-Diary Log 2055-
Dear Diary,
Today, I caught myself thinking, what would I do if I met a canon character from Cyberpunk? If I met Gloria or David, would I try to save them or just leave them be? Every day, so many people in Night City die—it’s like the whole place is built on endless tragedies and forgotten hopes. A part of me that secretly believes I could make a difference, that I had the power to rewrite fate. But another part of me is starting to care less and less for the show that once brought me to tears, for the game that tested my emotions as I watched countless lives come and go… Maybe if I met one of them, and really got to know them, I might feel differently.
See you later,
Ellia
-Log End-
-Night City 2064- -Four days Later-
I step off the maglev platform into the gleaming heart of Corpo Plaza. It’s a rush of fluorescent displays, monorail tracks that coil like serpents overhead, and immaculate floors that reflect every neon hue. The air smells faintly of ozone and wealth—endless resources poured into building this consumer’s paradise. Clover is practically bouncing at my side, already pointing out some slick boutique that just popped up last week. Despite her excitement, I can’t help sweeping my gaze around, checking passersby one by one.
My neural implants tap into the plaza’s public security cameras, merging the data with my HUD. It’s second nature: scanning for anomalies, checking if anyone’s trailing too close. There’s no imminent threat, but my shoulders remain tight with vigilance.
Clover notices. “You know, you’re not supposed to be my bodyguard,” she says lightly, tossing her bright hair over her shoulder. Her voice has that teasing lilt that always edges toward sarcasm. “My parents said the Plaza was extra safe nowadays—something about doubling the security. So try not to look so paranoid.”
I force a calm expression, letting out a measured breath. “It’s habit,” I say, though habit doesn’t begin to cover it. I’m basically hardwired for this after so many mandatory corporate defense courses, and it’s gotten worse after my kidnapping. “They did specifically ask me to keep an eye on you.”
“Ugh, yeah, I know.” She gives a dramatic roll of her eyes. “But it’s called shopping, Ellia. We’re supposed to have fun. You can’t have fun if you’re busy acting like some secret agent, scanning everyone’s cyberware and stuff.”
I pause my scanning with a conscious act of will, severing the camera feeds. “I’ll try,” I mutter. “No promises.”
Clover’s grin widens. “If you really want to protect me, maybe buy me something cute. That’d be more fun for both of us.”
I let her banter wash over me, and before long, we find ourselves drifting toward a shop with a massive holographic sign overhead: LumiTek Clothing—Neon Dreams Collection. The store’s window is dominated by mannequins wearing luminous jackets, pants that shift color with each step, and accessories that appear halfway intangible. Clover’s eyes sparkle.
“Oh, that’s the brand everyone’s raving about,” she squeals. “Look at that jacket!” A slim, cropped piece with LED piping and stylized silver filigree.
As she goes to examine it, my stomach does the small knotting thing it always does when we’re in crowded areas. People swirl around, each on their own errands. No threat, I tell myself, scanning anyway. A pang of guilt flickers. I should lighten up.
I follow Clover inside. The store’s interior is equally lavish, with interactive mirrors that project alternative color palettes onto the clothes in real-time. A store clerk wearing an AR visor greets us in a polished tone, presumably analyzing our net worth or brand preferences.
Clover zeroes in on the silver filigree jacket. “This is it. My must-have,” she says, hugging it close like a child with a new toy. I let her chat with the clerk, feeling a distant wave of relief that my protective instincts can take a back seat for a moment.
A faint chime vibrates in my cochlear implant. Rafe is calling. I flick a glance at Clover, who arches her brow knowingly.
“A boy?” she mouths.
I shrug, answering the call with a mental prompt. “Ellia here. Go ahead.”
Rafe’s voice is crisp with a business-like edge. “Hey. Got a sec? Need to ask about the blueprint for your next implant mod.”
“Sure, what’s up?” I say.
Clover, of course, overhears my side of the conversation. She sets the jacket aside, her eyes dancing with mischief. “Boy?” she mouths again, making exaggerated kissing faces.
I wave a hand at her dismissively, trying not to give her more ammo.
“Just wanted to confirm the neural interface lines,” Rafe continues. “If your gear is as advanced as I think, we can skip the capacitors and go for direct method. I’ll send you the new specs, then you can double-check. Cool?”
“Cool,” I echo. “I’m at the plaza right now, so I’ll look at it tonight.”
He’s silent a moment. “Right. Later, then.”
