Chương 194: Chapter 185 - Agreement

I took a moment inside the room before I opened the door. One deep, deliberate breath all the way down to where the ribs started complaining about it—so not all too deep whatsoever. But good enough. The katana sheath was in my left hand, the weight of it settled evenly against my palm. I looked at the door for a brief second, then I opened it and stepped out into the hallway.

Three faces snapped up from the far end of the hall simultaneously, with the unified speed of people who had been waiting in an eager anticipation for exactly this thing to occur. Higgins, Reina, Kaito—all of them carrying variations of the same expression, which was a compound of despondent, wary and something that definitely had some anger in it—some grief was in there as well, somewhere. It was a thoroughly complicated expression to try to decipher from a distance.

Their eyes dropped to the sheath in my hand one after another. Higgins moved first, pushing off the wall with the crutch, Reina and Kaito falling into step behind him immediately. He was already composing something on his face—the careful, prepared expression of a man who had spent the last hour rehearsing a conversation he hadn't ever wanted to have and had decided to get through it with as much dignity as possible. I made a decision, right then and there.

Possibly the only genuinely good one, as far as I could tell, I'd made in the entire preceding twenty-four hours—if not longer. I stopped walking, shifted the sheath to my right hand, and bowed. Not a mere nod. Not a shallow, social acknowledgement that passed for a bow in contexts where nobody actually meant it.

A full, deep bow—as far as my cracked ribs would allow, which was further than they wanted to go and I went there anyway, holding it for several seconds, eyes down, the posture communicating clearly that this was not a perfunctory gesture—but also not one of condolences or grief. [Cultural Savant] was carefully guiding my exact posture to express the exact thing I was trying to convey: Sincerity and regret. Dead silence followed.

I could feel it from five meters away—the complete, absolute stop of three people who had been in motion and were no longer in motion, who had been preparing for one kind of moment and had just been handed an entirely different one. I spoke into the silence, in Nighon, keeping my voice even and my eyes down.

"{I owe all three of you an apology… I speak Nighon. I have spoken it since before we met at the OPN. I kept it from you deliberately, when we first met, for my own safety—I didn't know any of you yet, and the information advantage felt like something worth holding onto until I had a better read on who I was working with. I'd imagine you can understand that very well, given that you made no attempts to include me in all of your conversations either when you still suspected I did not speak it..}" I stayed in the bow as I spoke.

"{That part I can justify. What I cannot, however, is not telling you before I was in the room when you discussed your finances and your plans for going forward. I should have said something before that conversation happened, or at minimum given you the choice of whether to continue it with me present. I did neither. That was very wrong, and I am sincerely sorry for it.}" I let it sit for a few seconds, the apology in the air between us with nowhere to go yet.

Higgins drew a breath—I could hear it, the careful intake of someone about to respond, with the same kind of care given to the exact depth of their breath as I was doing—and I straightened up and looked at all three of them before he could get the first word out.

"{I am glad I was there for it, though,}" I said, and watched the three expressions recalibrate simultaneously at the shift in register.

"{It made several things clear to me that I needed to be clear on. And it helped me make a decision about Takeda-san's request.}" The flinch moved through all three of them at the same time, Higgins' face doing something complicated and specific that he mostly managed to contain, Reina going very still, Kaito's jaw setting hard. I held up a hand immediately, before they could get any false ideas.

"{He's alive. He's fine—relative to everything else, anyway. I refused his request.}" I paused for a second, considering if I should be honest—but given what it was that I was trying to do here, the answer was already a given, so I added, "{For the time being. We made a… different arrangement, the contents of which are his to share if he chooses to. But he's not going anywhere today. Not at my hands.}" The relief that moved through the corridor was downright physical in nature.

Higgins' shoulders dropped a fraction of an inch, which on Higgins was the equivalent of a full-on collapse. Reina exhaled long and heavy through her nose as the most miniscule smile blossomed on her face, her good hand loosening from the fist it had apparently been making at her side. Kaito closed his eyes briefly, then opened them as his jaw unclenched. The four of us stood in the corridor for a moment, everyone processing their respective versions of the last several hours in whatever order worked for them.

