The whiskey bottle was a dead soldier between them, its final dregs a testament to confessions that hung thicker than the bar's smoke-hazed air. The opening riff of yet another SAMURAI song was vibrating through the floorboards, a low, primal thrum that felt like the soundtrack to their shared unraveling. Luxy's eyes were closed as her head was lolling back against the scarred wood of the booth, a single tear tracing a clean path through the grime and defiance on her cheek. Void watched her, the adrenaline of their raw exchange fading, leaving behind the familiar, leaden exhaustion. The world outside this grimy bubble - Marzena's smear campaign, Amy's fragile hope, Keira's worried gaze - felt like a distant, hostile planet...
Void exhaled like she'd just come through a minor war, as the crooked bed frame stood tall enough to qualify as furniture. She tossed the useless booklet onto the pile of discarded packaging.
"Instructions were cursed anyway. Might as well have been printed in fucking runes."
"You mean they had words you didn't write yourself? That explains everything." Her smirk widened, voice dripping smug. "Void, author of one thousand programs, felled by a cartoon arrow. Put it on your résumé."...
Keira and Amy finally pushed through the door, arms heavy with grocery bags and a borrowed cart on top of which several boxes with furniture were stacked. Keira kicked her boots off with a grunt.
"Home sweet radioactive wasteland," she muttered, voice laced with that lazy sarcasm that made Amy snicker even though she wasn't sure if it was a joke or a genuine complaint.
Void glanced up from the couch lazily, finally stopping her nightly meme-scroll on the phone, the faint ghost of her last dive still hanging in the air. She didn't mention it. She didn't want them to see the way her pulse hadn't quite slowed yet. Instead, she stood, brushing her palms on her jeans and pulling Keira close by the collar for a kiss that tasted like leftover coffee. It was rough, unceremonious, but still warm enough to make Keira smile...
Void stretched her shoulders, muttering, "Time to check in on the old ghosts while those two keep themselves busy..." She padded over to her netrunning rig, pulling the cyberdeck closer. The thing looked like it had been scavenged from half a dozen corpses: matte-black patch plates, screws gone rainbow from too much heat, wires soldered in strange angles. Frankenstein tech, just like her.
She itched for a proper neural link, but the idea of flying out to some back-alley clinic overseas only to wake up with a soon-to-be-obsolete neuroprocessor didn't exactly scream worth it. A week of downtime for something the market would make ancient in six months? No thanks. The deck was ugly, but it worked - and it never let her down...
Keira's workshop screamed "abandoned shrine to half-finished projects and tendency to hoard." It was Keira's sanctum - or at least it had been, judging from the towers of boxes, half-dismantled gadgets, coils of wire, and a graveyard of projects that never made it past the "cool idea" phase. Void nudged a pile of metal beams off an old stool with the side of her boot, earning a sharp look from Keira.
"Careful, pinkie," Keira said, brushing her fringe out of her eyes as she stacked a bundle of cables. "That's organized chaos you're stomping on."...