Kabuki still felt temporary, even with a keycard and a lock that clicked clean.

  I shut the door, set the latch, and stood there with my palm pressed to the bandage at my waist, feeling the heat trapped under it and the thin sting every time I shifted my weight. The credchip in my pocket made my hip feel heavier than it should have. Forty-five thousand eddies ought to have calmed me down, and yet my brain kept insisting money was only real when it sat in a hand, not when it sat in a number.

  My left hand twitched when I flexed. The Dynalar cyberhand wore synthskin that tried too hard. The seams held grime at the wrist. Under the cover, the coupling sat crooked, jammed into my forearm at a bad angle. Sometimes the fingers lagged a fraction. Sometimes they overshot and ground against the cover from the inside. The pain didn’t stay in the wrist anymore. It had started to pulse behind my eyes, hot and rhythmic, and my jaw kept wanting to clamp shut. I caught myself grinding my teeth and stopped, then started again without noticing.

  I washed my face, swallowed water in small pulls. I tightened the bandage, checked my pockets, and left before the unit could turn into a tomb I paid rent for. On the way out I paused at the door, hand on the latch, listening for footsteps that weren’t there, then laughed once under my breath.

  Kabuki’s streets were already loud, tarps snapping over stalls, generators buzzing behind patched plywood, oil popping in a pan somewhere. Heat pressed down hard enough to make every inhale feel thicker. I kept my pace steady and my hands visible, adjusting my gait so the cut didn’t tear, watching reflections in windows for anyone tracking my angle.

  Misty’s storefront was easy to miss if you didn’t know what you were looking for. The chimes above the door tapped softly when I pushed in, and the temperature dropped just enough to make the sweat on my skin feel cold.

  Incense hung in the air, mixed with paper and something floral that didn’t belong outside. Shelves held cards, jars, crystals, small charms, and a layer of dust that told me this place survived by staying unthreatening. The smell hit a corner of my memory from a different life: cheap air freshener sprayed into an overheated office five minutes before a client walk-through. It was the same kind of lie, just a softer one.

  Misty looked up from behind the counter, and her eyes landed on my face before they dropped to my waist.

  “Hey,” she said, already stepping out from behind the counter. “No—don’t tell me you’re fine. Sit.”

  “Not dying,” I said.

  “That’s not a status,” she muttered, guiding me toward the chair by the wall. Up close she smelled of lavender and smoke. She pressed a sealed bottle of water into my hand—sterile plastic among candles and charms. “Small sips. If you chug it, you’ll regret it. Vik’s in back.”

  “I’m not gonna—”

  “Mm,” she cut in, not unkind. Just done with arguments. She picked up a slate and held it in both hands, not defensive, just grounding. “Name.”

  I hesitated.

  Misty’s eyes flicked up. “Real or the one you’re using. I don’t care which, I just need a label so he doesn’t call you ‘hey you.’”

  “Not sure,” I said.

  She stared at me for a beat, then typed anyway. “Okay. ‘Not Sure.’ Very mysterious.” A pause, her thumb hovering. “Any allergies. Any meds. Any new chrome since last time.”

  “I don’t know what’s in me half the time.”

  “That’s… not ideal,” she said, dry. Then, softer, she’d decided not to press. “Alright. He’ll see you. And if you pass out, try to do it in the chair, not on my floor.”

  The bead curtain rustled as she pushed it aside. The back-room air hit me with disinfectant and hot electronics.

  Viktor Vektor was at his bench with sleeves rolled up, hands moving through a tray of tools with the calm certainty of someone who’d rebuilt people long enough to stop performing concern. He glanced up.

  “Misty,” he said, then his eyes found me. “Well. You look like you lost an argument with the street. C’mon. Sit. Shirt up.”

  I sat in the chair that mattered, the one with mounts and straps and a drain in the floor beneath it. The cut pulled when I shifted, and he clocked the flinch without making it a thing.

  “How bad?” he asked.

  “Sore,” I said. “Cut’s shallow. Hand’s getting worse.”

  “‘Getting worse’ is doing a lot of work there,” he muttered, already snapping gloves on. “We’ll start with the part that’s bleeding.”

  He peeled the bandage edge back carefully. Leaned in. Eyes narrowed. Exhaled.

  “Not deep,” he said. “But it’s dirty. You let it sit, it gets ideas.” He glanced at me over the rims of his focus lenses. “We clean it, close it right, antibiotics—then you stop testing how tough you are.”

