“You’re right, it isn’t worth it.” You switch out of cyber and slip the thumb-drive back into your pocket.
Dawn. Another alley. Another secret world. Rosa punches a code into a control panel and a metal door clicks open. You step into an elevator. You descend.
The door opens and computer light floods in. You’ve entered a hacker den. Well organised. These guys aren’t amateurs. A man in a suit greets you and you give him the datafile.
“It’s all yours,” you tell him. “Good luck. Now, our deal.”
The man nods. “You want to disappear.”
And you do. You leave the city. A few months later you even marry Rosa, on a whim. Congratulations.
But we all leave our ghosts behind. You should have known that men in your position never truly get ‘out’.
You weren’t expecting it when Zero arrived at a fancy restaurant where you and Rosa were having dinner. You caught his eye for just a second over a glass of champagne, you even thought it might not be real. But the gun was real, the bullets were real, the shattering glass, Rosa’s blood seeping into the tablecloth.
By the time you draw your pistol she is already dead. You shoot Zero down, but he gets you too. You fall over the table. The whole thing’s a mess now anyway. You take your wife’s hand and wonder where it all went so bad.
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