Somebody had been in my unit, and it pissed me the fuck off.

  The room looked untouched, and it made my teeth grind. It was tidy—too tidy. Whoever did it took their time. I slid off the cot, careful of my waist, and did the count before water, before piss, before anything that let my head wander. Omaha sat where I left it. Spare mag sat where it belonged. Loose rounds in the tin rolled under my thumb, counted by feel.

  Two missing—again. Tool pouch next. Then the empty notch in the bit strip where a tiny star head should have been—gone.

  I crouched at the door and ran my fingers along the reader casing. The bottom edge sat proud by a hair. One screw head had fresh chew marks, bright metal showing through. Someone had worked it with impatience or the wrong tool.

  The junkyard deck sat on the counter, ugly Seocho plastic and bargain ports. I plugged into the reader’s service slot and watched the door firmware crawl into my optics—blocky panels, missing textures.

  Cheap hardware lagged when it mattered. Same vibe as the old asus rig back home—if asus even exists in this timeline.

  I went straight to logs. Last auth. Last power event. Maintenance access. My entries were there. A couple failed scans from neighbors. Then a gap that didn’t sit right, a missing tooth in the line that made my throat tighten.

  A shadow record sat under a generic label: **SERVICE EVENT**. The UID didn’t match tenant token format. The checksum didn’t match either—typed in by hand. No failed attempts. No brute force. The door had opened and closed, then somebody tried to carve the footprint out after.

  That wasn’t ol’Pipe Guy being clever, not his style.

  I dumped the snapshot to the deck and pulled the cable. Then I got petty in a way that worked.

  Tape across the seam, pressed hard. A fiber from my sleeve tucked into the edge so it would shift if the casing moved. A smear of grime across the tape to hold a print. One look later and I’d know if someone touched it again.

  My agent chimed. Regina.

  **GIG CLOSED. BONUS SENT. COME BY.**

  **— R**

  I locked the screen and shoved it into my pocket.

  The system cut in a heartbeat later, totally indifferent.

  LEVEL: 4

  LEVEL REWARDS: PENDING

  ATTRIBUTE POINTS: +1

  PERK POINTS: +2

  DRIFT: PRESENT (LOW)

  STATE: NOMINAL

  Then my agent chimed again.

  CRED // IN: E$3,200

  A third chime followed before I could even swallow the first.

  CRED // IN: E$800

  NOTE: BONUS

  I let myself enjoy it. A tight grin, teeth showing, something ugly and satisfied. Gamer brain got its candy for a second. The room was still violated, but the gig paid.

  I spent it fast. The attribute point went into INT before my brain could start bargaining and calling it “patience.” I wanted doors to open.

  The first perk went into the part of me that kept walking into ICE with a deck that wanted me dead.

  PERK ACQUIRED: TRACE SHUNT

  The second perk went into technical work. Pressure flared behind my eyes, new pathways sparking where they didn’t belong. It wasn’t a vision. It was tolerances and tool angles snapping into place, the irritation of knowing what was possible without having the parts.

  PERK ACQUIRED: SCRAPWORK PROTOCOL

  For a bright heartbeat, it felt good.

  Then I looked at the tape seam on the reader and the missing rounds and the missing bit, and the good feeling turned into a promise I hadn’t asked to make.

  I dressed, checked the waist bandage, pocketed the deck, and stepped out into Kabuki.

  Watson moved the way it always did: tarps snapping, generators buzzing behind patched plywood, vendors shouting over each other, exhaust hanging low. I kept my pace steady and my hands visible. Fear was a flare. Temper was a flare too, if you let it show.

  Halfway to Regina, I caught them in reflections—plexi, chrome, puddles trapped in broken concrete.

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  Two nobodies. No colors, no patch—hungry eyes and cheap clothes that didn’t fit right. They didn’t stare. They drifted at the edge of foot traffic and matched my turns a beat late, using the crowd to stay close without touching.

  Kabuki rats, and I let them think I hadn’t noticed until foot traffic thinned near a cut between shuttered stalls and stacked junk. I slowed, hand brushing my waist as if the bandage pulled, and gave them the pocket they wanted.

  One stepped in first, trying to smile.

  “Hey, cho—”

  I caught his wrist before his piece cleared cloth. My knuckles hit bone through synthskin. I turned hard and his breath came out wet and ugly. His agent slipped from his fingers and buzzed on the ground, screen flashing. A call icon lit for half a second before his thumb lost the fight.

  The second rat swung a pipe wide and low, hoping fear would do the work. I stepped inside the arc and took the hit on my Raven-brand arm—cheap plating, loud impact. The jolt snapped up into my shoulder. Pain flashed and didn’t get a vote.

  I drove my fist into his throat and felt cartilage give. He folded, hands clawing at air, eyes wide and stupid. The pipe rolled away into trash.

  The first one tried to crawl backward, clutching his wrist, fumbling for the buzzing agent with his good hand. The agent lit again, vibrating angry in the gutter. He was trying to check in.

  I kicked it toward myself and scooped it up. He looked at me with rage and terror tangled together. Terror won. He bolted, limping, leaving a smear on the concrete.

  Kabuki didn’t stop for pain. People stepped around the second rat as if he were part of the street.

