Page 75 of Neon Flux

“It was you, wasn’t it? You’re the one who nabbed the shield tech. You worked for Tanaka, and did it while you were at the data center?”

He didn’t have any proof of that, but he didn’t need it. Whether I admitted it or not, he knew the truth. There was a huge bounty out from POM for anyone involved in the leak. They already had me on collusion, maybe more. But now, I was dead, one way or another.

Cy stared at me, unreadable. Then he exhaled through his nose and muttered, “Fucking nightmare.”

“Well, looks like your options are work with me on this job, or I drag you down to Basement Nine, and you have a little chat with someone a lot less nice than me about your little data extraction mission.”

I felt the blood drain from my face. Basement Nine wasn’t real. It was the horror story all cyberrunners knew—a place no one ever came back from. It was a myth.

His eyes were serious. I shook my head to clear the dread that had lodged there. “Someone worse than you? I can’t imagine it.”

He didn’t banter with me this time, his arms crossed and eyes deadly serious. “So do we have a deal or not?”

He was right. It was just like DITA had said—the illusion of choice. Well, I was going to hold onto as much of that illusion as I could.

“All right, I’ll help you. But I want to get paid.”

He chuffed at that. “No surprise there. What’s the going rate for a data reconstruction expert slash shofu?”

My brow furrowed. “And that’s the other thing. This is going to be business—and just business.”

His eyes sparked. “Wasn’t it always just business, doll?”

“Pendejo. I mean this is a data job. You’re paying for data, and that’s all you get. No crossed lines, no—”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll find my pussy elsewhere.” He waved his hand irreverently. “You know, probably shouldn’t call me names if we’re going to be working together.”

“So we have a deal?”

He swiped his hand down his face and didn’t look any happier about this than I did. “I guess we have a fucking deal.”

CHAPTER 26

EON

I’d cleared out of the warehouse immediately. Deacon hadn’t given me a second glance, but Taos intercepted me at the door, her expression a carefully crafted mix of disappointment and concern.

“You’re really leaving? I was so close to finishing this new algorithm!” Her voice carried that familiar note of expectation barely disguised as collaboration. “Are you sure you need to go?”

Considering I didn’t think any of them would take too kindly to my latest contract, I nodded firmly. “I’m getting tired of waking up feeling like I’ve been sleeping inside some guy’s gym bag. Thanks for the hideout, but I’ve got a safe place to go.”

Her eyes grew ridiculously wide, like a little lost puppy—a look I’d seen her practice in reflective surfaces when she thought no one was watching. “Are you sure? I’m this close to finding out what really happened to the professor, I can feel it.”

I noticed she’d pulled up her code on her data pad, angled perfectly so I could see the mess of tangled algorithms and redundant loops. The structure was fundamentally flawed, and she knew it—this wasn’t about Tanaka; it was about using my skills while claiming the credit.

“The module in the third stack is inverting your data flow,” I said, unable to stop myself from pointing it out. “That’s why it keeps crashing.”

Her expression flickered between gratitude and something darker—irritation that I’d spotted the issue so quickly when she’d likely been struggling with it for days. She toyed with the glowing pendant around her neck.

“I was just about to fix that,” she said, a hint of defensiveness creeping into her voice. “But if you stayed just another day, we could finish it together. For Tanaka.”

The invocation of her name was calculated, a weight she knew would pull at me. My heart winced at that, but I didn’t have time to redo Taos’ shit code right now. “You’ve got this,” I said flatly.

She frowned, the mask of solidarity slipping. “That’s it? You’re just going to walk away?”

“Looks like it.”

“After everything I’ve done for you?” There it was—the entitlement beneath the revolutionary façade. “I convinced Deacon to let you back in. I’ve shared resources, intel…”