Chapter Text
The cut was bleeding, but she didn’t care. She had to get them out. If Celine wouldn’t get her a ripper she’d be her own ripper. She shouted and screamed in agony, tears impeding her breathing, but all she felt was her own flesh and blood. The bathroom door shot open and a gasp sounded behind her.
“Oh my god, Rumi,” Celine’s voice hit her like a splash of cold water.
=======
It was eerily quiet backstage. Despite the silence, Rumi still felt the chill of anticipation. Performing on a stage for the whole world to see was bad enough, but a lingering hum at the back of her mind was what truly had her on edge.
Rumi was different from her bandmates. Everyone had cyberware; optics, shard slots, personal links. Rumi though carried with her something she’d never asked for. Something she wished any old ripperdoc could just take from her.
Rumi gently lifted the black hoodie from her body and set it aside on the table and stared at the purple marks humming just below her skin. Faint scars lined the patterns on her left shoulder from where she tried to cut them out herself.
The night lingered in Rumi’s mind and haunted her whenever she saw them. The fear and self-loathing that plagued her when she realized that they couldn’t simply be removed like her other cyberware.
“You’re on in five,” came a crew member's voice with a light tap on her dressing room door.
Mira and Zoey’s laughter rang through the other side of her dressing room wall.
Mira and Zoey were everything to Rumi. Mira always knew exactly what had her down and Zoey always knew exactly how to cheer her up. She always felt her words weren’t enough to thank them, so she always put herself between them and harm’s way. One time she threw herself in front of a cyberpsycho’s mantis blade and Mira’s back, which luckily for her only earned her a cut on the cheek. They never let her hear the end of it, Mira insisting she could’ve handled it, but it was worth it to her.
Rumi had never wanted to die. She wanted to be with Mira and Zoey, see the shine in Zoey’s eyes as she rambled about turtles, or the soft glow behind every one of Mira’s witty jabs and smirks. She was completely infatuated with them, but she was scared of hurting them. She could never let them in, no matter how badly she wanted to. She figured giving her own life to save theirs would spare everyone the pain of her hurting them.
The terror of losing herself and hurting them was enough to keep Rumi up at night. She knew that every other person touched by the rogue AI called Gwi-Ma, the people marked with the strange cyberware that spread purple patterns across the skin, succumbed to some form of cyberpsychosis. She could never let that happen to her.
This fear drove Rumi to hate cyberware. She never let the girls get any more than necessary. As useful as fortified tendons or sandevistans could be when hunting down cyberpsychos, Rumi had a crippling fear of cyberpsychosis, and kept it minimal. She always told them it was because a cyberpsycho killed her mother. That was half the truth.
That same fear was what she swallowed down and tried to push back as she pulled her favorite yellow jacket over her pattern-ridden shoulders and switched into idol mode. She had to project confidence, control.
“Our faults and fears must never be seen,” Celine’s voice echoed through her mind as she touched up her makeup and took deep breaths.
You can do this, she silently told herself, finally stepping through the door.
Mira and Zoey were already there, dressed in their signature outfits. They turned to Rumi, and beamed brighter than they already were.
“Rumi! Took you long enough,” Zoey joked at her with a little elbow nudge. “Ready to go?”
Rumi gave them a confident nod, and they marched towards the stage together.
The crowd roared as the opening beat to “How It’s Done” began to reverberate through the stadium, the intro lines making way for the members of HUNTR/X to show themselves on stage.
Dancing to the rhythm of the song and singing alongside Zoey and Mira was enough to steel Rumi’s nerves and give her the confidence she’s famous for.
As the first song of the night draws to a close and the girls strike their poses, Rumi feels alive.
When the concert finally draws to a close some time later, the girls gather in the elevator. Mira and Zoey are talking excitedly, but Rumi doesn’t catch what they were saying.
She’s somewhere else. Alone. She’s under the tree Celine always took her to. Her mother’s grave sits in front of her.
For a moment, she thinks she hears her mother calling her name, and she holds back a tear.
“Rumi? You okay?”
Rumi snaps back to reality and turns to Mira, relieved to see her.
“Yeah, sorry,” Rumi responded sort of absently. “I just… spaced out, I guess.”