I cut the call. Clover practically pounces on me. “Awww, our little Ellia’s got a boy calling her.” She wags her fingers in front of my face. “Let me guess: your project is more than just a project, hmm?”
I look at Clover with a deadpan expression. “He’s literally just a contractor. There’s nothing else there.”
Clover pouts, turning her attention back to the jacket. “You’re no fun. You never have any fun, really. Everything’s work, work, work. Bodyguard mode. Corporate hack training. Nine to five, then simulations, then quickhack coding until bedtime. Don’t you do anything else?”
The question hits me like a subtle jab to the gut. “I… handle my responsibilities,” I say, but the retort sounds flimsy, even to me.
She’s turning the jacket over to find the size tag, but her focus is on me. “Responsibilities. Sure. But do you have any hobbies? How about music? Do you even listen to anything aside from news bulletins?”
“News bulletins are plenty—” I start to joke, but her stern look stops me.
“Seriously, though.” Her voice softens. “You’re always cooped up in training sims or in your coding den and today you’re on a mission to protect me from imaginary assassins. Don’t you ever want to go to a concert? An art exhibit? Or, I don’t know, a date?”
“Concert?” I echo. “Not really.”
She tilts her head. “How come?”
A faint wave of something unsettles me. I try to rummage for an answer, but all I can think about is how I never made time for anything that wasn’t strictly skill-building or career progress. “I guess… music today feels so synthetic,” I mumble. “All warped. It doesn’t spark anything.”
Clover’s shoulders relax, and she steps toward me with a gentler look. “Okay, but that’s just modern stuff. There’s a whole underground scene, old recordings—”
“I haven’t explored it,” I admit. “I guess I never tried.”
She sighs, turning back to the jacket. “You know, Ellia, you’re not a machine. You can’t just revolve your life around corporate tasks and VR combat training. At some point, you gotta live.”
I nod, the comment biting deeper than she knows. But I don’t argue further. She finalizes her purchase—a heart-stopping amount of eddies for a single piece of clothing—and we leave for the next store.
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Later that evening, I’m back in my corporate-issued apartment.
I drop onto my swivel chair, monitors lighting up with lines of code. My daily schedule flickers across the main screen: morning shift at the office, a break I typically spend in advanced infiltration sims, then more work on a quickhack project. By the time night falls, I’m usually so drained I can only do more coding or pass out.
I recall Clover’s question. Do you have any hobbies? I stare at my reflection in the dark screen. The truth is… not really. There’s an emptiness in that realization.
Feeling restless, I open a search engine. Might as well see if I can find something that resonates. I half remember older tunes from before—my memory of another life, intangible. Sinatra, Elvis, Dean Martin, old classics. I type in “Frank Sinatra.”
The results are pitiful: a few short references, broken links to archived media that no longer exist. The DataKrash —a catastrophic meltdown unleashed by Rache Bartmoss in 2022, ravaged the old Net, and what remains is behind the Blackwall. Because of that event, so many digital archives from the 20th century and earlier were lost forever. My search yields only scraps.
I click on a snippet titled “Excerpt of ‘Fly Me To The—’” and a broken audio track attempts to play. There’s a swirl of static, then a ghostly voice—smooth, melodic, tantalizing in its echo. It lasts maybe ten seconds before it cuts out. I could perhaps reconstruct the audio.
Slumping in my chair, I realize that I’ve spent my entire current existence ignoring stuff like music—Clover’s right. I haven’t let myself enjoy anything if it doesn’t further my training or job performance. I rub my temples, a headache forming. This is ridiculous.
I close the failed search window. Right on cue, a comm call from Rafe. Again. I accept it, pushing aside my swirling thoughts.
His voice is casual, with a hint of excitement beneath it. “Ellia. Good timing. Listen, me and some friends are booting up a MvP, Maxtac V Psychos. We’re down a player. Wanna join?”
I blink. “I don’t really play games,” I say, automatically. “I never had the chance. My father was strict. Wanted me to focus on corporate responsibilities, not messing around in VR with random people.”
Rafe laughs. “Sheltered corpo princess, huh? That’s basically a travesty. You probably have the best rig out of any of us. C’mon choom. It’s fun, and we need you.”
Sheltered corpo princess. I bristle a little—he’s gotten surprisingly comfortable with me so quickly, but a twinge of truth stings me. He’s not wrong.
I weigh my response. Maybe it’s the echo of Clover’s voice telling me to do something outside my bubble, or perhaps it’s the small memory of playing video games in my previous life. Or maybe it’s a deeper craving for something different.
