The world dropped away.
One heartbeat he laid on Lucy’s bed.
The next–
Just an absence. Sudden and total, of everything that had weighed on him a second ago. The train-seat ache in his back. The dull throb behind his eyes. Gravity itself, gone, replaced by a silence so complete it had texture.
Then the light came up, and Ken unconsciously let his thoughts slip, “Woah, what’s with this resolution?! The sun is too hot!”
“It connects through your personal link to let you feel the sun’s heat.” Lucy said from a few steps behind him, “Of course, you’d burn to crisp if it was the real temp. Want me to crank it up?”
“No way, this is just preem.” Ken jumped and suddenly flew high without control.
Lucy suddenly laughed. Without any hint of guard now, “What’s with your look? You’re ridiculous.”
Ken tried to land proper but failed spectacularly. It took him two to three rolls in the moon dust to find balance. Even then, he could only move without actual direction. Compared to him, Lucy moved with the grace of a fairy and he just wanted to gawk at her from the side.
“Hahaha, you have to do something about your simping. It looks like a serious sickness now. Can’t have a ’Saka boy running behind me all the time.”
“Sheesh, leave me alone.” Ken shooed her.
“When you’re not leaving me alone?”
“Ugh.”
Lucy spread her arms and asked, “So, how do you like it. Pretty cool, right?”
“Absolutely nova! Can’t imagine anything better, actually.”
“Right?” She totally got what he felt. Suddenly, she called him, “Come over here.” Her palms beckoned him with a hypnotizing grace.
’Should I grab it?’ Ken hesitated. It felt like she was inviting him to take it, then again, maybe he overthought it. He always did. He didn’t want to make it awkward again. Things were finally looking positive between them, at least to him.
While he was lost in hesitation, Lucy grabbed his wrist and jumped.
Ken marvelled at how different she was inside the BD.
The usual Lucy was confident, but there was this strange glominess around her he couldn’t quite name. Like she felt stifled when it was a free city, where you could literally do anything. Now, though? It was like he was seeing the true her.
Confident, smiling, and even free. Like she truly shone with the brilliance of a moon.
Lucy’s jump led her directly to the seat of a moon car. She didn’t mind the wide eyed, gawking Ken, looking at her like she was the piece of art she was. She had gotten over sounding him out.
With a practiced movement, she started the engine and the car literally flew at high speed from the start. Ken barely stabilized himself but couldn’t help but laugh at himself, and Lucy seemed to think the same as she joined him in laughing.
They stopped before a huge crater. Their footsteps left marks on top of the moon.
Lucy sat by the crater. Her legs mimicked her excited heart. Ken joined her looking at the dark crater.
“Is this also replicated from moon recording?” Ken asked, looking at the seeming bottomless crater.
“Mn, as real as it can get.”
“Did you know, apparently these craters formed when humans and aliens fought on the moon.”
“Pfft, didn’t take you for a conspiracy nerd.”
“It’s really true! Not a conspiracy theory.”
“Is that also what they teach you at ’Saka school?”
“No,” Ken’s shoulder slumped, “But they really do exist.”
“Hahaha, you get more interesting, next are you going to say ghosts exist too?”
“Uh, damn. They do exist though but something tells me you’re not going to believe.”
“So, you do get it.” Lucy said. Her tone said everything he needed to know.
“They really do!” Ken firmly held his stance.
Then silence stretched. Ken didn’t find it awkward this time. It didn’t need filling in this space. His eyes were lost on the earth in front of him. Both were earth, just, not the same.
“First time I have done it with someone else.” Lucy suddenly said.
“...Really?” That was supposed to mean something, right? “But, why me. We just met today.” Hours ago, to be specific.
“Just met today? You’re trying hard to erase your dark history.” Lucy gently rocked left and right, like urgency got erased from her dictionary.
“Ugh.”
Lucy said, looking up at the earth in front of them. “I wonder why.”
“What are yo–”
“Guess it just felt right to show you.” Lucy stilled and faced him. “I haven’t even talked about my dream to crew members whom I ran with for a year.”
“Eh, I’m flattered, to be honest...”
“Funny, isn’t it? We somehow fit together better than we probably should.” Somehow they both hated ’Saka for their own reasons, but no matter what they did, they just couldn’t erase the shadow of it from their life.
One ran away from the dark shadow of corporate mechanisms, and another blindly charged at it with nothing but dreams. In a way, they were a match made by the world.
Ken didn’t understand the complicity of her words. His mind–which was used to high-context prose–did catch it as confession. He suddenly became embarrassed but decided to give a reply he felt quite straightforward. “I guess so.”
Suddenly, dim lights flashed within Lucy’s eyes, Ken’s brows rose at that.
“Nad timing. Just a moment, I’ll put them on hold.”
However, that destroyed the momentum. Both didn’t know how to continue their conversation.
“Um, does it ever get old? This place.” Ken didn’t address it just as a simple BD, something Lucy appreciated. His question went unanswered long enough that he thought it got lost, somewhere in the space between their two nervous systems.
“Every time I come here, I tell myself it’s the last one. That I’ve had enough. Then a bad week happens, and I’m back. Strange though, I don’t feel like I’ve had enough today...”