  “I’m not—”

  “Yeah, you are,” he said, flat, and went back to work.

  He numbed the area with a quick injector, then cleaned the cut with something cold that burned at the edges. The pain dropped off, but the pressure and precision didn’t. He stitched it well, then sealed it with a spray that stung and smelled of plastic and money.

  “Keep it dry,” he said. “Change the bandage. You see redness, swelling, heat—don’t ‘watch it.’ You come back.”

  “I got it.”

  “Sure, you do,” he said, but there was no bite. Just habit.

  He turned to my left hand and lifted the synthskin edge at the wrist. He didn’t yank to prove a point. He just looked. The crooked coupling. The irritated collar. The harness sitting wrong.

  His jaw tightened. “Jesus.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  He looked up. “Who touched this?”

  “People who shouldn’t be holding tools.”

  “That narrows it down to half the district,” he said, tired more than angry. He pressed two fingers near the coupling.

  Pain jumped up my forearm in a bright line that pinched my vision. Viktor clocked it. “You always this quiet, or you running on fumes?”

  “Both.”

  “Hm.” He grabbed a handheld scanner and ran it over my arm, then my eyes. My optics whined faintly when they tried to focus.

  His expression shifted—annoyed, but not at me. “Entry-grade Kiroshi. Old firmware. And a Zetatech processor.” He made a face as if he’d smelled spoiled food. “Budget brain. Classic bugs.”

  “I didn’t pick it.”

  “Most don’t,” he said. “That’s why I stay in business.”

  He tapped the crooked mount with a knuckle. The hand twitched.

  “This Dynalar frame’s fine as a stopgap,” he said. “Mounted right. Yours isn’t mounted. It’s jammed. Signal’s dirty. Your processor keeps trying to ‘correct’ it, and all that correction is cooking you—jitter, lag, pain spikes.” He looked at me again. “Heat behind the eyes?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Jaw locking?”

  “…Yeah.”

  He clicked his tongue once. “Thought so.”

  “It fails at a bad time,” I said.

  “It fails at the worst time,” he corrected. “You drop what you’re holding, or you flinch when you need steady. You keep this, you keep rolling dice and hoping you don’t hit snake eyes.”

  He sat back, stripped one glove off, scratched his stubble, and looked at me the way a mechanic looked at a car that had already tried to kill the owner.

  “I’m not patching that hand,” he said. “I replace the whole arm. New socket. New interface. Proper mount.”

  I didn’t answer fast enough.

  Viktor kept going. “You walk out with a patch job, you’ll be back here in a month with an infected collar and a story about how you ‘meant to come in sooner.’”

  “I’ll come in,” I said.

  He snorted, small and humorless. “That’s what they all say.” His voice sharpened, just a notch. “Then they vanish. Then they come back when it’s already ugly. You don’t vanish. You come back for checkups. Install and maintenance are half the work—and I’m done watching people treat the second half as a suggestion.”

  From the doorway, Misty leaned in, hands tucked into her cardigan sleeves. “He’s not trying to scare you,” she said. “He’s trying to keep you intact.”

  Viktor glanced at her. “I am trying to scare him a little.”

  “Yeah,” she said, unimpressed. “I know.”

  He rolled to a cabinet, pulled out a case, and opened it on the bench. Chrome lay inside—matte-finished, joints sealed, collar designed to sit flush at the shoulder.

  “Raven Microcyb F-24,” he said. “Common frame. Solid tolerances. Not fancy. Works.”

  My throat went dry. “How much.”

  He told me. Then he added calibration and firmware work. I pulled the credchip out and set it on the bench. Viktor didn’t snatch it. He tapped it once, checked the balance, and looked back at me. “You can pay.” A beat. “Good. Because you don’t want to live with that mount another week.”

  “Do it,” I said.

  Viktor nodded, already moving. “Eat first.”

  “I’m fine.”

  He gave me a look that didn’t bother with sarcasm. “You’re upright. That’s all.” He tilted his chin toward the curtain. “Misty.”

  Misty was already gone and back with a sealed packet and another water. “Small bites,” she said, setting it in my lap as a verdict. “Then you can go back to being brave.”

  I forced it down, slow. My stomach tried to lurch for attention—then settled, grudging.

  Viktor injected local anesthetic high in my shoulder and closer to the socket, then added a sedative that didn’t knock me out. The room stepped back half a pace. He strapped my arm into a brace and locked it down.

