A gentle voice reaches Lucy first. A warm hand settles on her shoulder, steadying the breath that was trying to run away.
She turns and finds Rocky beside her. The room comes into focus: not a netrunner's dive bay, but a ripperdoc's clinic. The chair under her is padded, the overhead lights clean and bright, stainless trays standing by in orderly rows. Panic loosens its grip. Arasaka did not catch her. Rocky's tone helps the rest of the fear climb down.
Some of the nightmare clings anyway. Before Rocky can decide what to say, Lucy turns and wraps her arms around him.
"Do not move," she whispers at his ear. "Let me hold you. Just for a while."
Her pride normally chains moments like this in the dark, but the dream snapped a link. Since taking this commission, the swings have been steep: the hesitation before touching Arasaka's network, the jolt of being spotted, the relief of making it out alive. Even people who look unbreakable have to set the weight down somewhere. In Night City, who gets to be trusted?
Heat from his body displaces the chill that followed her out of the dive. Her heartbeat, too fast a minute ago, settles into something she can ride. Rocky relaxes his shoulders and returns the embrace.
"It is over," he says, voice even. "The targets are down. We withdrew cleanly. The Arasaka hacker who hit us is handled. No one can tie this to us. You are safe here.
"Hold me as long as you need. Say what you need. It is just us, and I will listen."
The words land in a place no one reaches often. For a moment she just breathes with him, tension bleeding off in a rhythm that makes sense again.
"That is enough. Thank you, L," she says at last, tightening once before she lets go.
"I am here," he answers, palm patting the middle of her back, gentle and sure.
Time passes. When Lucy steps back, her face reads like it did before, the earlier slip tucked away with care.
"Thank you, L. I feel better. Sorry about that. I hope you do not mind."
"I do not. If anything, I pulled you into this. Without that, you would not be carrying it."
She shakes her head. "My choice. My weakness. Not on you. By the way, tell me what happened after I blacked out?"
"The last thing I remember is the hacker catching me inside the subnet. When I opened my eyes, I was here," she says.
Rocky keeps it simple. "After you went under, Jackie and I traced the hacker, breached Konpeki Plaza's network control room, and took him out. I used his console permissions to purge our logs and footprints. Then we left Konpeki Plaza in my car."
Lucy blinks at the plain delivery. "It is hard to imagine doing that in those conditions."
He has not given her the mechanics, only the outline. To someone who was not there, the summary sounds like a campfire legend: two mercs without net access pods locate an Arasaka operator inside his own house, punch into the control room through layers of security, kill the operator, erase the data in front of Arasaka's nose, and then drive away through the net. If he were exaggerating, the story would be worse. He is not.
"It may not be what you imagine," he says. "There were not that many twists in the middle. It is also hard to explain cleanly. When you see it for yourself, you will understand."
She nods once. "Understood."
Rocky glances around the clinic. "Lucy, there is something I want to talk through. Not here, if you do not mind."
"You are right. Then I will take you somewhere. Come with me."
"Where?"
"You will know when you see it," she says, a small smile lighting the answer.
They tidy the workspace and head out.
Lucy leads him up to her apartment's rooftop. The sightline opens wide; a river keeps the nearby towers from blocking the horizon, and the sky hangs like a clean sheet. It is night, and a full moon sits quiet and bright.
Across the water, the buildings throw their light like a net. The city's particular beauty hums at this height: neon over steel, motion behind glass. Far off, the satellite launch complex glows; a rocket climbs, fire painting the column of exhaust as it pushes for orbit.