When I woke V was sitting nearby.

Seare: “what are you doing here?”

She looked up at me.

V: “if this has happened before why didn’t you have an escape route?”

I stopped.

Seare: “I do, it’s the window, I can use my Monowire to exit it, but you don’t have a Monowire. So we needed to go a different way.”

There was silence.

V: “why?”

Seare: “why what?”

V: “why get shot for me?”

Seare: “Choom, it’s a funny word. It used to be friend but over the years it changed. Because there is no one other than family that you can trust enough to end yourself for them, in this day in age self-sacrifice is a laughingstock.”

I took a breath.

Seare: “I like the idea of friend it has an end to it, it’s someone you would risk yourself for, I wish choom was set back to that. Choom someone you like and would be inconvenienced by but when things get tough, they drop because risk makes a choom an acquaintance you hanged out with once or twice.”

She went silent for a while.

Seare: “thanks for coming here, and helping out on the road. You didn’t have to.”

She gave me a weird look.

V: “friendships go both ways, don’t they?”

Seare: “usually. But I’ve never heard you call me a friend.”

She shook her head. And laughed.

V: “your such a weird friend. You know that.”

I smiled and looked at my phone. On message from my mom.

Kiri: “they are after me, don’t go back to the house until it blows over, they don’t know your name just what you look like. I’m in hiding, I can’t put out where I’m at or they will find me, I love you. I know you’ll make it. my amazing boy.”

What? My hand started twitching.

V: “what’s wrong.”

Seare: “they went after my mom, she is in hiding. We can’t go back to the house until it blows over.”

I looked at my savings, mom had with the message transferred a ton of eddies to me.

V grabbed my shaking hand, It calmed. I’m ok, she will be fine. I looked around Vic had gone upstairs probably. I had leveled up both athletics and crafting two four. I went over my options. Chose running heal and Rápido.

“Rapido” speed is everything when working, lose track of time when working and increase speed in work.

“running heal” body works faster when moving.

And I was close to leveling to four in reflexes street brawl and cold blood. I looked over my stats my worst ones were breach protocol, quick hacking, blades, assault, and annihilation. I cant level the first two without a cyberdeck and the others needed me to be in fights which I didn’t want to do. Ok I need a cyberdeck I could get a bad one but that’s not the goal it will be expensive even if I got the worst one, so I wanted one I would like. I went over and looked at the ones Vic had and then looked them up for details. In the end I decided on Militech Paraline cyberdeck.

Seare: “I’m getting a cyberdeck.”

This cyberdeck was one that would connect with a Monowire to increase its upload speed. And I could send hacks through the wire, I will also have a Monowire in the cyberspace with it. it was the best choice currently. That would be 90% of the money mom gave me.

V: “are you sure, you look like you’re on the edge.”

Seare: “yeah I am, and I need to be able to protect myself. Getting this is step one.”

I say that a lot. Step one there’s always a first step and I must take it every time.

But after step one is step two what is my step two. I need optics that can scan so that I can hack people with my eyes. I started going through the box of eyes. The basic Kiroshi optics were the rest of my money, but I needed them I felt my hand twitching I would buy better ones, but I don’t have cash. Deal with it and move on. After grabbing them I waited in the seat for Vic to come back.

V: “I’ll tell you, the job that might tie me to the Voodoo boys. I have been doing a job for them installing a program on every computer on the first floor for them. If they find out they could link it back to me.”

Seare: “ok, what do you want to do about it. one, nothing and hope we are fine. Two go get rid of it. three something else I don’t know about.”

V: “two. I don’t know anything else about it but I don’t want any links back to me.”

How do we do that though. We can’t go to each computer undownloading things right after the building is robbed.

Seare: “has the program ever malfunctioned when put in?”

V stood there thinking for a moment.

V: “once when an update went through the classrooms computers, I had to reinstall it because the reboot got rid of all the non Arasaka programs.”

Seare: “thanks let me think on this. Vic is coming.”

Vic walked down the stairs.

Vic: “Siri it would be nice not to have to pull Nine bullets out of you. nine what the hell. Last time it was shotgun blast to the chest this time, dam it kid you need to be more careful.”

