The next few hours proved once and for all the relativity of time, at least to me. I have to confess I glanced at the clock in my HUD constantly, trying to develop psionic powers just so I could accelerate time.

I tried to distract myself by mentally going over the designs of this cyberware or that, but every single time I was disturbed by one idiot or another bothering me with senseless drivel. Sure, there were a handful of people who were at least marginally interesting, but they rarely stood up to the deluge of stupidity I was subjected to.

Finally, in the early evening hours, the torture seemed to be over. At least, most people slowly exfiltrated out of the room and relieved I moved to follow them. I am proud of myself that I did not leave a flame trail, but instead moved at a measured pace and let the mob thin before I got to the entrance.

Alas, it should not be my freedom yet. I felt a hand on my elbow and when I looked up, frankly pretty irritated, I found Patrick standing there.

“Sorry, Kitten, but the boss has asked that you remain here for a bit longer. He wants to talk to you.”

Of course, I felt a pang of anger, but I quickly suppressed it. Patrick was just the messenger after all, and as much as I wanted to get home and recover for a bit, I understood all too well that Walker had his own way to do things, and he expected the rest of the world, or at least of his territory to jump when he said so.

And so I leaned against the wall out of the way and closed my eyes, enjoying the relative peace I had for a moment.

It only took a gracefully short amount of time before I felt another hand on my shoulder and opened my eyes again, looking directly into Walker’s face.

“Hello again. Nice of you to wait.”

As if I had so much choice in the matter. I just nodded, and he continued.

“If you would come with me please?”

He led me to another room, which turned out to be an office almost exactly like the one in his headquarter. In the room, he gestured for me to take my seat in the single chair on this side of the desk, while he walked towards a cabinet.

“I assume you don’t want a drink, so can I get you a coke?”

Thinking that I just wanted to get it over with, go home and crawl into my bed, I shook my head.

“No thank you. I’m good.”

“Suit yourself.”

He poured some amber-colored liquid into a low, wide glass, before he turned back to me, walked to the desk, and sat down on the edge of it, directly opposing me.

“Now, if you remember, we have some unfinished business left.”

I pulled a blank about that for a moment, before I got what he wanted.

“Oh… you mean the negotiations?”

He just nodded, taking a sip of his drink, so I continued.

“Do you really think that now is the best time for that?”

“Yes, it is.”

Simply marvelous. I could already tell that he would insist, but I had to at least make the attempt.

“I fear that I am the weak part this time. I am, to be frank, pretty beat, and I would appreciate it if we could do it tomorrow or next week.”

He smiled.

“No, now is a good time as any. We should get it done and over with.”

And that after I refused to take advantage of him when he was drugged up to his gills. But unfortunately, I could not refuse him.

He took another sip and placed the glass beside him on the desk.

“Now, I usually like to tailor the, well let's call it a tax, to the business that the applicant wants to open. I start at 10% and add or subtract accordingly.”

His smile widened.

“Now, I will let the nano-fab go. I understand that the discount you gave me was way more than I would get as tax here. And honestly, the same with the auto-surgeon.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

I could only nod. Yes, I would have been annoyed if he had demanded the tax for those two items, but there wouldn’t have been much I could have done.

“In your case, you have of course several advantages. Simply put, you saved my life. You also saved the lives of most of my men in the long run by giving Richard the nano therapy. I can also already see that you will be a good place to get new cyberware from in the future. In other words, my organization will directly use your services.”

He reached behind him and grabbed a file from his desk.

“Now to the other side.”

He opened the file and took out the first page of plasfilm.

“I like to know who I am doing business with, I hope you understand. So I had some contacts in Seattle look into you for a bit. Surprisingly, he actually found Veronica Sinclair in the official database.”

He lifted the page for a moment, before placing it beside him on the desk.

“Protip here, false identities work way better if you don’t tell everybody that they are false.”

I rolled my eyes.

“And then I make a mistake and you find out that it is false, and are angry. So you know it is false a bit earlier and learned it from me.”

He looked at me for a moment, before shrugging.

“You are not wrong here. You especially can’t pull it off. I would have found out about it in minutes.”

Yeah, sure. Rub it in, will you? He continued.