Then, surprisingly enough, Reina spoke up first, "{Honestly?}" We all looked at her.

"{That's kind of on us, too.}" She said it with the flat, direct delivery she gave everything, like the statement was self-evident and she was simply doing the service of making it verbal.

"{Nobody even asked you. We just—}" She made a brief, dismissive gesture with her good hand.

"{— assumed. Based on nothing, really. Based on what you look like, basically. Which isn't exactly a rigorous methodology by any standards. Much less one for keeping important things a secret.}" I blinked at the group, slowly. Of all the directions I'd expected this to go, Reina being the first one to speak in my defense had not made the list. Not the top of it, anyway.

"{She's… not wrong,}" Kaito admitted with a visibly heavy heart, after a moment. His voice carried the particular dryness of someone who had evaluated the situation from multiple angles and arrived at the same conclusion from all of them.

"{We made an assumption about your background based on aesthetic indicators. That's… a failure of our own assessment process, not just your own omission.}" Higgins looked at the two of them, then at me. Something in his expression had shifted during the exchange—the prepared, careful composure he'd been carrying down the hall had been replaced by something more genuine and less managed, the face of a man who had been ready for one conversation and was having a different, far, far, far easier one instead.

"{I accept the apology,}" he said, with the measured deliberateness of someone who meant it and wanted that to be clear.

"{The circumstances were what they were. You made a call at the beginning, and the right moment to walk it back didn't exactly present itself before things went sideways in a significant way. I would have preferred to know. But I understand the logic that kept it quiet… To a degree. But again, I accept your apology.}""{Learning opportunity,}" Kaito said, with the inflection of someone identifying a category rather than making a joke.

"{For everyone involved.}" A short pause followed his words, and I nodded—happy to take the "we're both at fault" that I hadn't been expecting to get. All eyes were now on Higgins.

"{For everyone involved,}" Higgins ultimately agreed after a few more seconds of deliberation, and something in the lines of his face eased further, the last of the rehearsed tension finally releasing. He looked at me for a moment with the evaluating attention of someone updating a file.

"{How long have you spoken it?}""{Long enough that it's very comfortable,}" I answered. Which was fairly accurate, and also comfortably vague, and Higgins appeared to decide it was sufficient enough.

"{The eavesdropping on the finances,}" Reina said, with the directness of someone who had accepted the general apology and was now doing the practical accounting.

"{What did you actually take from that conversation?}" It was a fair question. A very Reina question, too.

"{That the plan as it stands is… optimistic, to say the least,}" I said carefully. I had just gotten back in with them, I was not about to blow that up by being my typical asshole-self without explicit permission. I glanced at the sheath in my hand, then back up.

"{Which brings me to the other thing. Takeda-san's arrangement with me involves this.}" I held it up slightly.

"{He's given it to me. I won't pretend I didn't want it, because I did. But the conditions attached to it include being considerably more invested in what happens to this crew than a single-gig contractor has any particular obligation—or right—to be.}" The three of them looked at the sheath for a moment, then at each other, in the specific way of people conducting a rapid, silent conversation through expression alone.

"{Are you saying you want in?}" Higgins asked, and the question carefully posed.

"{I'm saying I'm already in,}" I countered, meeting his gaze directly.

"{I've been in since somebody fucked up the recon on this gig, probably. I'm just making it explicit, here.}" Another look between the three of them.

"{The Nighon thing,}" Higgins said.

"{Going forward—just speak it. If you know it, use it.}" It wasn't phrased as a question or a request. More like an adjustment to the operational parameters, delivered in the tone of someone updating a standing order.

