End of The Line // 0x47 // Shockwave

Void turned her head on the pillow - the one movement she'd been granted - and fixed Rez with the flattest stare she could manage.

"Still don't trust you."

Rez's eyebrows lifted. The LEDs on her cheeks flickered into a brief, bright question mark before settling back into their slow pulse. "Figures..."

"You broke into my chrome. You've been-" Void's jaw clenched as Rez's fingers resumed their idle tracing along her collarbone, as if the conversation had reminded her she had hands and those hands needed somewhere to be. "-touching me. For the better part of an hour. Without asking for my permission."

"Mm-hmm." Rez's fingers walked themselves down the line of Void's ribs through the fabric of her shirt. "And?"

"And that's not normal."

"What really is normal?" Rez tilted her head, and the LEDs around her temples shifted into a slow, spiraling pattern - something lazy, hypnotic. "Normal is what gets girls like us killed in alleyways. Normal is what corpo security expects. I'm far from normal, yes, and so are you, so why pretend?" One corner of her mouth lifted, the crooked grin holding steady as one of her hands slid up to Void's chest.

"You're not wrong, I'll give you that. But you could have asked."

"You weren't exactly able to talk..." Rez shifted her weight, sliding down from Void's hips to settle onto her thighs. The movement was unhurried, almost casual - repositioning in a way that would've been innocent if it weren't for the way her fingers trailed downward as she went on. "Still can't, really. Your voice is coming back, but it's all scraped up. Hurts to talk, doesn't it? Like swallowing glass?"

Void didn't answer. Which was - she realized - itself an answer.

"See? I'm paying attention. I'm being very, very attentive." She folded forward, resting her cheek against Void's lower stomach. The weight of her head was slight, fragile, the sharp angle of her jaw pressing gently into the soft fabric of Void's shirt. Her bangs fell across her eyes, and the lights adorning her cheeks dissolved, fracturing again - the pattern casting faint pulses of light across Void's stomach, waiting for the next move. "Most girls would kill for this level of attention from someone who knows what she's doing."

"She's using me as furniture again. This is- her head is literally on my- and- and she's talking about attention like this is some kind of spa treatment instead of- Keira would be nuclear. Keira would be absolutely, catastrophically nuclear right now. I shouldn't even like this."

"I'm not 'most girls'."

"Precisely." Rez's smile widened. "That's why you're interesting."

"She's deflecting. Every single thing I say, she turns it into a compliment or a flirt or some kind of... Philosophical bumper sticker. How do you argue with someone who treats conflict like foreplay?"

Void tried a different angle. "You keep saying you helped me. But you also said you were 'watching' me since I left my plane. That's... That's not help. That's stalking."

"Stalking is such an ugly word." Rez got up and clung back onto Void's hips again, her fingers resumed their movement, tracing back up Void's torso, along the side of her neck, coming to rest against the hinge of her jaw. "I prefer 'proactive interest.' Or 'curiosity with intent.' Or-" She leaned closer, her nose nearly brushing Void's, and the LEDs flared bright green for just a moment, as she finished by whisper: "-your 'guardian angel'"

"You're insane."

"Guilty as charged." There it was again - that same wide, crooked grin. "But I'm also right. About everything. Which must be very frustrating for you."

"It is. It absolutely fucking is."

Void's HUD flickered. A faint glitch at the edge of her vision - the cyberware equivalent of a muscle twitch. She ignored it.

"You could have taken me to a hospital. Someone with- with credentials-"

"Could have," Rez drawled, the word stretching out like warm honey. "But hospitals ask questions. Hospitals file reports. Hospitals have corpo liaisons who get very curious when a nameless girl shows up with a prototype neural accelerator embedded in her thalamus." Her finger found Void's jawline and began tracing its contour - she decided this particular bone belonged under her fingertip in that moment and saw no reason to rush. "You'd have been flagged before they even got you onto a gurney. And then-" She made a soft popping sound with her lips, a tiny percussive note of finality. "-no more pretty face. Just a brain in a jar and a very happy Militech R&D team."

"So you brought me to your bedroom instead."

"My bedroom was closer."

"That's not reassuring."

"It wasn't meant to be." Rez sat back slightly, and the LEDs along her neck cascaded through a new pattern - something like a shrug rendered in light, a waterfall of yellow that said "such is life" without needing words. Her head tilted, bangs sliding sideways across her eyes, and she bit her lower lip in a way that was probably meant to look thoughtful but landed somewhere closer to a flirty threat. "Reassurance is for people with options..." Her gaze dropped to Void's mouth, then back up. "You don't look like you have many of those right now." A pause. The crooked grin returned, softer this time. "But you can have me."