“You’re probably tired,” Zoey points out, her voice grounding Rumi. “Let’s get home, then we can have couch time!”
Mira watches Rumi intently, not an accusing gaze, but one attempting to read her. Rumi notices it and tries to calm herself.
The elevator doors open and Bobby is there, excitedly greeting them and leading them to their AV. Rumi gives him her best smile, but she keeps remembering the scene that played in her mind. She tries not to let it show, but she knows Mira has already noticed.
She doesn’t really hear anything Bobby says as he leads them out.
“Alright girls, here is your chariot,” Bobby called as he opened the AV door for them. “Another amazing show, seriously, you girls are the greatest! Enjoy your break!”
“Bye Bobby!” the girls chimed in unison.
Break? They didn’t often get breaks. Rumi hadn’t heard why they were getting one or how long for, but she wasn’t sure how to feel about it. Less time working means less distraction from everything wrong with her.
She loved flying though. From so high up, the world looked so small to Rumi. It helped calm her, the thought that even this massive city was small grounded her.
The AV ride was smooth as always. Zoey rambled about some black market cyberware she’d been studying. Mira listened with a soft smile and chimed in on occasion to assure Zoey she was listening. Rumi tried to as well but the topic was hard for her and she mostly stared out the window.
Zoey recognized Rumi’s discomfort and stared at her, glancing between her and Mira.
Zoey changed the topic to a nature documentary she’d been interested in seeing. Rumi remembered all the times Zoey had talked about wanting to own an animal sanctuary. So many had been driven from their homes or gone extinct, and she hated that.
When they arrived at the penthouse, the AV landing on their balcony, Rumi excused herself to her bathroom for a shower. Zoey reminded her not to be late for couch time while Mira just nodded, still trying to read Rumi.
The hot water on Rumi’s shoulders stung, but she wanted it to. Part of her thought maybe eventually the hot water would cleanse her. After her showers she used to silently cry when she would look in the mirror and see they’re still there. In recent months she was only numb. Tonight was different. They had spread again.
=======
The shower had finally stopped. Mira could tell because the pipes ran in a wall nearby, and they weren’t humming with the flow of water anymore.
Zoey was fixated on the documentary on the TV. Mira watched but it didn’t have her attention. She was waiting for Rumi to come out, and she was taking too long.
Zoey turned her attention towards Mira as she stood up.
“Where’re you going?” Zoey asked, the look in her eyes causing Mira’s heart to flutter. “Everything okay?”
“I’ll be right back,” Mira replied, avoiding the questions.
Mira could feel Zoey’s eyes following her until she was out of sight.
When she finally reached Rumi’s bathroom, Mira sat quiet, listening through the fan humming in the bathroom. She could swear she heard crying but it was too faint to make out.
“Rumi?” she called softly, knocking on the door.
A small noise of something shifting, and possibly a sharp gasp were all Mira heard for a moment.
“What’s up?”
“You good in there?” Mira gently asked, avoiding questioning the crying she thought she heard.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Rumi’s voice was shaky but clear enough to pass to most people. Not Mira.
“Alright,” Mira replied, not wanting to press Rumi, “just get down here soon, yeah? Zoey’s gonna yap my ear off and I prefer not sitting through that alone.”
Rumi’s chuckle from behind the door warmed Mira’s heart enough to let her smile, but she still worried.
She had always been secretive. Her and Celine wrote it off as modesty. Mira was never fooled. She just refused to push because Rumi and Zoey were the only family she had. She was scared of trying to break down Rumi’s walls because she was scared she’d leave Mira too. Just like her parents did to go live in some dumb space casino.
Rumi wasn’t them. Mira knew that. Rumi always tried to put her and Zoey before herself, to a self-destructive level. Mira had always tried to stop her from doing that, but Rumi never seemed to be able to.
Mira could never quite grasp where that instinct came from. Rumi’s rush to put herself in front of danger for her and Zoey. Like she was willing to die for them, but more than anything they wanted her to live for them. They wanted to be there for her, help her like she helped them.
Mira returned to the living room, still lost in thought and worry, dropping on the couch next to Zoey, who perked up at her return.
