Bitstream

1.2

Another person is waiting outside when I step back into the alley. She's young – early twenties, maybe – and she won't look at me. Doesn't nod, doesn't smile. Arms folded tight against her chest like she's holding something in. When I offer a quiet hello, she flinches, then moves past me without a word and disappears through the door. Has to be the two-o'clock Jin mentioned. There's something broken in the way she moves, like she's seen too much too soon and learned to keep her mouth shut about it.

I pull out the electronic map. It glitches once before stabilising. Covers a slice of the city, but the blue dot blinking in the centre confirms my location: Carter's Street, alleyway behind the canal, north side. Just ahead, across the bridge, a cluster of buildings glows faint orange. One of them is circled. That's the target. The name of the address is 'Old Mill'.

Interesting name, though it's far enough to be a problem. My head's still swimming from the sensory dysfunction. No pain, no smell. Right arm's dead weight hanging from the socket.

Once I get this fixed, I'll need to think bigger: housing, transport, backup gear. Walking this place alone with no gang, no name that means anything, is a good way to end up face-down in a ditch. For all I know, I burned bridges in my last life. Might've left someone bleeding in a stairwell. Might've been worse. If I passed one of them on the street today, would they recognise me? Would they draw?

I push the thoughts aside and walk, heading for the bridge. When I get there, it stretches across the water like a corridor to something uglier, and when I cross over, the rain's thinner. Wind has an edge, too, but it's not violent. Just that oceanic drift off the canal, the kind that leaves rust trails on the buildings and an oil sheen across puddles. My HUD clocks the time: 14:47. Middle of the workday. You'd think the streets would be clearer, but Neo Arcadia doesn't sleep. Doesn't slow. Pedestrians flood the crosswalks in every direction, and nobody makes space. They keep their heads down, eyes fixed ahead, bodies on rails. No one talks. No one touches. Just movement.

The farther I walk, the more the noise recedes. The crowd tapers off into side streets. I cut through one, then another, ducking beneath low-hanging sheets of scrap metal that serve as balconies for the buildings above. Pipes drip where they shouldn't. Plastic chairs line a walkway littered with crushed cans, old meal trays, wax wrappers. The signs here are scarce. The ones that remain are faded, or dead, or written in languages I can't parse. Some flash as if they're trying to come back to life, stuck in the loop between power failure and memory.

I keep looking.

Still no sign of Old Mill.

It's supposed to be here, buried in this neighbourhood, but nothing on the map gives me anything useful. Every building is a mutation of the last. Brick, steel, concrete, welded into angles that shouldn't exist. Above, power lines twist together in massive knots, snaking across rooftops like someone stitched the city together and forgot to hide the scars. I pass beneath a dying sodium lamp. A neon sign overhead spits static and Japanese characters. A metal shutter seals the entrance to whatever's behind it. Another screen to the left glows cyan but shows nothing, just a blank page. Dead feed. Below it, someone's hammered a wooden post into the brick. The sign is hand-painted. Sloppy. Letters running into each other. But it's there.

OLD MILL.

It's not a mill. No chance.

The building is squat and squatters still. Mostly metal, stained red brick patched with poured concrete. The door's rounded at the edges, sealed tight, no visible handle. More like a sealed entrance on a pressurised bay than something you'd find on a street corner. To the right of the door, an intercom and a buzzer. Both too clean. Too recent.

This doesn't feel right.

Too quiet. Too precise. Not a single marking on the walls, not even a gang tag. No cigarette butts. No blood trails. Just blank space between places that ought to be filled.

Is this it? Is this where they operate? Because it doesn't look like anything. Doesn't sound like anything. Just another faceless door in a city that's built its life around forgetting what's behind it.

I stand still for a second longer.

Then I press the buzzer.

The intercom hisses, and a voice cuts through the static: "State your business." Aussie accent. Male. Young, maybe.

The voice hits harder than it should. My heart skips before I can stop it. Too sudden.

"I, uh… Dr. Maelstrom sent me. He said—"

Laughter crackles down the line. Dry. Amused. Not warm. "This is what he sends? Seriously?"

The hair on my arm prickles. I plant my feet. "Listen. I've got experience." The words come out steadier than I expected. "And I'm not unequipped. I've got—"

"Yeah, we know," the voice interrupts. "Not exactly an impressive strap, mate, but better than nothing." A pause. "Name's Rhea, yeah?"

I nod, even though there's no camera. "Yeah. Rhea Steele. I was told to ask for Fingers."

Silence.

