When he woke from the simulation, Rick reached for the implant cable, but someone else’s hands were already there.

He glanced around the room and tried to stand up, but dizziness pulled him back into the chair.

Hector’s eyes were wide, and Manuel’s were too. Jerry’s face was blank, but Rick didn’t know the man well enough to read his expressions. He searched for anger in their faces, but there was only shock and unreadable blankness. He was overwhelmed by a sense of loss and failure, mixed with a tinge of relief he couldn’t be held responsible for Sonny Esposito’s fate. If the fighter turned up a murder victim, it wouldn’t be on Rick’s shoulders.

Hector narrowed his eyes. He wasn’t smiling. “What the fuck was that?”

Rick winced and looked at the floor. He glanced up, but his boss looked unsatisfied.

“A double-knockout?” Alex’s voice sounded flat, as though she was saying something she didn’t believe.

Rick looked up. “Wait.” He cocked his head. “What was that?”

“You knocked each other out at the same time!” Hector’s blank face had transformed into one of anger.

“I tried my—”

“The fuck you did,” Hector said. “You expect me to believe that? After you dismantled two human AI bots and a Cruncher? After that, you couldn’t take Sonny fuckin’ Esposito?”

Rick shook his head slowly, trying not to escalate the situation.

His boss set his jaw. “How much did they offer you?” He looked calm again—but it wasn’t the natural calm of someone who was unflustered—it was the calculated calm of someone why could murder another man for the sake of business.

Rick panicked. “No one offered me…” He started over. “How much did you lose?”

Hector seethed silently.

“Nothing,” Alex said softly. Her next words seemed aimed at Hector. “He didn’t lose anything.”

“I sure as fuck didn’t win anything!” Hector shouted.

Rick’s pulse rose. He was no longer in the game. If Hector responded with violence…

“But you didn’t lose, either,” Alex said again in a calm voice.

Hector frowned hard enough Rick was certain he was in physical danger, but then, as if the malice had never been there, blankness returned to Hector’s face. “Tell me. Why did you throw the fight?”

“I didn’t—”

“Don’t lie to me.” Carved in sharp relief on his flat face, Hector’s features were a gravestone.

“I…” Rick stalled.

“Sonny’s only the second real person he’s fought. I thought—” Alex said.

Hector pointed at the sky, as if he could point at her voice. “Don’t make excuses for him—unless you’re telling me you’re a shitty trainer, and I won’t let you lie to me, either.”

“No, fuck you,” Alex said. “I’m a great trainer, but it was less than three weeks for a total—”

“I watched him take the Wild One and the higher level AI bots—we all did—”

Alex raised her voice. “But they’re still bots.”

“Oh, the fuck if that matters,” Hector said.

“It matters. You wanna get in there and try? You said I’m a good trainer—how about we set up a rematch with Sonny in two weeks and I’ll train you?”

Manuel and Jerry may as well have been statues. Neither blinked, nor moved a muscle.

That Alex was defending Rick to their boss was apparent, but between the shock and the panic, Rick couldn’t goad himself into speculating about why she did it. If Rick had thought Hector a dangerous man before—and he had—he’d still underestimated by far enough that he’d be embarrassed once he was able to think about anything more than his own personal safety.

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Hector said, “I’m not a—”

“You’re not a fighter?” Rick asked quietly.

“Don’t you fuckin’—”

Rick didn’t raise his voice. “No, I’ve told you this entire time—I’m not a fighter.”

“You threw that—”

“I did no such thing.” Rick took a deep breath. “I know”—he nodded—“I know this is exactly what anyone in my position would say.”

Hector raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.

“My wife is in the hospital, and before two weeks ago, I’d never so much as entered an SR game.” He took a deep breath before he told the half-truth. “I needed this. We both know I’m falling behind as a courier—”

“Oh, that’s fucking done. That’s for damned sure,” Hector said.

Rick’s chest ached. The eggs. Kristina’s eggs. “I still owe you money.”

Hector’s smile was cruel. “Oh, that’s right.”

“I’ll get another job, please don’t—”

“Five days.” Hector had nearly snarled the words.

Rick stood with his mouth open for a long time before saying, “Five days? I can’t get you—”

“Five days, the full amount.” Hector smiled. “It’s business.”