“But I have to compliment you on the quality of the package. Sure, there is no real person who knows Veronica, but the computer file is extremely convincing. Spectre’s work I assume?”

I nodded.

“That still did not tell me who you are, so I had him dig a bit deeper.”

He took out the next page.

“And surprise that a few days before you contacted me, a certain tiny redhead vanished from the Commonwealth.”

Oh frack! That… was so not what I wanted to hear. And for sure, he turned the page towards me and showed a printout of the warrant on me.

And now he had a connection between Vivian DuClare and Seraphim.

“Of course the pictures are… slightly different. I have to assume that is because of the enhancement process Frankel liked to brag about?”

I could only nod dumbfounded.

“So, nice to meet you, Ms. Vivian DuClare. Welcome to New York I have to say.”

His smile became a smug grin.

“Of course other than two PhDs there is not really anything interesting to find in her file either. And good of you to not lie about those. Makes you more trustworthy. Of course, we both know that your file barely scratches the surface, don’t we Seraphim?”

I had to frown, but yeah, I knew that I more or less pushed his nose into me being Seraphim. In hindsight, it might not have been the smartest decision, but at the time I thought that the reputation was worth it in my dealings with him.

“Now, you still made some mistakes. But I simply could quite understand what actually happened. That is until I found out about C-Dot.”

He placed the warrant on the desk and took the next couple of pages out of the file. I on the other hand was a bit confused. C-Dot was… unimportant, by design. It was the ‘secret’ identity I used in nowhere to hide me being Seraphim behind.

C-Dot was a barely competent Queen at the lowest end of the shadow wars. Marginally useful for plausible deniability, good enough for small jobs, and relatively reliant. I specifically designed her to be bland. Good enough to make a living, not good enough to be of interest. Of course, with a jack, I could do her jobs in a tenth of the time, and that was before my way superior equipment came into play, so I had enough time left over for my real work.

But she was a complete non-entity. I simply could not understand what exactly Walker could use the information for.

“Oh, I understand that C-Dot is boring. But your mistakes were much much more interesting.

The small things first, you should avoid talking about your board so much. When you told Hunter that there are only two Mk. III in existence, well, I told you, you can’t lie.”

Oops, that was not so good. But it was not so bad that it was critical. And C-Dot could not give him any hint about that.

“Also, from what I understand, you have way too much autonomy for a typical Abyss-Tech. But I have to concede that could simply be a quirk of Spectre.

But the bigger things… well, you always talk about your utilities. That could be seen as that you’ve written them.

But you fucked up a few times and talked about your cluster, and your supercomputer. But still, it could be a quirk of Spectre.”

Ok, I had to look into getting that under control, but I could still not see what C-Dot had to do with…

Fuck! Oh no. Nonononono! He can’t go there! He can’t!

I involuntarily scooted backward, and he slowly rose from the desk, putting the rest of the file onto it.

“I see the penny has dropped.”

I barely registered the clatter of the chair falling back, while my thoughts began to race. Please, let it be something else. Anything else.

He towered over me, overbearing and I began to slowly retreat from him.

“But your biggest mistake was the VI. There is absolutely no way that an important hacker like Spectre would accept you routinely running an expert program that solely serves to protect and assist you, the tech.

At the minimum, it should protect him and you equally. Much more likely that it should protect him primarily.”

I felt the wall at my back and still tried to back away from him, not being able to really grasp any coherent thought. I scooted along the wall.

“I think you can understand that this was simply not adding up. But you see, then I found C-Dot. At first, I did not quite get the importance. So you had some protective coloring, so what? But then I got to think.”

I reached the other wall, still trying to get away from him.

“What if, and what an insane idea it was, let me tell you, what if Seraphim is protective coloring also?”

He was now hulking over me, having pushed me into a corner, literally and figuratively.

“But as soon as I got that Idea, it all fitted. It just worked.”

I tried to duck under his arms and get away from him, but his hand shot out and pressed my shoulder into the wall.

“So, why don’t I say hello to your fifth identity, what do you think, Spectre?”

My panic hit a new height. I could only think about one thing. I had to get away. Somewhere. Anywhere. Just away. But his hand firmly held me in place. Then he gripped my chin with his free hand and lifted my face.

I felt his lips on mine, and I could no longer think at all.