Upgrade Complete! 2

Ash's optical sensors glowed faintly.

"KERS, is it. I'd heard it was the latest technology Vortex had unearthed."

"...Huh? You know it pretty well?"

"Merely rumor."

Santa exhaled a long plume of cigarette smoke, a meaningful smile playing at the corners of his mouth. In the meantime, Akina came racing over and began inspecting Ash's ink-black chassis from every angle.

"Hey! You'll leave fingerprints, you brat. Hands off."

"...It really is Vortex Energy. Where on earth did you get this?"

"Heh. And what would you do if you knew? That's trade secret material, all of it. You think I'd just spill it?"

"Secret, my foot. You stole it, didn't you? It's stolen goods, isn't it?"

"What did you say, you little rascal?"

Santa smacked Akina on the head, then stubbed out his cigarette and folded his arms.

"Do I look like a thief to you? This was acquired through a perfectly legitimate transaction, I'll have you know! Of course, said transaction may have taken place in a somewhat... shady sort of location."

"It IS stolen goods!"

"Tch! So — you buying or not?"

"How much?"

"Hmm. About six million?"

Akina, who had been caressing the parts, snatched her hands away in a hurry.

Her blue eyes narrowed, trembling with disbelief.

Six million.

It was nearly ten times her entire life savings.

A flicker of despair crossed the girl's face.

But Ash showed no such agitation. For a long moment, he studied Santa's expression with calm deliberation.

Santa knew exactly how precarious their finances were. For him to quote a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠price they could never possibly afford meant there had to be some other intent hidden behind it.

Having settled his thoughts, Ash activated his voice module. A calm electronic tone drifted through the rest stop.

"Old Master Santa. The merchandise is truly fine."

"Of course it's fine. You know who recommended it?"

"And yet, is it not rather expensive?"

"Haha. So you want to haggle?"

"I do. So stop toying with this humble one, and name your true price."

At the blunt question, one of Santa's eyebrows climbed upward. Then he let out a dry snort of laughter.

"You caught on, huh?"

Ash said nothing.

That silence was answer enough.

Santa roared with laughter.

"I keep telling you, you're no ordinary machine. You sure you're actually a humanoid? You get more fascinating every time I look at you."

"If I answer regarding my identity, will you lower the price?"

"Oh? So you DO have something worth hiding."

Santa paused, watching Ash's reaction. Ash, in turn, stared back without so much as a twitch.

A short while later, Santa held up two fingers.

"Two million. Five-month installment plan. In exchange — conditions."

"What?! Seriously?"

"I wasn't finished talking."

Calming the electrified Akina, Santa continued.

"First — this wasn't purchased from me. You two acquired it yourselves, through your own means. Understood?"

"...You mean don't let Vortex Society find out? And if they do, we never mention your name, Old Master?"

"Correct."

Beside them, Akina shouted 'Stolen goods! Told you it was stolen!' but Santa studiously ignored her.

"Second — I need real-world usage data."

Santa's eyes glinted behind his shades.

"This unit is an early-stage model even among prototypes. Which means there's absolutely no telling what variables it'll throw off in an actual field environment. So build up that data. And share it with me."

Akina scowled.

"Ugh, what? What are you gonna do with that data? Sell it to Vortex?"

Santa scoffed.

"If I wanted to do that, I wouldn't need any of this."

"Then why?"

"You think I owe you an explanation for that too?"

He didn't.

Ash nodded.

"I understand your second condition as well."

"Good. Then for the last one — number three."

Santa adjusted his sunglasses. Somewhere along the way, the sly grin had vanished, and in its place sat a strange, quiet seriousness.

"Don't die. Either of you."

Unexpected words.

So plain, so matter-of-fact — and precisely because of that, all the heavier for it.

Ash's optical sensors blinked.

Akina, too, stared at Santa in wide-eyed surprise.

In the peculiar silence that followed, Santa cleared his throat awkwardly.

"...Well, you have to come back alive to hand over the data, don't you! And pay off the installments! I never do business at a loss — you know that?"

Perhaps.

Perhaps his first condition had been the warning, and the second condition merely the excuse — and only the third had been the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠truth.

Ash and Akina exchanged a glance, then nodded at the same time.

"We accept the deal."

"We'll come back alive!"

Watching them, Santa let the corner of his mouth curl upward, just slightly.

"A pleasure doing business, customers."

Two million, on a five-month installment plan.

The payment due immediately came to 400,000 credits.

Most of their cash on hand vanished into that first installment, but there was no question the contract tilted heavily in their favor. That left Ash and Akina with 260,000 credits.

Not a small sum — but not nearly enough to freely pick through the latest cyberware catalog, either. They would have to choose, and focus.

After long deliberation, the two reached a decision: a right leg to correct Ash's lopsided posture, and ballistic chest plating to raise Akina's odds of survival.

And with that, the selection of parts was complete.

Ash glanced back and forth between the new components that would soon be grafted onto his frame and Akina, who was busily laying out her tools beside him. Then he lowered his head for a moment.

There, mounted in the modding pit, he could see himself.

"Sitting like this, it brings back quite the old memories."

The old memories Ash spoke of were of the day he had first opened his eyes in the scrap processing yard.

