He was wearing a large brown fur-coat even bigger than Allister’s—a status symbol, no doubt—and underneath it a black shirt with a purple waistcoat over it with diamond buttons—not diamond shaped, not even diamond studded, diamond buttons—, a belt-buckle that seemed to be made of solid fucking diamond as well, and purple pants that were glistening, likely covered in diamond dust as well.

  His shoes were the only normal part about him, until I gave those a better look and noticed that they didn’t let off any reflection at all, even when they logically should. Some sort of super black gimmick shit?

  I deactivated the Sandevistan and let us get closer and closer to the motherload of all my problems. “Jin,” Allister said, talking to the person next to Katsuo. He gave a shallow bow, and Walter followed suit. I did too, only a quarter of a second late, not enough to signal any impudence I hoped.

  God, I was already thinking like a damn corpo. Mom would be so proud.

  “Oh, Allister, right?” Jin said. For being fifteen, he was still a couple of inches taller than me, and his hands were already chromed out, fingers plated gold no less. He was dressed in a long and voluminous silk jacket with a black backdrop, but decorated in glowing and artful depictions of cherry blossoms, dragons and tigers. His clothing underneath was a similar black to Katsuo’s shoes, too, a void of black that ate all light. His pants were the same, but they were loose enough to break up the silhouette of his legs, and his shoes seemed almost rudimentary in comparison, a pair of black sneakers without any additional frills. “My cousin and I were just talking about you!” He said, looking to Katsuo. “So, are you here to disappoint me again?”

  “Far from,” Allister said as he produced the baggie from his pocket and handed it over to Jin. “XBDs of Lieutenant Colonel James Norris’ final moments.”

  “Come on,” Jin frowned. “That’s old-hat! I already saw this!”

  “Then you may do with them as you please,” Allister said with a bow of his head. “My apologies for my repeated failure. But from my information, James Norris’ incident was the latest XBD that JK tuned in the Edgerunner series.”

  Jin grimaced. “That’s true, yeah. Well, whatever. Guess I can find some uses for this. Not like it was really that satisfying. You don’t even get to the part where he starts using his Sandevistan.”

  My eyes widened.

  I wanted to butt in, but Katsuo was standing right there, and he hadn’t even made the realization that I was who I was yet. He had looked at me plenty, that was for sure, but it was all very appreciative.

  I decided to give Allister a holo-call, counting on my shades to conceal my eyes.

  David: The XBD is uncut. This is everything James Norris experienced from the moment he started his rampage to the moment he was killed.

  “Who is calling you?” Jin asked. “Isn’t it rude to read such messages while speaking to your betters?”

  Allister bowed ninety degrees now. “My sincerest apologies. And my apologies again for correcting the honored executive’s son, but these XBDs show everything. Every point until James Norris’ death.”

  Katsuo scoffed. “Who told you that?” He turned to me and stared at me with redoubled intensity. “Who are you, anyway? I dig the outfit, but I’ve no idea who you are. Do you even go to our school?”

  Fuck. Shouldn’t have made it so obvious.

  Then again, my whole plan to make a splash in high society was dead in the water the moment Katsuo decided to show his face.

  I took off my large aviator glasses that seemed to have covered up my identity and gave him a flat look. Then I bowed, because that was apparently a thing you were supposed to do.

  “Hello, Katsuo,” I said.

  “Da-David?!” Katsuo almost shrieked. “What the fuck? And that stuff you’re wearing! Did—” he turned to Allister in shock. “Did you outfit this gutter trash with a fit worth twenty-six thousand?”

  “The executive’s son is mistaken,” I said, still bowing. “My clothes were bought and paid for by me.”

  “Stand up!” Katsuo roared. “You? You’re from fucking Arroyo! How could you afford this?”

  “Honored executive’s son,” Allister said. “David’s grandparents are actually—”

  “You shut your mouth, underclassman,” Katsuo spat before refocusing on me. “You. Spit it out.”

  “My grandparents are actually quite affluent,” I said. “It’s how I was able to afford to go to Arasaka Academy in the first place.”

  “Fuck that noise!” Katsuo shouted. “It’s because your mom is a joytoy!”

  My eyes widened, and I was glad I was wearing my shades again. I used the Sandevistan for an undue amount of time to calm down.

  All I really wanted to do was rip Katsuo to pieces.

  But that wouldn’t be very strategic, would it?

