A Break in the Sunlight

34. Music to Cut By

When Jaren finally did break through the first gate of the Gennwrugh code, it was on her own.

She was in the store, head buried in her elbows on the countertop, tipped back on the stool while Harley grooved in his own world, across from her, running track after track through the overhead speakers.

He'd driven her crazy at first, with his incessant music. He'd tried to infect her with his excitement, throwing on one song after another, always with his crooked, anticipatory smile and asking, "This? Do you like this?"

Eventually, he'd stopped asking, just shaking his head at her and smiling. He'd gotten it through his head. Jaren didn't like music.

Only that wasn't really true, was it? It had always been true before, but the truth was, his enthusiasm, and the relentless beat was growing on her. And that day, when she lay with her head down on her arms, and he flipped from one track to another, she looked up.

"What was that?"

"You liked it?" He looked astonished, but hopeful.

"What was it, I asked."

He flipped on the overhead monitors. The holo was of a bootleg, obvious from its generic white wrap with black block lettering, and no accompanying animations. Terran Vocal Arias, Part III, the title read.

"Catchy title."

"You like it." It was a statement. Harley grinned at her.

"Leave it on, for a bit," she said by way of answer, and buried her head back in her arms.

Something about the passionate soprano, the syncopated rhythms, the antiquated instruments and unintelligible words lifted her through the static in a way she hadn't been able to travel, before. It was breathtaking.

After the track finished, she looked up at Harley again. "Is there more?"

He looked. "Yeah, a couple of dozen from the series."

"Upload them to me, okay?"

His smile was triumphant.

------

Between Biddle's utilities, the soaring melodies, and her own deft movements, Jaren found layer after layer of static melting away. At some point, Harley whispered a farewell. She told him to turn out the light, and he did, leaving her in the dark, sifting, afraid to stop, to lose the rhythm.

She moved through it, dodging the progs before they even began to pool, anticipating them, outmaneuvering them, eluding them, until it happened, almost without her realizing it. The last door opened, and when she looked for another, all she saw was data, raw, pure, unscrambled data. Codes upon codes, for what she couldn't begin to fathom, but here it was, laid out in front of her like a garden of Eden. Each one encased in static of its own. But together they formed the digital key to the most powerful conglomerate in the sector. The secrets of Gennwrugh. With the main gate unlocked she could move each piece around until she was ready to unlock it. 

A smile spread slowly over her face. She didn't vomit this time, instead she felt power spreading through her body. She'd done it, she'd beaten the best she could have imagined. She'd reclaimed her own head, and she'd done it on her own.

She lifted her head and shouted triumph into the darkness.

And he stepped from the shadows.

"I was wondering how long it would take you to finish," Cai said. "You seemed rather engrossed. I thought it best to wait."

"What are you doing?"

"Cutting code," she replied, with eyes that couldn't keep from shining.

"Sounds interesting."

"Oh, it is. When it's not frying my brains."

A dimple flashed in his cheek. "Not today, though."

"Not today."

He smiled then. A beautiful, blazing smile, filled with intelligence and a sort of curious delight.

"Some time you'll have to tell me all about it."

And in that moment—just that quickly—she fell in love with him.

--------

Cai Moreno was the exiled heir apparent of the Gennwrugh family.

In time she would some to see him as many things--leader, lover, jailer, murderer, torturer, and salvation. He would become her world for longer than anyone had ever been, including her mother. He would bring her to the brink of death time and time again, always to pull her back into his arms with hardly an effort. She would live for him, and at his pleasure.

Of course, Jaren hadn't known that, then, staring at him in the gloom of Jem's storefront. Then she'd only seen his beauty.

He looked back at her placidly, a man of medium height, well built and striking, with dark brown hair, evenly caramel skin and oddly light brown eyes. He carried himself, in his coffee colored silk shirt and well-cut trousers, with the unconscious grace of a man born a prince. He was deceptively sure of himself, for a man of twenty-five.

He smiled lazily, revealing even white teeth in the semi-darkness.

"Did I scare you silent?"

"No," she answered, lowering her patch cord to the desk. She noticed them, then. Two hulking bodyguards standing outside the front of the store. One had a large tattoo on the back of his shaved head. "Who are you?"

Her gaze flickered from them back to him. He watched her with an amused smile, tracking her every thought.

"I am Cai," he replied. "And you are a friend of my Jeremy."

She nodded, feeling foolish. "I'm Maggie."

"Well, Maggie," he said smoothly. "I look forward to learning more about your talents. In the meantime, perhaps you can get young Jem on the comm, and let him know I am here?"

She nodded, turning automatically and dialing the antique commset on the back table. For some reason her hands were shaking.

And it was done. A tense-sounding Jem was on his way over.

"So," Cai drawled, leaning against the countertop, his hands clasped before him, the smile playing on his mouth. "What brings you to the Night City?"

He had, when he focused on you, a way of making you think you were center of his universe.

When he turned his attention on Jaren that evening, she felt it like the heat of a sun, dazzling and warming. And when he turned away from her again, having learned all he wanted to know, she felt as if that sun had been quenched, and she'd been left behind in the cold.

It was a feeling she would come to know well.

All rights reserved. Copyright 2016 Jae Darcy