“Everything okay?” she asked, noticing the concern in Mira’s face.
“I just, thought I heard her…” Mira’s words caught, causing Zoey to sit up.
“Crying?” Zoey finished her sentence in a knowing tone.
“Have you..?”
“Yeah. It’s been a while though since I last heard her. Didn’t know what to do or if I should say something but, it really hurt hearing her like that, choking it down so we wouldn’t hear. I didn’t say anything to her and she acted like she was fine after, but I knew she wasn’t, so I made her ramyeon and put on her favorite movie.”
“When was that?”
“After the NC show, remember? The one in the stadium in Pacifica.”
“The one where some old junkie climbed on stage and called us ‘corpo whores’ and told us we’d never be, what was it, that old 2000s band? Shinobi or something?”
Zoey laughed at the memory, and Mira was lost in her laugh and the shine in her eyes. For a moment she forgot there was anything to worry about. Only a moment though.
“Yeah. Yeah…” Zoey’s voice trailed, mind returning to the topic at hand. “That was the last time I heard her cry. I never figured out what happened but if something is getting to her again, I wanna figure it out. Should we talk to her?”
“I don’t know. I tried to ask her if she was okay but didn’t tell her I heard her. Wasn’t even fully sure if she was,” Mira turned to look at Zoey head on. “I’m really worried about her, Zo.”
The two locked eyes for a few seconds, neither sure what to say or do next, simply finding comfort in each others’ gazes. After a moment that felt eternal while they lived it, and far too short after its passing, Mira saw Zoey’s eyes light up orange as she herself saw a pop-up in her view as her ringtone played. Celine was calling both of them, and Rumi too.
“Hello girls,” Celine’s voice came through, warm enough to feel caring but smothered in exhaustion.
“Hi Celine,” all three of them chimed in unison.
“How was the show? I know you girls are starting your week vacation now, but officially that starts tomorrow. Right now I need you in the office, it’s urgent.”
“What? Why? Can’t Bobby take care of it?” Zoey’s whine hurt something in Mira, she wanted to fight Celine just for upsetting Zoey.
“No. It involves GWIMA.”
“We’ll be over right away,” Rumi said without hesitating.
Mira hated the way Rumi talked to Celine more like a commander than a mother, despite the fact Celine had raised her in place of her birth mother. It pained her seeing Rumi fall to the other end of the spectrum she had with her own parents. Mira fought hers at every turn. Rumi fell in line with whatever Celine told her to do. Zoey got along with hers fine, but that just made their divorce harder on her.
“What she said,” Mira replied, with her best poker face on.
The call ended.
Zoey pouted at having to get up. “So much for couch.”
=======
AV trips never failed to excite Zoey. She’d grown up in Night City, always watching them fly overhead. She’d always dreamed of the views. Here in Seoul she’d now been riding in them for years, and she still couldn’t get over it. Even while she talked to her bandmates she was always glancing out the window.
The sights she always remembered were the Kiroshi building with its giant eye-like logo, the hospital and all its plants lit by fairy lights, and the one part she hated, the GWIMA HQ and its ugly neon pink logo. Zoey didn’t even know what it was supposed to be. It looked like a jack-o-lantern’s mouth, or a really wide flame or something.
She couldn’t fathom why anyone would work for them. Then again, most people didn’t know it was secretly run by a crazy evil AI that murdered its own creators. To them they just made implants and weapons or whatever. That and shitty music, usually some Elvis impersonator.
The ride to the Sunlight building was short, and the AV parked itself in the building’s AV hangar. Rumi took the lead walking to Celine’s office. Zoey worried if Rumi had been crying, that she’d done too well covering herself, because not a single thing Zoey could see in her betrayed her emotional state.
As they walked, Zoey waved back at various employees that waved excitedly at the girls’ arrival. She loved making fans happy. Mira and Rumi gave simple smiles and nods.
They stopped in the hall outside Celine’s office so the scanners could ID them, and the black doors slid open. Celine’s office always gave Zoey a weird vibe. She could never shake the feeling she was somewhere she didn’t belong.
Celine’s tired voice welcomed them in. “Hello girls. Take a seat please.”