I let out a breath. “Alright, one match,” I say. “But don’t expect me to be good. I haven’t exactly been gaming.”
“Awesome,” Rafe says. “I’ll send you the invite. Join the psycho side.”
We hang up, and I stare at the blinking “Download Complete” icon in my field of vision. I hope I don’t regret this.
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I jack into my rig. The harness envelops my arms and torso, neural links hooking into the back of my skull. There’s a familiar hum as the system syncs to my implants. Initializing.
The next moment, I stand in a gritty urban sprawl rendered in neon and grime. A pulsing scoreboard hovers overhead, showing the Maxtac side and the Psychos side. Rafe’s avatar, plus two others—Orion and Sono—are grouped with me in a small alley.
Rafe’s avatar looks paramilitary, a sleek black outfit with minimal flair. He waves me over. “Override, right?”
I glance at the name floating over my own avatar: Override. It was my gamer tag before my reincarnation. My avatar is a dark silhouette with faint electric-blue outlines, eyes glowing faintly. “Yeah,” I confirm.
Orion smirks. “So you do have a sense of style. That’s an edgy avatar.”
Sono runs a quick check on my gear. “Your loadout’s standard. We’ll find you a better weapon. The psycho side is all about stealth kills and jump scares, basically.”
I nod, slipping into old instincts from infiltration training. This environment isn’t too different from the real VR combat sims I’ve run in corporate security. If anything, it’s less punishing. There’s no risk of actual bullet wounds or neural feedback injuries. I can handle this.
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
We split up. Orion and Sono lay booby traps in a half-destroyed building while Rafe and I scale a flickering fire escape to get a vantage point over the main street. Through the windows, we see the opposing team—fully decked out in Maxtac gear, systematically sweeping the area in tight formation.
I select the monowire loadout.
I release the monowire, twirling and swinging it. My VR interface reports near-instant response time—the monowire flickers with a digital sheen that hints at lethal capability.
“Let’s go,” I say, a grin tugging at my lips. I used to dabble, I remind myself, recalling my old reflexes.
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GrayFox POV (Ingame Maxtac Squad)
GrayFox led his unit through a city block at night, his senses acutely aware of every fractured sound. Broken street lamps barely managed to cast sporadic pools of light across rubble-strewn sidewalks and busted-open shopfronts. Overhead, skeletal skyscrapers—half a dozen in all—loomed like grim sentinels, their shattered windows hinting at conflicts too terrible to name. The ambiance was heavy with tension; GrayFox could almost feel the roaches scurrying in the shadows and see electrical sparks leaping from fractured wires, each spark igniting a primal alert in his mind.
His squad’s loadouts were standard Maxtac fare: rifles steady in his hands, flashbangs secured at the hip, and a short-range scanner that beeped softly whenever movement came too close. Normally, they dealt with psychos who charged recklessly or relied on raw brute force. In such cases, GrayFox’s unit methodically cleared buildings—overlapping fields of fire ensuring that no enemy could ambush them from behind. Tonight, however, something was distinctly off.
From the moment they spawned, the city was unnervingly quiet. GrayFox’s scanner reported minimal movement, and the comm channels buzzed with similar reports from the other squads—eight or nine players total—each one echoing an eerie calm. “No contact yet. Holding position. Possible psycho movement on the upper floors. Stay frosty,” crackled the messages. GrayFox’s stomach churned. His instincts told him this silence was the calm before a storm.
Taking point, GrayFox stepped gingerly into a ruined convenience store. The store was a tableau of decay: toppled shelves, scattered and cracked VR game boxes, and faded posters advertising old braindances peeling off the walls. As his squadmates—Hawkeye, Blitz, and Ember—spread out behind him with rifles raised, he couldn’t shake the feeling of impending doom. Every shadow seemed laden with threat.
Then, a flicker of motion appeared on his HUD—a subtle, ghostlike presence crossing the street outside. GrayFox’s heart skipped a beat. “Contact!” he hissed urgently into the squad comm. Weapons were raised and nerves strung taut. They burst out onto the street, expecting a foe, but found only drifting trash and the distant whir of a generator. GrayFox’s mind reeled; the absence of a clear target made his skin crawl.
Undeterred, the squad pushed deeper into the city block, linking up with another group to cover more ground. Without warning, the overhead lights sputtered and died. In a single moment, street lamps and neon signs fizzled out, leaving only the narrow, unwavering beams of their suit-mounted spotlights to pierce the darkness. Ember muttered a curse under her breath—“Night shift? That’s early in the match. They must’ve triggered a power grid hack”—but GrayFox only gripped his rifle tighter. His mind raced through possibilities; was this a planned disruption or the handiwork of an unseen foe?
