《System Overclock》Chapter 3.2: Anti-Virus

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Dark clouds had rolled over the streets during her time in the stripclub, and the sky was now pouring down. It was nice, considering she’d been stuck in a stuffy surgery for more than half an hour, and it probably would have been much longer had Dyker been able to do something. Had he actually been able to help.

Still, she was grateful for the information he provided. Might not have been much, but at least now she had something to work with. Finding the location of the anti-virus wouldn't be a problem; stealing it on other hand.... Yeah, that could cause a few issues. Considering that her last heist was a disaster, she didn't have high hopes against something as big as the Legion. They were violent, money-loving drug-addicts. Rich ones, at that.

The West Avenue tram rumbled on its rails; the vantablack hull was hitched across a suspended arch, and each cart was clogged with enough people to fill a jury stand. Taxis of all colours climbed into their loading docks, while pedestrians swarmed the footpaths and junctions, going about their daily lives, living the right way, the normal way. Luna wished she could have something like that. A life where her mother never died and her father never vanished off the face of the fucking Earth. A life where she had some sort of control. Where she might have been normal.

She had fucked up so much recently that she didn't think that was possible anymore. After all, she somehow managed to upset Dyker, and he was probably her best chance at clearing this virus. He also seemed like such a nice guy. Who went out of their way to willingly adopt a child in Zemon, never mind a teenage girl? It was honestly quite beautiful.

It even brought back fond memories of Luna's mother, how she would bring herself and Sarah out for ice cream in the winter, because money had been too sparse to afford the summer prices. Her mother had worked as a customer service agent for a relatively small computer company, earning little but managing to supply Luna and Sarah with everything they could have ever wanted – a place to stay in L’illian (albeit in the lower ends), enough food and water to last them into adulthood, and an affection you couldn't find anywhere else…. A mother's love was sacred, deep, and irreplaceable.

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Back then, things were perfect. Of course, until she got struck with brain cancer. It started off as just a tumour, which was easily treatable at the time, but it kept coming back like an annoying itch you couldn't quite scratch, or a terrible, terrible cough during the night. Hacking, hacking, hacking: the cough that whipped up clods of mucus and never settled, only grew itchier and more irritable, until all you were left with was a migraine the morning after.

It was that type of tumour. She’d had multiple visits to the doctors, got laser-therapy, chemo, but none of it worked. Her hair fell out, her face turned gaunt, and her skin became frightfully pale. There were dark circles under her eyes, and she was like a zombie rising from the dead... except she was alive. Very much alive. And that had haunted Luna, really haunted her.

She thought about this on the taxi-ride home to L’illian. The rain lammed the windows like jazz percussion, and the winter sun was taking a bloody departure. She sat in the back with her eyes closed, head tilted up at the roof, and slowly her memory began to materialise, not in her MD, but in the grey-black nothingness she often saw before being swallowed by her dreams….

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