  “This part’s gonna suck anyway,” he said, steady. “Breathe through it. Don’t fight me. Fighting makes it worse.”

  Pressure and tugging came first—something being separated from me with deliberate violence. The second part hit scar tissue around the old harness, pain in hot pulses that didn’t care about numbness. I clenched my jaw until my teeth rang.

  Viktor didn’t chatter.

  “Breathe. Slow. Good. Don’t move.”

  When the old coupling finally came free, seeing the Dynalar hand on the tray—torn synthskin, grime in the seams—made my skin crawl. It had been garbage. It had still been mine. That contradiction sat heavy, and for a second I wanted to reach for it, just to prove I could decide what left me. I didn’t move.

  Viktor didn’t comment. He refurbished the socket, trimmed what needed trimming, set the new collar, then brought the Raven arm in with steady hands.

  “Alright,” he said, and his voice changed—less casual, more exact. “Now we sync.”

  He plugged a cable into the port at the base of my skull and another into the arm’s interface collar. Cold ran down my spine. My optics flickered. The room sharpened too hard, smeared, then snapped back into focus with a faint internal whine.

  Viktor glanced at his monitor and exhaled through his nose. “There it is,” he said. “Old firmware everywhere. Processor arguing with optics, optics lagging, and this arm waiting for someone competent to show up.”

  He typed with two fingers, fast. The clinic hum deepened.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Text burned across my vision.

  — SYSTEM UPDATE —

  CYBERWARE: PARTIALLY UNLOCKED

  ARMS:

  Raven Microcyb F-24 — COMMON

  OCULAR:

  Kiroshi Optics SD-5 — COMMON

  NEURALWARE:

  Zetatech Neural Processor Mk.I — POOR

  My fingers flexed without permission.

  Viktor squinted at his screen, then looked at me with one eyebrow up. “Jax Morrow.”

  My head tilted before I could stop it. “I didn’t tell you the second part.”

  “You didn’t,” he said, and tapped the monitor with a knuckle. “Your processor did. Old profile header still riding along.”

  He studied my face. “You want it wiped, we can talk. You want to know who paid for your skull and your ports, you keep it—for now.”

  From behind him, Misty’s voice came warm and quiet. “It’s a good name,” she said. Relief hit first, sharp and irrational: at least it hadn’t coughed up Harry Du Bois.

  Viktor turned back to the work. “Open your hand.”

  I opened it. The fingers spread smoothly—no delay, no overshoot. My forearm trembled once, then settled.

  “Close.”

  I closed it. The grip formed, and the newfound control made my stomach tighten.

  “Wrist.”

  I rotated. Smooth. The shoulder mount ached deep and steady, my body arguing with the new geometry.

  “Good,” Viktor said. “Again. Slow. We’re not showing off.”

  He walked me through calibration until the arm stopped trying to jump ahead of me. He flashed the processor and optics, ran a quick diagnostic loop, then leaned back and finally let his shoulders drop.

  “Zetatech’s still trash,” he said, no cruelty in it. “But it’s updated trash. It should stop throwing tantrums over normal signal.” He pointed at my face with the scanner. “You get ghost inputs, lag, heat behind the eyes—you come back. Not ‘when you have time.’”

  “I’ll come back.”

  “You will,” he said, blunt enough to be a threat. “Week. Then a month. Then we talk upgrades if you’re still breathing.”

  Misty returned with water, painkillers, and two little inhalers in sealed sleeves. “One now,” she said. “The other tomorrow. Don’t get clever.”

  Viktor tapped the interface area. “Port collar’s irritated. Keep it covered. Keep it clean. You paid for a new arm—don’t ruin it in a week.”

  “I won’t.”

  He slid the credchip back across the bench after the transfer. “And don’t wave that balance around outside,” he added. “Kabuki has ears.”

  Outside, Watson hit me with heat and noise again. I adjusted the sling Viktor had looped for my shoulder and moved back into Kabuki with the clinic smell still clinging to me. I kept expecting the new arm to feel alien, to resist, to do something dramatic. It just worked, which somehow felt more dangerous than failure.

  Clothes came first. Kabuki’s racks held functional fabric, dull colors, stuff that would pass at a glance without pulling attention. I bought what I needed, overpaid, hated it, and shoved it into a bag without admiring any of it. In a restroom with a scratched mirror and flickering light, I changed, ran water through my hair, and watched my reflection shift from half-dead to present.