Hawkeye’s scanner chirped softly. “No direct movement. Could be a trick to spook us,” he observed. GrayFox nodded, his inner thoughts darkening. He knew better than to trust a silence that felt so orchestrated.
Then came the moment that splintered their fragile composure. As Blitz swung his rifle toward the rear, shining his beam into a shadowed alley, a choked shriek ripped through the quiet. GrayFox’s blood ran cold as he spun around. There, emerging from the darkness like a specter, was a tall figure dressed in obsidian black. A shimmering monowire flashed—so quickly that GrayFox only had a split second to register it—and then Blitz’s health bar plummeted to zero in a sudden, brutal burst of red. The figure, as though it were nothing more than a ghost, melted into the gloom before any countermeasure could be taken.
“What the hell?” Ember breathed, her voice laced with raw panic. GrayFox felt the weight of the word “Override” throb on the kill feed—a single word that now pulsed with a sinister, almost personal menace.
They huddled together, adrenaline thrumming through each soldier’s veins. “Form up, back to back,” GrayFox ordered, his voice clipped and taut. In his mind, questions swirled—how could an opponent vanish so effortlessly? Was it a glitch? Or was the enemy simply that skilled? Every fiber of his training screamed caution.
Moving as one, the squad advanced to the next street corner, carefully maneuvering around piles of rubble. A distant crash echoed from above—like twisted metal giving way—but then there was nothing, just oppressive silence. Trusting his instincts, GrayFox ordered the thermal overlays activated. If any enemy lurked near, their silhouettes would betray them. Instead, the scene remained deserted, a void of unsettling calm.
Ahead, they spotted another friendly squad engaged in a desperate firefight with a blur of motion. Muzzle flashes strobing in the darkness revealed, for an instant, a black-clad figure darting along a collapsed hallway. In a heartbeat, that figure had leaped off the wall, swooping down on one of the enemy players. The kill feed updated again: “GreenDog eliminated by Override”—then a second name, and then a third. GrayFox’s pulse thundered in his ears as he watched the annihilation unfold in horrifying rapidity.
He exchanged a sharp, grim look with his comrades as they watched the enemy squad disintegrate before their eyes. The last soldier tried to flee, but the phantom opponent pounced from above, delivering a final blow that silenced him permanently. Desperation and fury warred within GrayFox as he barked into the comm, “All squads, this is GrayFox! We have a psycho user named Override. They’re coordinated, moving fast. We need to regroup—” His command was met with nothing but static, then intermittent cries from another group reporting ghostly illusions in the subway level, followed by a bloodcurdling shriek. And then, silence.
Ember, her voice barely a whisper through tears and fear, clutched GrayFox’s shoulder. “This is insane. We can’t hunt them. They’re hunting us.” Her words, raw and unfiltered, echoed in GrayFox’s mind. He gritted his teeth and, summoning every ounce of resolve, replied, “We move together. Keep your corners covered. If they come at us, we light ‘em up.” But inside, he questioned every decision, feeling the weight of each loss.
With grim determination, the squad pressed into an adjoining building—a once-grand lobby now reduced to a cavern of shattered glass and ruined architecture. The atrium, its glass ceiling broken into jagged shards, let in only sporadic light. Pillars lay fractured, walls were riddled with bullet holes, and in the courtyard, the flicker of fire from a crashed helicopter painted ghostly figures on the walls. The darkness here was almost sentient, a living tapestry of danger. GrayFox’s suit-lights skimmed over debris while his scanner registered faint, deliberate footsteps from above. He froze, every sense on high alert.
In a heartbeat, terror struck anew. A shape plummeted from the broken skylight, landing silently behind Ember. There was no time for a cry; the monowire came in a swift, merciless arc, slicing through her chest in a burst of vivid red. A second, equally fatal strike followed, and Ember collapsed, her digital life extinguished. The kill feed read once more: “Ember eliminated by Override.” GrayFox’s heart pounded in his chest as he felt the heavy burden of loss.
Hawkeye and GrayFox spun as one, their rifles blazing full-auto toward the vanishing figure. For a split second, GrayFox caught sight of the attacker: a dark silhouette with eyes that glowed faintly in the dim light, exuding an unnerving calmness. The figure moved as if it anticipated every shot, weaving through the barrage of bullets with supernatural agility. Muzzle flashes danced in disjointed, strobing bursts as the enemy slipped behind a collapsed pillar. Their gunfire ricocheted off the stone, leaving their magazines empty and their hopes dwindling.
