a way to organize information."
I tilted my head slightly. It made sense.
She adjusted a piece of hair near my temple that she had fixed a minute ago. "Why didn't you tell me before?"
"I was afraid it would drive us apart. I still am." My thumb moved over one of the seams in her hand. "And I don't understand most of it. Every answer gives me three new things I don't know. I thought if I waited, I'd eventually find a version that made sense."
"Well, did it work out?"
"No."
"Shocking." She tapped my forehead with one finger. "Well, in the end, you're still you. Just with a cooler backstory."
It took me a second to answer. "Yeah."
She put her palm against my bare chest. Her hand was warmer than the air. I covered it with mine before she could take it away.
I almost told her about David. A yellow car. A motel room. A kid who thought I had known his mother from work. Her fingers moved against my chest, and I kept my mouth shut.
"Tell me something normal. What did you do on a regular day there?" she asked.
"Sorry. I'd rather not." I watched the antenna light come on again. "I need to feel at home here. It was simple. Very simple."
She didn't push. Her knee found mine instead. "Feeling at home is a stretch. You adapted to the dirty parts, mostly. You sleep in your clothes, forget eating until a voice tells you, and I've seen your bathroom situation. Doubt there is a simpler way to wash up than a water hose."
"It has soap nearby."
"For cars." She nudged my knee with hers. "I'm not disgusted. I just don't understand how somebody can write all that scary ICE shit in weeks and lose a fight with basic hygiene."
That got a laugh out of me. I rubbed at the dried blood under my nail. It didn't come off.
"There are good things too. Programming, for one. When I make something here, I can see what it does. I can hold it, sell it, use it to get somebody out of trouble. Back home I wrote things for companies that sold them to other companies. Most of the time I never saw the person at the end." I had to think about the next part. "I'm proud of what I can do. I don't have many things I can point at and say I'm good at them."
"You're annoying about it sometimes, but yeah. You are."
"And there's you."
She raised her eyebrows. "Smooth."
"I thought knowing people from a game or a show would make them easier to connect to. But I find myself wondering whether they're the person I knew at all."
"So I'm easier?"
"No. You're the one I never had a version of."
I looked at her, sitting there in my jacket with her burned hair and damaged cyberware.
"I love you."
Her fingers stopped.
She pressed her face against my neck. For a while she just stayed there, breathing against my collarbone.
"You can't say it like that when I look like a fried shrimp," she muttered.
"I'm not a looker myself right now."
"Uh huh."
I held her. She eventually said, quieter now, "Me too."
She sat up first and took a second to speak.
"Tell me about my people. Not Faraday, I already know he's a sack of shit. Maine, Dorio, Becca, Pilar, Falco, Kiwi, all of them. If you know how it went, I need to know."
I warned her that the show had already gone wrong. She was alive. Kiwi had joined earlier than she should have, and the setup around the crew was different. Sasha listened with her eyes fixed on the tar between us.
"Maine goes cyberpsycho. He keeps adding chrome, and eventually he can't come back from it. Dorio tries to get him through it. She dies with him."
"No." The word came out automatically. She pressed her tongue against the inside of her cheek, then shook her head. "He is not that weak. He has been fine so far. It doesn't make sense."
"The version I saw wasn't him being weak. He… decided to stop running."
"I know what cyberpsychosis is." Her voice sharpened, then dropped again. "It's just not him."
She rubbed her thumb over the finger with the broken claw. I gave her the rest. Pilar got cocky around a random psycho. Rebecca died during the attack on Arasaka Tower when Adam Smasher landed on her. Kiwi blindly trusted a promise and died for it. Falco survived.
"Yoko was still alive and kicking in 2077 running her shop."
Sasha breathed out. "Of course she is. You know she is in there eighteen hours a day, right?"
"Makes sense."
Sasha stared at my mouth. "Stop smiling."
"I'm not doing it on purpose. It's just… I remember it so vividly."
"And you are happy about it?"
"It's not all gone. Not yet."
She pulled her knees up and rested her forearms on them. "Do you want to help them?"