  I walked two blocks before I looked at the agent. One number sat at the top, dialed seconds ago.

  I saved it under a name that made my mouth twitch once, then go flat.

  PHONE GUY.

  Not funny out loud—funny in my skull. Useful either way.

  Regina’s den sat high enough that Kabuki noise turned into a distant hiss. Yaiba’s lobby smelled of disinfectant and cheap perfume, all glass and polite security that watched my chrome hand longer than my face. The elevator ride felt too smooth. That was never a good sign.

  Her floor was quieter—less foot traffic, more locked doors. The kind of quiet people paid for.

  Regina had a desk that looked lived-in, not staged. Shards in stacks. A couple printed sheets with pen marks. A radio on low volume that she kept for the habit, not the music. She didn’t smile when I walked in. She didn’t need to.

  “You bled on the way here,” she said.

  “It was them,” I said, and nodded toward the street behind me.

  Her eyes didn’t follow my gesture. “Watson’s full of them.”

  “They tried to call somebody,” I said. “I took the agent.”

  That earned a real reaction—not fear, interest. Her hand moved a few centimeters, not toward a weapon, toward a shard pile. Control move.

  “Number.”

  I gave it to her from memory, slow. Regina typed it in, looked at her screen, then looked back at me. Whatever she saw stayed behind her eyes.

  “Good,” she said. “You brought me something I can use.”

  She let a second pass. She watched if I filled it with nervous words. I didn’t.

  “The clinic job,” I said. “You dragged me in, you said talk.”

  Regina leaned back in her chair, measured me, then spoke in the same tone she used on the phone—professional, clipped, no wasted syllables.

  “You did it clean,” she said. “You followed the warning. You didn’t poke the wrong hornet nest. You got in, you got out.”

  “So it was a test,” I said.

  “It was a filter,” she said. “Unknowns don’t get real work until I see how they move.”

  My agent chimed again, delayed receipts catching up through spotty coverage. I didn’t look down. Regina did.

  “Eddies arrived,” she said. “Payout and bonus. Don’t spend it all on chrome and ego.”

  I didn’t thank her. That felt cheap.

  Regina’s gaze sharpened. “You smelled corporate on that job.”

  “I smelled someone paying for privacy,” I said.

  She gave a small nod. “Good. Keep that nose. It keeps you alive.”

  I pulled the conversation where I wanted it. “My unit got accessed.”

  Regina’s face stayed still. “When.”

  I gave her the window. Reader seam, SERVICE EVENT hole, minus the details that would tell her how deep I’d dug.

  “That isn’t street trash,” she said. “That’s access. Maintenance token. Somebody checked you. They didn’t want your socks. They wanted a read.”

  “Why,” I asked.

  Regina’s mouth tightened for a second, then relaxed. “You want answers, earn them. You want to keep breathing, you patch your weakest link.”

  She slid a shard across the desk. I watched her hands before I touched it.

  “Your neuralware is budget,” she said. “Your deck is a toy. You keep pushing that setup, you’ll get flatlined by something you won’t even notice.”

  I’d heard the same message from Viktor with care in his voice. Regina delivered it as a bill.

  “What’s the job,” I asked.

  “A chop-den on my turf,” she said. “Scavengers. Real ones. They pull chrome off warm bodies and sell it through chains that heat my neighborhood.”

  Disgust tightened her mouth, controlled and sharp. Her eyes stayed steady.

  “I want it quiet,” Regina said. “I want it gone. That’s my benefit.”

  “And mine.”

  “Yours is hardware,” she said. “They’ve got neural components. Processors. Interface chips. Deck parts. Stuff you can’t afford new. You go in, you end it, you bring me proof. You keep one piece that helps you and I don’t ask where it came from.”

  Dead man chrome sat between us in the space she refused to fill with comfort. I felt the pull of it in the back of my throat—revulsion and hunger stacked together.

  Regina didn’t soften it. “If you want clean, leave Night City.”

  I took the shard. Warm from her hand. Route. Target. A problem shaped into a job.

  At the door, she stopped me with one last line, tone flat.

  “That number you pulled? Don’t call it from your unit.”

  I didn’t answer. She didn’t need one.

  Back at the building, the reader blinked amber, then green. The tape seam looked untouched. The fiber sat where I’d tucked it. My shoulders dropped for half a second, then tightened again when I remembered that SERVICE EVENT hole.

  Inside, I locked the door and set the deck on the counter. I pulled up the log snapshot again, hunting for more detail, hunting for anything that told me whether I needed to move tonight or just sleep with a gun in my hand.

  A new thread sat above my files.

  It hadn’t been there earlier.

  Timestamp matched the moment I’d been plugged into the reader, staring at chewed screw heads and missing ammo. Sender field blank.

  **?:** You didn’t feel the breach.

  **?:** UNAUTHORIZED ENDPOINT.

  **?:** Nice deck. Wrong building.

  My mouth went dry.

  I hadn’t felt anything. No warning flash. No ICE bite. No hitch in the door firmware. Just me, angry at screws, plugged into a reader while somebody brushed my signature and walked away.

  On my counter, my deck held a message from a suit who didn’t need to knock.

  ATTACHMENT: GEO-PIN // 0.4km

  **?:** Come outside.