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"Damn it all, Kilo. What do you mean you can't?" I did not want to hear those words from his mouth again, the sickly dwarf coughed into the vidphone between us and shook his head.

"I mean I can't. Cannot. I am not about to risk what's left of my neck over this. Getting involved with some unknown runners, because your little boyfriend got tangled up in something? It's hard luck, but it's not my hard luck, and I intend to keep it that way!" Kilo replied, before another agitated bout of coughing took him.

"Then tell me what you can, before I add a personal visit to my itinerary." I was angry. He wasn't wrong, but I wasn't about to let the little rat renege on a personal debt. "And if it's not as good as your personal support, it had better be damned near. Don't think I've forgotten why I have half a lung on the left side."

He visibly blanched at that, and held up a hand, as the coughing got worse. For a moment, I wondered if he was going to drop dead, right then and there. It would've been inconvenient, to say the least. But after a few minutes of hacking and wheezing, he managed to recover enough to half-croak into the microphone again.

"Yeah, yeah. Look. You say your boy has a datajack and good reflexes? I can..." He paused and looked around the nest of cables, chips and oddly bent pieces of metal that formed what he lovingly called "the pit".

"Twenty four hours. Expect a delivery by drone at the other usual place. Drone's yours to keep, I can't be caught up in this. This is the last favor you're ever getting from me, Slipstream." I used to love that name. Used to. Before I couldn't do the work anymore.

"Don't call me that. She died back then. You know it." I growled, more than answered. "She died to save you. Whatever help you're sending me, remember why you're sending it." I disconnected the call and distanced myself from the area.

It wasn't exactly Kilo in the matrix, but with as much time as had gone by, I knew it was as good as I was going to get. I flipped through the contacts I had, and sighed. Dead. Dead. Lockup. Dead. Lockup. Went straight. Disappeared. Dead. I wondered idly what anyone would think of me at this point. I didn't quite go straight, I wasn't quite dead... but all I could do was call favors and hope.

Either that or... go full dive. Replace the better half of me and ... hope I was still me, on the other side. It was a terrifying thought, but... I was already making the call before I even had time to consider it.

It was her personal line. I could have called her by her birth name, but it was automatic. When she picked up, she seemed surprised, but that fleeting joy was replaced immediately by worry as I said the first three words. "Niviene, it's time."

Niviene was our ace in the hole, far too clever for her own good, the nimble elvish summoner was a hell of a shot from a distance, but it was when she was cornered that she was often the most dangerous. But more than that... she was our medic, and when she retired after that last run, she went straight, became a doctor. A legitimate one.

Niviene promised me once, if I ever wanted to get back into the game... she'd make it happen. But what it would cost me was more than I was willing to barter in the exchange. At least, back then. I couldn't stomach the thought of it.

I was going to be a lot less Beryl when she was done with me.

She slated me for an appointment, off the books, that night. She always had been true to her word. I had no idea how much this was going to cost her, and I didn't want to ask. As I exited the cab, she was waiting at the door. She hadn't aged a day, her fiery red hair glinting in the light just like it did the last time I saw her. Different clinic, same piercing gaze.

"You're sure about this?" She asked, as I walked in behind her. "You said no for years, Slipstream." She added, a reminder I didn't need to hear. She was right though, I had adamantly refused what we were about to do. I was alive, it was enough.

"I know, Niviene. I don't want to, I don't have a choice." I replied, through clenched teeth. "I wish I did, but I don't." Understatement of the year. I hadn't made it ten steps in and I felt like I was going to be sick. The smell of the institutional antiseptics, the cheap benches, it brought back all the old memories. That night in hell when they patched what was left of me back together in a place just like this. The night I got lucky when only half my organs went to slab.

"You always have a choice, Slip. If you're in trouble..." Niviene began, but my hand took hers, familiar warmth between the two of us. We were a lot of things back then. We were close, and it tore her apart to know that for everything she could do, she didn't have the education to do anything for me that night.

She changed that in the hopes that she might make up for it. But until tonight, I hadn't been ready to make that journey. I felt guilty that I wasn't doing it for her. It should have been, but it wasn't. Life just didn't work out that way.

"It's not just me." I replied, giving her hand a squeeze. "It's a friend of mine, Niv. He's... he's kept me sane all this time. He needs Slipstream. Beryl can't help him anymore. He's not a runner. It's amazing he's not dead yet."

"Slip..." She sighed, and shook her head, wrapping her arms around me. Forehead to forehead. Gentle as she'd ever been. Our lips met, and for a moment all the old memories came flooding back. Her laughter, her gaiety, the way she could pull me from the darkest spots and make me think it was the brightest sunny day we'd ever shared.