  But I’d think about it for a while, just enough for me to get over the little fantasy and snap back to reality.

  Finally, I felt ready to respond. “A joytoy wouldn’t be able to afford an Arasaka Academy tuition, Katsuo. And if she was highly-enough ranked in any of the known brothels to be able to do so, then you would have found conclusive evidence of these rumors by now. And I also believe we should let the dead rest.”

  Jin was grimacing as he looked at his cousin. “Seriously, dude? His mom’s dead?”

  “It’s been a tough week,” I said to him.

  “Wait, she died this week?”

  “Last Wednesday,” I said.

  “Shit, dude,” Jin said with sad eyes. “My condolences, choom.”

  Katsuo scoffed. “Don’t start pitying this gutter trash, cousin.” He smiled maliciously. “I bet he paid for this outfit with the money he should have used on tuition.” His eyes flashed blue. “I’ve been keeping track on you, Martinez. You haven’t paid your fees yet, and as my father is a board member of the Academy board, I get to have access to who did and didn’t pay—” he stopped, his expression turning into horror.

  “The payment went through just an hour ago,” I said.

  “Big deal,” Katsuo scoffed. “Probably some kind of life insurance payout. And you blew it out on an outfit. David, how fucking stupid are you?”

  Shit, how did I refute that?

  Well, thanks to the Sandy, I had more than enough time to think of a rebuttal.

  Wait, I didn’t have to do that at all. I had bank statements.

  I NFC’d him a list of transactions for the past week. The addresses were obfuscated, but it showed a consistent pattern of ingoing and outgoing payments. “If I was paid out by a life insurance policy, I wouldn’t be receiving money this often.”

  “Doctored,” Katsuo said, having not even bothered to read it.

  Yeah, you would think that, you fucking gonk.

  I will bury you, Katsuo.

  I NFC’d everyone else the statements, even Walter.

  Jin was a wild-card, but I was hoping he’d come around to my side and that he wasn’t being so chaotic just to fuck with me.

  He probably was. Couldn’t rely on him.

  A message popped up in my vision.

  Allister: Stop defending yourself now. You have done all you can. Anything more will just rile him up.

  Oh well.

  I let my learned helplessness swallow my despair, the helplessness I had learned growing up with the compulsive fear that a moment of rest would spell my doom.

  I could do nothing anymore. And if that was the case, better not kick and scream as I was getting tossed into the void.

  “Not gonna say anything, David?” Katsuo said. “Maybe it’s because you know what you are—a fraud.”

  “Hold on, cousin, shut up for a second,” Jin said. “Like, forget about all that random shit for one second and let’s get back on topic. Can we do that, cous’?”

  Katsuo frowned. “What, the XBDs?”

  Jin nodded insistently. “Fuck yeah the XBDs! You, David, you said these were uncut, right?”

  I nodded.

  “Start to end?”

  “Right until Norris goes face-to-face with a Militech M-179 Achilles tech rifle and gets his brains splattered all over the sidewalk. Never let go of his trigger fingers until the very end.” I held up both my hands towards Jin like I was holding him at gunpoint and pulled the trigger on his face. He mimed getting his head blown off before laughing like a child during Christmas.

  “So you watched it!” Jin said.

  I gave another nod. “It’s got everything. The twenty-seven cops, the Sandy, and the death.”

  “Fucking nova! We gotta sync-watch this shit!” Jin looked around, and his eyes flashed yellow, probably sending out messages. “Oh wait, I almost forgot,” he pushed the BD baggie to my chest. “I’ve no idea who the fuck you are.”

  “You get your BDs from Allister?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “I’m his guy.”

  “You’re his guy.”

  I nodded with a hum.

  “Preem story, guy,” he said. “But it’s the same anyway. I usually don’t slot in BDs that I haven’t seen people around me slot in. You know how it goes.”

  “Smart,” I conceded.

  He smiled. “Then you get it!” Yes, yes I did. He wanted to use me as a guinea pig.

  “I didn’t bring my wreath,” I said.

  “You can borrow mine,” Jin said with a tone of magnanimity. “Follow me, we’re going to the media room!” He ran up the stairs of his house, and around us I saw the decent flock of people that Jin had gathered, almost fifteen in number. His retainers?

  Fuck, I felt bad for them. Some of them looked genuinely scared, and I couldn’t blame them. Their sociopathic young master was about to force them into reliving the last days of a cyberpsycho.

