As it turns out, Davis was a poor bastard. The expensive-looking decorations? Expensive looking. They were quite cheap and I barely got a couple of Rayn each after arguing. The data slate sold for slightly more, but even then I only left the shop with forty extra Rayn in my account. Last time I come to Peter’s Pawned Prawns.

After that was done, I headed down to Saint’s Plaza. It was a spot kind of close to Absolom Clinic, and one of the biggest street markets in all of Little Yukoto, if not the entire city. There was something for everyone for sale here, even some of the low-end less-than-legal kind. And, the scenery was preem to boot.

Saint’s Plaza sat at the foot of the biggest cathedral this side of the city. It was one of the few buildings around that didn’t have the ever-present neon and advertisements shining brightly down onto us plebeians. Modesty was the name of the game for the building, yet that very modesty made it stand out against the backlit neon and excess native to the streets.

The shop I headed for was a little place called Yukoto Matrix. I found it after asking Shinobu if he knew of a spot. That guy proved to be ever helpful and recommended this place. Apparently, it was where the Jade Fang Netrunners occasionally came for supplies.

I entered Yukoto Matrix, immediately taken aback by the sheer amount of tech everywhere. Everything from replacement CPUs to full-on decks were stacked around the shelves in the room. There was so much of the stuff that even the lights were half-blocked, making the entire place kind of dim.

A rather thin-looking guy stood behind the counter at the back of the room. As soon as I stepped foot in, his dim eyes lit up. “Welcome in. You looking for something in particular or just browsing?”

“Um- my friend said you sold programs?” I was so far out of my field here. I didn’t even know what half the stuff was, and it was making me kind of antsy.

“Chek chek, choom. What kind?”

“Access to criminal records.”

The guy nodded and vanished behind the desk. He returned with several chips. “I gotchu. Just base-level criminal records and missing persons? Or something a little more… advanced?”

“I’m on a rather tight budget. Hm… what are these advanced programs though?” He had successfully piqued my interest.

He flashed three chips at me. “They allow access to the whole directory. Very expensive, but useful if you’re looking for someone without a criminal history. The high-priced ones even allow access across nodes.”

Damn, that did sound nice. And Lynn Parker would definitely be on there… fuck being broke. “Just the base one.”

He shrugged and pulled a chip from the bundle. “Thirty Rayn. You can always come back later.”

Ah, the wonders of having a PA and HUD. I didn’t even have to pull out my phone to pay the guy. Just make eye contact and send the money over. So nice. I grabbed the small chip and plugged it into my new phone as I headed back for my bike.

I returned home and ate a light meal of silage, which was as tasty as always, and then began searching through the new program. Surprisingly, there were quite a few Lynn Parkers. Since this was the criminal records, they thankfully all had mugshots accompanying the files. Then it was the same process as the last, cutting through them until I found the one.

‘Cept, course my Lynn Parker wasn’t in the records. What a fucking waste of time and money… how could she not be in the records though? This was Aythryn City where crime lurked ‘round every corner. She must’ve lived a sheltered life to not have a record… but then how could she be a doll? Hmm… something wasn’t adding up.

I swapped my query from criminal records to missing persons. After a few more tweaks on my search, I found a file. Lynn Parker, Scav kidnapping, deceased. It was a report from a few months ago. I would’ve just passed on by, but the smiling face of my killer without the doll chrome sat on the front page of it.

She was reported missing a few months ago by her brother. Their home address was in the East End, so disappearances weren’t all that uncommon. It looked like a Blue Crusade Squire, those that were a bit further down the totem pole and usually directly served a Crusader, had gone to their house and asked some questions. Then, the Squire marked the case as closed.

I was too tired to think any more about this. The rest of the search would have to wait for tomorrow. It was getting late, so I retired for the night.

The choppy purr of my motorcycle assaulted my eardrums as I rode the crowded neon streets. Rain was falling, the water lightly striking against my patchy raincoat as I headed to my next destination: the Parker family’s home. It was close to the projects, just about a block away.

I thought about it while going through my daily routine. Why would Lynn Parker, a person I know to still be living, be marked as deceased on a police record? And then I realized I was thinking too hard. This was Aythryn City! The answer was obvious: corruption.

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

That got me thinking. Why would someone want Lynn Parker marked as dead? As a Scav victim no less. The answer I came up with, which took most of the day, after taking in all the facts? So no one would look for her.

See, she had doll cybernetics. Doll stuff was some nasty hardware. It overruled the owner's original personality with whatever a client would want. Usually, this worked only on willing people and they could quit the doll override at any point. However, take this with a grain of salt since I know next to nothing about magic, what if it was magic?

The idea came to me after I snooped around Build-A-Doll a bit more. Part of their sales pitch was ‘making your nights magical’, and the site said had a full roster of magically attuned ready to fulfill their customers' every wish. The company, Build-A-Doll, might take its name quite a bit more literally than I originally thought. The buyer would say what they want, then the company would go and basically enslave a matching person to become a doll, and then sell the doll to the buyer. It was a perfect system, especially considering the disappearances could be written off as Scavs or Savants.

Then, when Davis got his new doll, something in his apartment caused the magic to break. Or maybe he broke it himself. He did have all of that magic stuff everywhere, so the guy was obviously interested. Maybe he bought a scroll or something and used it to show off his 'prowess' in magic.

