Mela was a horrible friend with a penchant for relentless teasing. I knew that, and I still hugged her and cried for an embarrassingly long amount of time. At least she didn’t record me… I think? She better not have. I would exact bloody retribution.

  It might take me a lot of growing and practicing, but I would find a way.

  Then again, she looked about as embarrassed as I did. She beat a hasty retreat at the first opportunity. She also rushed to assure me that the area was much safer now, that she would take the head off of anyone who dared mess with the youngest Kitten, and that she was a call away if I needed something. I did tease her for all this in turn, so…

  Well. I guess we were both a little awkward.

  Now that I was alone, though, I felt even more lost. The last time I’d stood in that space, it was covered in blood and other bits that really shouldn’t be on the outside of someone. Now, my shoes were by the door, and I got to sink my toes into what had to be the fluffiest carpet I’d ever felt.

  I started to walk around absently, brushing my fingers over all the new surfaces. The wardrobe felt more solid. The desk I had no idea what to do with, especially since I hardly ever felt the need to use my scroll anymore. And the chairs… they felt like a real luxury, for some odd reason. Maybe because I’d thrown out the last chair I actually owned for being a rotted mess?

  Not that it was actual wood, mind you, but whatever replacement material it had been made of was authentic enough to rot. Way quicker than actual wood would have, too! A real nice bonus feature!

  These chairs were metal and looked suitable for smashing someone over the head, probably on account of Mela’s tendency to use furniture like that. But the cushions were comfy, and I perched on one while looking around like a lost owl.

  “What am I supposed to do now?” I asked myself out loud, dizzy with both confusion and an odd sense of liberation.

  I’d successfully stolen the eyes. I’d made it through my suspicious ripper and a mugging. I’d saved Mela. I’d survived a fucking war.

  And now there I was, sitting in a comfy chair, with no idea what was expected of me.

  Oh, the Kittens were likely to want something in the future, but neither Garren nor Mela were the types to just screw with my daily life for the hell of it. So I was… well, essentially, back at square one.

  Just way better equipped. I had an actual safety net, more credits than was healthy for me, and good eyesight.

  That did leave me with one more question, though.

  “What do I even want now?”

  That wasn’t supposed to confuse me so much, was it? Most people could probably answer the question easily. The problem was, I’d never had time to think about it. I’d been trying to stay ahead of imminent starvation or violent death for so long, I had no clue about anything beyond.

  What right did a kid from the slums even have to throw around such a frivolous question?

  That, at last, did stir a desire in me. It felt like the first spark that made old machinery twitch and stir to life.

  Yes, I was a kid from the slums. Yes, life had strung me along and kicked my ass too many times to count.

  So, that was what I wanted: I wanted to never be so mishandled again. I wanted to know I could take care of myself.

  I wanted to feel safe.

  The problem was…

  Those stats. Those stupid, stupid stats. Compared to an average kid my age, I was a stupid distance even from the starting line of proper conditioning.

  The Reality Enhancement software was helping, sure. Its careful analysis of my body yielded plenty of data to transform into an exact schedule of how much I could push myself, how much I should eat, etc.

  I’d shared all that with Mela, Garren, Ravs, and even Feyo. The gang leader had assured me I’d always have enough to eat. Ravs was there to check up on me and okay my continued torment by Mela. Feyo was more than happy to ‘put meat on my bones’, as he liked to say.

  None of that changed the fact that I was dealing with the effects of long-term malnutrition, lack of proper exercise, and stunted growth. Not to mention enough chemicals in my system from the slop I’d been eating to ensure I died of cancer eventually, without proper treatment.

  Wonders never stopped piling onto the citizens of our wonderful corpo-run world. I mean, why would anyone care about the slop sold in the outer districts, let alone the slums, when humans bred like rabbits compared to most other races? Clearly, we were the most accessible fast-replenishing resource, and corpos knew that.

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  Ranting aside, my point was that I was small. I could be very easily squashed by any ganger on a solid meal plan of steroids and rage-inducing drugs.

  Mela certainly knew it. Fuck, she wasn’t exactly subtle about her lack of confidence in my physical abilities. How many times had she ‘nonchalantly’ complained, loud enough for me to hear, about the Kittens’ lack of good support members? I knew for a fact she wanted me to beg Ravs or even Torn to take me under their wing. According to her, I ‘had a brain that’s actually worth shit’ and could excel under them.

  The problem was, I really didn’t want that. I didn’t want to be ‘support staff’, however useful.

  I didn’t want to feel vulnerable anymore. I didn’t want to jump at every shadow that crossed my path, scared out of my mind that I’d get ambushed again. I mean, even with the shooter Mela had left me with and all the training she’d given me, I still wasn’t sure I’d be able to take that druggie she saved me from. Not one-on-one.

  But the stats were against me. I was never going to be a physical powerhouse, even if Garren was okay with drugging his own people to the gills for a boost (and he wasn’t). I had to accept that.

  Mind you, I wasn’t about to give up.

  I’m just going to have to work smarter, I resolved silently as I stripped off most of my clothes and jumped into the shower. Or borg out to the point I can take care of myself.

  I didn’t particularly want to go insane or lose my ability to feel emotions. But if it came down to a choice between running scared for the rest of my life or seeing if I could withstand enough cyber bits to measure up with more physically gifted gangers, I’d roll the dice.