  I waited for Katsuo and Allister to follow after him. The former scoffed at me before dogging the steps of his younger cousin, which gave me some confusion. Was the head of R&D beholden to the head of Finance? Probably. R&D was driven by money. Finance was money.

  What a backward way of thinking that was. R&D was why the fucking company had money in the first place.

  I was reminded of what Lucy said back then at Turing’s: being useful could just open you up to exploitation.

  I was also beginning to doubt how far one could conceivably climb on the corporate ladder without having family ties.

  Katsuo took the lead to the media room, an expansive hall with a bunch of BD chairs that allowed people to lie down on them horizontally. There were BD wreath mounts as well, wired and connected to some wiring underneath the floor.

  And on the wall were all the chairs faced was a screen, curving to a concave bend. On the ceiling was a hologram projector as well that likely used the curve of the wall to more easily plot the visual data of a BD, but those things were always quite tricky to get down.

  Jin stood next to the chair closest to the screen and gave me a smile. “This one’s for you. Provided you don’t fry your brain after this, we’ll give it a try afterwards.”

  While I walked towards him, I shot Allister a text.

  David: Make sure they don’t try anything while I’m out.

  Allister: They’d have no reason to. You’re testing a product that they want. And as you may have noticed, Katsuo is beholden to him-the brat. That fucking brat.

  I almost chuckled. Always trust a holo call to reveal a person’s deepest feelings. I folded my glasses and put them in an inner pocket of my jacket before taking my seat next to Jin, who put the BD wreath on my head and slotted the shard.

  The wreath lights activated, and once again, I was in James Norris’ body.

  Everything was wrong. So, so, so, so, so, so, sosososososSO FUCKING WRONG.

  Had to chill.

  Yeah. Chill.

  Oh look. A cop. Maybe ask him for directions. Damn pigs liked to think they were better than us servicemen. Fuck ‘em. Who the fuck gave a shit how many gangoons they brought in. So fucking wrong. Bastard.

  I knocked on the window of a cruiser.

  Why? Why was I disturbing a cop?

  “Hey, back off!” the fat cop growled. “Looking to get shot?”

  What?

  Yeah, fuck him.

  So I—paused as my finger hovered over the trigger, memories of mom, the Animal gangoon’s minigun, and all those glass-shards—shot him.

  The bullet tore through both passenger seat windows, and the skull fragments broke through the wind shield.

  He deserved it.

  More of his pals came out to play.

  Hitting them was child’s play.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Playing with children, with meat. Always so fragile, those things.

  But this was fun! So fucking fun!

  Why didn’t high command let me do this more often?!

  Wait! Waitwaitwaitwait!

  I remember!

  I have this!

  The world went still, and I went behind the row of pigs firing at me, giving them each a bullet to the back of their heads, their hats flying as their heads exploded.

  Reload.

  Used magazine hadn’t even hit the floor before the new one was loaded.

  And then those things I shot died.

  Nice.

  One brazen little meat-puppet ran at me.

  Kick!

  He got cut in half!

  Right, had those sword legs. Forgot. The sword legs felt like such a part of me that this really had been just a kick in my mind.

  More blood. More dead pigs! I didn’t even have to move! They just kept coming to me! How nice of them!

  Something was in the sky. Red lights. I felt… heavy.

  Ran away from it.

  Red light followed.

  And then something broke into my brain.

  But I beat it. I had implants for that stuff. High command made sure of that. Good guys, they were.

  I fired up at the flying archnemesis, this hated foe, and it spewed out six-eyed children that began to fire at me.

  Then that brain attack hit me and things began to go dark.

  The children stabbed me from a distance, each taking turns, jerking me around. I slowly regained more control over my body and kept firing, but my attacks did nothing.

  The six-eyed children kept pointing their triangles at me.

  No matter how many shots I fired!

  One six-eyed child shoved his triangle into my face, and he wouldn’t back off no matter how many shots I popped off, no matter how—

  I woke up firing imaginary guns at the sky, trying to kill the six-eyed children before their triangles could consume my soul.

  I activated the Sandevistan instinctively, and my mind cleared up.

  I was still in the BD seat. That was good. And no one had died while I was still experiencing personality bleed-through. That was great.

  Fuck. That was close.

  Maybe now that I had heavy duty chrome, I probably shouldn’t be running any Edgerunner XBDs near population centers.

  I deactivated the Sandevistan, took the wreath off from my head and got up, redonning my sunglasses. Jin stared at me expectantly, as if I was about to crack on him or something. “Well?”

