Two days had passed since I finally got a measure of control over my Clairvoyance skill, and they were glorious.

  Nothing ruined my mood. Not Catill’s grumbling, or the tension in the air of the slums, or even the fact that Mela had tried to talk me into letting two gang members shadow me and call it ‘patrolling.’ None of it could bother me.

  Not when I was inching ever closer towards another skill level-up.

  Programming was now something I could fly through. And even if my status page was refusing to outright acknowledge my progress with the desired level-up, that didn’t erase the fact that I was making progress.

  I found it remarkably easy to wrap my head around the coding used in the RE app, especially the coding I thought actually belonged to my eyes. The other half, what could be dubbed the ‘modern’ coding used for the base RE app, was a bit more… obtuse, sure. But I was still working through it at an impressive rate, especially considering that I didn’t have a teacher or even a textbook to guide me.

  Besides, the coding of my eyes was clearly superior. No one could argue against that. I mean, the creator of this tech had found a way to make the eyes scan for things like the soul. Then there was the entire Shadow Runner package…

  So, yeah. Programming was great. In fact, I was pretty damn proud of my progress.

  And that wasn’t the only skill I was swiftly advancing in.

  Movement, as it turned out, was simply the art of navigating the netspace. I was having a ton of fun with that. Now that I could turn my Clairvoyance on or off at will, I had an easy time racking up the exp points. I got one after the other when I used my eyes to spot breaks in code and slip past them.

  I even managed to gain access to one of the locked rooms on my floor! It was so odd, snooping around someone’s ‘private’ netspace like that, but I couldn’t hold my curiosity back. I only wish said curiosity wasn’t swiftly rewarded with pure trauma when I took a peek at the scroll they had hooked up to their net access point only to find it full of porn.

  Just like Clairvoyance, though, Movement seemed to get stuck at the final exp point I needed to level up. Programming, too. This was annoying, but such was life. I was sure I’d get them sooner or later. I just needed to find the right way to push myself.

  Quickhacks was the final skill I was making progress in. This one was… weird. For so many reasons.

  First, I tried to gain exp by just using my available quickhacks over and over inside the netspace. That quickly proved to be useless. Well, mostly useless.

  Case in point: I shot the breach quickhack at one of the apartment doors, just to see what would happen. Nothing happened. The door just took the punishment. Emboldened by the lack of activity, and intrigued to see there were actual marks left behind on the wall from the ‘shotgun’ pellets, I kept going until the door was actually busted enough for me to see into the room.

  I got a single exp point then. And so, naturally, I repeated the same song and dance a couple of times. To my surprise and mild irritation, I stopped getting exp after going through three doors. Apparently, I couldn’t just keep grinding the use of the quickhack again and again to level up.

  So, when next I used that quickhack in the privacy of my netspace room, I triggered my Clairvoyance and paid attention.

  As it turned out, quickhacks were rather more complex than I thought. First, the program, because that’s what it was, had to unpack from the compiled format it was in to conserve storage. Then it had to ‘aim’ by connecting to the target you had in mind. Once that was accomplished, the program was partially uploaded to the network you were attacking, before it got executed and either managed to breach the target or not.

  I used ‘breach’ as an example, but the same four steps happened with pretty much every quickhack. The thing was that a netrunner could get a lot more involved in the process, as I was learning. That was why so many people tended to compare netrunning to ‘cyber magic.’

  I mean, what else would you call it? When you could manually help the quickhack unspool and make connections, and even better direct its assault towards weak points, using nothing but your will and your mind? It wasn’t like I was editing and changing the code on the spot!

  ‘Magic’ or not, it was fun to practice. And I was seeing the payoff in cold hard numbers, too. Even if I’d admittedly put much less time into the Quickhacks skill than into anything else, I was already at seventy-four points out of a hundred.

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  That only left the final skill on the list: Assault.

  I had no idea what to do there. The name implied it was meant to be used offensively, but I couldn’t guess a single other thing about it. No matter what I tried, I didn’t seem to get any closer to a solution.

  I broke out the shards I’d bought to kick off my netrunning adventures, the ones meant for some probably long dead runner’s apprentice. Scanning through their content for keywords and such failed to bring up anything even remotely relevant. So far as I could tell, aside from a few quickhacks I could take apart later and study (and save on my deck for future use, of course), there was nothing in those lessons I’d find irreplaceable.

  Overall, though? Even with the failure of my research into Assault, I was content.

  So, naturally, the world decided to kick my teeth in.

  It all started so innocently. I was on my bed, bundled up under a couple blankets just for that extra comfort boost. I had code scrolling across my vision as I fought to improve it using both my studies and my Clairvoyance.

  That was when an incoming call demanded my attention.

  As lazy as I was feeling, when I saw it was just Mela, I took my time to stretch and yawn before hitting ‘answer.’

  “Hello hello, how can I help you today?” I tried for my best customer service impression, hoping to make Mela crack a stupid joke in turn.

  Except her voice came through as a rough, demanding bark. “What took ya so long?! Where are ya?”

  “I, uh, I’m at home. I almost always am at this hour. What’s wrong?”

