"A?!" Kiwi’s eyes widened.
Then, she witnessed a scene straight out of a horror movie.
The lights in the dollhouse began flickering erratically, as if there was a bad connection. At the sa ti, the security guards throughout the shop started screaming in unison, their cries echoing from all directions like a macabre chorus.
"Ahhh!! Aaahhh!"
Screams erupted everywhere, interwoven with the crackle of electrical sparks.
"There’s a netrunner! A netrunner! Cut the network! Don’t connect to the server... Aaahhh!"
Soone shouted a frantic warning, but rcer had already seized full control of the server. At that mont, everyone connected to the server’s subnet beca a target for his virus.
Aside from Kiwi and the other pitiable sex workers, even the perhaps ’innocent’ custors fell within the scope of rcer’s attack.
Because all the sex workers here had been bought, rcer pitied Kiwi, and naturally, he pitied the other unfortunate girls as well.
So had been sold by traffickers, others by their own parents or relatives, they were rely purchased by the shop, viewed by the local gang as nothing more than lumps of flesh, machines for making money.
"Help ... help ..."
A man in a suit reached out from one side of the corridor, but the next mont, his cyberarm convulsed and went limp.
rcer’s icy, murderous voice sounded beside Kiwi’s ear.
"Recognize him? I specifically left your boss for you. Go on, this is yours, but be quick.
Soone called the police before they died. NetWatch and NCPD will probably be here soon. Don’t worry, you won’t be implicated.
Enjoy your pleasant revenge."
rcer’s voice faded away.
Only the man in the suit remained, his eyes wide with terror, utterly unable to command his own body.
Kiwi’s breathing grew heavy. Trembling, she stepped forward, looked down, and stared at this man who had always held himself high, who had beaten and abused the sex workers at will, controlling their lives and deaths.
"Save ... Kiwi... help shut... shut down..."
His throat produced a garbled plea for help.
Kiwi’s breathing grew even heavier, like a panther about to roar. But in the end, with cold eyes, she simply reached out her hand.
She took the pistol from the man’s waist, aid it at his head, and smashed it down!
Kiwi didn’t choose to pull the trigger. Instead, she hamred his head again and again with the gun’s grip. Once, twice... ten tis, fifteen tis!
Only when the man’s head was a bloody, pulpy ss did she finally gasp for air, her eyes, unbeknownst to her, already brimming with tears, blurring her vision.
Her hand shaking, she fired several shots into the corpse, then imdiately stumbled and fled frantically out of the brothel.
At that mont, the dollhouse had transford into a living hell, Kiwi could see it. As a netrunner, her cybereye allowed her to perceive the signals flowing through the network.
Right now, the data surging through this network was as fierce as a tidal wave. Invisible, powerful currents, fueled by the server’s computing power, were rushing toward everyone connected to the subnet. The internet-connected light bulbs shattered from the overload, neon signs flickered a few tis before going dark, yet Kiwi ran on with single-minded focus.
As she sprinted, she pulled the doll chip from her neck and flung the symbol of restraint and surveillance forcefully ahead, crushing it under her heel as she passed.
She dashed toward the automatic door that had always been locked to prevent dolls from leaving.
The door was already forced open, and now, the dimly lit alley outside the shop was still aglow.
Kiwi’s mind felt vaguely blank, she seed to have thought a lot, yet also nothing at all. She was just running, running like she hadn’t in a long ti.
Before long, the dollhouse behind her burst into flas. rcer had initiated overload on all the servers and electronics inside, setting the server room ablaze.
The stench of the alley gradually faded as she distanced herself. When she finally ca to her senses, she found herself on an unfamiliar street.
Gasping for air, she turned back in confusion.
The dollhouse had long vanished from her sight.
Only sparse traffic flowed along the street beside her, and a few passersby eyed her warily, a girl dressed to the nines but missing a shoe, clutching a pistol tightly in her hand.
Kiwi’s hand trembled slightly as she tentatively whispered, "A?"
"I’m here."
rcer’s voice remained calm.
"Wh-where do I go now?"
Kiwi looked around, the December night wind making her instinctively hug her arms.
"Got any money?" rcer asked first.
"I, I don’t have a bank account. They always paid in cash. Damn it, I... I forgot to take the money."
As she spoke, the realization hit her, and regret set in, she’d forgotten to grab cash from the shop!
Even just pulling the manager’s personal chip to drain his digital wallet would’ve been sothing.
"Don’t worry about it now. NCPD is already on the scene, I made quite a ss."
rcer thought for a mont, then offered a suggestion: "I know a friend. She’s a good person. Shouldn’t be a problem for her to put you up for a few days.
Just find a spot to wait; I’ll have her pick you up by car.
Or do you have any other friends you trust?"
Kiwi answered reflexively, "I don’t have any friends."
"Then you do now, her na is V, a good girl you can trust. She’s about half an hour away by car. Just find a place to stay put for now."