Then a low cough, someone clearing their throat with gravel. The buzz sounds off to the left, just beneath the doorframe. The lock unlatches.

"Take the elevator to Dash Two," the man says. "Fingers is waiting. And don't touch anything."

The speaker clicks off, and I stand there for a second, hand clenched, trying not to look as shaken as I feel. That part's done. The easy part. The talking. Now comes the descent.

Come on. Breathe.

I step inside.

The hallway's long and too bright. Fluorescent bulbs hum overhead, some flashing at irregular intervals. The walls are sheet metal welded over brick, corners dirtied with years of foot traffic and uncleaned spills. Doors line either side, all identical: dented aluminum with scuffed keypads and old grease around the hinges.

Up ahead, a broken washing machine leans against the wall, its lid half open, rust blooming along the edges. Two oxygen canisters rest beside it, valves sealed, no markings. A man hunched over the machine groans. His body trembles before he lunges forward and vomits straight into the drum. The sound is sharp and wet. No apology. No shame. He just stands there afterward, swaying, one hand gripping the edge in case gravity tips sideways.

Drugs. Drink. Withdrawal. Could be anything.

I keep walking. No reason to get involved. No point.

But he lifts his head as I pass. Eyes red and wrong. He tries to speak, but only half a word makes it out before his knees buckle. He hits the ground with a dull thud, out cold or too far gone to care.

I don't stop.

At the end of the corridor, the elevator waits. Old. Square. The panel to the side blinks red. The wall beside it is crumbling. Layers of plaster have peeled back, revealing squalid beams and a network of exposed cabling. Across the elevator doors, someone's left a message in white paint, bold and angry:

THE BLUES FUCK US RAW!!!

No signature. No tag. Just the sentiment, plain as breath. Someone wanted it seen. Makes sense. Gangs don't grow in peaceful places. They sprout in the cracks, where the rules fail, where the people meant to protect you turn their backs or pull their weapons. Maybe I knew that once. Maybe I didn't just run with a gang; maybe I helped build something. Maybe I stood in hallways and scrawled warnings in paint that never really washed off, too.

I don't feel that way now. I don't feel rage. Or loyalty. Or fire.

I feel tired.

But I press the elevator call button anyway.

I wait.

The elevator groans its way upward, dragging metal against metal. Each second scrapes against the next, and the longer it takes, the more I start questioning whether it's worth the ride. The whole rig shudders as it climbs, and for a moment I picture the cables snapping, the floor dropping out, and it plummeting into the dark with nothing but stale air to scream through.

But the doors open, and whatever image I had is smashed to hell by the man stepping out.

He fills the frame, shoulders squared, jacket black and zipped to the collar, a gym bag slung from one thick hand. But he's not heading to a workout. His eyes scan past me like I'm scenery, something irrelevant and in the way. He mutters something – "Watch it" – and brushes past without stopping.

I barely felt myself move. Didn't even realise I was in his way. That one's on me.

I step into the box. It's tighter than it looked from the outside, a square space pressed up against its own skin. A mirror bolts to the back wall: cracked at the corner, fogged with fingerprints and grime. I jab the button marked "-2" and feel the whole thing lurch. The descent starts with another howl.

I turn to the mirror and take it all in, because there's no point pretending anymore. The reflection doesn't lie, even when you wish it would. Scavenger gear clings to me, smeared in blood that's long since dried and flaked into the creases. My right arm sits stiffly jammed into the side pocket of my kutte, tucked away like trash I haven't figured out how to get rid of. It doesn't belong to me. Maybe it never did. My face looks worse than I expected: drawn tight, mouth set, eyes shadowed with something deeper than fatigue. Worn. Like a rope pulled too many times through the same set of bloody hands. There's no room left for weakness, no time to stop and breathe or ask what the hell went wrong. Everything's broken and still breaking, and I'm stuck right in the thick of it, buried beneath a heap of problems stacked like bricks, trying to claw my way up just far enough to see daylight. But daylight's a luxury. Movement's all I've got. Keep moving or get buried for good, I guess.

The elevator jerks to a stop. Doors grind apart.

The corridor waiting on the other side isn't residential. No apartment doors. No lights overhead. Just a bare bulb swaying from a cord, casting long shadows on grated steel. The floor's damp. A pipe leaks somewhere above, the drip steady and slow. The walls are reinforced with thick slabs of metal. Behind them, I catch glimpses of movement. Tables, chairs, wiring. Screens. Equipment. Shadows, maybe. Hard to tell.

Voices drift down the hall. Muffled. Low.