V eyes widened when he said shotgun blast. But I ignored her questioning gaze.

Seare: “exactly, that why I want to buy these two things.”

I held up the eyes and deck. He scoffed.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Vic: “a five ye-”

Seare: “legally fourteen.”

He looked at V then back at me.

Vic: “ a fourteen-year-old with this much chrome will drive them psycho I don’t want to see that.”

I noted my shaking hand and hurting neck.

Seare: “but I need this. And I’ll pay.”

He sighed and turned to V.

Vic: “any way you can convince him?”

V: “nope.”

Vic told me the price and I paid. He handed me more pills.

Vic: “I’m trusting you.”

I went under readying myself for waking up different.

I woke feeling like shit. My head burned and I couldn’t move. To much info was in my head. I opened my eyes and could see really well I wasn’t wobbly like my brain felt it was focused and controlled. I saw V and my vision zoomed in on her cheek then suddenly out to her whole body. I turned my head away and felt pain in the back of my head. I lifted my hand and felt at the new hole in my head where I could jack into the net. My eyes were what worried me currently as I tried to focus myself but my vision kept zooming and unzooming. I almost threw up when Vic came over. Every step was focused on each movement I zoomed.

Seare: “Something is very wrong. My vision is fucked It keeps zooming randomly.”

He ran over and plugged my port to his computer and looked through the settings.

Vic: “here it is.”

He typed true instead of false and suddenly everything was my normal.

Vic: “sorry, it wasn’t connected to your nerves yet, it was doing it like it was automated for showing off how deep it could go.”

Yes this was better I could focus, my sight zoomed only when I wanted and looked only where I wanted it. I breathed a sigh of relief.

Seare: “thanks.”

For the next while he taught me how to use the new eyes their capability’s and uses and my cyberdeck. After a while V woke and it was time to decide.

Seare: “thank you Vic. So much.”

We left and stopped at a nearby food stand. While I practiced with Vic, I had made a plan.

Seare: “I’ll do the plan at school tomorrow, today we need a place to sleep. And for me to code.”

I plugged the virus chip into my port in a separate file in my cyberdeck making it something I controlled with my head now. I could send it to other people I hacked or machines, an off button I could send. It was a large file so it took a minute to upload but it would work.

V said she knew a abandoned building so we went there I checked and it was empty. So, I got to coding, I copied the code from the blackout virus and made changes to make a new virus, I replaced the code saying to turn things off with new code to do something else I uploaded the new code to the chip, I could myself hack into the building now but that would leave traces that Netrunners could follow that’s why people use a chip you could tie a chip to someone but not if you kept it hidden. Then we slept taking shifts, so we didn’t get robbed in the night.

The next day at school I plugged in the chip set it to one hour and let it upload the code into the server then pulled it out. in one hour the code would start.

During lunch me Sam and V ate like normal. It was done everything was done the code had done its job.

It was over, what I had coded was an update change the image of a battery to an old school one on the screen it was an update to the system. Hopefully no one would notice the difference but if they did it didn’t matter there was no trace back to me except the chip hidden in my wireframe.

Everything went black and text appeared.

Box: “you have stopped the first assault. Reward: “one max life point increase” this can be used once per life, you can spend this on tip the scales. “tip the scales” you change fate to make something happen perfectly.”

That’s cool, but what let me relax was that the assault was over, sure I wasn’t going to get caught today but the fact I knew I was safe from whatever changed fate was nice.

I looked at V.

Seare: “it’s over, were fine.”

V nodded and visible relaxed.

Sam: “what are you talking about choom?”

Seare: “nothing, lets finish our meal.”

My eyes could now call, text and run a search engine. I kept my moms message tab open now letting it out of the corner of my vision at any time.

Where am I going to sleep tonight? Is V going to stay with me? Or go on her own now the main danger is gone?

After school V grabbed my arm and pulled me outside and into an alleyway I didn’t feel any camera’s.

V: “you said during lunch its done.”

Seare: “went off without a hitch. The gang you did it for wont suspect you either because it wasn’t a normal way of getting rid of it.”

V: “Great!”

She seemed over the moon, jumping up and down slightly getting me to smile.