“What’s up Celine, why is this so urgent?” Mira asked, turning the seat around and sitting to lean on the chair’s back.
“You’ll see. The shards on my desk, plug them in,” she responded, gesturing towards little shard cases spread so each of the girls could reach them from their seats. “These were extracted from an illegal braindance smuggled from a show in NC. GWIMA employees snatched it up first, but I paid a mole to sneak what info he could from it.”
The girls slotted in the shards, and saw a series of photos from the BD.
Some kind of boyband performance, a really bright and cheesy looking one. Zoey caught herself looking at the one with the too-long bangs too often. Then she hit a realization. In one of the photos the boys’ eyes caught the lights with a yellow gleam. Rumi had noticed too, and she spoke first.
“Cultists?”
“They’re a new band hired by GWIMA called the Saja Boys,” Celine replied. “At first I dismissed it as another effort to draw in funding. Then I heard the song.”
Celine’s eyes lit as she sent a signal to the room’s speakers. A cheesy pop song about soda. At first Zoey assumed the lyrics were meant to be sexual innuendo, but then she thought of the glint in their eyes.
“It’s a song about Gwi-Ma,” she blurted out. “Do you guys remember those old myths about demons eating souls? That’s what this is, that’s what Gwi-Ma does, right?”
“The old ‘soulkiller’ program Arasaka left behind when it collapsed, yes,” Celine replied, not looking directly at Zoey. “They appear to be singing from the perspective of their master.”
“So what is this boyband’s goal?” Rumi asked, bringing the conversation back to the shards. “And we can’t be completely sure until we see the implants that Gwi-Ma controls them with. What are they even doing?”
“They’re cyberpsychos, Rumi,” Mira tilted her head to face her bandmate. “What does every crazy little cultist of Gwi-Ma’s do?”
“So they’re going after the people of Night City now?”
“I’ve long suspected soulkiller never left NC,” Celine answered. “I’ve been digging for a long time, and I discovered that Arasaka Tower was where the Mikoshi labs were. I figured the founder of GWIMA had downloaded it and taken it somewhere else after the Night City Holocaust, but the more I think about it, the memorial site is the perfect cover.”
“Because the ruins are inaccessible,” Zoey interrupted. “No one’s allowed down there for the sake of safety, right? It’s so obvious!”
“So, what, we kill NC’s new boy group, sneak into the heart of the city so we can delete Gwi-Ma, and fly out like nothing happened?” Mira narrated the idea sarcastically, pulling her phone out of her pocket.
“It isn’t going to be easy, that’s for sure,” Rumi’s eyes lit up to view the shard again. “There’s some metallic lining on their arms, probably concealed weapons. I know GWIMA loves their mantis blades.”
Mira put her phone away again and turned to face Celine. “Kicking cyberpsycho ass is one thing, I’m always down, but I just looked these guys up, Celine this is THE most popular thing happening in NC right now, we can’t just kick their shit in and walk away.”
“Night City is full of crazy gangs,” Zoey chimed in. “I mean, Maelstrom is like, Gwi-Ma’s cult but more obsessed with body modification, and without the soulkilling stuff. And they like to be loud and proud about it too. And there’s the scavs, they love cutting people open for parts, the freaks.”
“So, what, we pin it on one of the gangs?” Rumi asked, slight concern in her voice.
“Not directly, no, I’m just saying NC is dangerous, and if we just, y’know, cover our tracks, everyone’ll assume some other cyberpsychos got 'em or something.”
Mira raised an eyebrow, thinking through Zoey’s logic. “Not a bad idea, Zo, but first we need to get them alone, then we need to figure out how to get inside the NCH memorial.”
“Mira’s right, but first things first we need to get to NC,” Rumi stood up and removed the shard. “Sorry girls, vacation is cancelled. This boyband is probably already kidnapping victims for Gwi-Ma, we need to move.”
Mira and Zoey sighed simultaneously.
“She’s right,” Mira added, “we have to move out. What’s our cover, are we releasing the song?”
“Yeah, I’m gonna launch ‘Golden'. First performance, Night City.”
“I’ll book us a nice suite in Heywood,” Zoey said, already pulling out her phone to scroll through hotels.