I walk.

A foyer now. Stretches longer and wider than it should. Feels like something designed to disorient, to keep visitors thinking about how far they've come and how little they know. Eventually I turn the corner and step into a room lit by deep red. No windows. Smoke hangs in the air, so stale and bitter it sinks into my tongue.

It's a strange room. Half office, half lounge. A leather sofa sits near a wooden table, flanked by mismatched chairs. Well, nothing matches, but nothing's careless either. Every item placed with purpose, whether it fits or not.

Three men sit at the table, and none of them speak. Cyberware crawls across their bodies. Arms plated in steel. Optics glowing faint green. One of them has a neural shunt running across the side of his skull, wires vanishing beneath a Kevlar-lined collar. Their clothes don't match, but none of it matters. Jackets zipped to the chest. Cargo jeans. Boots. They're dressed for the street but built for something else entirely.

One of them leans forward. His fingers catch the light. Too long. Metal. The extensions flex as he taps the table once. A coat, deep yellow, hangs from his shoulders. Weather-beaten. Stained. He doesn't blink when he sees me. Doesn't nod. Just watches.

That's got to be Fingers.

The only other person in the room is tucked in the far left corner. A woman. Lean, but not fragile. Blue hair, one side shaved to the scalp. She toys with a jackknife, flicking it open and closed with a quiet snap-snap-snap. Fingerless gloves, black hoodie. Her expression's hard to read. She's not watching me, but she's not ignoring me either.

She's the only one here who doesn't look like she belongs.

Then again, neither do I.

The man on the right leans back, drags slow on a thick cigar, and lets the smoke coil out of his nose. His arms hang over the edges of the sofa, legs kicked up on the table as if he owns the floor, the building, maybe the whole street. Blonde hair cropped close to the scalp, jaw tight. He drops his boots to the ground with a hollow thump, flicks ash across the table, then gives a low shake of his head that carries more weight than the words that follow. "Seriously?" he says, voice low and chewed-up, like he's spent a lifetime swallowing fire. "You've gotta be fuckin' kidding me."

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Across from him, the man with the long fingers lifts one of them, taps it against the table once, then twice more. His voice cuts in: smooth but off, something slightly wrong buried just beneath the polished accent. British, maybe. Or something else trying to pass for it. "You'd be surprised what Neo Arcadia has out there," he says, and the way he smiles doesn't sit right. It stretches too wide, like he already knows something about me I haven't figured out yet. "Always refreshing to see fresh talent walk through the door. Mmmm. Oh yes."

The blonde snorts. Doesn't bother looking at me. "Talent?" he says. "You call that talent?"

On the other end, the third man shifts forward. Not smug, not amused, just curious. His brown hair's tied back, neat, and a silver band crosses his eyes, embedded directly into the bone. When he presses the neural port on his temple, the band lights up with a soft hum, a slow pulse of electric blue that climbs from one side of his skull to the other. "Thought you said someone experienced was gonna sher up, Fingers," he says, voice deep, flat, and oddly... well, odd. "This one er dern't look the part. But hey, I give credit where it's due. Stay off the lists this long, either means you're good at what you do... or never er done any." He grins wide. His teeth are a mess. Black in places. Too many gone.

"I..." I start, but stop short. "Excuse me?"

The blonde rises, cigar clenched between two fingers, ember flaring. He steps in. Slow. Just enough to bring his face down to mine. Close enough I can count the veins around his eyes. His breath tastes like hot ash and something worse. The kind of tang that I imagine sticks to your skin. "Tell me something," he says. "You ever been shot? Ever watched someone bleed out at your feet? Ever put a knife in someone just to shut them up?" He waits. Watches. Chuckles. "Didn't think so."

Something whips past my shoulder. The sound is sharp, fast, final. A knife lands dead centre in the bull's-eye of a dartboard hanging off the wall behind me. I flinch. Everyone sees it.

"Knock it off," a voice calls. Clear. Steady. Female.

I turn.

The blue-haired woman rises from the shadows at the back of the room.

The blonde doesn't move. Doesn't turn. Just rolls his eyes. "Tellin' you, Fingers," he says, half to her, half to the room. "I don't see what you're betting on with this one. She freezes up, she's gonna get someone killed."

"I believe he can think for himself," I say bravely.

The blonde laughs. The sound is dry. Empty. Then he slumps back into the chair and raises his cigar again.

The man with the metal fingers – still watching me, still smiling – shakes his head once. Small. Slow. No words.