  Then I bought the rifle.

  The place wasn’t marked with a sign so much as a pattern: a roll-down door that never fully closed, a security cam that looked new on an old wall, and two guys out front pretending they weren’t watching who walked in.

  Inside, it smelled of solvent and warm metal. Racks and cases sat behind mesh. A cheap fan pushed hot air around without helping.

  The shopkeeper didn’t look up right away. He finished wiping something down, set the cloth aside, then finally lifted his eyes to my sling and the fresh collar at my shoulder.

  “New arm,” he said. Not a compliment. An assessment.

  “New problem,” I said.

  He snorted once, as if that tracked. “What you want.”

  “Tech rifle. Achilles.”

  That got his attention. He leaned back, stared at me a second too long, then turned and keyed open a low case. The latch stuck; he hit it with the heel of his hand until it popped, annoyed at the hardware more than me.

  He lifted out a Militech M-179 Achilles that had been used hard enough to lose its shine—stamp half-scrubbed, housing scuffed at the edges, rails straight but worn smooth where hands had lived.

  “Used,” he said.

  “Used is fine,” I said. “Works matters.”

  He flipped it, checked the charge assembly, ran a thumb over the ports, then glanced at me. “You know how to keep a tech rifle from eating itself?”

  “Dry. Don’t cheap out on seals.”

  “Look at you,” he muttered, and set it on the counter. “Cable runs are intact. Charge coil’s stable. Trigger’s a little heavy—someone didn’t enjoy surprises.”

  I reached for it. He slid it back an inch, not hostile—just business.

  “Cred first.”

  I pulled the chip and set it down.

  He didn’t pick it up. He just tapped it with his counter reader and watched my face while it queried, waiting for me to flinch at my own balance.

  “Okay,” he said finally. “You’re not bluffing.”

  “Price.”

  “Five for the rifle,” he said. “Ammo is… depends.”

  “On what.”

  “On whether you want it to shoot today or next week.” He opened a drawer and started pulling boxes, then stopped and clicked his tongue. “I’m light on good cells. Kabuki’s been buying hard. Folks spooked.”

  “Then sell me what you’ve got,” I said. “And the boring stuff.”

  He huffed, but it wasn’t refusal. He stacked what mattered and skipped the performance: ammo, cleaning kit, contact cleaner for ports, spare seals, springs, a handful of small tools, and a little packet of desiccant.

  “You take this,” he said, flicking the desiccant packet, “and you keep it in the case. You store the rifle in a damp unit, you’ll be back angry about corrosion and I’ll charge you again.”

  “I won’t be crying,” I said.

  “Sure,” he said, unimpressed. “You’ll be angry. Same thing.”

  He ran the total. It landed just under what I’d expected, which made me suspicious.

  “That all?” I asked.

  He looked up. “You want to donate extra?”

  “I want to know what you’re not telling me.”

  He tapped the rifle’s housing with two fingers. “It’s loud. Not sound—attention. If you carry it wrong, people notice. If people notice, somebody follows. If somebody follows, you end up buying ammo you don’t get to use.”

  He transferred the sale, slid the chip back, and pushed the case toward me.

  “And don’t come back telling me it ‘just stopped working.’ Guns don’t just stop. People stop.”

  I carried the case out and kept my eyes forward until I was three blocks away, then I let myself breathe out and realized I’d been holding it, automatic, the way you did when you expected a punch. “Achilles,” I muttered, like the name was supposed to make it less true. “I’m calling you Talon.”

  Range access and gym access came through the same backroom math: cash up front, no paperwork, no names that mattered, and the feeling that I’d paid rent twice. I got what I needed to build a routine.

  A 3D printer crossed my mind while I looked at the bag of parts. Print spares. Print brackets. Print fixes. Then I pictured the noise, the power draw, the footprint in my unit, and the way Kabuki listened through walls. I just let the thought die.

  I saved the car for last.

  I pinged the contact from the Rayfield deal with a short message: NEED A RIDE. GALENA. FAIR PRICE.

  The reply didn’t come right away. When it did, it was two lines and an address with a typo in the district name.

  HONEST HIRO.

  OLD JAPANTOWN LOT. DON’T WASTE HIS TIME.

  The lot sat behind a noodle place and a shuttered arcade. Chain-link fence, motion lights, a dog that wasn’t a dog—cheap security drone on wheels with a speaker that crackled when it rolled past.