His dream was dead. His future was dead. He knew it and Hector knew it.

***************************************

Rick waited for his wife to be discharged from the hospital. He tried to enjoy the sparse waiting room, with its cracked vinyl upholstery and sad fake plants. Hospitals were an ad-free zone, too, so there were a few suspicious loiterers in dirty clothes quietly trying not to be noticed. Likely, they were homeless and couldn’t pay for even a few spare minutes of ad-free time. It was smart, and he wished he’d have thought of it when he and Kristina were homeless. Rick tapped his phone idly, doomscrolling a microjob site, but there were fewer jobs than there’d been last year when he found the courier job with Hector. The bots were getting so good, there were fewer jobs they couldn’t do.

The door to the bowels of the hospital opened, and he took a deep breath as his wife emerged. She wore baggy slouch-wear and carried a small bag, though her joggers had pockets, and when she met his gaze, she swept her blonde hair back over her ear and glanced at the ground before meeting his eyes again. He knew his wife’s mannerisms and gait better than his own, and he’d have been able to identify her on that alone, were she at some distance or wearing a disguise.

He stood, hoping not to appear anxious or reticent, though he was. Kristina-Anne was always fragile after an episode. He faked a smile, hoping his sunny disposition might clear away some of the fog of shame under which she obviously struggled.

“Baby.” He pulled her in close and she gripped him hard in return.

“I missed you,” she said.

He’d visited a couple times after training, usually at night after grabbing a quick bite for her from one of her favorite fast-food places. It had been a fight to get her to let him come, but once she relented, she gave every indication she was glad to have him there. Though he never said or did anything to shame her, he had to prove it over again every time in a situation like this. He didn’t take it personally—how could he? This was the condition of her existence. It started long before she met him, and though no one is born broken, she’d confided in him that she couldn’t remember a time when it wasn’t that way for her.

Rick remembered the time before he was broken, and the ghost of who he’d been, the good and the bad, still haunted him. Kristina knew that, and she lived with his inconsistencies and the intermittent imperviousness of his emotional boundaries. Often, she sensed when something was wrong with him before he did. “You’re drinking a lot,” she’d say, though she wouldn’t demand he stop. Or she’d comment that he was spending a lot of time in AR arguing on social media.

It happened a lot near significant dates. Arraignment. Sentencing. Release. The first year had been hell, and he was drunk for most of it. He never asked why she didn’t leave him because he didn’t want to make her think about it. He didn’t want to think about it either, but after the first few months of that first year, every time he accidentally got triggered by a movie or an advertisement or an altercation on the street, she’d hold him. She’d pull him back. She’d drag him to bed and give him something worth living for.

She squeezed him again. “Jeez, I thought it was my turn to be the headcase. Where did you go?”

He held her close. “I fucked up so bad, baby.”

She pushed him away so she could see him, but he looked down to hide his face. She grabbed his chin gently and he raised his face to look at her. “Did you lose?”

He nodded, and he had to blink hard and fast to keep the tears from forming. “I’m fired. Fired from fighting, fired from running.”

“You’ll get another job. Maybe in a week or two, the therapist will let me look for one, too?”

The lie she’d told was a kind one. This had been her fourth suicide attempt, and the state had never cleared her for a job in less than a month. By then, rent would already be due. Even if she did jobs under the table, there wouldn’t be enough money.

But that wasn’t the worst part. The only reason he’d hoped Kristina would ever forgive him for the liberty he’d taken with her body was that he’d done it to ensure she could have the children they both wanted so badly.

He’d squandered their last chance. There was no way he’d have the money in five days. If he’d been a murderer for hire, he wouldn’t have been able to come up with it.

In that moment, though, he knew he would become that—a murderer for hire, the worst of the worst—if it would give them back their future. He’d misjudged Hector because he needed to. He’d needed to tell himself the shark wouldn’t bite because he didn’t want to choose between his life and a stranger’s. He’d once ended a man’s life, and though that was due purely to pride and youthful stupidity, he’d let that error cause him to make an even worse one.

Though he was doomed, he resolved one thing:

He’d never choose anyone else’s safety over his or that of his family again.