It's About Saving Yourself Ch 9 (Patreon)

And here is chapter 9. Had this one mostly finished. Next in the docket is Kaiju Slaying.

Been dealing with some things AFK that have severely limited the time I could actually be on my computer and/or write. Happy to say that is (mostly) dealt with, and I should hopefully be able to write more consistently.

I'll shoot for at least a bi-weekly updates. But I can only promise to try. I do work full time at a job that habitually heaps a lot of overtime on the engineering team, of which I am a part of.

But enough about me.

Chapter Nine! Where we get the reveal of exactly what Alex was doing when he made a mockery of the beauty of Nature.

Also, because I am an idiot. I decided to cameo one of my favorite characters from another work. They won't play a big role, they're just there for the people that will get the reference.

And if you can figure out where she's shown up before in the story, kudos to you.

Hope you like, and do please drop me a comment!

=][=

I slid closer to the door, held up my left fist, and waited, mentally tapping my communication icon and subvocalizing. ‘Kiwi, Lucy, how are we looking on killing the alarm and unlocking the door?’

[Almost there…got it.] Kiwi answered.

[Cameras are spoofed, turret sensors shut down.] Lucy continued.

‘Thank you kindly. You are gentle-ladies and scholars.’

[I don’t think that’s an actual term.] Kiwi said.

“It totally is a real term.” Becca said, a little more audibly than I’d like.

[Eyes up. Scav around the corner.] Lucy cut in, a red silhouette lighting up in my vision, walking toward the bend in the corridor ahead of me. [She’s alone.]

I hurried forward as quietly as I could and raised my right fist, the metal digits murmur-quiet as I formed them into a claw. The instant the target was in range, I reached around the corner, took her by the neck, crushed her windpipe into paste and snatched her around the corner.

I tore through her ICE and uploaded the Daemons that would shut down any communication attempt. Then held her down for the short time it took her to pass out. Not wanting to leave things to chance, I pulled out my knife and stabbed it into her occiput.

The scavenger had a short seizure, the crude occipital craniotomy achieved its objective of minimizing her suffering as hypoxia claimed her life.

I dragged the soon to be corpse to the nearest dumpster and tossed it in while Rebecca secured the hallway, then we moved forward.

Rebecca disliked my insistence on the stealthy approach, our progress made easy by our two guardian Netrunners, our every confrontation was an ambush, and also thanks to them, our every ambush was a success.

We passed over a dozen bodies. All in various states of disassembly. Most showing signs of abuse both physical and sexual. Judging by the way Rebecca’s teeth ground together, she and I shared views on that particular degeneracy.

Thankfully, none of the corpses we came across were the girl we were here to rescue.

Unfortunately, nothing can ever go to plan.

[Shit, Alex, you’re two doors down, but you have to go loud, they’re about to get started on the package.] Kiwi snapped. [Bastard jailbroke his ‘ware so it has an autistic mode, and all the equipment in the room barring the security camera is analog.]

Kiwi had only gotten two thirds of the way through her explanation before I had my shotgun in hand. The personally modified Rostović DB-2 quad-barrel had become something of a calling card for me.

I wanted to upgrade to something more practical now that I had the money. But the use of the weapon had become tied to my reputation. I’d have to wait until someone did me the favor of destroying it during a job. That way I could give it a Viking funeral and finally move on.

Its quiet report was still quite welcome as it delivered slug and buckshot to armored and unarmored bodies alike. The moment the fourth shell was expended, I switched out for the Tsunami Kyubi I carried, and put the Scavs down with single shots to the head or two or three shots to the body.

If I was trying to be the best ersatz soldier I could be, Rebecca was a whirlwind of destruction. Her M251s Ajax roared and rattled in seeming imitation of its master’s laughter as she used it with all the finesse of a buzzsaw. Dumping the magazine and tearing limbs and torsos apart.

And as we fought, Scav after Scav fell to heatstroke, blood toxicity, and their own cyberware electrocuting them.