“Good luck, girls, call me if you need anything,” Celine called as they walked out, turning in her chair to look out the window behind her desk.
They returned to the AV, once again waving and nodding at the excited employees.
When the girls got back to the penthouse, they began packing for the trip to NC. Mira quietly got to work and Rumi shut herself in her room. Zoey started packing, but couldn’t stop worrying about Rumi.
She padded over and stood in front of Rumi’s door for a moment, but something stopped her from knocking. She decided to talk to Mira instead.
Zoey shuffled up to Mira’s room, her door ajar. “Mira?”
Zoey’s gentle calling of her name got Mira’s attention immediately. “What’s wrong, Zo?”
“I’m really worried about her…”
Mira walked over to Zoey and took her hands in her own. “I know. Me too. Her giving up vacation so fast, even if justified, rubbed me wrong. I hate seeing her do that. Pushing down everything so she doesn’t have to worry about it.”
“I just, I want her to be okay…”
Mira could tell Zoey was about to cry, and pulled her into a gentle but tight hug. “Me too, Zo.”
She gently planted a kiss on Zoey’s forehead, and for a gentle moment Zoey felt safe in Mira’s arms.
=======
The flight had gone smoothly. Bobby was less than thrilled at having to book a venue for the Golden release on such short notice but he didn’t really mind. He had just been excited they were ready to release a new song.
The girls had settled into the penthouse they’d rented and given themselves enough time to rest before beginning rehearsals and hunting down the Saja Boys.
Rumi sat alone in her room, staring out the window at the city center. She kept thinking about the tree, and her mother.
Suddenly she heard a knock on her door. Quick, rapid burst, but gentle. Zoey.
“Yeah?”
“Come watch this documentary with us, unnie! Please?”
Rumi couldn’t resist Zoey’s plea. She got up and opened the door with a soft smile. Zoey gasped and jumped, wrapping Rumi in a tight hug.
“It’s about sharks!” she proclaimed excitedly, dragging Rumi by her hand to the couch, where Mira was sitting and scrolling through her phone.
Rumi sat next to Mira, and Zoey held onto Rumi, resting her head on her shoulder. Rumi’s heart fluttered, and she brought a hand up to gently stroke the maknae’s hair.
Zoey’s running commentary on the documentary had more of Rumi’s attention than the narrator did. She loved hearing Zoey talk. Mira would make a witty remark here and there to mess with Zoey and throw her off, and Rumi let herself laugh at the two.
Eventually the girls drifted into a nap, and Rumi awoke to find herself nestled alongside Mira, one of her arms around the taller woman’s waist. She felt Zoey snoring on her thigh, her slender arms wrapped around her legs.
Rumi felt herself turning red, but didn’t dare move, especially once she realized her head was on Mira’s chest. She turned redder still when she heard tapping sounds and realized Mira was awake and on her phone.
“Don’t move. If you wake Zoey I’ll put you to sleep for good.” Mira’s voice was low, but non-threatening despite the words.
Rumi shifted her gaze to Mira’s face, and saw her glance down at her with a grin.
“Nice pillow, huh?”
Rumi worried if she turned any redder she’d explode. What had she meant by that? Did she like Rumi and Zoey cuddling on her like that? She hadn’t brushed them off. Hadn’t brushed Rumi off her chest.
Mira’s grin widened, knowing Rumi’s mind was racing and seeing Rumi’s red face in the early dawn light.
Rumi instinctively tried to hide her face, realizing too late the only place to hide from here was to bury her face in Mira’s chest.
Mira chuckled. “I daresay that might be your new favorite pillow.”
“Shut up,” Rumi squeaked.
Mira put her phone down and began stroking Rumi’s hair, gently brushing the strands beside her braid. Something in Rumi relaxed, the thumping of Mira’s heart and the rising and falling of her breathing with Zoey gently holding onto her legs made her feel safe. Like nothing else mattered, and she drifted back to sleep.
This time she awoke with her head on Zoey’s lap, some cartoon playing on the TV and the smell of ramyeon filling the air. Rumi shot upright, feeling herself turn red again.
“Morning, Rumi!” Zoey gave her a big smile. She had one of her notebooks in hand, and was writing away.