Seare: “do you know any place I could stay? Wait your hiding also, where are you going to hide out? I can’t go home until Militech decides that it isn’t worth killing me and my mom for the amount it costs to look for us.”

Seare: “sorry again, I know I said you could stay at my place and hide but that turned out to be a failure.”

V: “it’s the thought that counts, plus I owe you for so much more than you owe me. Huh, were could we hide out…”

We waited in the alleyway thinking.

V: “I do know a small group of nomads… but they don’t take eddies… you did good when coding can you hack as well?”

Seare: “yeah.”

V smiled.

V: “will it be god enough for a job?”

Seare: “of course.”

V: “they will take a good hacker. If you’re ok with that.”

Best offer so far.

Seare: “sure.”

V: “ok, now how to get there, the badlands aren’t something you can walk through. Wait you know how to drive! I saw it on the city cameras when you ran form Militech. You were clean man. ok so we steal a car and drive out there.”

Glad to not have to make the decisions or think for the first time in a while I let her decide on a plan and agree to whatever she says. Steal a car no big deal, ride into the badlands where if you meet someone other than nomads you are going to be shot, then code some for them, I want that. Now the hard part actually doing it.

We look for a suitable car, me and V have very similar tastes. Motorcycles, im my last life I only left the house to go to school or a friends house no need for extra car space so I had a motorcycle not that I didn’t learn to drive a car but I wanted the flashy cool vehicle. V and I set sights on one, but there was a man leaning against it playing on his phone.

V: “how long would it take to hack the bike.”

Seare: “with my cyberdeck I could do it from here.”

I started hacking the bike, it wasn’t what I expected it would be hacking through the net. I expected matrix and lines floating in the air, but it was like a game. That’s right, Netrunning is like a game, a puzzle solver game. That’s because when people made defenses in a new world of the net, they did it like their old ones. Puzzles, key’s, number locks that only they know, no wonder it’s like playing a game it was made that way by people. And I have made games, broke games, and played games for a long time.

I felt as I realized this, my breach stat went up to level three from zero it had been three, but I couldn’t understand it until now.

I hacked the car in less than a minute.

Seare: “I’m in, currently uploading my fingerprints as the user and deleting the old ones.”

V looked shocked at my speed, I was too, it was hard but not the impossible task I always thought hacking would be. sure, there was a lot for me to learn whole systems of ways to do it better, but I understood the natural way for it now.

After another minute I was now the proud owner of a new Nazaré Racer Motorcycle.

I smiled at V my teeth showing slightly.

Seare: “my bike is so cool.”

V punched my arm.

V: “how much for it.”

Seare: “it’s got so much sentimental value, and it’s the first vehicle I’ve ever owned on this life, 150,000 eddies.”

I could read the bikes real price in its manual and it was less than half that. V smacked my on the back of the head.

V: “That’s Extrortion!”

I laughed and she did to.

Seare: “before we haggle, we should probably get the bike before he notices he can’t use it anymore.”

She nodded.

V: “ill distract him you get on and I’ll jump in.”

Seare: “sounds like a plan.”

V walked up and started talking to the guy, I snuck around do the other side of the bike and slowly got on it, V had him turned away form his bike.

V was distracting him, I had started it silently and now was sitting there watching her try and distract. I could speed away, but it was fun, after at least thirty second she started floundering trying to keep his attention on herself. Eventually he turned and saw me on his bike.

Dude: “Hey get off my Bike.”

I smiled at him and drove passed him grabbing V’s outstretched hand and pulling her on. The Bike was so compact for speed there wasn’t much room for both of us. She sat behind me arms spread in the air feeling the wind while her legs wrapped around me for support.

V: “YEAH!”

Seare: “our first heist is a success! And only a moderate amount of flailing from the team.”

Her cheeks when slightly red.

V: “YOU Asshole! When where you ready to leave.”

Seare: “two seconds after I got into the seat. needed that time to secure my feet.”

She went bright red at that and started hitting me in the back.

V: “How dare you!”

childlike cackle leaving my mouth, i smile enjoying the city air sweeping through my face. she started laughing to. And it was nice.

end of chapter: seven