“So, what are you waiting for? Delta already.” Lucy shooed him towards the door.
“That was intense! How did I do?” Ken slumped on the sofa. His eyes met Lucy’s who was standing just behind.
“Couldn’t be worse.” Lucy frowned. “Wrong choice every turn... But somehow still breathing, so I guess you have something working for you.”
“That bad, seriously?” Still not grasping what could’ve possibly gone so bad.
“You don’t realize even a part of it.” Lucy dropped back to the windowsill, fishing out a fresh cig since the last one had apparently ended in his hand. “Let’s recap. You told an armed crew you weren’t handing over the one thing they came for. To their faces. While their irons were already halfway up.”
“I, uh. Panicked.” Ken rubbed the back of his neck. “In my defense, I didn’t really plan any of that beforehand.”
“You offered to pay them back. In front of people, who now know you’re sitting on eddies worth taking. On top of the chrome they spent eddies on, and the effort to look after their lost supplier’s family.”
“That one was bad. Yeah. But hey, the only reason I did that was because we had some connection.” He winced, no arguing that. “I kinda realized that the second it left my mouth and there was no taking it back.”
“Then you showed off. Sandy-blur, grab a smoke off my windowsill, back before anyone blinked. In front of three people trying to decide if the spine was worth the effort and eddies off your worth.”
“It wasn’t that bad. I saw Maine already pulling back.”
“And then you negotiated your work schedule. With Maine. While he was still deciding whether your legs were staying attached.”
“Only holidays and evenings really is reasonable though–” Ken caught the look on her face and deflated mid-sentence. “Ok, maybe not the moment for it. I just. I have school. I didn’t want to lose that on top of everything.”
Lucy studied him for a long moment, but Ken couldn’t understand why and what went through her mind.
“You really don’t get how close that was, do you.” Not a question.
“I mean.” Ken looked at his own hands. “I know it was bad. I felt my heart doing something weird the whole time, so, yeah, I got that part.”
“That’s the problem. You felt it was bad. After.” She took a drag, tapped ash toward a tray that had been filled ages ago. “In the moment, you looked calm. Almost stupid-calm. Not brave kind, Martinez, that’s broken. You know what happens to gonks who don’t feel it in the moment?”
“...Zeroed?”
“Uh-huh. They get zeroed.”
Ken swallowed.
“Good. Since Maine left you under me, I will give you the first lesson. Never trust a soul in Night City.” Something in her posture eased, only for a moment, before it hardened right back. “And since you clearly need it spelled out, here. Lesson two.”
She didn’t move. Didn’t so much as flick a finger.
Ken’s vision went white-black and then nothing at all.
His optics blacked out first, a full second of pure static where the room used to be. His holo interface hiccuped and died mid-render. Aside from the tingle in his spine that he’d gotten so used to, everything just blacked.
“Wh–” Ken lurched sideways off the sofa and caught the armrest badly, knee cracking on the table.
For a handful of seconds, he was just a guy. No feed, no holo, nothing. Just a blind body that felt, for the first time in weeks, entirely stock.
Then it all slammed back online at once, and his knee reminded him, rather unkindly, that the table had not moved out of the way in time.
“Ow– ow, ok, ow. What was that?!”
“Quickhack. Simple one. Doesn’t fry anything, not for the purpose of damaging, doesn’t even count as an attack on most scans. Just kicks whatever chrome you’re running back to zero for a few seconds. Acts like a simple restart you triggered yourself.”
“You could’ve warned me!”
“That was the point of not warning you.” She flicked her cig toward the tray, missed it entirely, didn’t seem to notice or care. “Imagine that landed mid-fight. Hits the second Pilar decides he wants to test his theory about your chest. No Sandy answering you. No feed. Nothing telling you who’s about to draw first. Just you, blinking, waiting hard for your optics to come online, like an idiot, for however many seconds it takes.”