"{Noted,}" I nodded, then tilted my head slightly and added, with what I was aware was probably not the most ideal timing, "{Does that apply to other languages as well…?}" The corridor went very quiet and still. Three sets of eyes landed on me with the unified attention of people who had just been handed a new piece of information and were rapidly revising the size of the thing they'd been dealing with.' That may have been a touch too much, too early, Ela...'

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"{How many languages do you speak, exactly?}" Reina asked, and the suspicion in her voice was definitely present and deliberate—she wasn't trying to keep it out, which meant she'd decided she wanted me to know it was there.

"{More than two,}" I said, keeping it vague with the specific vagueness of someone who had made a conscious decision about how much to volunteer.

"{Enough to get by in most situations around the city.}" [Polyglot] was relevant context here, but the full scope of it wasn't something I was ready to put on the table—there was a meaningful difference between being honest about speaking multiple languages and revealing that I was effectively a walking translation service with near-universal coverage.

"{I'm just trying to figure out the protocol going forward. Whether I should be presenting as more like you when we're out—common and Nighon, nothing else visible—or whether I should be upfront about the other languages and act as a public translator when it comes up.}" The three of them shared a look. It was, I noted with genuine and slightly irritated admiration, the one language that [Polyglot] had entirely failed to cover, apparently.

Whatever complete and fluent communication was passing between Higgins, Reina and Kaito in that half-second of eye contact, I was getting none of it. Higgins turned back to me and exhaled—the specific exhale of a man recalibrating his worldview for what felt like the fourth time in an hour—and shook his head.

"{Like us, for now. Common and Nighon, that's what you show. If you pick up something relevant in another language, flag it to us over comms and I'll handle it from there.}" He held my gaze.

"{I'm still the Face. That doesn't change.}""{Perfect,}" I said, and meant it completely and without any reservation. I had absolutely zero interest in being the Face for anything. The entire appeal of staying in the background was the staying in the background part—low profile, low visibility, not the person anyone was looking at—or for—directly. Which was, admittedly, a preference that the foyer incident had likely done some significant damage to.

That particular ship had probably sailed somewhere around the time I'd put an [Anima Razor] through both walls of a residential building and rearranged the structural layout of the front entrance. But that was a problem for future-Ela to deal with, that would definitely not come to bite me in the ass in any real capacity… Surely.' And not exactly anything I can change right now anyway,' I added drily, in the hopes that future-Ela would look back on this moment and give some leniency to past-Ela's exploits.

Finally, however, Higgins looked at me for a long moment with the expression he got when he was running a full assessment and had decided you were worth the thoroughness. Then something settled in his face that I hadn't seen on it since before the gig had gone sideways—something that sat closer to the Higgins from the OPN bar than the Higgins from the last twelve hours: Confidence.

"{We should go back in,}" he said.

"{All of us. I imagine Takeda-san has some things to say about all of this.}""{He seemed to be looking forward to it,}" I offered with a nod. Higgins raised an eyebrow at my tone.

"{He was laughing, when I left,}" I clarified.

"{Of fucking course he was. The stupid blank,}" Kaito said, with the flat certainty of someone who had known Takeda long enough to find this entirely unsurprising. Reina said nothing, but the corner of her mouth did something that was not quite a smile and was not quite not one either.

We turned and went back down the corridor toward the room, Higgins on the crutch setting the pace, the four of us moving with the slightly battered, slightly recalibrated cohesion of a crew that had just updated several of its operating assumptions simultaneously and was still integrating the results. The sheath of the katana was warm in my hand and I kept a tight hold of it.' Not the worst haul, all things considered.' We filed back into the room.

Takeda looked up as we entered and his eyes did a quick, searching sweep of the group. Whatever he found in our expressions seemed to satisfy him, because he settled back slightly against the headboard without comment. The conversation that followed was different from the one before it—less fraught with emotion and far more practical. Higgins steered, naturally, the Face instinct reasserting itself even from a chair beside a Ripper's bed with a crutch leaned against the wall.

I participated from the outer edge of it, which was where I'd positioned myself both literally and in terms of contribution, and when there was a natural opening—which there actually was for once! —I put my piece on the table.