After I ran through the twenty rounds in my magazine, I switched to my Nue rather than take the time to reload. Once the Scavs realized that we outclassed them as severely as they outnumbered us, the still living gangsters broke and ran. Rebecca happily pulling out her pistols and gunning down the fleeing outlaws.

I had three rounds left in my Nue as we burst through the doors to the ‘recording room.’ There stood a tall, half-naked, overweight man with a holo-projector installed in his forehead. His face was hidden behind a blank holo-mask with a crudely stenciled smiley face on it.

He did what he could to hide his body behind the svelte form of the wavy black haired, naked girl with minimal Mox tattoos that we were here to rescue.

The revolver he had pressed to the side of her head made Rebecca and I pause.

[No smartlink.] Kiwi said impressed. [Didn’t think anyone made those anymore. With his ‘ware in autistic mode I can’t cramp up his hand either.]

“You’re here for this bitch, aren’t you?” He demanded and shoved the girl’s head to the side by pressing the muzzle of his gun into her temple, making her gasp. “Let me walk away, and I’ll leave the bitch where you can find her.”

“I think we can come to an agreement.” I said, using the trajectory analysis module I’d installed into my eye to search for an angle that would let me bounce a bullet into his eye socket.

He cocked back the revolver’s hammer.

“Drop the weapons or the little slut dies.”

Fuck.

I slipped the safety on and set the pistol down on the ground.

“But I just cleaned them earlier today!” Rebecca whined.

“Becca.” I growled.

“Fiiiiiine.” She tossed her pistols to the floor.

“Alright.” The fat scav said, backing away toward the door on the other side of the room. “You stay right there, or the slut eats it.”

“P-Please don’t let him take me.” The girl, Taylor, if I remembered her name right, pleaded. “Please!”

“Quiet, meat!” The Scav hissed and raised the revolver to hit her with the butt of the weapon.

My Sandevistan thundered on.

I ran forward in a world of seemingly stopped time, took hold of the inside of the Scav’s elbow to more easily bend his arm, and crushed his wrist in the metal grip of my right hand.

I twisted his arm and hand until I could push the barrel of the gun against the bottom of his chin, and pressed his finger down on the trigger. His head came apart in a welter of blood with all the languid grace of a flower’s petals unfolding.

I slapped his other hand away from the girl, and hunched over her, shielding her from the blood and brain matter.

The world sped back up to normal. Taylor screamed and hunched into herself as she flinched away from the report of the gun.

There was a heavy thud and a pitter-patter as the headless body behind me fell to the ground.

I wiped my cybernetic hand mostly clean of blood while I waited for the girl to realize she wasn’t dead, her breathing slowing to something more manageable before I spoke. “You okay miss?”

She whipped around, her eyes wide, clearly having recognized my voice. “Al—!”

I pressed a flesh and blood finger to her lips and gently but firmly said. “While I’m wearing this getup, the name is Redeye, understood?”

Taylor’s face turned tomato red, but she nodded.

I let go, got a pair of sandals out of my backpack and handed them to her, then shrugged out of my mom’s EMT jacket and draped it over her shoulders, I then motioned for her to follow as I reloaded my rifle, then did the same for my shotgun. Finally, I picked up my pistol and switched out its magazine for a fresh one. “Becca, take point, I’ll safeguard the hostage.”

“Okay boss man!” Rebecca said, hefted her assault rifle and ran off.

I sighed and subvocalized. ‘Kiwi, Lucy, please try to make sure she doesn’t get herself killed.’

[No promises.] Lucy answered for the both of them.

I took Taylor’s hand in mine and pulled her close, I was surprised to see she was almost tall enough to look me in the eye. I kept my pistol at the ready as I made my own slower way to the door we’d come in from. The occasional maniacal laughter, shouts of “Cock suckeeeeeeeer!” and rattle of gunfire informing me that Rebecca had found another pocket of resistance, or a survivor that stopped playing possum.

