Combing her disheveled hair and wiping sweat from her flushed cheeks, Lilith sank heavily into her chair and sipped the sludge-like coffee.
The bitterness and powdery texture were like swallowing charcoal. The instant coffee she drank was the undercity’s most common, mass-produced garbage. Mix the coal-like powder with hot water, wait a second, and you had something resembling coffee—utterly vile.
“Eve,” Lilith said.
“What?”
“You drink coffee?”
“I can… but Lilith, you’re calling that coffee?”
“Obviously. For the record, this is the best-selling coffee in the undercity. Ignore the taste and smell, and it’s drinkable.”
Brandishing the syrupy, ripple-less coffee, Lilith pointed to the cupboard. “Want some? I’ll make it. Free of charge.” She stood.
“No need,” Eve replied. “More importantly, Danang, how long are you gonna lie there? The groin pain should’ve faded by now. Hey, you listening?”
“Pointless,” Lilith said. “Probably.”
“Why?”
“When he sleeps, he’s out cold. Tickle him, blow cigarette smoke in his face—nothing wakes him. Let him sleep.”
Lilith kicked Danang’s side as he lay silent, breathing faintly like a corpse. “Right?” she muttered, grabbing a coffee jar from the cupboard and twisting the lid.
“…” Eve was quiet.
“What’s with the silence? Got something to say?” Lilith asked.
“…Danang acts different with you.”
“Acts?”
“Yeah. When he talks to you, he seems… human. But with me, he’s always on guard. I’m partly to blame, sure, but he trusts you.”
“Who knows? You can’t read someone’s heart, so what they really think is a mystery. But… yeah, trusting people in the undercity is hard. Others are just tools to use. Trust, loyalty—it’s all surface-level. Honestly… Danang and I might not even trust each other.”
Maybe we don’t. Scooping powder into a spoon and dropping it into a mug, Lilith spoke with a tinge of melancholy, offering a faint smile.
“…You don’t trust Danang?” Eve asked.
“I don’t know.”
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“Why—”
“It’s a deal we made ten years ago. Stay close physically, but keep emotional distance. That way, if one of us dies, it’s just, ‘Oh, they’re dead.’ Less pain. Losing family or someone close hits hard, you know? So, a relationship without dependency is best.”
“…”
It was a sad dynamic, Eve thought. Avoiding deep bonds to sidestep grief or regret. Using each other, consuming each other.
Was their earlier banter, their heated exchange of insults, just a facade of connection?
Danang’s concern for Lilith’s safety, her blushing at his words—was it all superficial?
There wasn’t enough information to call it a lie, no proof to expose deception. Yet Eve couldn’t believe Lilith’s words were entirely true. That cold, ruthless Danang cared about this girl, and she was weaving a pale gray lie into a pristine white truth—or so Eve felt.
“Want anything in your coffee?” Lilith asked.
“Sugar and milk?”
“Got sugar, no milk. It doesn’t keep.”
“Sugar’s fine, then.”
The rich coffee aroma mingled with the sound of hot water pouring. Holding two mugs, Lilith handed Eve one with a dog print and stood before the monitors.
“Eve.”
“What?”
“Plug this into Danang’s mechanical arm.”
Lilith offered a translucent cable—a data transfer connector.
“This is my job now. You good with machines?”
“Better than average.”
“Cool. Optimize Danang’s arm, then. Looks like he’s got a new one since last time, and the hack program I installed is probably gone. The default hack software should handle ruins fine, but it’s a pain for me.”
Disconnecting Danang’s arm from its neural link, Eve removed the armor, revealing a tangle of circuits, cables, artificial blood pipes, a power battery, and a retracted vibro-blade.
The arm was near perfection. No tweaks or repairs needed. Of course—it was a bespoke piece, designed and built single-handedly by that man.
“…” Eve paused.
“What’s up? Connect the arm to the cable,” Lilith said.
“Lilith, the program you’re installing—you wrote it?”
“Obviously. It’s a masterpiece—encryption, hacking, and data optimization all running in parallel, tailored for my processing needs. You’d pay a million credits for something like this in the commercial district.”
“Can I see the source code?”
“Do what you want.”
“Thanks.”
Eve’s silver wings scanned the hack program, her prismatic eyes reflecting digital data. Her pupils dilated and contracted, her irises absorbing the code as her wings processed it, her mind rewriting it.
“…”
Lilith prided herself on being unmatched in information tech within the undercity. No security, however advanced, could withstand her—she could crack anything, from classified intel to critical data. Those scraping a living in the digital seas between the undercity and mid-levels called her a wizard.
Her genius lay in hacking and advanced tech. Mechanics weren’t her forte, but textbooks and practice had honed her to above-average skill. In a battlefield of bullets, she was powerless, but in cyberwarfare, she had no equal—save perhaps the leader of the Dead List or the elusive “K,” who flickered in and out of the digital sea.
But now, Lilith realized she had to rethink her confidence. She thrived with computers and monitors—her weapons and ammo. Without them, she was just a powerless girl, her means of survival severed.
Fighting without weapons was impossible. Sustaining a battle without ammo was absurd. Weapons and ammo were vital for defense, and skill compensated for any shortcomings.
Yet, watching Eve process, analyze, and construct data with her body alone, Lilith felt a crushing defeat—and a need to redefine her role.
She’d delegate Danang’s arm optimization and initial data processing from the ruins to Eve. Detailed analysis, reconstruction, and deal negotiations would be her own tasks. If each handled their roles, Lilith’s plan could advance quickly.
“Really…”
The world’s full of surprises, isn’t it, Dad? Glancing at a photo on her desk—a man holding a young Lilith—she began typing, diving into data analysis.