Akina blinked a couple of times, then smiled.

"Yeah. It does, doesn't it."

A humanoid reduced to nothing but a bare head, and a girl picking through a garbage heap. A strange, quiet bond blossomed between them over that scene — one that only the two of them shared.

"Looking at you now, you seem a bit taller."

"Huh? Am I?"

He certainly was. The jumpsuit she wore had grown short somewhere along the way, leaving her ankles peeking out.

"Next time, let us buy you clothes as well."

"Aw, come on. What's the point of buying that stuff? Total waste of money."

Ash shook his head.

"It is not a waste."

Akina started to argue, then pursed her lips instead.

"...Fine. Then when this expedition's over, you pick them out for me. My clothes."

"Gladly."

And with that, the brief chatter came to an end.

The girl who had been smiling so brightly slipped back into the face of a technomancer. With a short, deep breath, she ran a final check over her tools and spoke.

"This procedure replaces the chassis and the battery pack simultaneously. We'll need to disconnect the neural matrix too, and the whole system's going to need a full reboot. It might take a while."

In other words — ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠his consciousness was about to go dark for a time.

Ash nodded.

"No matter. Forget about me and take your time."

Akina nodded back, her face grave, and connected cables to various points across Ash's body. Then she tapped a few commands into her data pad, and, preparation complete, met his optical sensors with her own eyes.

"See you in a bit, old man."

The moment she pressed something on the pad, the shutdown sequence engaged. Green strings of text scrolled up the frame before Ash's eyes.

His vision dimmed bit by bit, and with it, every one of his senses grew hazy. It felt as though his consciousness were sinking toward some distant, fathomless deep.

Like a man slipping into sleep, his mind flickered once, twice.

That was when it happened.

Into the darkness of his consciousness, a video suddenly unfurled — buried under a mountain of static.

First person perspective.

The footage, shot as if through 'my' own eyes, shook violently and warped terribly. Glitches flared everywhere, as if to declare the data broken beyond repair.

And through it all, 'I' was walking somewhere.

It seemed 'I' was following the faint sound of a grass-leaf flute.

It was a melody both clear and familiar, and yet strange — one 'I' had never heard before.

Then, in an instant, the view before 'my' eyes swept open.

What spread out beyond it was a sky so blue it stung, and an endless field of pale pink azaleas. The blossoms in full bloom rippled gently in the wind, rolling in soft waves — a landscape that somehow felt too perfect to be real.

But the static and glitching that had dogged the footage from the very start twisted that flawless scenery out of shape. The azaleas flared, now green, now blue.

'I' walked through them.

And the closer 'I' walked, the nearer the sound of the flute grew.

Had 'I' finally reached the end?

A weathered old stone wall came into view, hanging low, and atop it sat a girl. Seeing the blade of grass in her hand, it was clear the source of the music was her all along.

She sat there like something out of a painting — though the relentless glitches occasionally caused her outline to crumble and fall away.

Then, the girl turned her head.

The distortion was too severe to show her face. Only her lips — unnaturally red and full, curved in a bright smile — remained vividly clear.

— Old man!

She waved.

'What is this?'

Strangely enough, Ash knew that girl.

And at the same time, he did not know her.

It was a bizarre sensation. To know, and yet not know.

But above all — at the sight of that girl waving toward him, something unknown surged up from the very depths of his chest.

Something that felt remarkably like longing.

'I' waved back at her. And the deeper 'I' waved, the wider her red smile grew.

'I... know who that girl is.'

Certainly.

Her name... that child's name was, without a doubt...

"...Nangrang?"

Whether it came from his voice module, or from the 'me' in the video, he could not tell.

One thing was certain: the instant that name passed his lips, the video froze. The suspended world began to collapse.

No — 'collapse' wasn't quite right. It would be more accurate to say it was swallowed by glitches.

And so the dreamlike landscape shattered into fragments and vanished, leaving only darkness behind.

Out of that darkness, green text rose.

In an instant, Ash's optical sensors flared back to life.

"Old man!"

The first thing to enter his field of vision was a girl waving at him — Akina.

"Huh? Why aren't you saying anything? Is something broken?"

Akina, who had been waving her hand in front of Ash's face, picked up the data pad. Then she perched herself on the tool table, lips pushed out in a pout, and glared down at the device.

Her posture — it was uncannily similar to that of the flute-playing girl from the video.

Amid the strange afterglow still clinging to him, Ash gazed at Akina and let out a low electronic hum.

"Is it finished?"

At those words, Akina looked up.

Then she beamed at him.

"Oh, come on! I thought I'd forgotten to hook something back up!"

The girl tossed the data pad aside and took a step forward.

"Ta-daa! Upgrade complete! Come on, old man, take a look at yourself!"

Ash lowered his head.

His ink-black chassis came into view, along with his freshly attached legs. Every part he had agonized over choosing was connected with clean, precise workmanship.

"Well? Do you like it? Anything feel off? Anything uncomfortable?"

Akina's voice bubbled with excitement, but Ash couldn't answer right away.

His main core was far too full of other thoughts.

Thoughts of that inexplicable footage he had just witnessed.

Thoughts of a girl by the name of Nangrang.