"Yes. I just don't know where I'd put it. And they wouldn't listen to me. I'm the guy who showed up out of nowhere and knows too much."
"No. They'd listen to me."
She said it flatly.
"Dorio first. I'll ask what Maine's installed lately and who did the work. If she tells me to mind my own business, I ask again when she's drunk. I can get his medical records if I have to. Pilar won't listen to a warning, so I'll make it a story about some gonk who thought cyberpsychos were funny from up close. I can find an XBD for Pilar. Something memorable."
Sasha's expression stayed tight as she began searching the NET for the right seller while we spoke.
"There's a fixer, Regina Jones. She pays for cyberpsychos to be brought in alive. She thinks some of them can come back. I don't know how it really works out. The better answer is not letting him get there."
Sasha nodded slowly. "Then that's what I'll try."
I sighed.
"This is the part that scares me. Trying to fix things before they happen. I think I know what happens if I do nothing, so I interfere. Then something goes wrong, and I can't prove the other way would've been better."
As soon as I said that, a sharp feeling pressed in my chest. I pressed my palm against the tar until the feeling passed. I'll solve it. I'll make David's life better.
Sasha took my hand off the tar and held it between both of hers.
"You changed mine. I'm sitting here. That doesn't mean you get to fix everybody, and it doesn't mean I have to leave mine alone." Her fingers tightened. "I'm not letting them walk into it just because you're scared of making another mistake."
I nodded. It was all I could manage without saying something I didn't want to say.
"What about you?" she asked. "Outside of surviving until next week. What do you want?"
I watched a pair of headlights move through an intersection below us.
"I want to know why I'm here. Why this body. Why I woke up on that roof. If somebody put me here, I want to know what for. If it was an accident, I want to understand that too."
"And if the answer's somewhere else? Would you leave Night City?"
"I don't know what I'd do outside it. Don't know how it even is."
"Same." She grimaced. "Being born in NC means getting addicted to it. Even the parts that make you hate it. My people are here. We'd finish a job, go out, get some cocktails, and everything felt worth it. Lately I have been in no mood for it, though."
"You didn't seem to hate Afterlife."
"Shitty place, but I had fun. Becca didn't believe me when I said I'd found a protégé. Then I vouched for you, got you inside, and you spent half the night trying to reach Rogue. You wanted to pitch her your ideas. Very loudly. Extremely confident for somebody who couldn't find his own shoes later. That was fun."
"To be fair, I'd seen plenty of Afterlife on a screen. And Rogue."
"You were incredibly subtle. You only told everybody within shouting distance that Rogue needed to hear your ideas." Sasha struggled to keep a smile from appearing.
"Christ. Is that why you let Rebecca take me to her place? Loud to loud?"
Sasha's eyes dropped to the zipper. "Because I was tipsy too. If we'd gone back to mine, something might've happened just because we were drunk. I didn't want to wake up wondering which parts we actually wanted. Looking back, good idea."
"I already said I don't know why I got into Rebecca's bed. No idea. I wouldn't…"
"Yeah, yeah. Too late. You are now a pervert," Sasha interrupted.
"You're a romantic," I confirmed.
"Maybe a little." She sounded embarrassed enough that I didn't push, but she kept going on her own. "One guy called me his output when we were with his chooms and 'my runner' when his fixer was around. Two months of that. Another person kept score every time I disappeared for work. I wanted somebody who'd choose an ordinary evening with me. Apparently that was asking too much."
"I could take you to a restaurant date. A proper one, when neither of us is banged up."
She glanced up. "Somewhere not too uptight and fancy. But no diner. I'm not hearing the 'SCORPION FLAVOR TO MELT YOUR GUTS' ad while somebody tells me they like me." She smiled into my shoulder. "Don't make that face. You offered."
"Then we're doing it. We'll get some fancy clothes for the occasion."
"Nova." Her stomach growled loudly enough to ruin the moment. She looked down at it with open betrayal. "Now, anything is good."
"Want to head out?"
"Just give me a sec," Sasha said, looking out towards the city.
We sat like that until she yawned.
"What did you even do while I was dead asleep?" I asked.
