Lucy stood frozen, her cigarette half-burned and forgotten between her fingers.
She hadn't expected Arthur to actually activate the centipede-like spinal prosthetic. She thought he was testing fitnt, maybe checking voltage or compatibility—not jabbing an Arasaka-grade neural accelerator directly into his own back like it was a party trick.
But the mont she saw the red LEDs flare to life and the segnted limbs clamp into his spine—piercing skin and muscle with surgical precision—she almost dialed trauma response.
It wasn't until Arthur calmly wiped a little blood from his neck and said, "Hmm, fits perfectly," that Lucy finally found her voice.
"You..." she began, her tone torn between disbelief and horror.
Arthur cut her off without turning. "I'm using two at the sa ti."
Lucy blinked. "Two what?"
Arthur gestured vaguely to his back as he adjusted his internal interface system. "Two Si'anwistan neural accelerators. The original one I've been running, and the new one from Smasher's toolkit. Both installed. Both operational."
Lucy's eye twitched. "Goddammit, you are crazy!"
She looked like she was reconsidering every decision she'd made in the past six hours.
Arthur, however, remained perfectly still. In his brain-computer interface, he was delicately calibrating the paraters between the two neural boosters, making sure they wouldn't fry his nerves like overcooked noodles.
Lucy glared. "You're tweaking your own spinal implants now?! Do you even know what you're doing?"
Arthur nodded, still focused. "Yup."
"That's not comforting!"
"I've done worse."
"That's also not comforting!"
Arthur didn't respond right away. He was busy ensuring the two neural accelerators didn't conflict—adjusting thresholds, syncing output modulation, and isolating energy spikes. DIY installation was always risky, but DIY overclocking neural stimulators? That bordered on suicide.
Lucy stared at him like she was watching a clown juggle live grenades.
"You're really not afraid of snapping and turning into a raving chro cannibal, huh?"
Arthur shrugged. "We live in Night City. That's practically a Tuesday."
He took a breath, adjusted a setting, and continued. "Besides, I'm not stacking them for power. I'm planning to alternate them depending on the situation. Precision mode on my old unit. Long-duration slowdown with the Adam Smasher model."
Lucy crossed her arms. "You're telling you've got a toggle switch between combat reflex modes?"
Arthur smiled. "More like a ntal dial. One for finesse, one for chaos."
He leaned back, finished with his configuration, and exhaled deeply.
"In a pinch, I could run both at once," he added, "but that'd cook my brain like street yakitori."
Lucy lit another cigarette. "And that doesn't bother you?"
"It's my last-resort card. It might buy 20 seconds of pure, god-level reflexes. Slow-mo reality. Perfect awareness. Could save lives. Or end them."
"And your brain?"
Arthur tapped his temple. "Hopefully still attached."
Lucy shook her head. "So what—you're just walking around with a loaded neural grenade strapped to your spine now?"
Arthur grinned. "Only if soone pushes the big red button."
To demonstrate, he activated the Adam Smasher unit. Instantly, the world slowed around him. The tick of the clock on the wall beca a visual crawl. Lucy's blinking beca a slideshow.
Ti decelerated. His senses sharpened.
Arthur stood up and casually strolled across the room, watching dust motes drift through beams of fluorescent light like slow-moving sparks.
He walked to Lucy. Looked her over.
Smirked.
Then, with zero sha, he reached forward, tugged the zipper on her bodysuit just slightly—just enough to confirm his hypothesis.
Vacuum-sealed combat gear. No undersuit.
Arthur returned to his seat, settled in, and deactivated the acceleration.
Ti snapped back into motion.
Lucy frowned. Sothing felt off. She looked down, then glared daggers at Arthur.
"Pervert."
Arthur tilted his head innocently. "Hm? What was that?"
Lucy didn't buy it. She folded her arms tightly and muttered, "You're a freak. No way you're just so back-alley rc with tech smarts."
Arthur pretended to be insulted. "That hurts."
"I'm serious," Lucy said, sitting beside him. "Nobody does what you just did. Nobody installs dual spines and lives to brag about it. You hacked your own nervous system like it was a modded video ga."
Arthur paused.
"Well... I did once jailbreak a toaster to project Netrunner porn. So maybe it's a gift."
Lucy rolled her eyes and lit another cigarette. "You sure you didn't escape from so shady corpo lab?"
Arthur raised an eyebrow. "Maybe. If so, I want my warranty."
"You're absurd."
"And you're still here."
Lucy shrugged. "Well, soone's gotta docunt your inevitable ltdown."
Arthur took a drag from her cigarette—without asking—and puffed a cloud of smoke into the air.
"I've thought about going full chro before," he admitted. "But sothing about keeping a bit of flesh... keeps sane."
Lucy studied him for a mont.
"You ever think you're too smart for your own good?"
Arthur leaned back, hands behind his head.
"Every day."
She flicked ash into the tray. "You know Adam Smasher's not going to ignore this, right? You stole his spare spine, his gear, and now you're walking around jacked on his own tech."
Arthur scoffed. "It's not the first ti I've stolen from Big Hamr."
"That doesn't make it better!"
Arthur opened his mouth to retort, but his holo-screen buzzed with an incoming call.
He frowned.
The caller ID flashed: Old Captain.
Arthur squinted. "That's weird. He usually spends this ti of night drowning in drinks and other things at the Ritz Bar."
He answered. "Yo, Captain. What's up?"
The voice ca in fast, urgent.
"Arthur, what the hell did you do today?"
Arthur leaned forward, puzzled. "Define do."
"There are Arasaka agents crawling all over the city! I'm talking black-suits, smart-rifles, no-bullshit badged enforcers. Like cockroaches. The an kind. They're shutting down half the net relays in Watson!"
Arthur blinked. "...Oh."
"Oh?"
"Yeah. That might be related to a minor... unregistered visit I paid to a cargo ship."
"You robbed Adam Smasher's freighter again, didn't you?!"
Arthur winced. "Borrowed. Temporarily."
"You stole his backup loadout, Arthur!"
Arthur rubbed his temple. "Well, not all of it. I left him the box it ca in."
The captain groaned audibly. "You're going to get yourself killed. And not by a bullet—a missile. A missile with your na etched on it."
Arthur looked over at Lucy. She raised an eyebrow.
He sighed, shoulders sagging slightly.
"Well," he said
, "I guess Night City's gonna get interesting again."
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