Ken sat with that a moment, knee throbbing, the words settling somewhere. But it seemed like she didn’t realize he still had access to his Sandy. Though it mattered not without his eyes.
“...Ok,” he said, quieter this time. “That one actually scared me. For real, I mean.”
“Good. Took you long enough.” Lucy stood, stretched, jerked her chin at the door with the same lack of ceremony she’d used the last time she threw him out. “Now scram. I’m done playing tutor for one night. Seriously, why did Maine even throw you to me? Our kits are not even the same.”
“Right. Um. Thanks. For today. Even the bad parts, I guess.” He hesitated at the doorway, half-turned. “Sorry I made it stressful.”
“Out, Martinez.”
Night City hummed along around him the way it always did, loud and neon, and Ken walked toward the NCART with his hands shoved deep in his pockets and his thoughts somewhere he didn’t much like visiting.
He kept circling back to it.
Three guns, more or less pointed at him at once, by people who’d already half-decided he was worth more as a corpse than walking. He remembered his pulse, sure. Remembered his throat going dry right before that stupid line about them not being able to hit him. But underneath all of it, where the actual fear was supposed to live–the gut-drop, the cold sweat, the part of him that used to scream run before his brain even caught up–there had been nothing.
He had fought giant spirits and aliens, but neither because he liked nor because he had the courage. It was out of desire to protect someone and his own safety.
And what was happening now?
Not calm. Definitely not bravery either.
Just missing something.
Fear.
Something essential in human survival.
Whether it was because of his fusion or something else, he had no idea.
‘That’s not normal, I guess.’ Ken frowned at his own smeared reflection in a shuttered storefront window. ‘Even that time with Elena too. Rather than terrified of thinking I killed someone, or I had to fight, I was more worried about someone learning my secret, guess my safety was also a reason there. Tonight, three guns, and I was still busy thinking about school vs work schedules like it was some virtual corpo pitch meeting in my class.’
He didn’t have an answer for it. Just an uncomfortable, annoying feeling that he couldn’t quite scratch.
/ / /
Next Morning
Ken woke up in his cubicle to the same water-stained gray ceiling and a refreshing feeling came with a good night of sleep and a fully healed body. Ordinary morning, by his current standards. He brushed his teeth, ran the shower long enough to feel human again, and pulled up the Log mostly out of habit.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
You have triggered GAMER’S SLUMBER Lv. 2
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
“Huh.” He blinked at it twice, “Lv. 2??”
‘I thought in games you only go up in level, this one regressed?’ Last time it had hit Lv. 3, but this time only 2. ‘Could it be... the level is dependent on the trigger?’
That was something worth keeping notes on. However, he was 80 percent confident in his theory about [GAMER’S SLUMBER]. It triggered only when he played games or made [GAMING SUPERMACY] activate.
Which of the two, it was hard to find out for the time being.
[GAMER’S SLUMBER]; from what he understood about this ability so far, it allowed him to sleep well, no nightmare, and heightened recovery. He had yet to find anything else but those alone were good enough reasons for him to reserve at least an hour for gaming.
He felt his body, he felt fine. Better than fine, actually. No stiff shoulder, no grogginess, no brain complaining of melting, no lingering soreness anywhere. Peak condition, by every measure he had.
Then he checked the mini-map and HP bar out of habit.
97%.
“Hmm... Guess still not at peak?” He remembered his peak health percentage sat at 99%. He thought about Slumber Lv. 2 being lower than Lv. 3. Nothing connected cleanly, and he gave up trying to force it for now.
The Academy wasn’t open on Sundays. He was free until Maine called, when the guy decided to call. Out of options, he called Lucy next, mostly so he’d have something else to do.
He waited, tried once more.
Nothing. The call just rang and rang and died on its own. Not blocked at least. Small comfort. Very small.
“Probably busy.” He set the holo down, mostly convincing himself, and looked around the cubicle for something else to occupy his hands.