They reloaded in frantic silence, breaths ragged and minds in turmoil. “We have to go,” Hawkeye muttered, his voice thick with despair. “They’ll pick us off next.” GrayFox nodded, the rising tide of panic threatening to overwhelm him. “Fall back, fast!” he ordered, urgency lacing every word.
The squad sprinted into a narrow side corridor, boots pounding against broken marble as emergency lights flickered overhead. Over the comms, the final screams of another squad—pinned down in some distant sector of the map—echoed, the name “Override” repeating like a death knell. GrayFox’s heart sank as he watched his comrades vanish one by one.
In a desperate bid for survival, Hawkeye scrambled to seal a heavy door behind them with a quick weld, buying precious seconds. GrayFox’s scanner caught a faint, irregular heartbeat coming from behind the sealed wall—a fleeting sign of movement that urged them to move even more cautiously. He gestured silently for the team to advance along the corridor, rifles at the ready, every shadow a potential deathtrap.
Just as they reached an intersection shrouded in dim, sputtering light, the overhead illumination flickered back to life. There, perched ominously on a twisted metal beam along the ceiling, was the psycho. GrayFox’s throat tightened as he raised his voice to issue a warning, but before he could finish, the figure leapt down with a terrifying burst of speed. A single, swift slash—the sound of a wire slicing through the wind and agony—sent Hawkeye’s avatar reeling in a haze of digital gore. The comm line updated with grim efficiency: “Hawkeye eliminated by Override.”
In that moment, desperation took hold of GrayFox. He broke into a full sprint, ignoring the pounding in his chest and the echo of his panicked breaths. Every step was a frantic dash toward the extraction zone—a hope that somewhere, somehow, he might reunite with any surviving members of his unit. His flashlight bobbed erratically as he tore through the corridor, his mind a whirl of terror and determination. This was supposed to be a game, but the visceral fear was indistinguishable from reality.
A sudden glitch of static danced at the edge of his vision—a final, ominous sign that the psycho was close. GrayFox snapped his rifle up, aiming wildly into the dark void. But his own pounding footsteps betrayed him. Then, he sensed it: a faint whisper of movement, a rush of air that heralded a predator’s pounce. He whirled around, eyes straining in the darkness, and there, just for a split second, he saw the figure again. Its eyes glowed with cold precision, and its monowire arced in a lethal, final sweep.
The HUD erupted in bright red warnings. GrayFox’s limbs locked in terror as the last message blazed across his screen: “GrayFox eliminated by Override.” In an instant, his avatar dissolved into darkness, leaving behind only a final scoreboard and the echo of that one fateful name—Override—etched indelibly in every surviving player’s memory.
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Ellia pov
I take deep breaths as I sit on the virtual floor in the post-match lobby—an industrial-style VR space with chain-link fences and flickering fluorescent lights. My real body was probably drenched in sweat. In-game, we thoroughly annihilated the Maxtac squads. My kills soared thanks to infiltration moves gleaned from years of actual combat simulations. It’s exhilarating.
Rafe’s voice filters through the leftover team chat. “Holy—Ellia, you said you didn’t play?”
Orion laughs. “That was terrifying. I almost pity them.”
Sono whistles. “Where’d you learn those moves?”
I press my lips together, letting out a shaky laugh. “I, uh… I’ve had some training. Corporate security sims.”
Rafe is still chortling. “Yeah, well. Remind me never to never get on your bad side.”
A weird sense of pride churns in my stomach. So I can do something that isn’t strictly ‘work.’ Maybe my virtual combat drills actually paid off in unexpected ways.
Orion and Sono say their goodbyes, logging off. Their avatars blink out, leaving me alone with Rafe in the post-match lobby.Rafe leans against a battered digital crate, crossing his arms. “That was a blast. We usually do a game night once a week, so you’re invited if you want.”
I shift, feeling a surprising wave of gratitude that he asked. “Might take you up on that. It’s kinda nice to, well, do something else for a change.”
He nods. “Glad to help. Hey, we’re actually heading to a netrunner hub next. You want in?”
I arch a brow. “A netrunner hub? I’ve never heard of them.”
Rafe’s grin widens. “Of course not. Sheltered corpo princess, right?”
I roll my eyes, but I can’t deny my curiosity. “Don’t rub it in.”