"{I'm willing to help with what you need,}" I said diplomatically.

"{Runner gigs, light muscle when it's actually light, translation work around the city when it comes up. That kind of thing. I'll keep you updated with my capabilities as I make progress on my end of things.}" Reina and Kaito both looked at me with the specific, thoroughly skeptical expression of people who had been inside the foyer when it had all gone down and were finding the characterization of my capabilities somewhat conservative. I held my ground.

"{That was a one-time exception,}" I clarified, before either of them could build a case around it.

"{It is not something I can reproduce on demand and it is not something I'm willing to be counted on for. What happened in that foyer was pure desperation and a last-minute gamble that somehow worked out, not a reliable toolkit I'm selling.}" The skepticism didn't fully vacate either face, but neither of them pushed it. Which was, given what they'd seen, a reasonable exercise of professional restraint on their part.

"{Also,}" I added, "{I still expect to be paid. For what I've already contributed on this gig, and for anything going forward. I like all of you reasonably well at this point, but I have equipment to replace and my own overhead to manage.}" I glanced at my jacket, thought briefly of the Combo Kit, of the things the evening had cost in pure material terms.

"{The kit I used on Takeda-san, Reina and Kaito needs restocking at minimum. I'm not running on pure sentiment alone, here.}""{Fair,}" Higgins said, without hesitation. He shifted on the chair, the crutch shifting slightly with him.

"{Here's what I propose, then: If we find a gig that benefits from your particular set of skills, I'll send you an information package. You look it over and you accept or you don't. No obligation to commit, no pressure to drop whatever you're doing and join or anything. Just a package and a simple yes or no.}""{That works for me,}" I said. It was simple, clean and, most importantly, low-friction. The exact kind of arrangement I could actually maintain without it becoming a whole thing—perfect! I took a breath.

"{There's one more thing.}" Everyone in the room gave me their attention.

"{What happened in the foyer,}" I said, keeping my voice level, "{does not get talked about. To anyone. I'm saying this for your benefit, more so than my own. Trust me on this, please.}" I watched their faces and waited for the pushback… that didn't come. All four of them—Higgins, Reina, Kaito, and Takeda from the bed—agreed with a speed and unanimity that was, frankly, extremely suspicious.

I must have let my surprise and confusion at their reactions show, because Reina shifted her weight and shrugged with the economy of someone clearing up a misunderstanding they found mildly tedious.

"{Corpo Scion with Blacksite Cybernetics,}" she said flatly.

"{That's what we've got you logged as, at this point. You think we're going to go around talking about Blacksite tech we stumbled across on a gig that we officially messed up?}" She raised an eyebrow.

"{We're not complete blanks, Ela-san. We know what happens when people talk about that kind of thing. You don't need to tell us twice.}" I opened my mouth—then closed it again. The thing was—she wasn't exactly wrong in phrasing it like that. A Corpo Blacksite project was, in practical terms, the single most universally understood reason in Neo Avalis to keep your mouth shut about something. It required absolutely no explanation, no elaboration, no complicated justification.

Even the most comprehensively uninformed blank on any layer of the city had the instinctive and well-founded understanding that you did not discuss Blacksite technology you had encountered, because the Corpos would find out, and the Corpos would zero you for it, and that would be the end of the story—no exceptions, no appeals.

Which was, when I looked at it directly, functionally identical to the actual reason I needed them to stay quiet, as far as I could tell—just without any of the complicated, time-consuming, deeply inconvenient explanations about Anima and things that had no business existing in a cyberpunk city and yet here we all were. I sighed.

"{Fine,}" I said, and nodded once.

"{Works for me.}" The conversation wound down through its last few items quickly. Higgins mentioned equipment—specifically whether I had contacts for the kind of kit I'd been running, and the surprise I felt lasted approximately half a heartbeat before I remembered that I was looking at a crew where Pseudo-Tier 1 was somehow not yet the baseline. The gear gap between us was very real and they'd apparently recognized it as well.

