Chapter Thirty-One - Running to a Home

"Y-you can let us out here," Sharp said.

Jenny didn't let up on the pedal, and we roared past one of the main entrances into Fenway. I sat up a little straighter, having relocated myself to Sharp's arms... or more accurately, having allowed her to grab a hold of me. She was hugging me close, so it saved me from bumping around too much as Jenny climbed her van onto the curbside and continued to rush forwards past the usual traffic.

"J-Jenny?" Sharp asked.

"We're going to Allston," Jenny said.

"Jen," Alyssa said. She was still plastered onto the floor of the van. "Just take us home."

"Fuck that," Jenny said. "They saw your face. Bet they saw my van. They can trace us back with nothing more than a two-bit netrunner. Home ain't safe, and you need a medic."

"I don't," Alyssa said. She groaned as Jenny took another sharp turn, honking as she wove through a busy intersection. Sharp shifted to the side as Alyssa vomited across the floor of the van. Fortunately, it seemed as though she didn't have much to vomit. It was mostly wet bile.

"You can let us out here," Sharp said again, gesturing to a four-way up ahead. Technically we were in Brookline now, having cut through the lower edge of Fenway. We weren't in the more... posh and well-protected areas of Brookline, however. Rather, we were on one of the suspended highways over the nicer parts of that district.

Jenny shot past the intersection without a look back. "We're going to my doc," she said.

Alyssa's response was an ugly groan.

"Stop complaining. You're injured. Injured people should shut up and let their docs fix them up." Jenny was blinking quickly, and the look on her face as I caught it in the rearview was far from pretty. She sniffed, but her eyes were steel.

I glanced up at Sharp. She was a little concerned, obviously, but not on the verge of panic or anything. To be fair, there was little reason to be. Jenny was doing a somewhat sensible thing dragging her friend in for medical attention. Stopping to drop us off might lose some precious minutes.

"It's just... it's just magic sickness," Alyssa said. She pulled herself up, and Sharp set me down on the seat next to her to help Alyssa sit up straighter. "It'll pass."

"Last time you had magic sickness you were down for three days and you didn't look half as bad as this," Jenny snapped. "And you were in a cage, I saw it. Did they stick you with anything? Were you drugged or something?" Her hands tightened on the steering wheel. "Did they touch you? I'll fucking kill them all."

"Nothing like that," Alyssa said. She slumped back into the seat Sharp helped her into and just closed her eyes for a moment. Sharp stared for a moment, but didn't say anything. It was kind of irritating how Alyssa managed to still be attractive, even with her hair in total disarray and her face so pale it was clear she was ill.

A bit of a distraction couldn't hurt. "Did you gain a lot of skills all of a sudden, Sharp?" I asked.

"Hmm? Oh, yeah," Sharp said. She picked me up again and brought her head close to my ears. With the sound of traffic, there was a good chance Alyssa wouldn't overhear much. "My Combat went up one, so did Protagonist and Tech."

Not the same set of increases as me, which I supposed wasn't that surprising. There were only three skill ups compared to my four, which was also not too strange. I'd been in the middle of the fighting whereas Sharp was more tangentially caught up in it. Any amount of increase was good, though.

We were both reaching the point where we had skills close to level five. If the pattern held, that would be when we finally got some more of those Perks that Sharp had mentioned. Her one perk so far had summoned me, and I liked to think that it meant that the perk was relatively strong.

Hopefully, that pattern of strength and utility would hold and all of the perks we'd gain would be just as strong and useful.

Squinting, I dragged out the skill list, just to see where I was sitting at the moment.

Anima 2

Body 2

>Cat 4

Combat 3

Cool 1

Magic 2

Reflex 2

Tech 2

That was... a fair bit of improvement, but the only skill actually close to that perk rank was Cat, the skill I perhaps cared about the least. Combat being a close second was actually kind of nice. I was looking forward to that, but at the same time, levelling combat required being in combat, and that meant being in a degree of danger that I wasn't comfortable with.

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I was knocked out of my thinking as Jenny took a turn far too sharply. "Get the fuck outta the way!" she shouted at some people diving off the road. We'd taken an off-ramp and were now in a busier part of the city, surrounded on all sides by older warehouses and shops and tenement buildings.

Jenny had punched the dash a few times, shutting up the device tallying up all of her tickets.

Jenny drove the van into an open garage door in what looked like a large repurposed factory. The walls were covered in glowing graffiti, most of the art showing people dancing or animals or musical notes. The van shut down, and Jenny leapt out of the driver's side. The moment the door opened, I caught some heavy electronic beats coming from just outside.

The side door opened, and Jenny came face-to-face with Sharp and I. "Oh, right, you and the cat. Uh. Just stand off to the side. I'll take care of you later."

Sharp scrambled out of the van and I leapt up and onto her shoulders.

This was a gang hideout if I ever saw one. The DJs, if I had to guess. I didn't know much about this group, except that they were small and kind of wild.

The men and women around here were dressed... almost normally. There was a lot of tracksuit-chic and graphic-tees covered in bright neon artwork. Half the people I saw here had glowing tattoos as well.

A man came over just as Jenny was helping Alyssa out of the van. A shorter man, in an orange coat not too dissimilar from the bright yellow jacket that Jenny was wearing. "Didn't think I'd ever be seeing you again, Jenkins," the man said.

Jenny froze up, then half-turned to give the man a glare. "I need to chat with the old fox," she said.

"Your friend shot up?" he asked. He wasn't giving ground, and there was a certain tension in the entire room. Lots of folk just sitting back and watching, but guns were close at hand.

I really didn't want to be here.

"She... we got tangled up with that cult of freaks in South Boston. They did some magical shit and Aly got caught in it. She needs a doc."

The man stood his ground for a few moments more, then he nodded. "Fine," he said. "Get her in the back. Fox will give her a look, but it'll cost you, in explanations to begin with."

Jenny worked her jaw, but nodded before shifting her hold on Alyssa. "Yeah, alright. Thanks," she said.

"Once family, always," he said. Then he turned his gaze onto Sharp and I, though I only got a spare look. "Who's this one?"

"She's a solo that helped us," Jenny said. "Sharp, grab Aly's other side. You can skip on out of here after."

"Oh, uh, okay," Sharp said as she scrambled to help. I leapt off her shoulder and landed by their feet. The ground was disgustingly humid, but I decided to reserve my complaining for the moment.

Jenny knew where to go, so we just followed along. I had questions, but no way to ask them, and Sharp didn't seem in a very communicative mood. Not that I blamed her. It was a long, tiring day. She was due to go to bed, not to be out here messing around.

Maybe we could take an autocab back to Fenway? Though it would cost a small fortune.

"You got an account on the Solonet?" Jenny asked.

"The what?" Sharp asked.

"Fuck," Jenny said. "Set one up and ping me your code, I'll give you credit for a gig completed. You... did pretty alright tonight. Might not have been able to save Aly without you, so as far as I'm concerned, I owe you one, yeah?"

"Okay," Sharp said. Then she looked down to me, and muttered a question that Jenny might have heard but which was definitely aimed at me. "What the heck is a Solonet?"

Right, of course some random orphan wouldn't know. And of course it would fall on me to answer the question.

I sighed. Time to explain to Sharp how to accomplish her dream, I supposed, though it brought me no pleasure to have to do the explaining, or having her know in the first place.

***