Night City.
Although David had released her wrist and stepped back half a pace, Lucy's keen heart, honed by years on the edge of life and death, was now pounding in her throat.
In her palm, the solid gold bar he had just pressed into her hand felt heavy, cold, and real.
And in the miniature subdermal slot at her fingertip, the nanoscale monomolecular wire, glinting with a deadly blue light, still quivered dangerously.
Let him get away?
Absolutely not!
Deep within Lucy's eyes, data streams in her expensive Kiroshi optics refreshed frantically thousands of times per second-[Biomechanical augmentation: 0.00%], [Pure flesh and blood]!
A high school kid from the slums without so much as a miniature capacitor installed had actually intercepted her bare-handed, with nothing but his flesh and blood?
Not only had he casually produced untraceable, unnetworked gold of 99.99% purity and tossed it to her as a tip, he had even... blurted out her "dream of the moon," buried in the deepest reaches of her soul, which she had never revealed even to Maine's crew!
In Night City, an encounter like this was no romantic meeting.
It was a death warning that some supremely terrifying being had locked onto her completely and seen straight through her, down to her very marrow!
Lucy clenched her teeth, quietly tightening the monomolecular wire at her left fingertips as she demanded in a low, icy voice that desperately concealed her shaken composure:
"You think a piece of real gold will smooth this over, kid? Cut the mysterious bullshit."
Lucy raised her chin slightly. Beneath her aloof mask, her eyes remained fixed on David's throat:
"If you don't explain yourself today, that neural chip of yours... won't save your life."
Yet David's face showed not the slightest panic at this aloof little