Ken’s eyes landed on the empty duffel bag shoved in the corner, left over from moving out of Arroyo and never actually thrown away.
“Right. I’ve been meaning to check this.”
He picked it up. A familiar prompt bloomed in front of him, the same one he’d waved off weeks ago without thinking twice.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Assign this bag as your Backpack?
→ Yes / No
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
He’d said no back then, gone with the easy Inventory grid instead, purely out of convenience at the time. Never actually followed up on the other one.
“Might as well see what I skipped.”
He hesitated once, what if Backpack could be assigned only once. Then again, he had Inventory.
The faint red glow brightened for a second, then settled.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Backpack Assigned.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
The bag itself didn’t look any different. Ken grabbed whatever was in reach, his old Arasaka SecureBook, thought better and left it alone, it was the only laptop he had. Grabbed a half-brick of spare parts from his usual technical practice, two clothes, and, for the sake of a proper test, a cup of instant noodles he’d microwaved specifically for this and absolutely was not planning to eat cold later.
Into the Backpack, all of it went.
The bag didn’t bulge at all. “Hm, the weight is there, but it doesn’t bulge and feels like I can put in a lot of stuff?”
For comparison, he pulled up the Inventory grid and dropped a second, freshly made cup of noodles straight into one of the empty slots instead.
No weight or strain. Just a small icon sitting quietly in its box.
“Ok. So that’s the difference. Physical bag, weight is there, just doesn’t look the part. Inventory is just grid, no weight, put it in and forget it.” He turned the duffel over in his hands. “Neat. Not exactly earth-shattering, but neat.”
He set an alarm for thirty minutes and went back to poking at his profile screen while he waited, mostly out of impatience with himself.
When it went off, he opened the Backpack first.
Only the noodle cup came out, with some soup. “Ok, that’s...”
Ken realized this Backpack was already done for. He took everything out, the clothes and his miscellaneous tech items, all mixed with cold soggy noodles and water.
“That had been foolish, but still, a good lesson. At least, I didn’t put in the laptop.”
Ken mourned for the lost experimental techs and moved on. They were nothing important. Then he pulled the other cup out of Inventory.
Steam curled straight off the top, just like the moment he’d put it in.
“...Ok. My gaming is paying off.” Ken stared at the cup in amazement. “Inventory doesn’t just take care of the weight problem. Time is frozen there? Or just doesn’t exist. Either way, too cool. Backpack on the other hand, has real weight, time works normally, no extra blocks for every item. It just doesn’t look bulky from outside.”
That actually mattered, once he turned it over properly.
Inventory was perfect for anything that needed to vanish completely–no trace, no decay, nothing ticking along inside it. He’d already used it for exactly that more than once, without ever thinking about it.
Backpack was convenient, if he needed to keep something running, like some program mid-process, anything that couldn’t just sit paused.
The thought sat well with him for about three seconds before the obvious follow-up settled.
‘...Wait. Time’s ok, and weight’s real. Would a signal be working too? If something in there had a tracker on it, and it pinged same as if it was just sitting in my pocket? That would make it convenient for me to haul contrabands without making the trackers disappear.’
He had no way to actually test that. Not without a spare tracker lying around, and definitely not by digging the one Maine had just slotted into his own neural socket back out, purely to see if a duffel bag made it go quiet.
His other tests revealed he could put the Backpack inside his Inventory, but Inventory, well, it didn’t have anything to store it into. Apparently, reassigning a new Backpack was possible, however, everything inside the previous backpack would never be recoverable.
Speaking of the devil, his holo buzzed.
Maine.
Ken stared at the name a beat too long before he answered, already bracing for whatever life had decided to throw at him next.
{Alt Titles: Cold Reboot; Backpack vs. Inventory; Cold Noodles, Hot Noodles: Better Than Tech Noodles; Slumber Lv. 2; She Didn't Even Warn Me; Danger Sense: Offline; Grading My Own Panic; A Bag That Lies About Its Weight; Call From Maine;}