"Worked. A little. Tried to sleep. Took half a sleeping pill, then spent an hour listening to you snore. Maaaybe fed you the other half."
"No, you didn't," I disagreed.
"You snore… so, so loud."
"How would a pill help with that?" I asked.
Sasha pulled the jacket off as she stretched, making strange metallic noises as she did. Neither of us looked ready to go anywhere. But going back down just for that seemed like a hassle.
"We look like we got thrown out of a ripper," I said.
"And?"
"People will stare."
"So? It's the cameras I care about."
I browsed the nearby area for any real places to eat.
"Can I plug in?"
She held out her personal link from her left palm.
I moved my hair away from my neck. "Don't give me malware again."
"That was one time."
"Over_there_indicator.exe was pure evil and you know it. Give me a sec, I'll open up the channels."
"It did what it said. You were over there." Her thumb rested under my ear while she waited for the port. "You're never letting that go, are you?"
"No."
The cable went in. A second later, two packages knocked against my ICE.
One was a camera daemon. Short loops, timed stutters, and a route already marked with eleven-second windows.
The other was a Synapse Burnout quickhack. Downloading onto my system in batches.
Her own build. SB_PERSONAL, with half the comments still in it. The last one read:
**don't let Caelen "optimize" the timing**
"What's with the last note about optimization?"
"I know you. You'd see a delay and try to delete it first and figure it out later."
"True. Why am I getting Synapse Burnout all of a sudden? A personal build of all things."
"Because I know what you have. And it's not enough." She didn't make a joke out of it. "If one gonk decides we look easy, whoever sees him first burns him. The other one gets us moving. If he has friends, we delta." She checked the first camera window. "Together. Nobody stays behind to prove anything."
I disconnected the cable.
"You planned all this while I was out?"
"I had a lot of time to think about it. Let's go?" Sasha said, guiding the personal link back into her hand.
The front shutter sat under two cameras. The service alley behind the garage had one, and Sasha's loop left it blind for eleven seconds. Her route started on the roof.
I jumped first.
The landing drove pain through both shins. My knees folded, and I caught myself against the wall. The bandage on my thigh pulled tight enough that I swore out loud.
"Fffuck."
Sasha landed beside me without making a sound.
Then the seam above her hip popped.
Not one click. A run of little snaps, one after another. The outer plate slid down her thigh and stopped at an angle. Something black and jointed kept moving underneath it for a second after she had stopped. A thin blue line pulsed beside a bundle of synthetic fibers.
There was no blood.
She looked down. "Huh. Would you look at that."
"Don't move."
"Now I want to." She tried rotating the joint. The plate gave a dry little scrape and dropped another centimeter. "Okay. That's out of its track."
I crouched in front of her. The covering along her hip had lifted at the edge. "Does it hurt?"
"Not yet. There's pressure. Should it?"
"Why would I know?!"
"The warning came on before we left."
"And you jumped anyway?"
"I thought it would hold."
Her own fingers went under the seam. She didn't hesitate. Whatever she was feeling through that leg, her face gave me nothing.
"Push when I tell you."
She worked one thumb into the gap and rolled her hip a few degrees.
"Now."
I pushed. The actuator inside dragged against my palm. Something caught, released, and slid upward. She guided it into place with a small turn of her body.
The seam closed with four small clicks.
"Again. Bottom clip."
I pressed until the last one went in.
She put weight on the leg. Once. Twice. Her expression still had not changed.
"It's really not a big deal." She ran two fingers along the seam, checking each clip, then smacked the plate once with the side of her fist, making her body shake slightly. The joint answered with a clean little click. "There. Mostly chrome, still some natural assets."
I held on and watched how it connected.
"It's closed. You can let go now."
I took my hand away.
"You need to get that fixed," I said. "Did you contact your ripper?"
"Yeah. He gets the parts he needs in two days. I'm stuck like this until then."
My bandages pulled every time I took a full step. Sasha's repaired hip arrived a fraction later than the other one. We crossed the first intersection at the speed of two geriatrics. Neither of us suggested carrying anybody.
