As if following Ken’s thought, a red screen popped up.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Lucyna Kushinada’s Dwelling (Netrunner)
Congratulations! Took you long, but hey, you are there. Love confession? Cleared. Relationship route? Active. What are we waiting for, choom? She's right there. Peak condition. Prime heroine. Proceed to Co-habitation? Commence baby-making sequence?
NC Profession Ranking: 2
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
‘Ok, that changed but seriously, who writes this? Can you stop with the baby-making?!’ Ken leaned on the rail beside Lucy–or Lucyna Kushinada–as his thoughts churned. He never doubted his system, but this girl beside him. Lucy? She didn’t look older than him. Even if she had super talent as a netrunner, she couldn’t possibly be the Number 2 Netrunner in the whole Night–fucking–City.
It was NC for fuck’s sake.
Not a small group of Nomad gathering together. Okay, he had nothing against nomads, but you get the gist.
Night City? It’s the den for all the big corpos around the world.
Arasaka. Militech. PetroChem. Biotechnica. Zetatech. Every megacorp employed armies of netrunners. Yet the system just plainly ranked the girl beside him as Number Two.
Did he create the party?
Ken looked at Lucyna Kushinada, very careful of even any random movement of her eyes and pressed yes.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
You have grouped with chooms:
Lucyna Kushinada Lv. 7 / 95%
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Party Member Lucyna Kushinada is partially linked with the RED Framework.
Link now? → Yes / No
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
‘Wait?! She IS partially linked with RED and Lv. 7?!’ Ken didn’t know what he should do. If she was already partially connected, linking her shouldn’t be a problem but he had no idea what happened when linking.
But one thing was for sure. Even if he partied with others, they didn’t get a popup like him.
‘Bigger question, does she know about the RED Framework and can interact with it like I do? Or is the partial link different??? What happens if I link her properly with the framework?!’
“Hey, are you listening?” Lucy had a grumpy look on her face as she sharply turned to the other side. “Don’t go blanking on my face. Simping has its limit, seriously.”
“Eh? Sorry, where were we?” Ken realized he was absorbed in his thoughts, completely ignoring her.
“Finally back to earth, hmph. So, I think we got a pretty good amount already but wanna change the line and have another round?”
Ken noticed her expression.
‘Ok, she is having too much fun,’ he realized. Well, not that he blamed her. He didn’t expect to have this much fun either. The thrill of almost getting caught, knowing that every shard was money, the rush of adrenaline was addictive for him too if Sandevistan didn’t slightly cool his excitement.
“You bet, it’s too fast to end the night here!”
“That’s how it has to be. Let’s–” Lucy suddenly stopped. Looked at him and a brow of her eyes rose, “Are you thinking something perverted right now?”
“What do you mean?”
“Your corks popped, not even realizing that, what a gonk brain.”
Ken touched his nose and the slight wetness caused him to frown. Just drops, but blood no doubt, still warm. “Eh, why?” He looked at his HP.
87%
Another seven percent, gone, with no impact, no fight, no bullet. Nothing but sitting in a train seat doing absolutely nothing more strenuous than walking, albeit in sandy mode.
Ken sat very still for a moment, running the math with a kind of creeping dread. “Okay,” he muttered, mostly to himself. “Okay, that’s... a pattern I don’t like.”
“What’s wrong with you now?” Lucy didn’t even bat her eyes.
“Nothing. Think I Sandy’d too much for the day.” Reading a book with Sandy had been a waste. Not that he expected to use it so much this particular day.
“And here I was wondering if you were limitless. There was no safety cooldown, or even active time limit, was there? Customized it yourself?”
“It was already customized when I got it.” Ken replied off-handedly. Reading the CC series books came handy faster than he expected.
“The hospital docs sure won’t allow someone to chip in something that serious. Still you’re the crazier one if you could run it so many times.” Lucy lit up a cigarette as if already sure they were either taking a break or ending their heist-date here.
