Chapter 12 - Chapter Twelve

Lucy didn't bring it up again the night after she told Maine because timing mattered in this city and pushing too hard made people break, so she ran the usual shard route with David, watched his hands catch three clean pops in a row without looking proud about it, then peeled off early with a muttered "tomorrow" and headed for the garage where Maine and the others liked to meet when they weren't working, a box of a space that smelled like solvent and metal with a couch that had seen better decades and a table covered in half-taken-apart optics; Maine was already there with Dorio standing at his shoulder, Pilar picking at a newly rewrapped hand, Rebecca perched on the edge of the tool bench swinging her legs, and Kiwi quiet behind a screen with a wire plugged into her neck port like she was bored even when she wasn't, and when Lucy came in Maine grunted, "All right, let's have it," so she laid it out clean, "David Martinez, eighteen, runs deliveries for Vault-Tec Medical, lives in a cheap block near the freeway, mother Gloria Hernandez in a coma at that clinic, he found a military Sandevistan in his apartment, sold it to Aperture Science, they gave him their own variant and did a proper install, his runs are smooth and he doesn't flex in front of cameras," and she let that hang until Rebecca laughed through her nose, "He sold your toy, Maine," and Maine didn't bite because he'd already been mad and it didn't fix anything, he just said, "What kind of kid does that?" and Dorio answered for him, "One who doesn't want to get killed in his sleep," which shut down anything else stupid they were about to say. Kiwi asked the only question that mattered on her end, eyes still on her screen, "Aperture's opsec?" and Lucy said, "Tight, no open net presence, clinic front only, you can't ghost them from a street hub," and Kiwi hummed once like she'd expected that and added, "So social, not digital." Maine paced one short line in front of the couch and said, "We can't hit a clinic, not this one, not with the city watching, and we don't trust buying chrome from back alley rippers when a job's on the line," then stopped and looked at Lucy hard, "Can the kid walk us in, just talk, no threats, see if this Aperture outfit will sell me something legit or at least let me put eyes on what they built," and Lucy shrugged like it wasn't her call and said, "He trusts them, he likes them, but he's not blind, if it's framed as helping his mom, he'll ask questions for us." Pilar scratched at his neck and said, "Or he runs to his clinic manager and we eat a blacklist for dinner," and Rebecca kicked his boot, "Shut up, you wanna eat paste the rest of your life," and Dorio cut them both off with a flat, "We're not strong-arming a courier whose mom's in the ICU, we do this clean." Maine made the plan in simple pieces because that's how he did everything that worked: Lucy would ask David to meet the crew, not a pitch, just a talk; they'd choose neutral ground so nobody felt boxed; Maine would say they had a missed connection with his mother and were sorry about the accident, then ask if he could make a polite inquiry at the clinic about a procurement program or demo for responsible buyers; if he said no, that was that and they walked away; if he said yes, they'd see where it led; nobody flashed hardware, nobody used names that shouldn't be said out loud. Lucy texted David later that night from a corner where the light was bad on purpose, just "friends want to meet, could be work, neutral spot, no pressure," and the reply came slower than his usual, a single "okay" and a time she recognized as post-route, and she told Maine, who grunted and went back to staring at a broken optic like it had insulted him, which meant he'd show up on time. David ran a full shift the next day and kept his steps small because his head was loud, Vera noticing and asking if he was good, him saying, "Just thinking," and her leaving it at that because he didn't look like he was about to fall over; he did the work—elevator waits you don't skip, stairwells you clear with your eyes first, signatures that match IDs, coolers that stay sealed until a door opens and not before—and he checked on his mother at lunch and told her he'd be late but he'd bring something good, and when he left for the meet he had that thought Vera had drilled into him, "Leave when it feels wrong," playing on a loop behind his eyes. The neutral spot was a throwback boxing gym that rented ring time by the hour and didn't ask why, concrete floor, old posters curling on the walls, a chain-link partition with a lock that had been broken twice and fixed once, fans pushing warm air in circles, and Maine had grabbed a corner with a cooler and a stack of plastic cups like this was a barbecue; Lucy made the introductions as plain as names, "Maine," "Dorio," "Kiwi," "Pilar," "Rebecca," and "David," and nobody offered a hand first, they just took each other in the way people like them always do, body weight, eye lines, gear hum, exit check. Maine broke the ice