A flash of white light streaked across her eyes.
Like a sudden strobe, it cut through the room's soft glow. Even with her eyes shut, she felt its piercing brilliance.
And in that instant—before the thunder rolled across the earth—Lucy's eyes snapped open.
As the architect and maintainer of the deep network connection, the shock she endured when it was severed hit her far worse than David.
Only now, after all this time unconscious, did she finally wake.
"David... David..."
A sharp, twisting pain tore through her brain, like a fork stabbing wildly inside.
Grinding her teeth against the agony, her frail arm reached out, gripping the bedsheet to pull herself upright.
Something had gone terribly wrong on his end—and it wasn't a simple mission error.
She had seen that bio-signal generator. The trap couldn't have been more obvious.
Only a corporation could field such equipment.
Torrential rain hammered the massive floor-to-ceiling windows, its roar echoing harshly through the apartment.
"Wait!"
Lucy's foggy mind jolted into focus. She scanned the room frantically.
"Gloria... where is she?"
Only the relentless crash of the storm answered.
Staggering to her feet, fighting off dizzy waves, she leaned against the wall and forced herself out of the bedroom.
"Where did she go?"
She slumped against the doorframe, gazing outside.
Thankfully, in this critical moment, Gloria wasn't in danger.
She sat silently by the window, watching the rain stream down the glass like a waterfall.
As if sensing the movement behind her, she turned her head stiffly, her eyes dazed and unfocused.
"David...
You... came back...
Come back, I...
Don't worry about the cost..."
Her words stumbled out, fragile, like those of a lost old woman.
And just as quickly, the spark of awareness drained, leaving her staring blankly back at the rain.
The storm's roar weighed heavy on the chest.
Lucy pushed herself toward Gloria while also initiating a call through her Neural Link.
The stabbing pain made veins bulge across her forehead, her eyes twitching as though they might tear apart.
...
On David's side, the reality was clear: his body was no longer his to command.
Yet on a sensory level, he felt everything.
He was locked inside his own flesh.
If he ever broke free and described this to Arthur, the man would understand.
The car wasn't jolting much, but even the faint vibration of the engine wracked him with agony.
The back of his skull pressed hard against the steel floor beneath him.
It was unbearable.
The only mercy was that the ride wasn't long. The convoy soon slowed, then stopped.
The door clanged open roughly, and David's treatment was even rougher.
First, someone yanked his hair, dragging him partway out, then grabbed him by the shoulders with that all-too-familiar grip.
If not for his drenched clothes reducing friction, they would've torn out a fistful of hair.
Helpless as he was, David's mind raced sharper than ever.
Not far from the Northside Industrial District... Arasaka. This had to be Arasaka Waterfront.
"If only... this was just one of V's jokes..."
His thoughts spun as he was dragged inside a building.
At last, he was thrown onto an iron bed.
Restraints pinned him in place at over a dozen points.
Binding a "vegetative" this tightly—these bastards were cautious.
"Fine... if that's the case, maybe I'll just sleep. Be rested when it's time to go."
Maybe too much had happened that night; he didn't even have room left for fear.
It wasn't that he wasn't afraid of dying—he just hadn't had the time to be.
The surroundings were dim. He rolled his eyes once across the room, then let them drift away.
The ceiling was plain and bare, nothing worth staring at.
Then, a heavy sound echoed closer.
David strained to shift his eyes, but it was still too far to see.
Seconds later, an obese silhouette entered his vision.
A fat man.
"Damn it!"
The rage buried inside him erupted. He strained, desperate to see the man's face.
"Looks like you're still wide awake."
If just seeing the figure had enraged him, hearing that voice made his vision go blood-red.
That voice—he knew it too well.
Even after half a year, the hatred still burned.
It was the damn principal of Arasaka Academy.
"Tanaka... that damn principal."
"Damn it..."
"Bastard..."
His fury peaked, so intense that he even blamed Gloria's tragedy on the man before him.
If that bastard hadn't kept hiking the rental price of Braindance gear at school, why would he have risked the black-market version?
Why would he and his mom have gone to the school together?
Why would they have run into those Tyger Claws fighting—the crossfire that caused the crash?
David boiled over. His eyes filled with bloodshot veins, the skin around them bulging like crawling worms.
Objectively, Gloria's accident had little to do with Tanaka.
But anger had already crushed his reason.
It was the fury of a lifetime, built up since childhood.
That filthy pig Tanaka—targeting him, targeting his mother.
And Tanaka's bastard son, hiding behind his advanced knowledge chip, beating David bloody time after time.
He had buried these memories, hiding them from friends and from the woman he loved.
But now, once again, he was in this pig's hands.
"Heh heh heh... ha ha...
So my appearance gave you quite the shock, didn't it?
David Martinez?
My student?"
That greasy, bloated face slid into view, grinning smugly.
He shook his head.
"No... no...
If I'd brought you here sooner, I wouldn't still be stuck as principal of that trash school.
I'd be in Counterintelligence, managing... or maybe in the Operations Division..."
...
(70 Chapters Ahead)
p@treon com / GhostParser