He laughs. “It’s like a VR plaza for coders, hackers, data-traders. You might like it. They’ve got shops for custom scripts, black-market ICE, that kinda thing.”
“All right,” I say, surprised by how eager I sound. “Let’s go.”
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Another swirl of neon disorientation, and I re-appear in a sprawling VR metropolis. My new avatar—a transparent aquamarine figure that mimics my silhouette—renders smoothly in the prismatic glow. The hub is huge: walkways of data, towering neon towers representing shops, throngs of netrunner avatars bartering in a kaleidoscope of forms.
Rafe stands beside me, his black geometry-laced avatar flickering as he gestures expansively. “Welcome. Big rule here: watch your ICE. Some people like scanning noobs for system vulnerabilities.”
I check my rig status: stable, no intrusion attempts. “Got it.”
He leads me through a few aisles, each with floating signage advertising code:"QUICKHACKS" “CUSTOM DAEMONS,” “ICEBREAKERS,” “REMOTE BOT OVERRIDES.” Vendors peddle data as if it were fresh produce at a farmer’s market. I see netrunners haggling over a new meltdown hack, some hooking each other up with exploit trades.
We drift toward a large stall called Night Market Novelties. Rafe points out a neat Ping upgrade but shrugs. “That’s mainstream stuff. Still good. Anyway, I gotta meet someone in a private node. Wander around, see what catches your eye.”
I give him a parting wave, scanning the crowd. “Will do.”
He disappears into a swirling black gateway. Left to my own devices, I wander deeper. The main corridors are jammed with flamboyant avatars and stalls with dizzying arrays of code. Deeper in, the foot traffic thins; the netrunners here move with quiet purpose. Their avatars look more refined, the environment heavier with encryption. My rig hums as it adjusts to the advanced data layers.
I pause at a tall, domed booth emblazoned with shimmering text. Inside, lines of quickhack scripts rotate like rotating display racks in a clothing store. I examine an advanced Overheat mod that doubles it’s speed while cutting memory usage. Impressive. I lose myself in analyzing the subroutines.
Suddenly, a voice behind me: “Nice find.”
I turn to see a lithe avatar shimmering in yellowish code, vaguely feminine. She steps closer, scanning me appraisingly. “That Overheat script is good quality. You definitely know your code if you’re reading it that carefully.”
“It’s well-written,” I say, my curiosity piqued. “A lot of Overheat variants are simple and can get messy. This is lean and potent.”
She tilts her head, her silhouette’s textures rippling. “Your avatar’s rendering is crisp. Must be a top-of-the-line rig.”
I give a small nod. “Custom build. I do a lot of coding.”
“Figures,” she says, voice warm. “Don’t see you around here often. New?”
“Yeah,” I admit. “First time in a netrunner hub like this. My friend introduced me.”
She laughs softly, then leans in conspiratorially. “If you like advanced hacks, I can show you a deeper node—stuff they don’t sell to newbies. But your rig better handle it. The encryption there is fierce.”
I set the Overheat script down, intrigued. “I’ll manage.”
She beckons me behind a swirling curtain of code. My rig begins to heat up as the environment transitions to a private sub-node. Only a handful of netrunners stroll here, each avatar stable and heavily encrypted. The stalls are smaller but filled with undeniably powerful and sometimes illegal hacks: meltdown viruses, multi-layer infiltration daemons, scripts capable of shutting down entire city blocks with the proper hardware.
“Wild, right?” the yellow-coded avatar says. “Code like this can be lethal in the wrong hands.”
“You’re not wrong,” I murmur. My mind toggles through possibilities, a swirl of excitement and caution. “I’m not sure I’d go that route, but it’s impressive.”
She shrugs. “Depends on your moral compass.” Her voice brightens. “Anyway, I appreciate your eye for detail. Not many would spend that much time reading the description on an Overheat quickhack.”
I glance at her. “Thanks for showing me around.” Checking the time, I realize it’s much later than I expected. “I should probably head out soon, though.”
She nods, stepping away from the stall. “Sure. This place can eat your entire night if you let it. Mind if we swap contacts? I like connecting with people who know their stuff.”
I hesitate a moment, but she seems genuine enough. “Yeah, let’s do it.”
She sent me a data handshake, and I accepted. A bright swirl of code indicates our rigs have exchanged secure IDs.
“Thanks,” she says. “I didn’t catch your username.”
I smile faintly at my reflection in the shop window. “I'm Override.”
She cocks her head, letting the name roll around in the air, then responds, “Call me Kiwi.”