by shoving a cup at David and saying, "Water's free, advice costs," and Rebecca snorted, "Ignore him, he charges for nothing," and David smirked because the rhythm was familiar, and he said, "Thanks," and didn't drink until Maine did, which got him a small nod from Dorio; Kiwi kept silent, watching, and Pilar broke and said, "So you're the courier who can move," and David said, "I deliver on time," and Pilar laughed because he liked the answer. Maine didn't circle it, he said it straight, "I was supposed to buy a piece from your mother, I was late because the city chewed the road, I'm sorry for that, and I'm sorry for what happened to her, that's not on you or her," and David's shoulders stiffened and loosened in one breath because hearing the missing piece explained with no blame felt like a weight he hadn't known he was carrying, and he said, "Thanks," and meant it; Maine followed clean, "I don't want your unit, I don't want trouble, I want a conversation with the people who built your variant because if they can do clean work then maybe I can keep my crew alive a little longer, and if the answer is no we walk, but you could ask if there's a procurement channel for independent operators who pay and don't screw around." David looked at Lucy because she was the only piece in the room he trusted yet and she gave him a tiny nod that meant "no blood," so he said, "I can ask, no promises, they're tight," and Kiwi finally spoke in a level tone, "They'll say no to a blind buy, but they might say yes to a clinic referral, you can walk in as a patient and walk out with a line on a maintenance schedule that just happens to include a demo," and Rebecca threw her hands up, "See, social," and Maine said, "If the kid's willing," and David said, "I am," and that set the first piece in place. They didn't let it turn into a job interview but it drifted there anyway because Maine wanted to see what kind of backbone he was looking at, and he asked David about his route work and how he handled a bad hallway and what he did when a client tried to slide something extra into a bag, and David answered in full sentences without getting puffed up, "Say the name loud so everyone hears the drop is legit, keep the logo visible, keep the cooler off the ground, get the signature while the security has the view, don't turn your back on the stairwell," and Dorio said to Maine under her breath, "He's trained," and Maine just grunted because he'd already seen it. Rebecca poked at David's jacket and said, "What's the glow under there," and he said, "Stitches," deadpan, and she cackled because that was the right answer when someone tried to pry; Pilar leaned back and said, "Dude, run a lap," and Dorio smacked him lightly, "We're not making the kid perform," and Maine cut it by shifting the subject, "You got rules?" and David said, "No guns on shard runs, no hurting people who aren't trying to hurt me, no blowing up my mother's peace for money," and Maine grinned because he could work with that, and Rebecca muttered, "He's corpy polite," and Lucy elbowed her, "Shut up, you like him," and Rebecca didn't argue. They split after an hour with nothing promised beyond David's agreement to ask the clinic, no hard date, just "I'll let Lucy know," and Maine didn't push for a number because inviting surveillance was idiot work; on the walk out Lucy fell in step with David and said, "That was painless," and he said, "You dragged me to a gym to drink water," and she said, "Better than a back room," and he didn't disagree. The next morning David put on his delivery jacket and stopped at the front counter after his van run, asked the clerk if he could speak to an Aperture tech about "procurement inquiry," and the clerk typed with the same neutral face as always and slid him a badge with a temporary stripe, and a man in a gray coat with the small Aperture patch led him down a hall lined with closed doors into a consult room that smelled like new plastic and wipes; David told the truth without names, "I know a crew that's looking for clean installs for work that keeps them breathing, looking to pay, looking for maintenance, not looking to steal," and the tech listened without blinking and said the line David expected, "We don't sell chrome to independent operators," then added a second line he hadn't expected, "But the clinic refers patients for procedures when a medical need is established and a funding source exists, and Aperture supports the clinic's decisions," and he slid a brochure across the table like this was about corrective surgeries, all neutral words coating a simple fact: there was a pathway if you could dress it right. David asked, "What counts as medical need," and the tech gave bland examples that made sense in this city—trauma repairs, work-related strain that required reinforcement, neuro conduction issues that standard units aggravated—and David said, "If someone wanted to evaluate performance before making a decision," and the tech said, "Patients in the field-data program can authorize a demonstration session with clinic