"He's not Fingers," the woman says, pulling the knife free from the dartboard. Her voice is even, unbothered. "I am."

I blink. "Oh."

She grins. Not mocking. Not cruel. Just sharp. "Yeah. I know what you were thinking. Don't worry. Happens all the time." She steps closer, claps a hand on my shoulder – not hard, but firm. She's testing to see if I flinch. "Nice to see another woman in here. So I won't go too hard on you. Won't go soft either. You want to run with us, I need credentials."

"Credentials," I repeat, already knowing I don't have what she means.

She nods. "Not a paper. Not a résumé. I don't care if you got fancy degrees or tech certifications from some backwater trade school. I care if you can function when the bullets start flying. If your instincts keep you breathing. You follow?"

"I think so," I say. "You want to see me in the field."

Another nod. "Bingo. Right on, Rhea. That is your name, yeah? I'm talkin' to the right girl?"

"Yeah," I say. "That's me."

"Good." Her grin lingers for a moment, then fades into something more functional. "Let's see what you're really made of." She watches me, eyes scanning like they're logging more than just posture and gear. Then she nods towards the others, her tone all business. "Quick intros. The one with the snake-arms behind me, that's Cormac. To his left is Vander. Explosives. And on the right – grump with the attitude – that's Raze. You'll figure out who's who before long."

"Cormac, Vander, Raze. And you're Fingers." I repeat it to commit it. The names land like placeholders, but I know they'll start to matter. Probably sooner than I want.

For a split second I consider asking how she got the name, given that her hands look perfectly human. But now isn't the time for curiosity.

She holds my gaze a moment longer, then gives my shoulder another pat. Heavier this time. Not a threat. Not a comfort either. She steps out into the hall and jerks her chin. The others start moving, too.

"Surprised you guys wanna watch," Fingers says, glancing over her shoulder.

"Didn't haul my ass in here for nothin'," Raze grumbles, standing slow, cracking one shoulder, then the other. He grinds his cigar out against the edge of his jacket before flicking the stub into a warped ashtray and snorting. "Been bored outta my fuckin' skull. Kid walks in, claims she's got somethin' – I'm watchin'. Hell, I'll bring popcorn next time."

"I'm more for the air, oh yes," Cormac says, coughing once, rolling his shoulder until something clicks. There's a subtle hum beneath his coat where the metal meets the bone. "Raze and his cigars… they've got a certain pungent quality, if I do say."

"Think that's just your own stink following you, Corn," Raze fires back.

Vander doesn't look up. He grabs a half-empty water bottle from under his chair, unscrews the lid with a quick twist, and drains it in one go. "Where's er Dance?"

Raze grunts. "Probably off screwin' some BD doll. Bastard hasn't shown up for two days. Bet his legs are still shakin'."

Fingers doesn't turn around. "He's sick. Resting up."

"Sure," Raze says, tone flat. "Only chemistry he's good at is whatever keeps him horizontal."

"Chemistry helps more than you think," she replies quickly.

He offers a lazy shrug and a fake nod. "Yeah. Okay. Let me know next time he whips up somethin' useful instead of frying his own damn brain."

She doesn't answer. Just keeps walking, leading the way through a foyer of half-stripped tech and low hanging cables. Metal plating clinks underfoot. The lights dim the deeper we go, but she walks like she knows every inch of the place, which I presume she does given that she's probably been around quite a while. I keep close behind, eyes on my feet. Rust flakes under my boots. Wiring coils near the baseboards. One wrong step and I'm liable to catch an ankle on the mess. Nobody slows down.

Then, after a little distance, Fingers stops at a door. Presses her palm to the reader. A short beep, then a click. The door hisses open. Darkness inside. She steps in without pause, claps her hands once, and the overhead fluorescents sputter before settling into a harsh white glare.

And that's when I see it.

The room's clean. No loose parts, no trash. Every inch of the back wall lined with bullet-torn targets, humanoid silhouettes riddled head to toe with black punctures. A long table stretches along the near wall, weapons laid out with care: pistols, rifles, spare clips. Everything accounted for. Everything ready.

"This is where we start," Fingers says. "You said you're experienced. Time to show it."

I nod once, slow, and step forward.

"Smell the gunpowder?" Raze says, scratching his fuzzy crewcut.

I don't, obviously, but responding to that asshole isn't worth my time. "So, you want me to shoot the targets?" I ask. "That it?"

"Not just that." Fingers pats my back and points to a large holographic screen behind. There's a list of scores on it. Cormac, Dance, and Vander sit near the bottom. The top two spots belong to Raze and Fingers, her name sitting at the very peak with a score of 2,184.