“Which pillow’d you like more, my tits or Zoey’s thighs?” Mira’s teasing voice called from the kitchen.
Rumi froze in place, unsure of what to do or how to process what had happened.
“You can say hers, it’s okay,” Zoey teased. “That’s my favorite too. No offense to your thighs, of course.”
Rumi groaned as she buried her face in her hands.
Mira walked over and set three bowls of ramyeon on the coffee table, and sat herself next to Rumi.
“Rumi,” Mira gently placed a hand on her lap, and she slightly flinched at the touch. “We don’t know what’s been getting to you lately, but we’re here for you.”
“Yeah, Ru. We just want you to open up to us.”
Rumi slowly took her hands off her face and reached for the bowl closest to her.
“I’m sorry if, I dunno, I’ve been, distant? I just-“
“Don’t worry about it,” Zoey gently wrapped her arms around Rumi’s bicep. “You don’t owe us apologies. We just want you to be okay.”
“I…” Rumi thought long and hard about their words. She wanted so badly to tell them everything. The implants driving her mad, her fear of hurting them, losing herself, of how they ended up writhing through her skin, but she couldn’t bear the idea they’d hate her, or the grief she would cause.
She had to fix this herself, alone. She just didn’t know how. Maybe if they found Mikoshi, she thought. “I’ll be okay,” she lied. Half a lie, she hoped. “We just need to get through this. Once it’s all over, I promise you’ll never have to worry about me so much anymore.”
Mira looked at her with concern, which made Rumi feel like she’d said something wrong. “We worry because we care about you. We’ll always worry about you. We love you, Rumi.”
“I-“ Rumi’s reply was cut short by a ringtone and the girls’ eyes shining orange. Rumi felt immense guilt at realizing she was relieved to not have to talk more.
Celine’s voice was just as exhausted as before but more awake and urgent than she was the other night. “Girls, a drone of mine caught sight of the Saja Boys. They’re preparing to send two of them out to capture victims for Gwi-Ma. Sending you the coordinates, stop them before they move out.”
“Yes, Celine,” they rang in unison.
Mira turned to Rumi. “We’ll continue this talk later, okay?”
Rumi gave her a small nod, and they went their separate ways to ready themselves for battle.
The drive wasn’t too long. They parked themselves a block away to give themselves cover to approach. The target building was a shady old warehouse covered in Maelstrom graffiti, and a sign atop the building read “ALL FOODS” in red text on a yellow backdrop.
The girls quietly made their way around the building til they found a spot to climb up to the roof. At the top, they found a large skylight, and carefully poked their heads over to look inside.
A handsome black-haired man stood flanked by a tall muscular red-haired man and a shorter one with silvery bangs. Saja Boys, Rumi recognized them from the shard. Only three of the five however. Rumi worried they were too late.
The black-haired one seemed to be in a heated argument. Rumi noticed a slightly unaligned pane in the skylight and gently shifted it so she could hear the conversation, as a tall bald man missing the upper half of his face stepped in to puff his chest at the Saja Boy.
His voice rang out, metallic and gravelly. “I don’t remember you tellin’ me what exactly this Gwi-Ma has to offer us, prettyboy.”
The black-haired Saja Boy answered in a cool but impatient tone. “We have already paid you some, have we not? We have taken care of Brick, just as you wanted. You owe us, Royce.”
The bald man called Royce turned around, glowing red lights shining from the crater where his eyes would have been. He appeared to be muttering something to others just out of Rumi’s view.
“Always hated these freaks,” Zoey whispered. “All chrome and no brain. Had a friend who lost a cousin to a bunch of these crazies. Never know what to expect with them.”
“Alright, pipsqueak,” Royce’s voice rang out again. “My boys and I, we think we got something you’d like.”
Royce moved toward the Saja Boys with a case in hand, but instead of opening the case, he swiftly pulled a gun and shot the black-haired one. The shot was aimed for his heart, but he reacted fast enough that it missed it. He staggered back, blood dripping from his pink shirt.
“We might not need to worry about them after all,” Mira muttered, mildly entertained. “Cyberpsycho vs cyberpsycho, always a fun watch.”