"{Give me a bit,}" I deferred.

"{I'll send you the details later, if I can. I need to check with my contact first before I start making introductions on their behalf.}" Misha's shop wasn't exactly a public listing, last I checked. She'd have opinions—whether positive or negative, I wasn't entirely sure—about me routing Operators from outside the Megabuilding to her door, and I wasn't going to make that call without asking her first. Higgins nodded, apparently content with the timeline. The last item on the list was the OPN complaint.

Higgins walked through the framework of it—filing the formal grievance, the reimbursement request, the expected follow-ups, dispositions, timeline and likely payout range—which for our case was likely around the 150-300 Credits range per person. Not enough to cover everything—nowhere even close to enough to cover everything. But potentially enough, if it came through at the top end of the range, to clear Dex's bill and maybe even get Higgins back on two feet in some functional capacity.

"{My portion,}" I decided then.

"{It's yours. Use it however it's most useful.}" Higgins looked at me.

"{In exchange,}" I continued, before he could turn it into something more than a practical exchange from my end, "{you handle all the paperwork and whatever administrative bullshit goes into filing all of it. And you clear whatever I've racked up with the Ripper.}""{Done,}" he said, and the word carried a quiet weight that had far, far more in it than the transaction itself, which I chose not to acknowledge directly because we'd both find it quite a bit less uncomfortable that way.'

Not my Credits to begin with,'I justified to myself half-heartedly,' And Higgins is sitting here, in a damn Ripper's backroom with one fucking leg, a bill that is going to be fairly substantial, and I already made a decision twenty minutes ago about being at least somewhat invested in these people's futures. The math's pretty straightforward here…'

The conversation wound down with the natural deflation of a meeting that had covered its agenda, and I stood up, took stock of my current configuration—full outfit back on, DuraPack, newly acquired katana plus sheath, various, deep aches distributed across the mid-section—and found everything more or less accounted for. My hand went to my jacket pocket, as I had one last item to retu—. It was empty. I looked at Reina.

She was looking at the wall with the expression of someone who had not done anything improper—like rifling through another Operator's pockets while they were unconscious, just as a random, off-hand example—and was not thinking about anything in particular. I noted that the pistol she had lent me back in the foyer, was back in its holster. I had absolutely no idea when that had happened.

Somewhere between the alley and the corridor, if I had to guess, in the chaos of being carried out of a building while unconscious—she'd probably taken it back at the first available opportunity and done so without waking me, which said a great deal about her commitment to the reunion. I decided not to bring it up—because I was, in-fact, a diplomatic mastermind.

"{We'll stay in touch,}" I said to the room generally, picked up the DuraPack from where it had been sitting against the wall, and headed for the door.

"{Ela-san,}" Takeda-san's voice caught me at the threshold. I looked back. He was watching me from the bed with the same eyes he'd had for the entire conversation—clear and evaluating as always, yet underneath both of those, something that had been there since the moment he'd handed me the sheath. He didn't say anything else. Just looked at me for a moment, and nodded once. I nodded back.

Then I walked out, down the corridor, past the wind-up music box still cycling its patient handful of notes, through the front of The Sutured Sparrow and out into the particular atmosphere and neon of the fourth layer at whatever damn hour it currently was. An auto-taxi answered the request inside of two minutes—and Higgins sent over my payment for the gig just in time as well to pay for it. ["Higgins" has transferred {c}155 to your account with the note: "Thank you for everything, Ela-San."]' That damn blank gave me 35 Credits more than we agreed to… I'm trying to be a hero here, for once in my fucking life, can you at least pretend like I'm succeeding in it? Damn it…!' I sighed, then got into the auto-taxi, gave it the route toward Delta, and settled back against the seat with the katana sheath across my knees and the city sliding past the windows in its usual composition of dim, oversaturated neon and utter indifference. The Anima Network wasn't going to fix itself…