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[System Notification]
System Cache detected within 100 meters.
The prompt arrived as Rook followed Lucy toward her apartment.
His steps paused before he could stop himself.
“Rook, don’t tell me you’re nervous.”
Lucy had already stepped onto the stairs.
When she saw him stop, she lowered her foot again, red lips curving with amusement.
“Not even close.”
He raised an eyebrow and glanced at the punk graffiti covering the stairwell.
“You look like this is your first time going home with a girl,” she said.
“Don’t tell me you’re still a virgin.”
Instead of dropping the topic, she leaned into it.
“Brat.
Don’t talk like you’re so experienced.”
He smacked her forehead, more warning than force.
Truthfully, it was his first time going home with a girl.
Saying he was not a little excited would have been a lie.
His boosted Cool stat just made it easy to hide.
“I figured something out,” Lucy muttered, rubbing her forehead as she headed upstairs.
“You’re great at almost everything except not being a jackass.”
It was also her first time bringing a man home.
She had not joined Maine’s crew yet, and until now, she had lived alone.
“I figured something out too,” Rook said from behind her.
“You’re beautiful everywhere except the part of your brain that makes decisions.”
She rolled her eyes, opened the apartment door, and stepped inside.
And grab two beers from the fridge.”
The moment he entered, another prompt chimed.
[System Notification]
System Cache detected within 10 meters.
Sure enough, in Lucy’s tiny apartment, not even twenty square meters, a purple cache sat quietly beside the refrigerator.
‘If I hadn’t met Lucy, would this thing expect me to break into someone’s apartment?’
Rook walked to the fridge, grabbed the beers, and opened the cache along the way.
[System Cache]
Purple cache acquired.
Rewards
– Rooftop duplex in Little China, Watson
– Autonomous AI: Argus
– RealSkin cosmetic cyberware schematics (Purple tier)
‘Looks like the first reward is always tied to money or property.’
He shook his head.
The haul was not bad, but the second reward caught his attention more than the apartment.
Argus was an autonomous AI.
If he released it into Night City’s cyberspace, it might be able to find a path through NetWatch’s Blackwall and reach the Old Net that had collapsed half a century ago.
Maybe it could even clear out the rogue AIs beyond the Blackwall and start repairing the parts of the Old Net that Bartmoss had destroyed with the DataKrash.
‘After tonight.’
He pushed the thought aside and looked toward Lucy, who was stretched out by the panoramic glass.
Carrying both beers, he sat on the sofa.
“Smoking, drinking, stealing.
You really do collect bad habits.”
He handed her a beer, took a hard swallow from his own, then pulled out his last cigarette and lit it.
Lucy stole it after one drag and put it between her own lips. This story is hosted at g.com.
“Sounds like you’re talking about yourself,” she said from the balcony, smiling around the smoke.
“You stole my cigarette, drank my beer, and took my chips.”
“Your mouth is pretty sharp too.”
Rook took the cigarette back.
“I told you.
That was your last one.
From now on, no more smoking.”
“Why should I listen to you?
You smoke too.”
She leaned close to his ear and reached for it again.
He crushed the cigarette out.
“Not anymore.”
After the enhancement serum, his cell activity made every drag feel like the first one.
The sensation was too addictive.
Since the pack was empty anyway, he might as well stop there.
Lucy watched him put it out, then slumped against his shoulder with a helpless little sigh.
“I’m still curious,” she said, voice softer than before.
“With your ability, you could’ve climbed high inside Arasaka in a few years.
Why throw that away?
Don’t tell me it was just to protect me on the NCART.”
She was thinking about the way he had taken her out of the train without hesitating.
“What’s Arasaka, really?” Rook asked.
“Why would I stay a corpo lapdog?
With the tech I have, I can build a company strong enough to stand beside them.
Look at what Night City became under Arasaka and Militech.”
He picked Lucy up from where she had been lounging by the panoramic glass, set her on the sofa, and tipped her chin up.
“I heard Arasaka once trained a group of netrunners to search beyond the Blackwall for the historical remnants left in the Old Net after the DataKrash.
I hope you enjoyed this chapter.