  “BD’s good,” I said.

  He grinned. “Choomba!” he hugged me. “It was all there like promised! Uncut Jimmy Kurosaki fucking gold! Love you man!”

  I didn’t hug him back. That was apparently the right move, because he didn’t get mad once he disentangled himself from me. He just focused on his group, half-nervous and half excited. “Let’s get viewing!”

  I gave Jin a nod. “Let me know if there are any problems with the viewing. I’ll delta for now.” Then I turned to leave.

  I found Allister by the hallway—Walter by his side— looking at me with such an excited grin. “You should have seen him while you were in the BD. He was practically jumping once he realized you weren’t full of shit!”

  I nodded. “So… hard part over?”

  “The dragon has been sated,” Allister said, never giving up on an opportunity to be a fucking nerd. “The hard part’s over. Now it’s time for the fun part; your debut.”

  000

  Observing the corpo brats made me feel like I was some kind of a documentary-maker from the old world observing the behaviors of some flashy species of bird.

  Jackets and coats were a mainstay for the guys; silken, fur or just fur-lined. Diamonds and necklaces adorned them as well, sparkling with all sorts of different gemstones.

  The girls covered less skin, sometimes kept fur around their necks or shoulders, and always either revealed a decent section of their legs or their cleavage, showing off chrome implants or biojobs that seemed to idealize them even further; thin waists, wide hips and, well, big tits and asses.

  Allister had introduced me to his gaggle of hangers-on, their level around half a step beneath Walter in the corp hierarchy. It turned out that when Jin and Katsuo weren’t around to tell him to eat shit, he pretty much had a run of the whole place. I had picked a worthy friend.

  We were by the pool area, having monopolized our own table with a parasol overhead. Around the table were three chairs, where Allister, Walter and I sat. His friends hung about either lying on some sunbeds or standing around, but they were all seemingly oriented around him protectively.

  And I took Allister’s advice by not talking. Not talking was surprisingly easy. And the fact that no one was speaking to me made it even easier. Then again, they probably didn’t want to get involved with the streetrat that had somehow infiltrated their little gathering.

  Walter was mixing some drinks on the table from five bottles of alcohol and several other smaller bottles of what looked like juice. The alcohol bottles were ornate, like works of glass art, and even the labels were in a gold filigree. Two bottles were clear, one labeled with ‘vodka’ and another with ‘gin’ but the five others were either dark orange or bright orange. Tequila, rum and something called ‘Triple Sec’, and two bottles of non offbrand sodas.

  And he was mixing it all into three glasses.

  “What is this?” I muttered.

  “Ah,” Allister said. “That’s Long Island Iced Tea.”

  “What the fuck is that.”

  “The stakes of our drinking game,” he said. Then he gestured his hand over the pool, to a table far from us, where a group of three others were seated, two in basic and functional neo-militarism garb and shades, while the third guy, probably the top-dog, wore a brown fur coat that seemed to turn into a scarf that hugged around his neck several times. He was black, and beneath his coat, he was shirtless, which revealed chrome paneling on his heavily muscled torso.

  And one of his chooms was also mixing some drinks as well.

  “What’s the game?” I asked.

  “Done,” Walter said.

  Allister’s eyes shone blue. “It’s a war game between us and Militech. HoloShip.”

  “The fuck is HoloShip?”

  Allister frowned at me. “You know we have a school team, right? It’s a pretty big e-sport in the private academy leagues here in Night City.”

  The name was vaguely familiar. “Might have heard or seen it written a couple of places but I still don’t know what the fuck it is.”

  “Ever played battleship?”

  “I guess?”

  “It’s something like that, but more interactive.”

  “Why are we playing games with Militech?” I asked. “Aren’t they, like, our enemies?”

  “That’s exactly why,” Allister said.

  “So, what, you build clout by beating rivals in video games?”

  “Yes,” Allister said. “While the Kang Tao, Trauma Team and other corpo scions watch.” He looked to the sides, likely at said ‘corpo scions’. The ones dressed in a Chinese style were clearly Kang Tao, but they were in the minority; just three girls and one guy. The rest, I couldn’t identify their allegiance at a glance. Wasn’t like the ‘Saka kids were coordinating styles, either.

  “Why are they even here?” I asked. “Who’s party is this anyway?”

