Void had always believed that if something was truly important, it would announce itself properly. Sirens. Gunfire... Maybe explosions. Something cinematic.
Boarding a plane, it turned out, felt more like waiting in line for a bad verdict.
Flying was fine. Physics made sense. Engines made sense. Gravity was a contract you could break with enough thrust and a good tilt. What Void hated was the ritual. The shuffling line. The performative politeness. The way everyone pretended this wasn't a metal coffin with snacks.
The queue crept forward in awkward half-steps. People stared at their phones like they were consulting oracles. Up ahead, a flight attendant was locked in a stalemate with a man whose carry-on looked like it could house a family of four.
"Sir, that will not fit in the overhead compartment."
"It fit on my last flight."
"This is a different aircraft."
"It's a standard bag."
Void leaned forward slightly. "So is denial, and yet... With all regards - move your ass, pretty boy."
The man shot her a look. The attendant bit her lip to keep from smiling.
"Ma'am," the attendant said to Void, "thank you for your... Contribution."
Void lifted her boarding pass. "Anytime. I live to serve."
She stepped up to the scanner. It beeped red.
"Try again," the attendant said.
Void did. Red again.
Someone behind sighed dramatically. Void turned halfway around. "Relax, princess. If this plane goes down, you'll still die on schedule."
The attendant coughed. "Please don't joke about that."
"I'm not joking," Void said. "I'm managing expectations."
The scanner finally beeped green.
"Enjoy your flight," the attendant said.
Void stepped past her, then paused. "Statistically speaking, one of us won't."
The attendant blinked. "Ma'am-"
"Kidding," Void added. "Mostly."
Inside the plane, the air was wrong - dry, recycled, like it had been filtered through pure regret. Void found her seat by the window and dropped into it, shoving her bag under the seat with unnecessary aggression.
The woman in the aisle seat was already buckled in, arms crossed, body angled away like Void was contagious.
"Hi," Void said.
No answer.
Void fastened her belt. "Cool. Strrroooong start."
The safety sequence flickered on. Smiling holographic people demonstrated exits no one ever wanted to use. Void watched none of it. Her eyes stayed on the window, on the tarmac, on the fact that she was still technically capable of standing up and leaving.
The engines roared. The ground began to slide backward. Gravity loosened its grip.
And just like that, the humor drained out of her.
Once the seatbelt sign chimed off and the cabin settled into its endless mechanical breathing, Void's thoughts came back online like a system rebooting after a crash.
First: Sandy and Emmie.
"You invited yourself into their life again."
She pictured their apartment. The quiet order of it. Sandy's predictable routines. Emmie's careful presence, always just on the edge of conversation, but mostly listening.
They had suffered - she knew that. Sandy's principles stuck to him like Void's surgery scars. Emmie carried something heavy inside of her, something she would never put into words.
And now Void was flying in like a meteor with a half-baked death wish and a bag full of unresolved consequences.
"What if I break their peace again?"
What if Emmie stopped sleeping because Void was in the next room with wires in her head and blood in her future? What if Sandy had to lie awake wondering whether this was the night his old friend finally didn't come home?
She pressed her thumb into the seam of her jeans until it hurt.
"Why would they even agree? You're just being pushy. They probably pity you. Moron."
She had called, sure. He had said "yes." That was consent in the technical sense. But - at least for Void - not in the moral one.
Then Keira surfaced.
Keira's arms around her. Heavy, solid. Like someone trying to anchor a ship with their own body.
Keira's voice: "If Freya pulls bullshit, you call."
Void had brushed it off. Pretended it was just Keira being paranoid.
But she knew better.
Keira smelled danger the way other people smelled smoke.
"You ignored her."
Because listening would mean stopping. And stopping would mean sitting with the fear instead of surgically removing it.
And then... Amy.
Amy didn't come in as a memory. She came in as a wound.
Amy's hands on her jacket. Amy's voice trying to sound brave. Amy's eyes trying not to beg.
"If the surgery goes wrong, the kid will never get up from this... Fuck. She's gonna blame herself forever."
Not Freya. Not Night City. Not the tech.
Herself.
She would replay that lunch over and over. Wonder what sentence could have changed the outcome. What hug could have been tighter, or what argument could have been stronger.
Void knew that guilt intimately. It was a language she was fluent in.
"You are planting that inside her and calling it progress."
She swallowed, throat tight.
"You didn't leave because you had to. You left because you were scared. Selfish. Fucking Idiot."
Scared of being too slow, of becoming irrelevant. Scared that one day someone would say "she used to be good" instead of "she is dangerous."
Once again she thought about how she had built her entire identity on being unaugmented and uncompromising. Pure flesh beating chrome. Will beating hardware.
And now she was on a plane to let someone rewire her brain sponge like one of her cyberdecks.
"Hypocrite."
She leaned her forehead against the window. The glass was cold.
"What if you don't survive?"
The question was more practical than it felt dramatic.
Prototype tech. Rushed timeline. A city famous for eating people and selling the bones. Odds stacked against her at every bullet point.
She imagined Sandy getting a call. Emmie standing very still while the world rearranged itself around her. Keira punching a wall until her hands were bloody. Amy going quiet in a way that scared everyone.
All because Void had decided she couldn't stand the idea of being left behind.
"This isn't bravery. It's vanity with better vocabulary."
Her reflection in the window looked calm. Controlled. Like someone who had their shit together.
On the inside? Hoo boy, she was flaying herself.
"I'm really bad at making sensible choices," she whispered.
The woman in the aisle seat shifted irritably.
Void closed her eyes before letting in one more thought.
"We should've died on that fucking bridge."
She fell asleep, exhausted.