  “Don’t move a muscle or I swear I’ll beatcha to an inch of yer life. I’ll have some guys pick ya up. Bring whatever ye think’s important to keep on ya, and make sure ye don’t regret the selection.”

  “Wait, what? Mela, I need more than that,” I argued, but I was moving already. I was mostly dressed, even if I was lounging in bed. It was just a matter of quickly throwing on some pants before stumbling around the room and throwing stuff in my backpack.

  It was almost funny, how quickly I’d filled the place with knickknacks. What was once a bare, functional space now had all these little touches of comfort and convenience, or just plain fun. Like those animated cupholders, courtesy of Mela, that played cutesy loops of video. Or that new kettle I bought with my limited disposable income when I actually tried tea for the first time.

  Speaking of tea…

  I picked up a shiny new tin of the stuff and shoved it into my backpack, hiding it at the bottom. It wasn’t ‘top tier’ by any means, but you could actually get halfway decent stock in the outer districts if you knew where to look. Passing it out to the few enthusiasts within the Kittens, including Feyo, felt almost like I was dealing hard drugs.

  “C’mon, Mela,” I urged as I packed. “What’s going on?”

  “There’s trouble, ya idiot. What else? Things are getting worse. Much worse. Just… try to get here quickly, and don’t attract attention!”

  “How much worse? Also, who are you sending? Mela? Mela!” I screamed in frustration when she just cut off the connection, leaving me to stew in my fear and concern.

  Ironically, most of it was focused on Mela’s wellbeing and not my own.

  Mela was overprotective from the start, but when Garren caught wind of what I was trying to teach myself, his own determination to keep me safe all but outshone Mela’s. I didn’t have any patrol duties. I wasn’t expected to ‘do my part for the gang’, at least not yet. All I had to do was occasionally show off a bit of what I’d learned.

  And the last time I’d demonstrated some of my progress to the man, before the whole drama with the renewed trouble started, he was ecstatic. His eyes were literally shining with the light of hope. The mutters of Mort’s name that I caught once or twice clearly suggested what Garren was looking forward to.

  Basically, I didn’t need to worry about my own safety. I was unlikely to be put in a dangerous situation if they could avoid it.

  Mela, on the other hand? Every bit of me was convinced that the reckless woman would jump headfirst into shit if it meant keeping ‘her’ people safe.

  And if shit was happening right now, and she jumped before I could get there and try to stop her…

  All I could do was grumble, curse, and fret as I paced my apartment, backpack in place. My deck was clutched in my hand. I wasn’t about to leave it behind and risk losing it to some stupidity if my apartment ended up trashed again.

  Then a loud banging on my door almost made me jump out of my skin.

  “Who is it?” I shouted, then cursed myself for doing it. I was expecting the people Mela had sent over, but that didn’t mean whoever was going around killing Kittens might not be lurking on the other side of the metal barrier.

  “Whodja think it could be you little shitter?” a voice groused on the other side.

  I had to blink a few times before cracking a grin. “That you, Lurch?”

  “Fuck yes it’s me. Me and Mike. Now come on, get your ass out here and let’s book it to the HQ. I’m not gonna stay out here for longer than I have ta, and you’re dragging things out!”

  He sounded more high-strung than usual, but then again, this was Lurch. He and Mike were the very first Kittens I’d met back then, when Mela saved me from that druggie. Mike had been the one who seemed most concerned for my welfare, while Lurch had spent most of the encounter leaning against the wall and griping.

  It had been a shock to get to know them a little better.

  Not because they were unpleasant or anything, but because their underlying personalities were almost a complete switch from my first impressions.

  Sure, Mike was nice. Kind, even. He did try to do right by everyone. But he would also fuck your shit up during a fight. There was a very good reason so many people stuck ‘mighty’ in front of his name. He’d earned that title from viciousness rather than physical might, so… yeah. He wasn’t someone many people wanted to cross, fellow Kittens included.

  Lurch, meanwhile, was all about that imposing ganger life. At least until the first shooter went off in his vicinity. Then it was all dodging behind dumpsters or whatever the nearest large obstacle was, followed by lots and lots of panicked return-fire and cursing.

  “Mela really busted out the cavalry for this, eh?” I teased as I ordered the door open, only for my smile to wither instantly. “What the fuck happened?”

  “Nothing much,” Mike said calmly, like the large splatter of blood on the left side of his face really wasn’t a big deal. “Just a little bit of trouble.”

  I quickly scanned him over. While he had a few other splotches of blood on his clothes, he didn’t seem to be hurt. I could only assume that not all of the red decorations he was wearing had come from his own body. A look at Lurch revealed that he was unharmed, too. Disheveled and pale, yes, but not hurt.

  “What are the chances someone is going to shoot at us while we run for our lives to the HQ?” I asked, oh so very casually.

  Mike shrugged. “Pretty high, actually.”

  Lurch gave a choked laugh that was probably supposed to sound tough, but just came out as ‘unhinged.’

  I squeezed my eyes shut. I had only wanted to learn and be left alone. No drama, no eldritch bullshit. For just. One. Week.

  Unfortunately, no one ever consulted me on shit.

  I opened my eyes and pasted on a smile. “Oh, goodie! Lucky us. Let’s go then, shall we?”