staff observing," which was another way to say yes without saying yes, and David took the brochure and a card with a contact line that wasn't the public number and left with a thought he recognized as hope and a caution he recognized as Vera's voice. He met Maine that evening at a noodle stall with Lucy already there and told them exactly what he'd been told, "No direct sale, but there's a clinic referral slot for procedures if you can justify it and pay, and there are supervised demos if someone signs the right box," and Maine chewed and stared at the steam and said, "So they act like doctors," and Dorio, who had walked up halfway through, said, "As they should," and Lucy watched David's eyes and saw that he wasn't spinning anything, he was just relaying, which fit everything she'd seen so far; Kiwi's voice came through on a small bud in Lucy's ear because she was listening from somewhere else, "Paper trail risk," and Maine said out loud, "We don't put names on anything until we're ready," and David said, "They'll want baseline scans and an evaluation," and Maine said, "Fine, on our terms," and they left it there with a plan to call in a "patient case" through the clinic in a week after Kiwi scrubbed what needed scrubbing. The meeting shifted after that into something like normal, Rebecca teasing David about his delivery jacket, Dorio asking him if he was eating enough real food, Pilar trying to sell him on some junk parts like a street hawker until Lucy flicked his ear, and Maine asked after Gloria with a tone that was gentler than the rest of him, "How's she doing," and David said, "Better, some movement, fingers, eyes sometimes," and Maine said, "Good, tell her some strangers are rooting for her," which made David look at him properly and nod once like a thing had been acknowledged. Kevin didn't know any of this because he was in the camera room that afternoon looking at timestamps and usage graphs from the anonymized field-data program, one subject whose profile matched the shape of David's days showing micro-activations clustered at the same hours his delivery van pinged the garage, and Angela stood beside him with a thin smile and said, "Stable," and he said, "Stable," and signed off on a tiny firmware tweak to smooth heat spikes on back-to-back bursts, an update that would shadow out to subject units overnight and make everything feel a little easier without David knowing why; above them the clinic halls ran like always, synth staff in scrubs moving the way real staff move when they've had enough coffee and the day isn't trying to kill them, the public face boring and clean the way Kevin liked it. Over the next few days the crew hovered on the edge of a choice and David went about his work like he didn't have one foot in two worlds, running routes, catching shards in the evenings when Lucy called, sitting with his mother and reading aloud a folded brochure about physical therapy goals even though she wasn't there yet, and every so often he touched the card in his pocket with the clinic's contact line and thought about how thin the line was between safety and risk; when the call finally went out from an unremarkable terminal in a public library—Kiwi's pick—to the clinic's referral desk, it was just a voice saying a patient needed evaluation for nerve conduction support related to work strain, and the desk said bring him in for a baseline and we'll see, and Maine looked at Dorio and Dorio looked at Maine and they both looked at Lucy, and she texted David a time and a place like it was any other small thing. The night before that baseline Lucy and David ran one more quiet loop and she told him nothing about the next day because she didn't want him walking in anxious, and he told her nothing about how his stomach felt like a knot because he didn't want to look like he needed her to unknot it, and they ate skewers on a curb and listened to a busker play a mess of notes, and for a brief stretch they were just two people sitting still while a city flowed past without caring. When David got home he checked the emergency card, checked the jacket zipper, checked the strap on his bag, then set an alarm and lay down on the cheap pillow he'd finally bought for himself and stared at the ceiling until the hum of the building faded and he slept; in another part of the city Maine stood in front of a mirror and rolled his shoulders like he was testing where the old pain still lived and told himself he was not walking into a trap, he was walking into a clinic like any other citizen, and Dorio squeezed his shoulder once and said, "If it smells wrong we walk," and he said, "We walk," and Kiwi texted a single check mark because she'd set three different tripwires on their exit routes, and Rebecca spammed the group chat with a photo of a burger to hide that she was up late, and Pilar sent a stupid meme, and Lucy just typed "tomorrow" and set her slate face down, and the city turned over to morning as if none of them mattered because that's how it always does until you give it a reason to notice you.