Lucy dropped her satchel onto the table with a dull thud, pulling out a compact cyberdeck and setting it beside her. The way her fingers brushed the casing, careful yet practiced, told Max she treated it like a lifeline.
"Guess I'll stay for now," she muttered, sliding into a chair. "But don't expect me to stick around if this 'crew' of yours turns out to be just another gang."
Max leaned against the wall, arms folded. His optics dimmed to a steady glow. "We're not a gang. We're operators. That's the difference."
Lucy snorted softly, eyes flicking up to meet his. "That what you tell yourself when the bodies hit the ground?"
"That's what I tell myself when they deserve it," Max replied without hesitation.
For a moment, silence stretched. Then V walked over, grabbing a half-burned pack of cigarettes from the counter. She tapped one free, lit it, and leaned back, smoke curling upward in the dim light.
Her gaze shifted to Lucy. "Alright, I'll bite. What's your specialty? Don't look like muscle, so what makes you worth bringing in?"
Lucy narrowed her eyes. "You don't waste time, do you?"
Before she could add more, Max spoke, his tone calm but cutting through. "She's a netrunner. And not just some script-kiddie. A good one."
V arched a brow, curious. "And how would you know that? You scan her résumé on the way here?"
Max's optics flickered faintly, replaying the traces he'd felt earlier. "No. When I found her, she didn't just watch me. She poked. Tried to slip into my systems—more than once. Smart probes, masked signatures. Almost caught me off guard."
Lucy stiffened slightly, shooting Max a sharp look, though there was no denial in her eyes.
Max continued evenly, "If she could do that to me—while standing in front of a pile of corpses, no less—then she's better than most choombas running the net in this district."
V gave a low whistle, exhaling smoke through her nose. "Huh. Got guts, I'll give her that. Guess you're not just dragging in strays, then."
Lucy crossed her arms, violet eyes glinting in the dim light. "Didn't think you'd actually notice. Most people don't."
Max tilted his head slightly. "Most people aren't me."
The air thickened for a moment, tension lingering between them until Lucy finally looked away, her expression softening just enough to pass as reluctant acknowledgment.
"Maybe," she muttered. "But don't think that means I'm playing by anyone's rules but mine."
Max inclined his head. "That's fine. Rules can wait. Skills matter first."
V stubbed her cigarette in the cracked mug, smirking. "Well, choom, looks like you found yourself a wildcard. Question is—can she actually play with the big leagues, or is she just flashy code and nerves of steel?"
Lucy bristled at the jab, sitting up straighter. "Try me. Give me a target, I'll show you what I can do."
Max raised a hand before V could fire back. "No need to flex on each other. We'll know soon enough. There's a convoy job tomorrow—Militech hardware, Japantown route. I already have partial schedules, but their net's still live. That's where you come in."
Lucy's fingers tapped against the edge of her deck, her eyes narrowing as the weight of the offer settled. "Convoy runs mean armored ICE, corporate-grade firewalls, maybe even black ICE. You expect me to punch through that on a handshake deal?"
Max leaned forward, optics pulsing faint blue. "I don't expect. I calculate. And right now, I calculate that you're our best shot at making this job clean."
V chuckled, shaking her head. "He's got a way with words, huh?"
Lucy ignored the comment, finally flipping her cyberdeck open. Green glyphs danced across the small holo-screen, casting light against her pale features. "Alright, then. Let's see what you've got for me to work with."
Max projected the convoy map onto the table, red neon routes spidering across the surface. Schedules blinked in and out, incomplete. "This is what I've scraped from the lower layers. If you can ghost their higher encryptions, we'll have full route data—and maybe an opening we can exploit."
Lucy studied the projection, lips twitching as if she were already running calculations in her head. "Not bad. Rough edges, but you pulled more than most fixers could. Give me a couple hours, and I'll have their network bleeding."
V raised a brow, leaning on the counter. "Confident, aren't we?"
Lucy smirked faintly, for the first time showing a hint of the fire Max had suspected was buried beneath the weariness. "Confidence keeps you alive in the net. Doubt gets you flatlined."
Max's optics dimmed to a steady glow again, satisfied. "Good. Then tomorrow, we move. Tonight, you prove you can do what I think you can."
The hum of the hideout's ancient lights filled the silence that followed, broken only by the rhythmic tapping of Lucy's fingers across her deck.
V exhaled smoke toward the ceiling, giving Max a side glance. "You sure about this?"
Max didn't look away from Lucy as the green light of her deck lit her face. "Yeah. She's exactly what we need."
They left the hideout's dim kitchen and split the night like a seam—V to scope the perimeter, Max to shadow the nearby rooftops, Lucy to fold into the net.
She chose a corner table by the cracked window, laptop lid like a prayer book. The city's neon bled through the glass in slow bands; inside, the room smelled of burnt coffee and metal. Lucy set her deck on her knees, fingers moving with the economy of someone who'd done this a thousand times. Her screen bloomed: wireframes, masked handshakes, salted keys. The whole room seemed to narrow to the glow of that green code.
"You okay out there?" Max's voice came low, from the doorway. He didn't sit. He never sat unless the world demanded it.
Lucy glanced up, expression flat. "Fine. Just—don't disturb my signal. It throws noise on the line." Her tone was polite but brittle; privacy was religion to her.
Max nodded once and melted back toward the window. V's silhouette hovered in the kitchen, cigarette stub between her fingers, eyes half-closed but alert. They were the quiet muscle—both physical and otherwise—trusting Lucy to turn their hazy schedule into a map.
Lucy exhaled, slipped her deck into a masquerade. She tossed a dozen decoys—old signatures, fake routings, useless pings—like breadcrumbs to throw off anyone watching. Then she dove.
***
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