After he finished, rcer chuckled lightly. "Gotta go now, NetWatch is here. I need to focus on tangling with them. Let’s see what these NetWatch agents are made of."
Not sure what prompted her, Kiwi replied, "They’re not to be ssed with. Be careful."
rcer sent her an emoji in response, then cut the voice comm.
Dazed, Kiwi found a railing to lean against and sit by. Even now, everything that had just happened felt like a dream.
She looked up at the starry sky. The stars, unseen for so long, weren’t shining brightly tonight as if on cue. The moon peeked in and out from behind the clouds, yet in her eyes, it was the most beautiful night sky she’d seen in years.
Until a beat-up Galena Gecko pulled up by the curb. A woman with white hair and a strikingly beautiful face, yet radiating an air of nonchalance, rolled down the car window.
"Hey, you’re Kiwi? Get in. I’m V."
This ti, Kiwi didn’t hesitate. She walked over and pulled open the passenger door. "That’s . Hello, V."
"I’m actually not doing very well." V said with a sigh. "Got dragged out of bed at 2 a.m. to play chauffeur. A told about your situation. Don’t worry, you can crash at my place for a few days."
"Thanks," Kiwi replied awkwardly, she wasn’t used to expressing gratitude.
V glanced at her, chuckled, and took in Kiwi’s weary yet still lovely face. Suddenly curious, she asked, "How do you know A? He actually paid 1000 eddies in the middle of the night just to babysit you for a few days?"
After a mont’s silence, Kiwi answered truthfully, "I don’t know him."
"Huh?" V was taken aback, then let out an "oh," convinced she’d figured it out. "So you’re a client, then?"
"Is he a rc?" Kiwi had heard stories about Edgerunners, to her, they were just rcenaries selling their lives for cash.
She couldn’t imagine soone like A, who talked so much about justice, being one of them.
"You didn’t know? Well, I think he is. He even tried to recruit ," V said uncertainly. rcer was still sothing of a mystery to her.
All she knew was that he was a big shot who could waltz into Afterlife and chat casually with Rogue, his cyberware so advanced even her cybereye couldn’t scan the models. Top-tier netrunner skills, not too shabby in a fight either.
His background, age, even his appearance, V knew none of it, only that his real na was probably rcer.
"I see... I don’t know him," Kiwi said, studying V’s handso profile. A thought suddenly crossed her mind, could it be that A simply had a thing for pretty won?
That explanation seed more plausible than sothing like pure kindness.
"He hacked into my system out of nowhere, asked if I wanted freedom... Then said if I sincerely begged him, he’d help . I tried it, and he got out of the doll club. The cost is 50,000 eddies, to be paid in installnts."
After hearing this, V’s eyes widened. "Fifty grand? Damn, that’s a lot!"
"Is it?" Kiwi laughed bitterly. "True, that’s enough to buy a living woman’s entire lifeti."
Kiwi took a deep breath and asked softly, "Mind if I smoke?"
"Go ahead, but there’s no ashtray. Just crack the window," V replied.
"Thanks, V." Kiwi suddenly found that saying thank you wasn’t so hard after all.
She lifted her head, lit a slender cigarette, and let the night breeze tousle her short hair as she gazed at the neon lights outside, her heart still filled with confusion and uncertainty.
V, purely curious and a bit drowsy from the late-hour drive, it was almost 3 a.m. now, asked, "Were you sold into it? Otherwise, it wouldn’t really be rescuing you..."
"Yeah," Kiwi replied, not really wanting to delve into what she saw as shaful scars.
"So what’ll you do now? I an, you can’t go back to being a doll, right?"
After a mont’s silence, Kiwi suddenly smiled. "I don’t know." Only now did she realize that her life had been set in stone ever since her parents sold her to the factory as a child.
At the factory, the foreman controlled her daily routine, demanding punctual work year-round without a single day off. Resignation was impossible unless she first repaid the exorbitant "buyout fee" the factory had imposed.
After the foreman repeatedly failed to coerce her into "dates" and spitefully sold her to a dollhouse in anger, her existence descended into another unimaginable hell.
Twenty-four hours a day, whenever requested, she had to work. Though she earned a ager so-called "paynt," true freedom remained entirely out of reach.
This ti, the buyout fee was a staggering 100,000 eurodollars, how could a doll, whose every expense from food and shelter to the mandatory doll chip was deducted from her earnings, ever save enough to buy her freedom?
She spent a year teaching herself netrunner programs and secretly saving up to buy a cyberdeck. From then on, she clung to netrunning as her lifeline.
Every day, she fantasized about freedom, dreaming of the day she could use her hacking skills to take revenge on the scum who controlled and enslaved her life.
And yet.
Freedom arrived so abruptly, so unexpectedly.
What would she do now?
For the first ti in her life, Kiwi could finally ponder that question.
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Bonus Chapter @300 power stones.
I also recomnd reading HxH: Dying Makes Stronger it’s a true hidden gem.
Advanced Chapters on p-atreon/AstartesTL
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