"Then I'm coming with." She replied, as she led me by the hand to a room in the back. It was already prepped for the operations... for everything she was going to have to do to me. All those knives sitting on the table. Scissors and sponges and that damned smell. I almost threw up. When she was done, I wouldn't be able to anymore, probably.

"Niv, you don't understand. I may not be able to save him. Or me. He's in deep. Don't ask me how I know. The whole thing just stinks. There's more at play here than he knows, or I do." I replied as she set me up on the table, and strapped me down tight. I hated that feeling. The bindings, the light on me. All I could think about was how much it hurt, how much it was going to.

"All the more reason to go. Slip... I love you, I have always loved you. I love you, and you love him. That makes him good as family to me. We promised each other, didn't we?" She asked, and the words were out of my mouth before I even realized I was speaking.

"Anywhere in the world, any time, to whatever it brings me. If you need me, I'm there." She interrupted me with the part she made me say, a thousand times before.

"Even if I'm too stubborn to admit I do." She said with a laugh, as she ran her hand over my head. "You're stubborn. But we promised. So I'm in. For now... just ... take slow, deep breaths, and when you wake up, take it slow."

The gas was a mercy. Last time I had to be awake for every cut, every tug. Every agonizing stitch as they tried to save my life. What was left of it.

I had strange dreams. Of times far and away. Places that were a combination of others, a job to do that was left undone. Our old team. Rocky, the goofball. He was a pilot, but he loved break-in jobs. If it meant bypassing some weird sensor or electronic box, or walking up in a suit with a clipboard and saying something important sounding... he was there. He always had a joke, and he always told me I was lucky to have Niv. As if he had to. He wanted her, so bad, but she treated him like a kid brother.

He fell off a roof. There wasn't anything to save. His last words were a joke. One last joke. "What's the sound of a kid falling off a roof?"

"A flat minor" he shouted up at us as gravity snatched him away.

I lost part of myself that night, it was a stupid thing that happened. A stupid way to go. And a stupid joke. Rocky deserved so much better. One night, one -kiss- from Niv. Something.

Gabriel, he covered our asses. Always covered our asses. Last man out. Standing policy. Three bullets, a new hand, and some terrific burn scars never changed that about him. "Doesn't matter." He'd say, kicking back a drink laced with painkillers to dull it. To dull the pain he felt all the time. And he did. He felt the pain from the bone fragments they couldn't get away from his spine. Felt the pain from the burns, and the way all the scars tended to pull. Felt the pain from how his girl looked at him. Pity, and heartbreak for what he used to be. He was a handsome man. Even I had to admit that. Was. Once.

And then it caught up to him. He wasn't fast enough on the way out, and they cuffed him. Maximum security, life. He could've given us up. Bargained away our names to shave the years off... but ... I heard later he just laughed and shook his head. "Doesn't matter. I was always going to be the last one out. It'll be just as true in prison."

We'd planned a hundred runs to try and get him out, but... there was no way. It was insane, and suicidal, at the most optimistic.

Masque, she went straight. Probably the only smart one among us. She was a clever rigger. Used her drones from as great a distance as she could, piggybacked off of internal networks and gave us eyes in every corner, without being anywhere near them, herself.

She was broken up by Rocky's death. More than anyone. She loved him with all her heart, even though he never really even noticed the way the dwarf looked at him. She'd have done anything to have taken his place that night. We had to carry her out.

She blamed us all for it, but mostly she blamed herself. She never recovered from it, and the last I heard, she was hooked on BTLs. Living a simulated life with an addiction worse than any chemical drug. A simulated life where Rocky was still alive. Where he could tell her his stupid jokes and she could look into his eyes, and it was all okay again.

A simulated life where it didn't hurt anymore.

I couldn't blame her for it.

And I saw Mark. The office clerk, clutching at my shoulders, sobbing and terrified. He wasn't any of us. He wasn't a runner. He wasn't meant for this. And I'd have given anything to shield him from it. I loved him the way I loved Niv. Moreso, perhaps, because he never saw me as a broken thing that needed fixed. He never thought I needed to do or be more. He never made stupid jokes, he never made empty promises. He was safe, and I'd never had that before.

Loving him was safe... until it wasn't... and I'd have given anything to shield him from it. Anything. Including Beryl.

I saw myself on that slab, as Niv operated on me, through the night. Taking out my battered organs, and replacing them with synthetic parts. Cutting away scarred, useless muscle, and flesh. Turning me into a golem, instead of a girl.

I was going to give him the most precious part of me. And it hurt so much. It hurt more than anything ever had...

Because he'd never understand. He'd never really understand what it meant. Or how much he meant to me.

Beryl died on that table that night. Slipstream would have to do her best to show him all the feelings she wasn't able to. Starting with a goddamn slug in the back of the head of the fucker who brokered the run.