“Oh, shit…”
“What is it?” asked Pratiti, everyone suddenly on edge in the room.
Lecky put his phone back in his pocket, his eyes going back to Eden.
“We’d better get you back very soon. The Tiger’s growing impatient, and he apparently does not like being unable to reach you…”
Eden suddenly realized she had spent a while down there, chatting with them about the specifics of the Edge and upcoming hacking. She had completely forgotten about Loir and Dante being unable to reach her…
“Let’s go,” she nodded.
She didn’t want to show it, but she also was well aware of how short Dante’s patience could be. It was better not to risk the Italians busting into another territory right before the actual war… She tried to get up as a reflex, but almost immediately, remembered her legs would not have it. Lecky caught her right before she fell, but it didn’t save her the embarrassment, and Eden blushed, holding herself on the chair.
“Th-thanks,” she mumbled.
“Watch your step,” Pratiti jokingly added. “…Are both your legs Parts?”
“Yeah.”
“Damn... Who did this? The Core?”
“...In a way. They forced me to sell them to care for my... probably-already-dead mother’s safety.”
If it had been anyone else asking, Eden might have found it somewhat rude, but as a hacker, Pratiti was different. Parts weren’t as uncommon and unpopular in the hacker world as they were in reality. In fact, so many of them had been physically wounded and damaged, most hackers had joined the Dark Reality to find an escape from their real bodies. Plus, Pratiti knew how corrupted and twisted the Core could be to people. She wouldn’t make fun of her or get disgusted at how Eden had been forced to sell her legs... She nodded, her eyes going down to Eden’s legs.
“Damn. It does sound like the kind of shit they’d do… No wonder you’re so fast in the Dark Reality! Everything that is fake about us in the real world makes us stronger on the other side…”
“…You too?”
“Mostly my spine, yeah,” Pratiti grumbled. “Those bastards tortured me so much, I had to replace a lot of the shit they broke… Luckily, it became my strong point. What doesn’t kill us really makes us stronger, huh?”
Eden smiled. Nebty was known for her incredible agility in the Dark Reality, which made her able to get into the smallest spaces and wriggle her way out like a snake. Pratiti was completely right, and Eden realized it felt good to have another woman, both hacker and Part, who knew what it was like to hide and live for the next hack. Although they had never met before today, the two of them were similar in so many ways, she felt like they both could feel close and trust each other already. She smiled at her.
“See you on the other side, Nebty,” she chuckled.
“See you there, Ghost. Don’t get yourself killed.”
With Lecky’s help, Eden got back on her feet, without stumbling this time, and bid goodbye to all the people present, even those who shyly glanced her way. To her surprise, A. stayed down there, while Lecky was the only one to help her up.
“…Damn, no offense lady, but you’re hella heavy,” he grunted.
They were struggling to get her up the stairs, as going down had been much easier. Eden chuckled.
“Steel is heavier than flesh… even more so when they are two dead weights.”
“...I see.”
He didn’t seem to look sorry for her. Considering who was hiding in this basement, it probably wasn’t as much of a shock or sob story to him as it would have been to other people. Since he had asked this awkward question, Eden cleared her throat a bit, before asking the one that had been on her mind.
“So you… I mean, you don’t really… look like a Zodiac.”
Lecky chuckled.
“No, I don’t. I don’t know what a Zodiac is meant to be, but it’s probably not someone like me… I was put in this position, but unlike most, I didn’t choose to be. Did you know the Goat is the Zodiac that gets replaced the most often? Even without getting into fights… A lot of my predecessors simply gave up. We don’t need to fight for the position, we just get elected, or are the last ones who can do this. I’m the leader of the outcasts, an outcast myself. Not belonging to any group, or to too many… All my people are those who don’t belong elsewhere. We just want to survive. Not make waves, just hide and leave the bigger beasts to fight between themselves.”
“Maybe I should have been one of your people when I left the Core, then…”
Lecky chuckled and shook his head.