"She's infuriating. She's completely, cosmically infuriating, and she knows it, and she's enjoying it. I've faced network defense systems with more emotional intelligence than this woman. I've-"

The HUD flickered again. Harder this time. A cascade of visual corruption rippled across Void's field of view, and for half a second everything distorted into jagged patterns before snapping back.

Then her head lolled.

The motor control Rez had restored - that hard-won ability to turn, to look, to hold her own head upright - had vanished. Void's skull dropped back against the pillow like a stone, and her neck muscles refused every command she issued.

"...Fuck."

"Oh." Rez tilted her head. "That's not good."

"No. Really? What gave it away." Void's voice was flat, but her pulse was climbing. She could feel it in her temples again, in the places where her body was still hers and the places where it wasn't. "My neck... Is failing again."

"I can see that."

Silence. Rez didn't move.

"...Can you fix it?"

Rez's grin returned, slow and satisfied, like a cat watching a bird land within pouncing distance. The LEDs along her temples spiraled into something mischievous: gold bleeding into green, pulsing faster now.

"Say that again."

"What?"

"Ask me... Properly this time. With feeling..."

"I'm going to kill her. The moment I can move again, I'm going to kill her, and it's going to be slow, and creative, and-"

"Can. You fix it. Please."

"Mmm." Rez leaned forward, bracing one hand on the pillow beside Void's head. The shift brought her face close enough that Void could count the faint freckles dusted across the bridge of her nose, could see the way her irises were ringed with a darker shade of green at the edges, could feel the warmth radiating from the LEDs embedded in her cheekbones. "You're already addicted to me, admit it." Her free hand rose, and her index finger came to rest against Void's lower lip - a statement of presence. "One little taste of motor function and you're begging for more."

Then she pressed inward.

It was enough for the tip to slip past the threshold of Void's lips with the same unhurried motion Rez had applied to every other boundary she'd crossed that day. The pad of her finger was warm and soft, carrying the taste of salt and something metallic - solder residue, maybe, or the ghost of whatever machinery she'd been tinkering with before Void woke up. It came to rest against the edge of Void's teeth and stopped there - claiming a space Void hadn't offered.

Rez's pupils had dilated. Her cheeks were now bearing a pulsing spiral, the speed of it synchronizing with her raising heartbeat. Her lips were parted and her breath had shallowed in a way that had nothing to do with exertion and everything to do with the particular thrill of getting exactly what she wanted.

"I'm n-" The word died against Rez's finger, still resting at the edge of her teeth, turning the denial into a garbled, unconvincing mumble. Void's tongue brushed the pad of it involuntarily, and the contact sent a ripple through her she refused to name. "-nnn begging."

Rez flared bright gold - victorious. Only then did she withdraw her finger.

"Good girl..." Her hand now dipped into her skirt pocket and emerged with a datashard - slim, black, its edge glowing faint yellow. "Lucky for you, I came prepared. Ran some diagnostics while you were napping and found out your implants weren't designed for the whole-" She gestured vaguely at Void's head with the shard, "-dual-identity thing. System's burning resources trying to host two people in one skull. Motor control's first to go when the power budget runs low."

Rez slotted the datashard into a port on Void's neck and her irises flickered through a rapid sequence of patterns too fast to follow. "This is a custom job. Made it myself... It'll temporarily patch out some logic in your existing firmware and redirect non-critical processes away from the motor bridge when the load gets too high. Basically, it tells your brain to stop trying to do everything at once."

"And... The catch?"

"Oh yes, you're such a catch..." Her fingers ran back underneath Void's shirt. One of her sharp nails scored a slow line down Void's side, leaving a faint scratch that prickled in the open air. Void's breath hitched before she could stop it.

"You're-"

"Charming? Beautiful? The best thing that's ever happened to you?"

"-incapable of taking anything seriously."

"I take you seriously." Rez's voice dropped, and the edge smoothed out into a quieter tone. The lights under the skin on her face stilled, there was only a soft, static glow now. "I take you very seriously, bubblegum. Why do you think I'm still here, putting up with all your rude remarks?"

Before Void could answer, Rez leaned in and pressed her lips to Void's forehead - another of those slow, caring kisses, but there was something different about this one - it lingered longer than the ones before. Her personal link found Void's neural port at the same moment, and the datashard's contents activated.

Void's neck muscles came back online - the movements were much more fluid this time. She could turn her head. She could hold it upright. She could, if she wanted, look anywhere other than Rez's face.

"This is my life now. Fucking preem. Pinned under a neon freak who doesn't know what 'consent' is. Keira's going to- no. Keira's not going to know about this. Ever. I'm taking this to my grave."

Rez disconnected the link but didn't pull back, and let her face hover inches from Void's.

"You're welcome," she whispered.

"...I didn't say thank you."

"You were thinking it."

"Was not."

Void stared up at the ceiling for a long moment. Rez observed carefully, and her weight remained settled on Void's hips.