"How long have you people been around exactly?" I ask, my curiosity getting the better of me. "To have a set-up like this?"

"Too long," Raze says.

I look at him, pursing my lips. "Dr. Maelstrom says you're new."

He chuckles. "That fuckin' guy," he says quietly.

Fingers cuts in. "We've been at this for the better part of seven years," she says. "Lost some people, gained some people. In the grand scheme, we're not that old, but we're not that new either. Not compared to the real corporations."

"Corporations?" I say.

"The biggest gangs of all, sweetheart," Raze says, loudly. "Fuckin' hate that word: gang."

"Got a better way of puttin' it, mmm?" Cormac chimes in. "How about organised lawbreakers? Rolls off the tongue, dunnit?" He laughs, a weird, squawky sound.

"Anything wrong with the word team?" Raze asks, folding his arms across his chest.

Silence follows. The awkward sort.

Fingers picks up from where she left off. "Back to the point. I don't just want you to hit the targets and call it a day." She smirks, eyes sharp with something teasing, something challenging. "I want you to beat that asshole's score." She nods towards Raze. "Two women in the lead sounds better than one, don't you think?"

I blink. "You… I'm supposed to… what?" I start, unable to string together a sentence that accurately conveys my frustration. I look up at the screen again and see that Raze's score is 1748. There's no way I'm beating that. Not with one arm. Not after being inactive for so long. Hell, I don't even remember if I've ever used a pistol before.

Fingers tilts her head. "If you're as good as you say you are, this shouldn't be an issue, right?"

Raze steps up behind me, resting a heavy hand on my head like I'm some kid who just swam into the deep end of a pool. "Ms. Experience, eh?" His voice is cold, and his grin is wide and smug. "Let's see just how experienced you really are." Then he glances at Fingers. "Oh, and what's the other rule again? No outside weapons?"

Fingers nods. "Just to make sure you don't have some smart-lock software installed. You have to use one of our pistols. Understood?"

As if it'll make a difference. I hand over my pistols, watching as she checks the safeties before tucking them away in her pockets. Can't be too careful, I suppose. Stepping up to the range, I reach under the shelf and grab one of the pistols. A basic A-22B Pulse. Not much different from a standard Glock, except for the bronze finish along the slide and the rubberised grip.

"If you wanna maximise your chances," Fingers says, "aim for the head. I'll tell you when to start."

I aim the pistol at the target range, feeling a strange sense of déjà vu, like I've done it many times before. The sensation is stuck in the back of my brain; it almost hurts.

The humanoid targets begin shifting across the range. Some lift towards the ceiling, hoisted by retractable bars. Others duck behind cover: brick walls, road signs, washing machines, stacks of tyres. There's no real pattern to it. The whole setup looks thrown together. Someone must have raided a junkyard and slapped an AI on top to control the moving pieces.

My hand's a little shaky at first, but it eases. Fingers starts counting down from three. Once she hits zero, a target flips down from the centre of the ceiling, playing the sound of a woman that yells, "You moron."

Almost instinctively, my hand snaps toward it. My finger pulls the trigger before I even process the action. The bullet lands clean between the target's eyes, and for a moment, I just stare.

"Well, I'll fuckin' be..." Raze mutters, his voice dropping even lower than usual.

The reflex had caught even me off guard. I expected to take my time lining up the barrel. Instead, I found the target instantly, fired without hesitation, and landed a perfect headshot for maximum points.

The target flicks back up. Two more pop out, one from behind a washing machine, the other from a brick wall. And just like before, my hand moves on its own.

POP! POP!

Again, both shots land dead-on. Quick, clean, precise. The AI seems to hesitate before retracting the targets, as if recalibrating. Then, four more emerge, this time moving. Shifting side to side.

My arm moves again, smooth as clockwork.

The targets fall, one head at a time, all within the space of two seconds. Maybe even less.

"I like this girl," says Cormac, laughing.

"You sure she ain't cheatin'?" Vander asks.

Fingers shushes him.

This goes on for another minute or so. Each round of targets is more complicated and compact than the last. Soon, not only the targets move but also the obstacles, as if being wheeled along on rails, and they're not smooth movements either; they're jerks. Road signs lift off the ground, shielding targets from incoming fire. But before they can fully block my view, I've already adjusted, switching focus, prioritising open targets, waiting for the split-second the shield drops and—

POP!