  A man stepped out from under an awning as I approached. Older than the street but not weak. Tired eyes. Expression sharp with experience. He looked at my sling, then at the rifle case, then at my face, and I decided he’d already written the ending where I tried something dumb. It still didn’t stop my shoulders from tightening.

  “You brought a gun to buy a car,” he said.

  “I brought a case,” I said. “And I’m not opening it.”

  He watched me for a second, then nodded. “Good. People who wave hardware around are either stupid or trying to make a point. I don’t do business with either.”

  He jerked his head. “You’re Weaver’s friend?”

  “No,” I said. “Just a contact.”

  “Even better,” he muttered. “Less feelings.”

  He walked me between two rows of vehicles that had seen better decades. Some had fresh paint meant to hide old damage. Some didn’t bother. He stopped at a Thorton Galena G240 with scratches and honest wear instead of polish. Dust in the seams. A dent on the rear quarter that had been hammered out only enough to stop it catching light.

  “Galena,” he said. “G240. Not pretty. Doesn’t beg for attention.”

  He popped the hood. The engine bay looked... functional. Hoses had new clamps. A few seals looked fresh. Battery terminals weren’t furry with corrosion.

  “I can sell you a prettier car,” he said. “Prettier cars get stolen.”

  “I want boring,” I said.

  “Boring is expensive now,” he replied, and slid into the driver’s seat. “Start it.”

  I climbed in. The seat fabric was worn, but it wasn’t torn. The interior smelled of old plastic and someone’s cigarettes from years ago.

  I turned the key. The engine started on the first turn. The idle held steady. Dash lights came on, then behaved. No flicker. No warnings yelling at me in red.

  Hiro watched my hands. When my new arm took the wheel, his eyes narrowed a fraction.

  “Fresh install,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “You get that done in Kabuki?”

  “Vik.”

  That earned a tiny shift in his expression. “Alright. At least you didn’t let some alley clown wire you up.”

  He got out and waved me around to the rear. “Brakes are decent. Tires are new-ish. Fluids are fresh. I replaced the seals that tend to start leaking on these when they smell summer.”

  “How much,” I asked.

  “Thirteen for the car,” he said. “Two for the work.”

  I stared at him long enough that a lesser man would start explaining. Hiro didn’t.

  “Two for the work is steep,” I said.

  “It’s not steep,” he replied. “It’s the part you don’t see. Tires, fluids, seals, battery. And my time. You want cheap, I’ll show you a cheap Galena. You’ll be back in a week telling me it’s my fault your coolant line blew.”

  “I wouldn’t come back,” I said.

  He smiled thinly. “Sure you wouldn’t. You’d come back angry. Same as everyone.”

  I leaned in and checked the tire wear. Even. No bald edges. I opened the driver door again and looked under the dash for a mess of aftermarket wiring. It was tidy. Not elegant, but not dangerous.

  “Paperwork?” I asked.

  Hiro’s eyes sharpened. “You want real-real, go to a dealership and let them run your biometrics. This is real enough to survive a casual check. You don’t rack up warrants, you don’t give cops a reason to get curious, you’ll be fine.”

  “And if they do?”

  He shrugged. “Then you’re in Night City.”

  He handed me a folder. The print looked cheap. The stamps looked better. The dates lined up. The VIN matched what was visible without pulling panels.

  “Thirteen,” I said. “And one-five for the work.”

  Hiro stared at me, weighing whether I’d earned the right to negotiate.

  Then he sighed through his nose. “One-eight. Don’t insult me.”

  I tapped the credchip on my reader, checked the balance again, then transferred.

  Hiro watched the confirmation, then held out the key between two fingers. “Don’t die in it,” he said. “I’ll try,” I answered, because anything else would have been theater.

  He didn’t laugh. He did something rarer—he looked almost satisfied.

  “And listen,” he added as I pocketed the key. “You got new chrome and a rifle case. You drive like you’re invisible, you’ll get reminded you’re not.”

  “I know.”

  “Good,” he said. “Then go.”

  Driving back to Kabuki with an Achilles case on the passenger seat and a new arm on the wheel felt dangerous in a quiet way.

  A patrol drone drifted overhead at an intersection, lens swiveling. I kept my eyes forward and my speed boring. The city didn’t feel impressed. It felt patient, waiting for me to get careless, waiting for the moment I got tired of being cautious and decided I deserved a break.