The magenta girl came to a conclusion she didn't like but couldn't escape: there was no point in fighting this. Not right now. Not while she was still mostly paralyzed, dependent, trying to piece together what had happened and where she was, and who this woman actually was beneath the manic pixie nightmare exterior. She couldn't out-argue Rez. She couldn't out-flirt her. She couldn't physically remove her. The only available strategy was surrender - not the type Rez probably wanted, but the kind where Void stopped trying to win and started trying to understand.

"Fine."

"Fine?" Rez tilted her head.

"You win this round. I'm not going to keep arguing with someone whose relationship with logic is the same as a corpo's with traffic laws."

"Rude." Rez frowned mockingly. "But that's the smartest thing you've said since you woke up, hackergirl."

"But if I'm stuck here-" Void took a breath, and the words tasted like defeat and strategy in equal measure, "-I want to know who I'm stuck with. Actually know. Not the theatrics or flirting. The... Person."

Rez's LEDs flickered. For just a moment, the pattern destabilized - the smooth pulse skipping a few frames, distorting into something unreadable before reforming into its usual lazy rhythm.

"I see..."

"Person," Rez repeated, as if tasting the word. "That's very serious of you."

"I'm a serious individual."

"No, you're not. You're a sarcastic disaster who deflects with humor every time something gets too real." Rez leaned closer, her nose almost brushing Void's. "Takes one to know one. We're a carbon copy of each other, bubblegum." Her subdermal lights turned magenta for a brief moment, which Void found very aesthetically pleasing against the overall green accents. "That's why you don't trust me. You recognize the cracks."

"She's doing it again. Deflecting. Hmm..."

"How old are you?"

Rez blinked. "What?"

"You heard me. How old?"

"Twenty-one." The answer came out automatically, before Rez seemed to decide whether she wanted to give it. She tilted her head, and her LEDs cycled into that question mark pattern again. "Why?"

"You look younger."

"I know. A strong face card." Rez's fingers found Void's hair again - an absent, habitual motion, like she couldn't stop touching it once she'd started. "Also the malnutrition. Growth stunt, or whatever. The docs explained it once. I wasn't really listening."

"Malnutrition? What about your parents?"

Rez's hand stilled. The subdermal matrix along her cheekbones flickered again just once, a stutter of yellow-green that didn't match any pattern Void had seen before.

"That's... A very personal question," she said, and her voice was still light, still teasing, but with a hint of vulnerability, which wasn't there a while ago.

"You've been violating me for an hour. I think I've earned one personal question."

Rez stared at her for a long moment. The broken heart animation started up again.

"Car accident," she said finally. "Or, well. Not an accident. A road rage thing. Some ganger decided my dad cut him off. Opened fire. Mom was in the passenger seat. I was in the back." She shrugged, and the motion was too casual, too practiced. "I was eight. Don't remember much. Just the noise. And the glass."

"She was eight. Eight years old. And now she's-"

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be." Rez's grin returned, but it wasn't as wide as before "Ancient history. I got over it. Mostly. Partially. Enough to function."

She leaned back, and her fingers retreated from Void's hair. The absence was, once again, more noticeable than it should have been.

"Anyway," Rez said, and the brightness was back in her voice, "that's enough emotional honesty for one hour. My turn."

"Your turn for what?"

"Your turn to be looked at." Rez's gaze traveled down Void's body. "You've got this scar here-" She touched Void's jawline, right below the ear. "-where'd it come from?"

"I don't-" Void stopped. Actually thought about it. "I don't know. It's not mine. It was... Hers. Aura's. From before."

"Mmm." Rez traced the scar with one finger, following its line. "And this one?" Her hand moved to the inner side of Void's forearm, where a thin white line ran from wrist to elbow.

"Accident."

"You've got a lot of ghosts written on your skin."

"I'm aware."

"I like it." Rez's voice dropped again, quieter. "Makes you feel... Layered. Like there's more to uncover."

"She's treating my body like an archaeological dig. And I'm letting her. Why am I letting her? Because I can't move. Because she saved my life? Because-"

The door exploded inward.

The heavy steel slab that separated Rez's room from the rest of the building slammed open with a crack that echoed through the walls, rebounding off the dried flowers and circuit-board decorations. Void's whole body jerked - the first involuntary full-body movement she'd managed since waking - and her newly-stabilized neck muscles wrenched her head towards the sound.

A figure stood in the doorway, backlit by the harsh fluorescent glare of the room beyond. Taller than Rez. Broader through the shoulders. One hand braced against the doorframe, the other dragging a heavy-duty cargo net bulging with what looked like salvaged machinery - scorched plating, tangled cables, something that might have been a drone engine.

"Rez."

The voice was flat - a vocal equivalent of a white wall.

"We talked about this."