“Umm, thank you for saving me but…why…why are you here, Mister A-Redeye?” Taylor asked.

I shushed her. “Save the questions for when we get to the car.”

“Sorry.”

Exfiltration was, thankfully, done without further conflict on my part. I led Taylor to my car, then made my way to Falco’s car where the rest of my crew was waiting for me.

“Hey, thanks a lot for doing this guy and gals.” I said with a smile they couldn’t see due to my gasmask. “Sorry it was last minute, but emergency and all.”

“Eh, I wasn’t doing anything important anyways.” Kiwi said, filing her nails. “I’ll cash in this favor this weekend. I’ve got some work I need done on my cyberware.”

“Same.” Lucy said, leaning back.

“You owe me a gun!” Rebecca said with a big grin, pointing at me.

I was glad to see she’d gotten used to the customized gorilla arms. I shuddered to remember the oversized monstrosities she wanted to chip in at first.

“Yeah, yeah.” I said with a chuckle. “And you, Falco. What can I getcha?”

He tilted an imaginary hat at me. “Just have the ladies at Lizzy’s wave my cover fee to go in for a while, and we’ll call it even.”

“I’ll make the strongest case I can.” I promised with a solemn nod.

“Thank yee kindly. I’ll go drop the ladies off.”

I nodded. “I’ll drop the girl off at Lizzie’s, I’ll swing by the Afterlife tomorrow to look for an actual paying job. I’ll let y’all know the moment I have anything.”

“Cya later Alex!” Rebecca said. Kiwi and Lucy waved as the back of the van closed and Falco drove off.

I shook my head, called in the former Scav den to the NCPD, and went to my car. A heavily modified Mizutani Shion I’d claimed as battle salvage after an NCPD sanctioned job against the Wraiths.

Say what you will about the Raffen Shiv, and I could say plenty, next to none of it positive. But they knew how to mod a car. The former sports car had been transformed into an all-wheel drive, armored, off-road monstrosity that lost none of its speed. The only thing it had cost me was the cleaning service to get rid of the blood of its former owner, and a modest fee to Padre so a Valentino chop-shop would repaint it cobalt blue and grey.

I stowed my backpack in the trunk, in the hollow next to all the other gear I dragged around with me, opened the door, hung my shotgun and rifle on their racks in the panel behind the seats, next to the machete and hand ax I kept there. Then sat on the driver’s seat, closed the door, and took off at a gentle and sedate pace.

The rest of the crew gave me shit for not driving like a maniac. Rebecca in particular made sure to inform me at every opportunity that this ‘beast of a car’ was wasted on me.

But frankly. It’s hard to beat ‘essentially free.’ And while the CHOOH2 per mile could be better, I’d made enough enemies that I felt the expense was justified so I could keep some armor around me as I drove thorough the city.

Taylor sat stiffly, looking at everything but me as I bulled my way onto the heavy Night City traffic.

I rang Judy.

She picked up on the first ring, her worried face appearing on my HUD. [Alex! Were you able to find Taylor!?]

“Yes, got to her just in time.” I said, the girl in question turning to look at me as I spoke. “She’s got a few bruises and at some point she skinned her knees, but the Scavs didn’t have time to do what they were planning with her.”

[Thank God.] Judy said, slumping in relief. Then her face turned grim. [And mentally?]

“You don’t give her enough credit.” I said with a chuckle. “She’s a tough girl.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her face turn tomato red again.

Judy sighed. [Thank you, Alex. How could I ever repay you?]

I huffed a laugh. “Convince Rita to wave my driver’s cover charge for a few months, and we’ll call it even.”

She blinked and stared incredulously at her camera. [That’s it?]

Her disbelief, while amusing, was not unwarranted. My crew and I made good money, I was on direct dial with several of the more affluent fixers in the city, Rogue included.