“Is that so? I feel the same. Wanna go for round 2 of the moon ride? I think I missed most of the fun.”
“Yeah? And why did you miss that exactly? Were you falling hard for the moon?” Lucy stood. She currently had the mood of going with the flow.
“Yeah!” If she was the moon, that was indeed correct. Ken grimaced, he really had a talent for striking his own leg, didn’t he?
Lucy suddenly frowned. Ken noticed and asked from the side, “Your chooms again?”
“Yeah, might be important. Lemme check.”
“Ok.” Ken looked around. Moon didn’t seem half-bad compared to the image he had. He hummed the music that had been running on the BD background at some point.
Then it happened without any warning. Ken came back to his own body all at once, gasping at the surprise. The wreath slid slightly off-center on his temple; he fixed it without thinking, hands unsteady.
Lucy was already back, wreath already out, cigarette lit between her fingers, watching him with the cold mask he had noticed her put on.
“Get out,” she spat, voice flat.
Ken thought he heard wrong for a moment before the words settled. “What? Why suddenly?”
Lucy didn’t answer. She was already up, already moving, gathering nothing in particular just to have something to do with her hands. “You heard me. Out. Now.”
“At least tell me why.” Ken stayed seated, “Two minutes ago we were–”
“Two minutes ago doesn’t matter.” Her voice had gone somewhere cold and flat, the same register she’d used on the train when she’d pinned him to the wall and called him a stalker, except this time there was nothing playful underneath it. “Get out of my apartment, Martinez.”
“No.”
That stopped her, just for a second. “Excuse me?”
“I said no.” Ken didn’t move from the bed, even as every instinct screaming under his skin told him to. “Something happened on that call. You don’t do a full one-eighty over nothing, and I’m not walking out that door until I know what it was.”
“You really want to test me right now?” Her eyes flashed, and for a moment the low light of the apartment caught something sharper underneath. “I will fry every synapse you’ve got left, and then I’ll fry the ones you’re borrowing from whatever military lab built that thing in your spine. Get. Out.”
“Do it, then.”
She actually froze at that. Obviously not the reaction she’d braced herself for.
“I’m not calling your bluff for fun,” Ken said, quieter now. “I’m calling it because I don’t think you actually want me to. And because if I walk out that door right now, I feel like I might not get to walk back in. Ever. And I’d rather take whatever you throw at me than lose this before I even know what this is.”
Something in her jaw worked, tight, like she was chewing on the shape of several different things to say and rejecting all of them.
“You didn’t think,” she said finally, voice dropping, “to mention your mother’s name was Gloria Martinez.”
Ken’s whole body went still. “...How do you know my mom’s name?”
“Answer the question first.”
“You never asked.” It came out defensive, too fast, and he heard how thin it sounded even as he said it. “I mean, you don’t exactly say your parents name when you introduce yourself. Lucy, why do you...”
He stopped.
Always telling me not to eat from the vending machines... and she even used to bring me home cooked food.
“...Oh,” Ken said, very quietly. “But how? Mom rarely had any free time from her endless shifts.”
“Yeah.” Lucy’s voice had gone somewhere he’d never heard it go. Not cold anymore, not angry, just hollow. Like something underneath the anger had finally given out. “She comes by to sell tech goodies. Sometimes straight chromes. Always out for anything that made her good eddies.”
Lucy paused. Took a deep drag of her cig. “I never liked her. Always annoying me about needing some meat on my bones. Taking out the lunch box that was definitely for herself and watching me eat like it washes off her exhaustion. I truly hate her to the bone.
“And then, two days ago, Maine said she had passed away. Got caught up in some gonk fights. I couldn’t believe it. I should’ve felt relieved I wouldn’t be annoyed anymore... but, it hurt. I regret it. Regret never trying to properly know her. Somewhere along she probably became more of a proper mother figure than my own mother ever was.”
Ken turned away from her. Eyes held tightly in his mind. No crying. Not in front of another girl. It was especially hard because he could visualize every single thing she said. Even now, he felt like he himself didn’t know his own mother that well. To what extent she worked herself to support his studies.
‘Just why go so far?’ just for his studies. Was it that important for him to climb that corpo ladder?
The silence was especially unbearable when both had their chest pounding in pain.
“Just, go.” Lucy hugged her chest. “I will file as sick. The other netrunner is busy with something else, so you have like one or two days. Go somewhere, maybe leave the Night City.”
“So,” Ken breathed and absorbed the words, trying his best to make sense from the tidbits she told him. “The guys you roll with, they want me?”
Lucy’s silence answered before her words did.
“They are after the Sandy actually, I don’t know how you changed the name signature, but it fooled me, and I don’t think you just happened to have another Sandy lying around this exact time.” she said eventually, still not turning around. “Maine struck some deal with Glo... with your mom. Then she went awol. The only reason he waited this long is because we trust her not to go back on her words. And she seemed adamant about keeping her son out of this world. Sent me a photo now. Asked me to find him.
“Find Gloria’s boy.”
{Alt Title: Apparently Going to the Moon Together Doesn't Mean You're Dating; Even the Moon Couldn't Hide the Truth; The Dream She Shared; Gloria's Boy; }