Or maybe Lynn broke out of it herself- doubtful. If this was a business built upon brainwashing, it was highly doubtful our damsel could break out of it on her own. A business built upon a flawed product wouldn’t last long. Especially if the clientele was getting flatlined by said flawed product.

The entire situation was fucked up. Suspected human trafficking, where the victim killed her trafficker, and I was hired to track down the victim? Gah! I feel terrible about this… but it was the job. At some point, as any merc or Edgerunner would tell you, you just have to disassociate and do the job.

Of course, this was all theory at the moment. Unfortunately, Carone likely wouldn’t accept theories as a conclusive resolution to this investigation gig. I would either have to speak to Lynn Parker or head to Build-A-Doll to find out the truth. At the moment, talking to Lynn Parker sounded quite a bit better. There was far less of a chance that I would run into people involved with magic this way.

I pulled into the right street and parked a bit back since there were so many cars parked everywhere. I began my slow jaunt up the street as I tried to figure out my approach for the family. It needed to seem plausible that I would show up. Hm… oh, I was an orphan here for donations! Always worked. At most, I would be kicked out.

My steps paused as Insight tickled at the back of my mind. This time it didn’t take me long to notice the oddity. There was a cleaner van parked out front. Normally it wouldn’t be too weird of a sight, but this was close to the projects. Who in their right mind would spend their little money on cleaning services?

Something was wrong here… maybe Build-A-Doll sent cleaners? Not the housekeeping kind, but the ones that make people disappear? I felt for my Sidewinder, taking a small comfort in its presence. It could just be nothing. I’ll just go up and check, and if it's too dicey I’ll just keep walking.

With a plan in mind, I slowly worked my way up the trash-coated stairs. The building’s elevator was broken, so the stairs life for me. Maybe I should start doing some cardio? I seem to have taken the stairs a lot recently…

I was panting for breath by the time I reached the eleventh floor of the building. I took a few moments to settle myself before I pushed out into the filthy apartment hallway. I passed by a man as I walked down the hall towards Parker's apartment.

As I passed by him, a frown creased my lips. I noticed even without Insight’s help. He was wearing a cleaner’s jumpsuit. Coincidence, or…

A step came from behind me. The step, as quiet as it was, sounded like thunder to my ears after my time with Fox’s Paw. I felt a cool tingle, almost like a blade, down my right side. I instantly knew it was Insight, but it felt… different. Not quite painful, but a bit more tingly? Almost- almost like a phantom pain? It faintly reminded me of the time I stayed at the rock garden.

I decided to trust it and dodged to the side as a knife cleanly slid by where I was just standing. The man, seemingly put off for a moment by my dodge, was a second slow in his recovery as I fully turned to face him.

My instincts took over as I reached for my pistol, fumbling the grip as I felt that twinge a second before he slashed. It was almost as if I could feel his attack before he actually threw it, and I preemptively dodged to the side. The guy missed again, but he still had his other hand. Before I could even aim at him, he smacked the pistol from my grasp.

“Gah!” I felt my wrist snap to the side with the force of the hit as I backpedaled away from him. The pain brought back that coolness that I felt back in the pavilion and I felt my mind lock in. Insight saved me once more as I pre-felt a blade slicing toward me. A second later, his knife sailed through clean air as I flopped to the side.

I got yet another preemptive warning of a lunge. He let out an aggravated growl and he lunged forward, stepping out to increase the force. “Die!”

This time I was prepared. I ducked into his guard and grabbed the knife hand, attempting to redirect the hit into a wall so he would drop it. Unfortunately, the strength of a fifteen, almost sixteen, year old girl who rarely worked out couldn’t compare to a trained killer. I barely managed to redirect a part of his force before he stopped the strike.

He grabbed my arm with his other hand, and I could feel the cool phantom pain of Insight across my chest. I couldn’t dodge out anymore, so I did the next best thing. I wrapped my leg around his kneecap and pulled. Since he was still half-lunging in a weak posture and the trash-covered floor offered terrible purchase, I easily knocked him to the floor, messing up his slice.

An issue arose in two ways. First, he was holding me so I also fell down. Second, he was still attacking, so his knife cut through the jacket. Unfortunately for him, he didn’t put in enough force and it only half cut into my flesh, only barely short of bone maybe.

I toppled onto the bastard and reached down into my boot as I attempted to push away his knife-hand. I used Hidden Hands, on my other hand while attempting to fully attract his attention onto the weak knife grapple as if I was making a last-ditch effort to struggle for my life.

He sneered, an ugly look on his already ugly face, as he easily pulled the knife away, flipped me, and pinned me to the ground. Or at least that’s what he thought. In the second before he could restabilize himself to plunge the knife into me, I pulled free the emergency shiv I kept in my boot - thank you Mira - and rammed it into his throat. I didn’t even think as I put my full force into the strike, feeling bone grate against my shiv as it fully found purchase, glancing to the side of his neck

A look of surprise flashed through his eyes followed by his head whipping back in a torrent of arterial spray. He tried to speak, but his blood was too busy choking him to allow air to pass through, let alone words. I didn’t let up and sprung to my feet as I kicked the shiv, slicing through the muscles of his neck fully. The shiv roughly cut through and clattered into a pile of trash along with a chunk of flesh.