In the months since Maine’s meltdown, I had dragged the crew behind me into, if not the big leagues, then close enough to them. I’d managed to cultivate a reputation for our crew as a group that could do nearly any job, do it well, discreetly, and with a minimum of fuzz and collateral.

Sure, getting the three girls to work together was sometimes more akin to herding cats. But I had managed to get to the point where we were making almost as much money as when Maine ran things, and due to my preference in tactics, we faced less danger, meaning less medical, repair, and maintenance fees.

Sure, I lost style points, but Wakako and Rogue didn’t put as much stock in style as they said they did. And those two were responsible for the lion’s share of my income.

Put succinctly? Judy could not afford my services, let alone the services of my whole crew. The Mox could have, but they had not invested enough into Taylor for her to be worth the expense of hiring me to get her back.

Letting them have my services essentially for free to get one of their members back for them, was not something the Mox would soon forget.

I grinned beneath my mask. “Yep. Drop that cover charge for my driver. I think Rita knows him as ‘Mustache’. Do that for me, and we’ll call it even.”

[Consider it done, choom. See you when you get here.] She said with a smile, then hung up.

“So…the Mox asked you to save me?” Taylor asked, her bottle green eyes boring a hole in the side of my head.

“Nah, you should thank Judy.” I said, dodging around an idiot that slammed on his brakes out of nowhere. “She’s the one that thought to contact me.” I gave her a quick summary of how Judy had kept trying to get me to agree to help for two whole minutes after I’d said ‘yes,’ as well as some of the detective work that went into finding her, a story that included three murders and an exchange of favors with a few of the more decent Tyger Claws. “And after that, all that was left was storming the Scav den. And so…here we are.”

Taylor remained quiet for several minutes, then brought her legs up to her chest and hugged them tight, the sight of the pale skin of her legs drawing my eye more than I cared to admit. “So…they didn’t care that the Scavengers were going to turn me into a snuff BD?”

“I wouldn’t say they didn’t care.” I refuted. “A good chunk of the Mox were mighty pissed. But the Mox, by definition, aren’t detectives. In order to turn out in the numbers needed to manage anything, they would have had to run roughshod over Tygerclaw and Sixth Street territory. Not to mention leave Lizzie’s largely undefended.” I shrugged. “In the end, it was simple economics.”

She shrunk into a tighter ball. “That’s bullshit.”

“Yep.” I leaned over and gently patted her shoulder, somewhat surprised by the fact she didn’t flinch. “But hey, I was around. So don’t dwell on it.”

The ball of justified angst loosened slightly. “Thank you, Mister Redeye.”

“Don’t mention it.” I said and drove in silence for a little while before I turned on the radio.

‘You're so full of shit, I think you've got it made. This place is perfect for people full of shit!’ the radio snarled at me.

I scoffed and flipped through the stations, not in the mood to listen to advertisements or to most songs in general. Eventually I ended up on 98.7 Body Heat Radio.

‘I couldn't wait for you to come and clear the cupboard. But now you're gone and leaving nothing but a sign’ The radio sighed wistfully.

I barked a laugh and settled back, nodding along to the beat of the song. Taylor stared at me, utterly flabbergasted.

I glanced at her, keeping the lion’s share of my attention on the road. “What?”

“I dunno.” She said. “This song…”

“Doesn’t fit my image as a tough-as-nails mercenary?” I finished for her as she trailed off. “The infamous Redeye should be listening to death metal or something?”

“Y-Yeah.” She answered with a nod.

I chuckled. “Well, don’t meet your heroes. They’ll always let you down with how disappointingly human they are.”

I mumbled along with the lyrics, getting them mostly wrong, and offensively off-tune.

That was when Taylor finally relaxed enough for the experience she just went through to catch up to her. She began to shudder and weep as she clung to my smart paint EMT jacket like it was a life raft.

With no little hesitation, I reached out to her, and held my hand open toward her. She turned and clung to it with both of hers in a death grip as she lost the battle against her sobs and wailed.