  Granted, I did have one other potential option. And it was a lot more appealing.

  Stepping out of the shower, I got comfy on my new deluxe bed. Then I booted up my search engine and started browsing.

  The object of my research? Netrunners.

  Though the Zerx assault ultimately failed, I was never going to forget what happened that day. Our cameras hijacked. Our defenses turning against us. My own eyes almost stolen from me.

  That level of power was terrifying. It was a nightmare even to consider one person wielding that much influence over the world around them.

  And it was tempting. So tempting, in fact, that I had to fight down the urge to search for learning resources right then and there.

  I forced myself to slow down. To keep it to casual browsing.

  But as I browsed, the urge only grew.

  There were plenty of stories, both starkly realistic and blown out of all proportion, about exactly what runners were capable of. I found no less than seven news reports from the deeper city districts about businesses getting stripped of their credits and secrets by rival corpo runners. Four reports of borgs getting hacked and unleashed on their own employers. Three reports of independent runners who’d had a bit too much fun and disabled entire blocks of security, before getting hunted down and taken out by corpo assassins.

  In an age when most ‘civilized’ people had net-connected machine bits in them, runners may as well have been wizards. They could do just about anything to you, if the fancy hit them.

  So it really didn’t surprise me that training resources on the subject were heavily restricted, whether behind cold hard creds or corpo contracts.

  You want to be trained as a runner? Sure! Join your local branch of our corpo office, sign a contract, and we’ll put you through our courses. Oh, what’s that? You don’t want to spend the next eighty years indentured to us? Too bad. You’d better have several thousand credits to shell out for the classes, then. And that’s on a monthly basis.

  This formed an effective barrier for most people. No one could advance in this particular career except those born to wealth, or those willing to sell themselves body and soul to play in the digital world.

  I didn’t qualify for either category.

  For a moment, I idly considered going to Garren. Runners were always a hot commodity. He’d likely want to get more of them. With Mela and her burning desire to keep me away from combat backing me up, the man might say yes. A very selfish part of me nudged me to try.

  The other, more reasonable part of me scoffed, telling me I’d never do it.

  Damn it, that part was right.

  I’d heard Garren complain about finances more than a few times over the last couple of days. The kind of meds, food, and other supplies he secured for the Kittens on the regular were not cheap. They cost him thousands of credits every other week.

  Even with all of the gang’s many sources of income, most of them highly illegal of course, he was only just staying ahead of things. He’d confided as much in me one time when Mela and her nonsense had driven him to drink.

  So, just asking Garren to pay for lessons or learning resources was out.

  You’d think there was a much simpler solution to the problem. After all, the Kittens already had a runner. Mort might have nearly gotten himself killed by his surprise Zerx rival, but the man was neither stupid nor useless. If he was willing to back me and actually play teacher for a bit, I could probably get to a basic level of runner proficiency in a couple of months.

  Unfortunately, that was a pretty fucking big ‘if.’

  Mort owed his status and influence within the Kittens to his runner skills. Anyone who showed up with the potential to replace him was his biggest threat. If I so much as revealed any interest in runner training, I wouldn’t be surprised if I just vanished. They would find my body in an alley a couple days later.

  That might seem like a bleak outlook, considering how nicely the Kittens had treated me. But having met the man myself? Yeah. I wasn’t taking that risk.

  Naturally, that left me with only my stubbornness, my ingenuity, and my own meager resources.

  Then again…

  I eyed up my backpack, knowing it was metaphorically weighed down by the addition of the cred chips I took off the Zerx Mela and I had killed. I’d tried to split those with the woman, but she’d just waved me off and told me that she owed me for saving her ass already. That meant I’d enriched myself by an additional two thousand, five hundred and some-odd credits. Together with what I already had, well…

  It wasn’t enough for personalized classes and proper guidance. Not even close to enough for bribing some runner into taking me on as an apprentice, either.

  Still… maybe, just maybe, I could do something with the money?

  A ton of research later, I was even more frustrated than I’d been at the start. Supposedly, you could get shards containing lessons for much cheaper than personalized courses. They’d be good for at least the basic stuff, if not the more advanced learning.

  Problem was, no one deigned to share the wisdom of how you could actually buy these shards. Even those who openly discussed the best shards to purchase, by name, never once quoted a store that sold them.

  Besides, the sites where I found the info weren’t exactly what you’d call ‘upstanding.’ Not the so-called ‘dark net’, not even close. I had no way to access that. But they were definitely not sites set up by law-abiding citizens.

  I was just about to throw caution to the wind and try one of the paid forums when my attention drifted to the current time. I froze. It was already way too late, and I was actually going back to work the next day.

  Grumbling, I got even more comfortable on my ridiculously soft bed and tried to drift off, thinking about Catill’s grumpy face.

  Catill!

  I jolted upright.

  Despite his deep hatred for all things tech, my boss also consistently turned up all sorts of odd wares at his shop. It was a long shot, but if he could somehow help me get my hands on some of those shards, then I’d be a huge step closer to my goal. Failing that, I was at least sure Catill could put me in contact with people who would be able to procure shards.

  When my nervous energy finally fizzled out much later that night, I fell asleep with a big smile on my lips.