“You’re responsible for the bruise on his face, aren’t you?”
Through the darkness, David heard his mother Gloria’s furious interrogation.
“What if I am?”
Maine replied with total indifference.
“I’ve already paid, but where’s my cyberware?
If you don’t hand it over soon, it’s not going to end with just a single punch.”
David slowly opened his eyes.
A dull throb in the back of his head made him scowl involuntarily.
He was lying on a cracked leather sofa, the familiar, comforting scent of home filling his nose.
Megabuilding H4—the place he had missed so desperately.
David looked up.
His mom, Gloria, was standing in the center of the living room.
She was still wearing her bright yellow emergency medical technician jacket, her shoulders tensed tightly.
Maine stood directly in front of her, with Dorio and Pilar flanking him to his left and right.
Lucy was further back, leaning against the wall, a cigarette dangling from her hand.
The four of them stood as a unit.
His mom stood opposite them, looking terribly outnumbered and vulnerable.
“That still doesn’t give you the right to hit him,” Gloria said, her voice trembling with rage.
“Don’t forget, I’m your employer.”
“Cut the crap!” Maine waved an impatient hand.
“Where’s my pay and the cyberware?
Hand them over.
Now.”
At that mention, Gloria’s momentum completely evaporated.
She cast a fleeting glance toward David before quickly averting her eyes.
“I don’t…
have the item on hand right now.
Just give me two days.
In two days, I will definitely have it for you.”
She didn’t reveal that David had taken it, terrified of causing even more trouble.
“Gloria, the only reason I gave you that deposit upfront was because you’re usually a reliable runner, and I knew you were desperate for eddies,” Maine frowned deeply.
“You’ve never screwed up like this before.”
“Today, you either return the deposit, or you hand over the chrome.”
Gloria opened her mouth, but no words came out.
She couldn’t produce the cyberware, and she didn’t have the money.
Maine’s deposit had been a substantial twenty thousand eurodollars.
She had used it to pay this quarter’s rent, settle David’s overdue academy fees, set aside a brokerage fee for a connection, and kept a little for living expenses.
When she tallied it all up, she couldn’t even scrounge together ten thousand eddies right now…
Lucy had noticed Gloria’s earlier glance and made a logical deduction regarding the cyberware’s whereabouts.
Leaning against the wall, smoke rising gently from between her fingers, she spoke up.
“If I’m making the right guess, it seems the Sandevistan…
is currently attached to David.”
“What?!” Gloria whirled around to face David.
Maine froze, taken aback.
At that revelation, every eye in the room fell upon the teenager who had just sat up on the sofa.
“I took it,” David said, not flinching.
He met their gazes as he stood up from the sofa.
“The implant is in me.”
“David!
You…” Gloria found it impossible to process.
That was military-grade hardware.
Even Lieutenant James, a career soldier, had turned into a cyberpsycho after implantation.
How could David possibly withstand it?
“Tch…” Maine glared at Gloria in frustration.
“What is this crap?
How did my implant end up installed in your son?”
“What’s the play here?” He crossed his massive steel arms over his chest, speaking with growing annoyance.
“Today, you either find a doc to rip that chrome out of him, or you pay me back.”
Gloria hadn’t even found her voice yet, but David cast a glance at Lucy and stated resolutely, “This implant is mine now.
You’re not getting it.”
Fake.
It’s all fake.
Only the evil spirit and the cyberware were real.
This was Night City: every beautiful thing was just a dream.
“If you try to remove it by force, I promise you’ll regret it,” David said with absolute seriousness.
If he lost the Sandevistan, he trembled to imagine what outrageous things that entity would do the next time it possessed him…
“You threatening me, kid?” A homicidal gleam flashed behind Maine’s sunglasses.
Seeing the atmosphere reach a boiling point, Gloria immediately shoved David behind her to protect him.
“Maine, he didn’t mean it like that.
I’ll pay you back, I swear…”
She didn’t understand why David wanted to keep hardware like that, but she didn’t scold him in front of Maine.
Her priority was to get Maine to leave first, then clarify everything with David.
“Hmph.” Maine wasn’t inclined to show mercy to either of them.
“Then do the transfer right now.”
“Could you…
give me just a few days’ extension?” Gloria asked, keeping her tone as even as possible.
“I just…”
“No!” Maine shook his head.
“I want it now.
Either the money or the chrome.
There is no third option.”
“I know, I know…” Gloria’s voice sank lower and lower, almost reduced to a plea.
“I am truly, terribly sorry, but I honestly do not have that much money at once…”
She repeatedly apologized, bowing low.
Watching his mother repeatedly bowing before Maine made David feel a suffocating tightness in his chest.
“Hey!” David looked at Maine and asked coldly.
“How much does my mom owe you, total?”
“Twenty thousand for the deposit, eight thousand for the brokerage fee.
But since we’re acquaintances, I can drop that to five.
Total is twenty-five thousand eurodollars,” Maine raised an eyebrow.
“What?
Are you planning to work for me to pay off the debt?”
If Gloria didn’t have the money, how could this kid possibly have it?
Lucy snubbed out her cigarette and looked toward David as well, her beautiful brows furrowing slightly.
Could he truly produce twenty-five thousand eddies in one go?
“David!” Gloria’s voice tightened with alarm.
“Don’t talk nonsense.
You still have classes to attend.
I will figure this debt out…”
“It’s not necessary,” David interrupted.
He ran a scan and initiated a transfer request to Maine.
[Authorizing transfer…] [From: David Martinez] [Amount: €$28,000]
Ding!
A crisp, pleasant chime sounded in Maine’s consciousness.
He looked at the figure.
“That’s three thousand over.”
“A tip,” David said quietly.
“For taking the time to come all this way.”
Gloria stared at David, her lips parted slightly, utterly speechless.
Twenty-eight thousand eurodollars?
Where had the child gotten that kind of money?
David didn’t look at his mother.
He reached into his pants pocket, but he was actually pulling the stolen neural chips out of his personal inventory space.
He walked over to Lucy.
She was still holding the cigarette which was nearly burned down to the end, her facial expression still casual.
She had expected David to curse at her, to scream in anger.
But he didn’t say a word.
David simply opened his palm.
Those thumbnail-sized neural chips were lying there silently.
They were the ones she had taken him to steal tonight.
Not a single one was missing.
Realization dawned, and Lucy’s expression froze.
“This is…?”
“Tuition,” David said, placing the chips in her hand.
He gave a calm smile.
“After all, you taught me quite a bit tonight.”
Lucy looked down, staring in a daze at the chips forced into her hand.
Tuition?
The fact that David could produce twenty-eight thousand eddies in an instant proved that he was not lacking money at all.
So the seamless cooperation in the subway carriage, the thrilling chases, the conversations under the moonlight…
had he just been humoring her foolishness this entire time?
Lucy tightly clenched the chips in her fist, her nails almost digging into her palm.
“Since the money has been repaid,” David turned around, his back to her.
“Please leave my home.
Now.”
“We’re done,” Maine signaled Dorio and Pilar.
He cast one final glance at Gloria before leaving.
“In future dealings, I hope you won’t screw up like this again.”
Gloria nodded.
The tension she had carried in her heart all day finally eased.
Whatever happened next, at least this situation had been resolved for now…
The group followed Maine out of the apartment.
When they reached the doorway, Lucy paused.
She was just about to look back.
But the door slammed shut right in front of her.
Click.
It was a very light sound, yet terribly final.
Lucy remained at the doorway for a long time, only starting to walk when she heard Dorio shouting for her from the distance.
She couldn’t stop the thought from surfacing: Did I truly do something wrong?