Another headshot. I try to fire again, but the gun clicks. Empty. Reloading with one hand will take too long. Instead, I grab another pistol from the table, flick off the safety, and keep firing. Not even two seconds later, another click, but this time the magazine still has twenty rounds left. I can see the exact count on the digital gauge just below the sight.

I panic at first, thinking there's something wrong with the gun, but then I realise: the timer: it's gone, and a loud, strident beep echoes across the range.

"Session complete. User: Rhea. Has acquired: Two thousand. And. Fifty-five. Points. Thanks for playing."

I freeze. My grip slackens. The pistol drops from my hand. Turning towards the leaderboard, I watch as my name appears on the screen: second place. Right below Fingers. But above Raze. It's oddly quiet. Raze reaches into his pocket, pulls out another cigar, and lights up. He takes a slow drag, exhales, and says nothing. Doesn't even look at me. Cormac and Vander do, though. But their faces are... somewhat unreadable.

Fingers steps closer, and she's not smiling anymore. "When Maelstrom said he had experienced talent looking for a job, I didn't think he meant a shooter." Her tone is sharp. "Tell me. What gang did you work for?"

I stare at her, unable to come up with a satisfying reply, at least one that satisfies both of us. Eventually, I just say, "Well, I can't remember. That's sort of the problem. I lost my memory."

She snorts. "You really expect me to believe that?"

"Scan me. It says I'm supposed to be dead, right?"

She smirks. "I don't have netrunner-ocs. If everyone could see each other's identity, then we'd be in a pretty messed-up society. That aside, you lost your memory... but you remember how to shoot?"

"I know how it sounds, but it's true."

Raze finally moves, unfolding his arms and strolling over to the range. He picks up one of the pistols I was using, turning it over in his hands. "You really pulled in a crazy one, ay, Fingers?"

"Crazy or not," Cormac drawls, tapping his long metal fingers against his coat, "that was a damn fine show. Gave me chills. I'd pay good money to see that again, oh yes." He tilts his head, eyes glinting creepily. "We're talking indeed professional hitman levels here, Fingers. Be a crime to turn her away, oh wouldn't it?"

Fingers pinches her lips with her thumb and forefinger, eyeing me thoughtfully. She looks at the scoreboard again, and then at Raze, who still hasn't let up on checking the weapons for any signs of cheating software. "She's clean, Raze. I would have seen it if she put a chip in."

"Even if she did have a cherp," says Vander, "only experience can er make you shoot with that much confidence. 'Sides it'd want to be some pretty expensive software to hit right between der eyes, and you gotta ask why she'd want a job with us if she can erfford that sort of crap." For the first time he sounds convinced. He pulls a chapstick from his sleeve pocket and starts rubbing it across his lips like a woman getting ready for a night out on the town. He even pouts. Cute.

Raze places the pistols back on the shooting-range table. "Her other arm is broken. Interesting."

"Only now you noticed?" Fingers snarls. "She's been walkin' around like a bodyguard ready to draw at any second. Maelstrom already told me." She maintains eye contact with me, gives me a once-over, and says, "Alright. Well, I can't lie to you. At first, I didn't expect you to match up with the rest of us. I was fully intending on turning you away, because more often than not the people who show up are all talk. Loudmouths. You know the sort, I'm sure."

I do.

She pulls out my pistols and stares at them. "You have two guns here, but you can only use one arm. Why is that? To quickly whip between the two so you can avoid reloading for forty bullets straight? Not gonna lie, that's clever. Definitely helped you break the two-thousand mark on the leaderboard." Fingers' voice is soft and intense. She hands me the pistols. I didn't notice this before because it was so dark in the office room, but there's a silver ring on the third digit of her left hand and a fancy pink-glowing ring on the pinkie of her right. She notices me looking at them and knocks them together, making a horrid little click that sets my teeth on edge. The impact results in a spark. "Beautiful, ain't they? My sister gave them to me. One on the right cost two thousand creds while the one on the left cost two and a half. Good birthday gift, wouldn't you say?"

I swallow. For some reason I feel nervous all over again. "Yeah, they are." I tuck the pistols back in their holsters. "So... I hate to be a bother, but am I in? I really need the creds. Just to fix the stuff wrong with me, that's all."

She doesn't take long responding. "Oh, you're in," she says. "Like Cormac said, I'd be stupid to let you go. Guess you can join us for a job tonight. See what you're really made of."

I smile. "Thank you," I say breathlessly. "And yes. That'd be perfect. What sort of job is it?"

"You'll find out soon enough," she says. That's about as much information that she or anyone else will give me, and that's okay.