  “Jin’s, and because having a party with other corps is a good way to show off to your future rivals. And trust me, you want the other corps here. A purely Arasaka fete would… not be very fun. If you thought Jin’s grandstanding was insufferable right now,” he snorted. “You’ve barely scratched the surface.”

  “It’s more chill now?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he replied. “Laws and regulations would prevent any bad thing from happening in this party, at least between factions. Within Arasaka, a superior would be free to physically abuse you if you don’t have the backing to ensure vengeance. With others around, we try to keep these ugly matters away from prying eyes.”

  Walter lifted the bottles, and the people standing around us took them respectfully, and more joined to clear the table out before it suddenly transformed. The plastic-like finish at the top peeled away to reveal the table’s metallic bottom, containing a laptop, a fucking gun and a tablet.

  “I heard tell that you’re quite the accomplished programmer,” Allister said. “Hence why I invited you to this table. You’ll take the laptop.”

  I picked it up gingerly, still a little confused. He took the gun, and Walter took the tablet.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  Allister twirled the gun by the trigger guard. “It’s not a real gun. Anyway, each team has five battleships arranged randomly on the pool, which is meant to be a map. No specific grid-like pattern either, and the ships move according to an artificial intelligence that Walter is in charge of designing. He knows where they are at all times. It’s your job to hack into Walter’s counterpart’s tablet to find information on where their ships are, and also protect Walter from any intrusions. Can you do that?”

  “And where do the Long Island juices come into play?” I asked. “Are we supposed to drink them first?”

  “Heavens, no,” Allister laughed. “Only if we lose. If the other team loses, they drink theirs.”

  “And then?”

  “Well, then we can taunt them while they are utterly toasted,” he said. “And they won’t have the guile or wit to really defend themselves. You’ve played video games, yes? Think of it as a debuff towards a statistic called ‘social defense’, which is very important to us.”

  “Wow,” I said. “That’s pretty anticlimactic, I won’t lie.” I booted up the laptop. It opened on a preprogrammed app that consisted of an IDE and access to the local net. “What am I supposed to do here, program a quickhack or something?”

  Allister laughed. “Yeah, right. Just focus on maintaining our ICE for now. Those Militech guys get enough practice breaching, but they’re always on the defensive. If we go on the defensive, too, it can at least ensure a cleaner match. And I trust Walter’s ability to make sure our ships remain untouched.”

  The opposing team’s head honcho raised his thumb. Allister turned to Walter who gave a serious nod. Allister returned the thumbs up.

  “Alright, let’s get started!”

  I connected to Walter’s device and quickly programmed a simple app to detect intrusion. It took me almost a minute, but once I was done, it already gave me warning signals. Thankfully, the program identified the nature of the intrusion, and I quickly shut it down.

  Then I started building on the ICE. Instead of manually maintaining the cyberspace wall, I decided to create a little program that would help me out. I didn’t count on it to really do more than just buy time while I figured out a more involved solution to building up the ICE in a short time.

  I typed away on an encryption algorithm and after a few minutes, checked back to see how my subroutine was doing. My eyes widened in shock.

  Not only did I negate Militech’s advances, I began to push them back as well. They weren’t fast enough to even break down the ICE my subroutine was building.

  I looked up from the computer and eyed the opposing hacker, who was frantically typing on his laptop.

  I felt bad for him.

  “How is the ICE!” Allister asked as he took aim at some part of the pool.

  “ICE is… fine,” I said.

  “Walter!” Allister shouted. “I need coords!”

  Walter’s eyes flashed yellow, and Allister fired.

  The gun released a holographic bullet that struck nothing but water, making a holographic splash as it did. “Curses,” Allister muttered.

  “You want me to get you the real coords?” I asked him.

  “Just focus on maintaining the ICE! Concentrate, David!”

  I looked down at my terminal. The automatic subroutine I had programmed to make more ICE was already kicking the other guy’s ass.

  I laughed.

  I turned to the Militech guy. “Allister, what if I gave the other guy a holo-call? Is that against the rules or something?”

  “Focus, David!”

  “But is it against the rules or not?”

  “No!”

  I gave him a call.

  David: Yo, it’s the other hacker. No idea what the hell you’re doing but that’s not gonna work. Have you tried employing the quantum cipher matrix against the subroutine you’re getting your ass kicked by?

  The hacker looked up at me in shock, and then glared before redoubling his progress against my ICE.

  “Damn you, David!” Walter shouted. “Focus on your work!”