“Yeah, my ripperdoc chewed me for three days exactly before chippin it for me.”
“A ‘Saka boyo using backalley ripperdoc? You just get more interesting.”
“I hope I’m awakening a good kind of interest in you. Huff...” Ken stood straight but felt a bit light-headed and shaky. Now that he noticed, his body was hot, not the normal kind but rather burning hot.
Lucy instinctively supported him. “Oah, YOU don’t look fine, choom. Do you need to see your ripperdoc?”
“Ugh, bummer. I am gonna be so chewed up...”
“You’re talking funny now. So, where’s your rip?”
“Watson, sent you the deets. I really really don’t wanna go though.”
“Stop being unreasonable. I don’t have time to babysit you.”
“No, our heist-date will be over then?!”
“...Don’t call it a date!” Lucy dragged him to NCART and both sat together.
“Actually, I am already feeling better. Maybe we should change our directions?” Ken tried to convince her.
“If you’re feeling better, stop leaning on my shoulder. Not interested in entertaining an amateur who doesn’t even know restraint.”
“Ok...” Ken tried to sit upright and then gave up, “Ok, maybe not that better.”
Sigh “How long have you even chipped it in to not know your limit–wait, don’t tell me. Curiosity kills the cat and all that.” Lucy had that exact disposition being curious but not willing to get involved.
Then there was the same awkward silence.
Ken started, <Ken: So, who is klepping the shards?>
<Lucy: You want to do it? Just in case saying, but I won’t be babysitting you if you get greedy and try to freelance my clients behind my back.>
<Ken: Wouldn't dream of it. I don’t even know where to fence a shard, just had a daemon I was building, and thought it might work on this...>
<Lucy: Cute honesty. Keep that up and I might actually trust you by next week.>
Ken let his head loll back against the seat, watching the tunnel lights strobe past the window in dizzy little pulses. <Ken: So. How much did we actually walk away with tonight?>
<Lucy: Haven’t tallied the balance sheet, hotshot. Give me a minute, some of us process numbers with our brain and not vibes.>
She calculated fast. Then a number flashed onto his holo, and Ken sat up fast enough that his vision swam.
<Ken: That’s–wait, that’s not counting your cut yet, right?>
<Lucy: Before.>
<Ken: ...Ok, I take back everything bad I said about corpo mixers.>
<Lucy: You didn’t say anything bad about corpo mixers.>
<Ken: I was building up to it. I had every bad thought available in my dictionary for them.>
<Lucy: And how many is that exactly?>
<Ken: ...er, you’re really out on embarrassing me, huh. 2, maybe 3?>
Lucy burst into laughter. Not one of those tiny amused huffs she had been giving him all evening.
A real laugh.
Bright. Honest. And loud enough that two passengers looked over. Somehow, hearing it felt like a bigger reward than the eddies.
<Ken: Sheesh, anyway! That's a lot of eddies for people who apparently just... deserved it, somehow.>
Something shifted in her posture. She didn’t answer immediately, just a slow breath as if savoring it and watched the ceiling like it owed her something.
<Lucy: They didn’t deserve it. They earned it. Every one of those chooms tonight works for a company that treats people like line items. Consider it a rounding error correction.>
<Ken: Sounds personal.>
<Lucy: Everything’s personal if you dig enough.> She took a pause. <Not every corpo. Just the big one. You know which.>
Ken did know which. He’d have to be an idiot not to connect the dots by now. The way she’d specifically called it “not stealing” if it was ‘Saka, the way tonight's targets had skewed heavier toward Arasaka polos than any other logo in the room.
He didn’t push. Some doors, you didn't kick down. You waited for someone to open them on their own.