The minimart across the street was shuttered. A dying fluorescent tube flickered over old tags and the remains of a beer advertisement. One man slept against the loading wall under a pile of coats. Another sat beside a fire can, heating something in a ration tin.
A camera turned above the minimart door. Its status light stuttered. Sasha kept walking. Her eyes flashed green once under her lashes, and the feed in the corner of my HUD jumped eleven seconds ahead.
She was doing every camera before we reached it, leaving us a blind spot to walk through instead of fixing the problem behind us.
Further on, the warehouses had chained loading doors and dark windows. Steam came off the industrial plant behind them. A delivery truck went past with some food subsidiary's smiling sun on the side and mud all over the logo. Two workers were unloading crates at the next corner, one cutting them open and the other watching the street holding an assault rifle.
"I need to stop being Sasha Yakovleva for a while," she said. "New paper, new accounts, a handle nobody gets to keep. The face comes later, if it has to."
"You think a new name won't be enough?"
"I think Biotechnica can put enough zeroes on my head to make most people reconsider their principles. Doesn't have to be some dramatic betrayal." She stepped around a broken strip of pavement before I did. "A new face doesn't change my implant serials or the signatures in my old code. One bad scan and the new name is just another file attached to me."
Her hand went to the whisker-like EMP threading on her cheek.
"This is my face, Caelen. I'm not ripping it off because Biotechnica got bitchy."
I had changed mine without asking what I was losing. She was talking about something else entirely.
"What about Stella?"
"No. They'll watch her. I'm not making her hide me too." Her eyes followed the next camera before it turned toward us. "Lying low means nobody knows it's me doing the work. It doesn't mean doing nothing. First I find out how they got my address. Then I rebuild my kit and take jobs through handles that don't lead back here."
She looked over at me.
"I'm telling you because I'm going to need your help. Not because I'm asking permission."
"Good. I'm not getting a nuke."
That seemed to surprise her. Her mouth twitched, and she faced forward again.
The food counter stood between a closed laundry and an electronics stall with its security screen down. There were four plastic stools and one exhausted cook. Two night-shift workers sat at the far end, eating without talking. Heat and frying oil came off the grill, covering most of the street smell.
Sasha picked the counter. I only understood why when I saw the camera above the awning. No cable, no signal, just a plastic shell propped up to scare people.
Above the grill, a wall screen was playing the financial news with the sound turned low. A green field filled half the display. Biotechnica's logo sat in the corner.
"…recovery expected in Q4 as consumer confidence stabilizes following recent controversy…"
The sleazy analyst underneath it was smiling.
Sasha stopped with one hand on the stool.
BIOTECHNICA: PROJECTED Q3 REVENUE IMPACT HELD AT 3%
"Three percent."
"…recovery expected as consumer confidence stabilizes following recent controversy…"
She read the line twice. The cook asked what we wanted. She ordered noodles with extra meat, then changed it to three bowls. Her voice went back to normal for the order. It took visible effort.
"First they said the drug. Then they said the leak." Sasha watched the analyst smile. "Now it's just 'recent controversy.' They keep taking people out of the sentence."
"Fuck 'em."
For a second I considered making the TV catch fire.
She watched the cook scrape noodles out of the strainer instead of looking at the screen.
"Can you switch the channel?" she asked the cook.
He changed the channel without turning around.
"Eventually they stop looking for me. Not because they forgive anything. Some other problem starts costing them more. I just have to stay not worth finding until then."
"Then we make finding you expensive. I can start with the address leak after I'm done with my shit."
Her eyes came back to me. "After food. I'm not building another night around your fucked up schedule."
"Fair."
She lowered herself onto the stool, favoring the repaired hip. I sat beside her. The cook put the first bowl down, and she pushed it toward me before taking her own.
I picked up the chopsticks. The broth was too hot, and I burned my tongue on the first bite anyway.
Sasha saw my face. "You'd think you'd be tougher."
She bumped her repaired hip against my good leg, testing the joint or testing me. Then she reached over with her chopsticks and stole a piece of meat from my bowl.
"C'mon," I said.
"Yours tastes better. Not my problem," she said, chewing.
I moved my bowl closer to her.