  I laughed. I looked down at the terminal. Yup. He was using quantum cipher now.

  But that could be defeated as well.

  I reprogrammed the subroutine and shot him another text.

  David: You should give higher math a try if you really wanna be an ICE breaker.

  “Anyway,” I said. “How are we doing? Did any of our ships get hit yet?”

  Allister flashed me an app install portal. I downloaded it, pushing the limits of my shitty corneal implant’s memory, and I could finally see our side of the pool covered in holographic battleships. One was smoking.

  “Going on the attack,” I said as I honed in on the enemy hacker on the local net and started writing a simple intrusion algorithm, hoping to have a little more fun.

  The algorithm crashed against a steel wall.

  Fair. Fair. Allister did say they were better at defense than offense.

  I took a look at my ICE. It was growing so large that it was beginning to take up valuable RAM. I decided to slow down the ICE-building algorithm manually so it wouldn’t grow any larger, and started on a better intrusion algorithm.

  This one dug a divot through the ICE wall before getting mercilessly ripped apart.

  I looked up at the pool. On the other side of the pool, a fully visible battleship was sinking. “Yes!” Allister shouted.

  I gave the next try some serious love and attention, actually giving it an effort that I personally felt was overkill, but I needed some way to have fun. This wasn’t exactly Graphwars with Lucy, but the ICE was at least posing something of a challenge, if not humiliating the enemy hacker.

  Unknown: Just give up, kid. This ICE is a custom-built project of mine. I’m in the cybersec track in Militech Academy.

  I saved him as L33t-H4x0r.

  David: Like I give a shit.

  I did the finishing touches on the algorithm and sent it.

  It fucking trampled on his ICE, breaking it into pieces and dispersing the bits like they never even existed in the first place.

  “What the fuck?!” the L33t-H4x0r screamed.

  “And now I have a run of their system,” I said as I accessed the enemy radar gonk and shot Allister and Walter their information. “Have at it,” I said to my two teammates.

  They gaped at me.

  The Militech alpha from the other team stood up in outrage.

  “Wa-wait, David!” Allister said. “Send a self-destruct order! You can do that now!”

  “Ah,” I said. I checked the radar gonk’s device and saw that I could. Preem.

  Their ships all exploded as one, becoming visible for just a fraction of a second before going up in flames.

  The onlookers stared in silence.

  “You cheated!” L33t-H4x0r yelled.

  I sent him a message.

  David: Run your mouth like that again and I’ll WET your ICE so hard that it’ll be breachable for ten generations. And I’ll hunt your new iterations down every time and release keys on every Localnet in Night City.

  The hacker backed up and tripped over his chair, landing on his back in fright.

  “You were the one who brought outside ICE,” I said. “That may not be against the rules, but it does tell me one thing; even with prep-time, you ain’t shit.”

  Allister looked at me with a frown. “That… is against the rules. And you still beat it?”

  Wow. What a scumbag. I wanted to get working on a generalized key to his ICE algorithms right now. Just from how well my intrusion worked, I could tell exactly what sort of encryption principles he used and how to defeat them.

  But that was just way too much work just for revenge. Ah, who gave a shit anyway.

  The main guy groaned before turning around to grab his iced tea and drank it all in one go before slamming the glass down on the table.

  “Rematch,” the guy growled. “We’ll switch hackers. No cheating,” he glared at his hacker. “This time.”

  I looked at Allister in surprise. “Can they do that?”

  Allister nodded. “Only if the new hacker drinks the penalty drink, or if the leader drinks it for him.”

  And true to form, the leader drank the other Iced Tea while his radar operator was still not halfway through the first one.

  “Wow, that’s,” I paused. “Okay, then.” He was pretty determined. I could profit from that, actually. “Can’t we put money on it or something fun like that?”

  Allister raised an eyebrow at me. “Money?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Money. I dunno, like… ten K?” I suggested, trying to make that sound more nonchalant than it actually was.

  Allister groaned. “I don’t very much see the point of that. Ten thousand is just pocket change, and even if they won’t miss it, they will carry a grudge for having their money taken.”

  For a second there I forgot that Allister was fucking rich. “What does it matter anyway?” I asked.

  “Watch yourself,” Walter growled. “Don’t go around giving counsel when it’s not your place.”

  I raised my hand placatingly. “I’m just curious why it does. Wasn’t being rhetorical. Militech are anyways our rivals, and they’re not gonna hurt you in public. And if we win, you’ll get more clout.” And I’ll get more money.