<Ken: Noted. I'll keep my Arasaka Academy uniform in the closet as much as possible. Wouldn’t want to give you ideas.>
<Lucy: Too late. Already have ideas.>
<Ken: ...Should I be worried?>
<Lucy: Depends how attached you are to that uniform.>
<Ken: Hm... sadly, maybe quite attached...>
<Lucy: Looks like you have your story.>
<Ken: Don’t you have yours?> He couldn’t imagine what a girl had to go through her age to be ranked no. 2 netrunner in the whole Night City.
He let the silence sit a moment, then decided–dizzy, feverish, possibly bleeding internally, definitely the worst possible time–that this was exactly the moment to ask the thing he’d been circling for... hours? Though it felt like a lifetime.
<Ken: Can I ask you something? Been bugging me since the gangway.>
<Lucy: You're going to ask regardless of what I say.>
<Ken: The optics glitching. The billboard. That one gonk who fainted for absolutely no reason back in Ch– back on a completely normal Friday. That was you, wasn't it? Every single time I tried to work up the nerve to talk to you.>
Lucy didn’t look at him. <Took you long enough to ask.>
<Ken: So it was.>
<Lucy: You were staring. A lot. For weeks. You have any idea how annoying that is, some random corpo-uniform kid parked on the railing every other day, eyes glued to you like you're a vending machine he's deciding whether to rob?> She flicked ash off the cigarette she wasn't actually smoking anymore, just holding. Seemed like a habit. <First few times I just walked. Then I got bored of walking. Rebooting your optics was easier.>
<Ken: You could've just told me to fuck off.>
<Lucy: Where's the fun in that and boy, you don’t take a hint, do you?>
He almost laughed, then thought better of it. Laughing felt like it might dislodge something important. <Ken: So why not report me? Or worse. If I was actually a corpo guy–>
<Lucy: You are a corpo guy, ‘Saka boy. But definitely not the usual one.> She didn’t mince her words. <First scan I ran on you, way back. You were running bargain-bin chrome. The kind street kids replace the first chance they get. Nobody hunting a netrunner shows up with hardware like that.> She paused again, more out of reminiscence. <Made you either genuinely harmless, or the worst-funded stalker in Night City. Turned out to be a bit of both.>
<Ken: I resent that characterization.>
<Lucy: You literally followed me onto a train hours ago.>
<Ken: ...Fuck.>
<Lucy: Then there was your name. It reminded me of an annoying woman.>
<Ken: Annoying woman?>
<Lucy: Yeah, always telling me not to eat from the vending machines, they are unhealthy and so on, but she used to bring me food.>
<Ken: Sounds a lot like my mom. Even three shifts she would cook before crashing to bed. Guess moms all come with the same firmware.>
Both grinned at that.
The NCART chimed. Little China. Ken peeled himself off the seat with the enthusiasm of a man walking toward his own execution, one hand pressed to his still-tacky nose.
Viktor looked up from his workbench the second the clinic door slid open, took one glance at Ken–pale, swaying, blood dried under one nostril, being half-carried by a girl he'd never seen before–and set his tools down with the exaggerated patience of a man who had genuinely stopped being surprised by anything a long time ago.
“Kid.” A pause, eyes flicking to Lucy, then back. “One week you decide edgerunning and you already found yourself an input.”
“Vik–”
“Because normally when you walk in looking like a corpse, I check your Sandy first. Now I gotta ask if it’s your Sandy or your heart that’s overclocked.”
“Err... how about I say both.” Ken admitted, deflating.
“Uh-huh. That’s serious.” Viktor waved him toward the operating chair without an ounce of urgency, entirely unbothered, already reaching for the diagnostic cables. “Sit. And introduce me properly this time, unlike some ungrateful gonks who bring strangers into my clinic and let me guess.”
{Alternative Titles: I Accidentally Partied with NCs No.2 Netrunner; The Girl Who Kept Rebooting My Optics; My First Choom Was Night City's Strongest Netrunner; Lucyna Kushinada Joined the Party; The Heroine Has Been Acquired; My System Thinks It's Time to Have Babies; The Girl Who Hated Corpos & Me, Running to Take The Ladders;}