Royce moved to put the gun to the Saja Boy’s head, but he moved like a blur, breaking Royce’s arm as his gun dropped to the floor.
Suddenly the warehouse erupted in gunfire, but the Saja Boys were just streaks of color as they darted around, two of them cutting through goons with mantis blades, the other pummeling them with gorilla arms.
Zoey’s jaw dropped as she watched them work. “Holy shit.”
“Nevermind. Definite problem,” Mira replied, attempting to hold a calm face. Her fear shone through anyway.
Rumi remained fixed on the Saja Boys, using her Kiroshi scanners to attempt to identify their cyberware. Subdermal armor, sandevistans, and an error about outdated cyberware her optics didn’t recognize. Gwi-Ma’s implants.
When they finished with the goons, the Saja Boys returned to Royce. The large one with gorilla arms pulled him into a rear naked choke while the black-haired one stood in front of him.
He muttered something to him Rumi couldn’t hear from where she was, and then planted a mantis blade in his stomach, leaving Royce dead on the floor.
“Now’s our chance,” Rumi said with a nod.
The girls jumped through the skylight and landed with graceful rolls and drew their weapons.
“Well, I figured you three would show up sooner or later,” the black-haired one said with a pained grin, clutching the bullet wound in his chest.
Rumi gripped her humming blade and stared him down. “Whatever Gwi-Ma’s up to, we’re putting an end to it.”
Zoey hurled her throwing knives at one Saja Boy while Mira swung her polearm at the other, its thermal blade hissing as it barely caught his shirt.
Rumi lunged her own glowing blade at the one in front of her, and he ducked and swung his mantis blades back. His eyes lit up as he called someone
“Intruders! They’ve killed Royce! We’re coming, we need rides out of here!” he shouted with a grin.
“Shit,” Mira shouted, ducking and weaving the punches of the red-haired Saja Boy.
The Saja Boys turned and began running, each taking separate paths. Mira and Zoey chased the other two while Rumi went after the black-haired one.
His strength was faltering from the blood loss, and Rumi took advantage of it by uploading a cripple movement quickhack. He noticed the attempt and turned to swing his mantis blades at her. She blocked with her sword, but the distraction caused the upload to fail.
She braced herself and struck back, putting him in the defensive. This time she focused and hit him with a cyberware malfunction hack, and he couldn’t break it in time, and his eyes began flashing yellow and his mantis blades began twitching and she got an opening. She chopped one of his arms off and kicked him, and he crashed to the floor.
He shouted, but recuperated and swung his other blade at her, tearing a hole in her jacket. Rumi yelped at the cut and braced for a follow up attack, but paused when she heard him gasp.
She looked at her arm, and realized she was exposed. The patterns that denoted the implant that had been driving her mad.
“You have them too? But, why-” He was interrupted when she pointed her blade at his throat. “Woah, slow down. We can talk about this. I didn’t know you were one of us.”
“I’m not one of you,” Rumi growled through gritted teeth.
“Really?” His skin shifted, patterns just like her own showing themselves across his skin, down his arms to his hands and up across his face. “What are those, then?”
His flesh sizzled as Rumi pressed the burning tip to his skin. “A mistake.”
“How come?”
“Not your business.”
He smirked. “Is it your friends’ business?”
She faltered. “What?”
Suddenly he moved with a blur and batted her sword aside with his mantis blade. Rumi gasped and stumbled back. He grabbed her wrist and his patterns lit up a bright violet, and suddenly her own patterns reached out to her hand, as if trying to meet his.
She broke his grip and pulled her arm free, looking at her hand in horror. Her own patterns were glowing now, and she had no idea what it meant or what to do. She looked at him, and was overcome with rage at the smirk on his face.
“What did you do?!” she shouted.
But she didn’t wait for a response. She grabbed her sword and shoved it through his chest. He just laughed.
He blinked down at the sword burning through his chest, and looked back up at her, then over her shoulder.
Rumi didn’t notice. She was tunnel visioned on killing him, it was the only thing she wanted at that moment. She ripped the blade out of him, and kicked him to the floor.
She heard a click behind her. The sound of a revolver being cocked. She whipped around, but too slow.
A shot rang out, her vision turned to static, and everything went dark.