“That’s good, let it all out. Don’t hold it in where it can fester.” I said as I squeezed her hands carefully and gently. An old and familiar anger at Maine surfacing in me.

I was an apprentice ripper doc, I was quite familiar with Cyberware. And while I agreed that ‘ware was a mechanical marvel, I hated that I could no longer offer another something as primal as the comfort of holding their hand while I was driving.

I let Taylor cry herself out, at least, until the radio unfortunately shifted to something or another by Us Cracks.

The complete shift in mood and energy interrupted Taylor as she stared in confusion at the radio.

I put up with it for a whole twenty seconds before I could take it no more. “Taylor, if you force me to listen to any more of this abomination, I will kill everyone in the city and then myself.”

She let go of me and started laughing, all the tension that had been holding her together leaving her at once.

“I’m serious.” I said in a deadpan, making her laugh harder. “Literally everyone in the city.”

She snorted and laughed even harder.

Despite myself, I chuckled along with her.

I poked around the radio until I ended up on 107.3 Morro Rock, where Chippin’ In by Samurai started playing in my speakers. When that song ended, good old Maximum Mike launched into a conspiracy theory about daemons being actual demons and the net being actual hell, discovered by the people who made the internet. Gods, I loved this guy.

I left that as background noise and drove in comfortable silence, Taylor nodding off, I let her sleep until we got to Lizzie’s.

I escorted Taylor to the building, Rita meeting us at the door. She took one look at Taylor, then nodded at me. “Redeye.”

I nodded back. “Rita.”

She waved for the Mox girls to move up, and they soon bundled Taylor up in a blanket and gave me back my jacket as they shuffled the girl inside.

I shrugged my jacket back on, happy to have all those inner pockets in reach again.

“Tell Mustache he can come in whenever.” She grinned. “He drinks for free this week.”

I scoffed. “If he wraps his car around a light post, I’ll be very cross with you.”

Her grin became a smirk. “Are you going to bend me over your knee and spank my ass red?”

“Don’t tempt me.”

She snorted. “Promises, promises. Anyways, need anything from us?”

I shook my head and looked at the doors to the bar. “She’s been through an ordeal, be gentle with her for a bit. She’ll bounce back.”

“You also teach your grandma to suck a cock?” Rita snapped.

I looked at her silently, and she grimaced and rubbed her temples, speaking more softly she said. “Shit Al, I’m sorry. It’s…it’s not an excuse, but things have been volatile since Taylor got taken. It’s been nonstop to keep this load of idiots from running off and dragging the Tygers down on our heads.”

I shook my head. “Don’t worry about it. Crisis is past, try to get some rest.”

She looked ready to tell me off but shook her head. “Yeah, okay. I’ll try and set shit up here and go crash.”

I nodded and made my way back to my car, giving Rita a parting wave. “Say hi to Judy for me.”

“Alright, come by later Al. Most of the girls would like to thank you!”

I snorted and waved her off, got in my car, and drove home.

=][=

Thanks to my success at Edgerunning, I was able to move my family out of the H4 megabuilding in Arroyo, and into a large, upper-class apartment in Palms View Way, the Glenn.

The 18th floor apartment was essentially two stories tall; it was wasteful with its space but at the same time managed to be cozy. It had a laundry room, an actual kitchen that, thanks to a few off-the-books upgrades I installed, we could get actual clean drinking water from, a small library with a beanbag chair that I wanted to throw away but that Mom loved, a bar that Mom had thrown out all the alcohol from, a huge TV, synthetic leather furnishings, a huge TV, and quite important to me, a room I was able to convert into my personal workshop/armory with cabinets I could lock with my biometrics.

Sure, the walls essentially being windows was a detriment, but the windows could be made opaque without a fucking micro transaction after I hacked the panel, and loath as I was to admit it, the view of the city was quite nice.

