Page 92 of Neon Flux

The thought sat wrong with me, like a piece of glass under my skin. I didn’t like the idea of her fitting into this world. She was too sharp, too stubborn, too willing to burn herself out for people who’d just as easily toss her aside. Maybe that’s what pissed me off the most. She was so used to being discarded, she didn’t even flinch anymore.

I exhaled through my nose and looked away. Not my problem.

A sudden breath from the couch pulled me back. Eon blinked, the glow of cyberspace still fading from her pupils as she came back to herself. She stretched, arching her back before dropping her arms over her head with a soft sigh.

“Done?” I asked, keeping my voice neutral.

“For now.” She pulled off her headphones, letting them hang around her neck. “Just need to run a few tests. Make sure Maddox’s fancy toy doesn’t fry me in the field.”

“Wouldn’t want that.”

She smirked, tilting her head toward me. “You watching me work, Cy? I should charge for that.”

I rolled my eyes. “Just making sure you’re not screwing us over.”

“Please. If I wanted to screw you over, you’d never see it coming.”

“And what exactly is stopping you?”

At that, her smirk faded. “You’re blackmailing me, remember?”

“Right. Here I thought you just wanted Tex to praise you again.” That got her. She went red, and it was adorable seeing the blush underneath all those freckles.

“Guess we have a lot in common, then.” As always, she wasn’t wrong.

She shifted uncomfortably on the couch, and I knew she was about to run. But something was still nagging at me.

“When I was at Hellfire, Rook still had your digitals.” I saw it. She was damn good at hiding it, but every muscle in her body flinched just the tiniest bit at the mention of the club.

“You like what you saw?” she said with a wink. No. She wouldn’t distract me this time.

“Why does Rook still have you in virtual? You could’ve deleted that shit ages ago.”

“His security is top-notch,” she said, not meeting my eyes.

“That cheap yarouhas high-end security software?”

“Of course he does. I wrote it.” That made even less fucking sense. She would’ve left herself a backdoor. Why hadn’t she purged her data? Hell, why hadn’t she taken down his entire fucking business? She saw the confusion on my face.

“Once a whore, always a whore, right? Deleting that doesn’t change what I was. What I did. Trust me, if I want to hide something, it stays hidden.” Her face was neutral, but her voice was tight. Self-inflicted punishment then. An open wound to remind herself of her weakness.

That, I could understand.

I rubbed my shoulder without thinking, and my left arm twitched erratically.

Her eyes locked onto it. “You’re having issues with your implants.” It wasn’t a question.

“Nothing I can’t handle. Don’t worry your pretty little head about it.”

“I’ll worry whatever the fuck I want, thank you. You twitch like that when we’re down in the Den and I’m dead. Come here.”

Her hands were on me, pushing my Vysor up off my face as she tugged at the skin under my eye. She was practically in my lap, leaning over me. I felt her Flux pulse and my implant lit up, the soft blue glow flaring beneath my skin. Just that ripple of her power had me almost undone, and I tried to push her away.

“Get off! What, you an expert in bioMods now too?”

She rolled her eyes. “Guess you didn’t notice that I worked in a mod shop while you were chasing me down, huh? Dev’s one of the best Modders in Neo Stellaris. I helped him enough to know what to look for.” She paused, biting her lip. “You were young enough to get the chip.” Not a question.

“Wasn’t exactly swimming in options. It was this or burn out trying to make it through puberty.”