  The unit’s hallway smelled of boiled noodles and old bleach. Someone down the row was yelling at someone else in two languages at once. The lock on my door didn’t click this time. The reader flashed amber. I swiped again. Amber.

  I breathed out through my nose, tried a third time, slower. Green.

  The petty part of me wanted to take the keycard out into the hallway and scrape the strip against the wall until the reader apologized—per Layer One of the OSI model. I didn’t. I went in, locked the door, and pretended I hadn’t thought it.

  I dumped everything onto the table and the floor and immediately regretted it. The table wobbled on one bad leg, and the vibration made a stack of ammo boxes slide. I caught them, swore under my breath, and shoved a folded cardboard wedge under the leg until it stopped rocking.

  The rifle case latch stuck. Of course it did. I worked it with my thumb, then with the nail on my new index finger, then finally used the edge of a coin. It popped open with a snap that felt too loud in a place where everyone listened through walls.

  I didn’t take the rifle out. I didn’t need anyone hearing the soft metal talk of it, even if they couldn’t name the sound.

  Clothes went first. I folded them and jammed one set into the narrow dresser, the other onto a shelf that bowed, on the verge of giving up. Armored jacket went on the hook by the door. The hook creaked. I froze until the hallway noise swallowed it.

  Medical next. Misty’s extra pad. Viktor’s meds. The inhalers. I put them where my hand could find them without thinking, edge of the sink, right side, under the mirror. Then I taped a note above them in block letters.

  ANTIBIOTICS. DON’T SKIP.

  CHECKUP: 7 DAYS.

  The ammo boxes came after. I started to line them up, then stopped and just poured them out onto the table. Cartridges clinked. I counted in stacks of ten, then counted again because I didn’t trust myself.

  The second count didn’t match the first.

  Two short.

  I’d been too focused on not getting followed to check the math. I put the shortfall on a mental list. Tools went down in a rough row: cleaner, seals, springs, little hand drivers. One of the drivers was missing its bit. I held the handle up, turned it, and nothing. Another future problem.

  The Galena key sat alone when I cleared a spot. Small, cheap plastic. Heavy anyway. I stared at it longer than I meant to. Not regret, exactly. More the quiet understanding that everything I owned now was something I could lose fast, and the city would take it without ceremony.

  A knock hit my wall: two hard thumps, followed by muffled yelling that wasn’t aimed at me but still made my muscles tighten. Kabuki had a way of making you feel guilty for existing.

  I waited. The noise drifted away. Then I checked the credchip balance.

  My old Zetatech didn’t want to talk to the screen. The connection stuttered. The number loaded halfway, froze, then refreshed.

  12,000.

  Twelve thousand. A lot and nothing at the same time.

  The drop from forty-five to twelve had been violent: rent, deposit, Vik’s work, the arm, ammo and supplies, range access, gym, the car, Hiro’s “work.” Each transaction had been rational. Together they formed one controlled burn.

  I pulled up the transaction log and the Zetatech made me fight for it—lag, a flicker in my optics, a faint whine when it tried to focus. The list scrolled in jerks.

  I went to the bathroom mirror and finally let myself do the full check.

  Long hair, cleaner now, pushed back. Sharp features. Green eyes with that subtle unnatural catch when the light hit them right. Cheap optics that didn’t disappear at the seams. A faint internal whine when I forced focus, a mosquito I couldn’t swat.

  The bandage at my waist sat tight and neat. Pain reduced to a steady throb that pulsed when I moved wrong. The new arm seated at the shoulder, collar flush. No lifted synthskin. No crooked mount. It still ached deep, not pain so much as my body objecting to a new geometry.

  I flexed my fingers. Smooth.

  I leaned closer, watching my pupils track. The eyes followed. The arm moved when I told it to. My body looked miles better than it did when I first woke up.

  Who was Jax Morrow?

  At least the name meant I existed somewhere on paper.

  I needed income. Real income. Merc work.

  I needed the body’s story and the system’s rules, because the system had already proven it could write over my senses whenever it felt justified. And I needed to use what I remembered from the game carefully; one target kept surfacing when I let myself think about rewards.

  Bartmoss’ deck.

  A landfill freezer, a trail that existed in my head from another life, and a prize that didn’t sit unclaimed in a city full of hungry hands. I didn’t have coordinates in my pocket yet. I had the memory. I pulled up the city map on a battered screen and started tracing routes with my fingertip, slow and careful, already counting what I’d need to get in, get out, and not die on trash-stink wind.