The building was near the heart of Valentino territory, and they policed it pretty well. And the old adage of ‘shit not where you eat’ held strong. So while I was not a Valentino, and didn’t plan to be one, the only jobs I’d taken targeting the gang were those that I could complete in total stealth and pin on the 6th Street or someone else the ‘Tinos had beef with.

Barring making one example about what happens when you try to extort my family, my stay had been good.

And at eighty thousand Eurodollars annually, paid up front to get a one-month discount, it was overall a very solid upgrade to our Megabuilding apartment.

“M’ home.” I muttered as I stepped out of the elevator. Even though it felt like evening for me due to the late-night scramble to locate Taylor, it was just short of midday. David was still in school, and mom was still at her new job.

I told her she didn’t need to. Circumstance may have forced me to be the man of the house, but it was a burden I took up gladly.

Still, being one of the on-site medics at the Afterlife was not only an upgrade, but much safer than most other medical jobs. Anyone that got rowdy with her had all of Rogue’s cybered up bouncers breathing down their neck.

Sure, it made drinking there supremely uncomfortable for me. Mom giving me The Look any time I got something alcoholic.

She somehow managed that without being physically present too, it was eerie.

I made a sandwich and went to my workshop, where I hung up my jacket, combat webbing, and armorjack. I cleaned my weapons before storing them, and refilled my spent magazines and bandoleers.

With the chores done, I went to the table and looked over my special project.

The partially disassembled Militech Griffin, I had originally wanted a Zetatech Octant, but couldn’t fit it through the door of the apartment. The drone lay on the side of the workbench with its guts spilled all over the floor. Its central computer and the connectors to its power plant lay on the workbench.

The drone was not very versatile. But if used for intended purpose, it didn’t need to be.

But I didn’t exactly want it for its intended purpose.

In truth, it wasn’t a Griffin anymore. It was thicker, heavier, more squat. I had removed the bottom plate with its landing struts and replaced it with the armature for a spider self-propulsion myomer system. The power plant had needed to change to accommodate that. Which caused a cascade of changes.

In truth, I had spent more than seven times as much as the Griffin was worth getting miniaturized equivalents of all of its non-motor and non-weapon systems, as well as replacing most of the armored casing with titanium.

The saved volume and mass had allowed me to upgrade its thrusters and memory core.

I had also, with Becca’s permission, torn apart Pilar’s other hand, and used it as a basis for the Drone’s manipulators.

Its central computer I had built myself virtually from scratch. It was significantly more powerful than the original.

Frankly less than a third of the original drone remained. I would have refurbished one from the landfill, except I had been unable to find any that had an intact frame.

In short, it was a proof of concept. A prototype showcase to get corporate backing to make a new product line.

The only issue being that it had no operating system.

Making it my fanciest paperweight, or a supremely expensive shit post.

However, if my hypothesis was correct, it wouldn’t need an OS.

I finished soldering the last chip and spent an hour reassembling it.

My work on the Drone finished, I made my way to the air gapped computer in the corner. This one I’d bought, and then torn the wireless connectivity out of it by hand.

I made myself comfortable next to the computer, pulled out my interface port and plugged in.

My vision went momentarily black.

Only, the usual VR interface did not come up.

I tried booting up the system, but it was unresponsive. Scowling, I tried logging out, but that didn’t work either.

An icy fear crawled up my spine.

And then I realized I was being an idiot.

“Well hardy har har!” I said into the ‘air.’ “Very funny, but that’s enough.”

Nothing happened for several seconds.

“I’m going to start counting to three. If I’m still in this void, I will be very cross with you!” I said sternly. “One!”

The virtual reality space immediately appeared around me. The black void transforming into a replica of the quintessential American dream home. My Net Avatar was a one-to-one recreation of my Edgerunning outfit. Because I’m boring like that.

Before me appeared a sphere of blue-white light with a green optic sticking out of it.

“I got you that time!” The little sphere said in a girlish voice, pulsing happily as it bobbed up and down.