  Allister conceded the point with a nod and a pained expression. “You’re right. It’s time I become more daring.” He schooled his expression to a determined frown. “But not ten thousand.” Fuck. Oh well. “That’s just pocket change after all.” He turned to the Militech leader. “Darius, we will agree to a rematch with twenty-five thousand eurodollars on the line.”

  Darius narrowed his eyes. “Paid collectively or by each of us?”

  “Your choice,” Allister said.

  “Each,” he said with a snort. “And I’ll agree if your hacker drinks his penalty.”

  I raised an eyebrow at that. Seemed a little chicken-shit to me, but I’d do it. I took the glass and while Allister was arguing, I downed it in several goes. Thankfully the fizziness of that solitary splash of nicola Walter had added to it wasn’t enough to make the drink more unbearable than it already was.

  But oh my god was it awful.

  “Done,” I said. I sat down on my chair, a little more heavily than I should have and turned to my terminal. “Let’s play.”

  “David,” Allister looked at me with wide eyes. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” I said. And if I turned out to not be okay, I’d just use the Sandevistan to process the alcohol faster. It could do that, right?

  [With the help of the Sandevistan, I can.] Nanny helpfully supplied. [But it is not the Sandevistan itself that does it.] Was I detecting a hint of bitterness?

  Nah, that was crazy.

  Either way, it wouldn’t hurt to give Nanny’s source code another look.

  Darius laughed. “Be ready!”

  My terminal reset and our one damaged ship restored itself. Now that Allister had given me access to more of the game’s visuals, I could see the count down. Once it hit zero, I immediately got typing.

  And I was typing fast. I wrote down some really good ICE, my creativity somehow overclocking and working perfectly with my technical skills to create some really good stuff.

  The intrusion arrived in time, and I wondered why I even needed the intrusion detection soft in the first place when that was pretty much an inevitability. That was stupid of me.

  Once I had gotten some decently chunky ICE-building subroutines going, I started preparing for my offensive, all the while keeping an eye on the progress of my ICE. The enemy hacker was chipping away at it, but it was building itself up just as fast, too.

  Child’s play.

  I decided not to retrace my steps for the last intrusion algorithm that I did, instead wanting to get more creative and therefore use even less memory. I followed a hunch and my grin started growing as I realized the feasibility of my effort. Yeah, this would be a fun one.

  And then my ICE started disintegrating.

  Fuck. Put a pin on that project for now. I ran back to my ICE and started patching the vulnerabilities, but the enemy hacker was faster. He was making progress, now. Real progress. Fast progress, too.

  I took one look at him and saw the chrome on the back of his skull. Netrunning cyberware.

  This motherfucker was cheating!

  Well, two could play that game.

  I activated the Sandevistan, immediately feeling my high leaving me and replacing itself with a peculiar sense of depression that began to be chased away by the urgency of my situation.

  While in overdrive, I looked at my code, took it in, and found it wanting.

  I’d been an idiot to let things get this far.

  But I could fix it. And moreover, I didn’t need the Sandevistan to.

  I deactivated it and then my fingers flew as I prepared to fix the fundamental issues of my ICE, timing its new launch right on time as the enemy hacker almost got through my ICE. He had just enough access to send a self-destruct signal to one of our ships, but that was all the time he had.

  He was booted right off as new security measures were put in place. I built on those measures, too, recalling and using the ridiculous methods I’d used while drunk to stymy him further. Once our ICE was secured, I continued on my intrusion project.

  That one had some good principles, but it was flawed as well, inefficient. I’d been caught in the sway of my own genius so much that I had lost my humility, and with it my ability to second-guess my methods and make them better on a second attempt. V2 would not disappoint, though.

  I let the enemy hacker try to punch his way through my sober ICE, and he probably thought he was making good progress judging from his frantic eyes and malicious smile, but little did he know that he was already screwed.

  I launched the intrusion. Built in was a code to send self-destruct signals to all the enemy’s ships as well.

  I slammed the lid of the laptop shut and swiveled my chair towards the enemy team as every single one of their ships exploded.

  “What?” I asked nonchalantly.

  Allister cheered as he clapped me on the back, and the onlookers joined in, some clapping their hands and others cheering loudly.

  Darius clawed his hands as he glared at me with true hatred. My expression was flat as could be. Allister’s advice followed me as I stayed quiet, letting my actions speak for myself.