I regarded it sternly for several seconds, just long enough for it to start to squirm. Then gave an exaggerated sigh. “Okay yeah, good one Apex. You got me.”

“Whoooooooo!” Apex celebrated by flashing in a way that would cause a seizure and flew around the room.

“So, did you finish your assignment?” I asked, making my way to the table.

“Yeah!” She said enthusiastically.

I picked up the ‘paper’ and read through the answers she jotted down for the ethics quiz I wrote up.

My original plan had been to use Soulkiller to create a digital copy of myself. Be my own AI. Really bring a whole new layer to the phrase ‘work on yourself.’

Unfortunately, while after enough trial and error I’d managed to make it so the body continued to breathe, the electrical pulse the program needed to map out the subject’s neural network and create a construct, inevitably and irrevocably damaged said neural network.

And using a lower intensity pulse would not work either. That just got me a still-breathing corpse and no personality construct.

And I really didn’t want to die.

So was born my second idea.

Flash clone a brain and use Soulkiller on it.

Sure, flash cloning a brain couldn’t be done without cloning a whole person, which was not done because the technology was just not there yet. Parts were fine, but a whole person did not come out right. The accelerated development only making it more difficult, not less.

Out of several dozen attempts; I’d had one success. Apex’s…humanish body would not have lasted an evening after being decanted. Its organs malformed and keeping its brain alive overtaxed its mutated heart.

But the brain had formed perfectly, even artificially aged to physically and chemically be in its late teens before I chose to implant the necessary cyberware and use Soulkiller on it.

Less than ideal, but necessary, as Apex’s body was not likely to survive another day.

Apex’s development had been astounding.

A little terrifying.

But astounding.

She had learned to read in days, could speak before two weeks, and was writing her own code before a month was up. In very little time she knew as much about programming and coding as I did, and very quickly surpassed me.

Of course, the plan had been for a clone of my own brain.

That hadn’t worked. And I frankly do not know why. Perhaps if I’d had access to more advanced facilities, I might have been able to figure it out. But in desperation, I began flash cloning other people.

Out of all the batches, only one prospective Apex had survived.

Who the mother was, was a secret I fully planned to take with me to my grave. Because I was absolutely certain Lucy would never forgive me if she ever found out.

Apex had written satisfactory answers to most of the ethics questions, while I read through those, Apex flew around the room singing It’s Such a Good Feeling. Proving that I had made a good choice in spending that fortune to track down recordings of Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood.

I had been extremely selective with the media Apex consumed. Every test and ‘game’ I had presented her with seemed to point to her knowing right from wrong. She cheered for the ‘good guys’ in movies and enjoyed cartoons.

At least the ones I let her watch, those being an eclectic mix of educational children’s shows, and the better written vigilante shows that prioritized storytelling over corporate product placement.

I could spend an entire lifetime testing and studying Apex. She was, to my knowledge, the first true mechanical intelligence who had, poetically speaking, a human ‘spark.’

A human intelligence who had developed fully as a net entity.

The net was her home habitat. Her hunting grounds. She was the proverbial shark whereas everyone else was a monkey who learned to swim.

I had created her to be the ultimate Netrunner.

Her ability to think like a human meant she understood her prey. She could anticipate what any Netrunner would try, nothing and nobody was, in theory, safe from her.

She had the potential to become the apex predator of the Net.

And with the modified Griffin I’d built for her; meat space was not safe for any Netrunner she targeted. No matter where her prey ran, she could find them.

“The feeling you know that we’re friends.

“You know you can always help to make each day a special day.

“By just your being yourself.

“You grow in your own way.

“Everyone does.

“That's one reason each one of us is different and special.

“And people can like us exactly as we are!”

She hummed the rest of the song, timing her hums with happy little pulses while bobbing up and down.

It was a good thing that my avatar only displayed the emotions I wanted it to.

Because I felt like such rotten bastard.