Chance stared at Verity for a beat too long. Her mouth hung open with a look of shock that made her plump lips look absolutely irresistible. He’d noticed her the first time he saw her, dressed like a prairie doll and looking for a job at the Ball & Joint. If he was honest, he hadn’t been able to get his mind off her but hadn’t risked actually talking to her. His self-imposed celibacy strained when he looked at her, wanting to break all of the rules he’d set up for himself.

No more fights, no more girls. Just as simple a life as he could eek out in the slums.

That was until tonight, when she spilled her entire tray all over him like some kind of spaz. Somehow, it made her even more endearing. Before today he’d been avoiding her, watching from a distance, and now, he could hardly string a sentence together without making some comment about wanting to jump her. Her horror at his suggestions of coming home with him was flavored with a hint of interest that made his cock twitch.

Damn.

Women didn’t look at him like that anymore. Every now and then one would be interested enough to try and tempt him into a quick fuck, but no one ever looked like they wanted him. More like they were thrill-seeking by fucking someone who could kill them without a second thought. And that was precisely the problem. Verity didn’t know about him yet.

Soon enough she’d look at him with the same disgust shaded by fear as all the others.

“So? What’ll it be?” He kept his face hard, the hint of hope that she’d actually consider going home with him a dying ember in his waterlogged heart.

“I think I better get home.” She shuffled her feet and hitched her bag up over her shoulder. The salty air blew over them like a warning.

“Lead the way.”

Verity headed north, holding her one remaining shoe in her hand and peeking up at him from under her light brown hair now and then. “You really don’t have to do this. I’m fine.”

“Yep.”

“‘Yep’ what?”

“Yep, I know you're fine, and yep, I need to do this. Deal with it.”

Verity huffed and blew her long bangs out of her face before picking up the pace. She stumbled slightly when an unusually slick patch of water, or oil, unsured her footing.

Chance reached out, his metal excuse for a hand glinting in the moonlight, but didn’t touch her.

“Where’d you learn to fight?”

“Oh, no, I don’t fight.” Verity bowed her head, her bangs falling back in her face, in a cute display of bashfulness that made Chance want to reach out, grip her chin, and pull it back to face him.

“Like fuck, you don’t fight. I saw you take down that Mod 3 like he was a toy soldier under a toddler’s boot.”

“That’s just pressure points. I learned them in school. You know, this one helps cure migraines—” She held up her hands and pinched the webbed flesh between her thumb and forefinger.

“And which one incapacitates a man almost three times your size with nothing more than a high heel and skinny fingers?”

“This one actually.” She stopped walking and faced him, lifting her chin so he could see the soft, vulnerable skin of her neck. She pressed a finger against a spot under her jaw, up against the bone. “If you know how, you can pop the jaw right out of its socket. Comes in handy if you need to pull a tooth.”

“You pull a lot of teeth? That all sounds like bullshit, no way you can just pop someone's jaw out.” Chance stepped forward, unable to resist the magnet calling him to her.

She giggled nervously. “Here, I’ll show you.” She came closer, and the smell of lavender filled his senses. How did she manage to live down here and not smell like mold and sewage?

Verity placed one hand on his chest, gently gripping his muscle and sending a shudder through his body. No one touched him casually anymore, a slap on the shoulder from another cyborg sure, but nothing like this.

Oh, he was screwed. His body reacted to her like a live wire.

She used her finger to lift his chin up.

He stared up at the sky, watching the lights of the upper city’s hover cars whizzing along the skylanes while they stood down here in the dark. He wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else. This little woman had him completely transfixed.

She ran her finger under his jaw, tracing where the bone led back to the soft tissue before it joined with his skull.

His cock twitched again, begging for permission to do something about the fire running through his veins. His body wanted to wrap around hers, kiss her until they were breathless, and press her against the wall of the nearest building. He’d pull that skirt up to her hips and run his hands along her smooth lean legs before lifting her up and sliding deep inside.

Another full body shudder went through him, and he closed his eyes, concentrating on the sound of her voice.

“See, right here?” She pressed up into his jaw. “If I apply enough pressure and angle my finger like this...” She moved her hand quickly, lifting up on her toes and leaning her body against his. Her breasts pressed against his chest. He reached for her waist just as pain lanced through his face, up into his eye.

He jerked away. “Ow! What the fuck?”

Verity bounced on her toes with a laugh. “It’s just pressure points.”

Chance rubbed his jaw but between the ache in his face and the throb of his cock his whole body felt alive in a way he hadn’t in years. “Who taught you that shit?”

“I told you, school.”

“No kind of school I ever went to taught little girls to incapacitate cyborgs with one finger.”

“To be fair, that’s not what they thought they were teaching.” She sighed and started walking again, sadness trailing behind her.

This girl was going to be a problem. She was gorgeous, hands down the most fuckable thing he’d seen in a long time, but that melancholy that came over her all of a sudden made him want to kiss her until it went away. He didn’t know what changed her mood like that, but it didn’t matter. He’d take those lips in his and kiss her dizzy until whatever made her sad was over.

“So, have you worked at the Ball & Joint long?” she asked, a nervous quiver in her voice.

Fucking small talk.

Chance bit down on the inside of his cheek to keep from snapping. It wasn’t her fault he had no skill in recognizing when someone was condescending or nice anymore. Human Interaction 101 had left the building.

Waves crashed in the distance against the Deluge that held the ocean back from completely devouring the old city. The structures that passed for buildings down here were waterlogged and crumbling, but without the wall, there’d be no back for the rich elite of the upper city to stand on top of.

“Never mind,” she mumbled. “I mean, you don’t have to tell me anything. I shouldn’t have asked. It’s none of my business anyway.”

“It’s alright,” Chance ground out the words and quickened his pace, so he walked in the street next to Verity instead of skulking behind her like a creep.

She danced around the puddles in her bare feet like a child. Charming in an innocent kind of way. It made him want to jump in the puddles with her, splash and dance, and maybe pull her lithe body up against his. They’d kiss, and the rain would come down harder, drenching their bodies, so she had no choice but to invite him in, it would be the only polite thing to do.

He shook his head, thoughts like that never led anywhere good.

“I’ve been with Garvan a few years now. Doing this and that.”

“But you don’t work on the Deluge?” Verity turned to him, her honey-colored eyes bathed in cool street light, making her thin frame look downright skeletal. When was the last time the girl had eaten?

“I did.” Chance shrugged and held out his metallic arm. “Why else would anyone do this?” Working on the Deluge was the fastest way to make credits quickly, and when Chance had been desperate, he’d jumped at the opportunity. Only Cyborgs work on the Deluge because the labor is too strenuous for a one hundred percent human body.

Verity didn’t respond but quietly watched him, waiting for him to continue. Her patience made him nervous, the quiet expectation in the air between them like a tether pulling them closer together.

“It was a few years ago, so, yeah…”

“That’s why you aren’t all rusted out like the others?” She said it straight, no pretense or judgment, but Chance couldn’t help his flinch. He didn’t like to talk about being a cyborg, let alone be lumped in with the rest of the cybernetically enhanced humans who lived in the Cyn City slums. He was no better than them but didn’t like to be reminded of how desperate one had to be to agree to something that left you less than human.

“Why? You thinking about upgrading so you can kick a little more ass?”

“Oh no, I would never do that to myself…” She stopped mid-thought, eyes wide. “I mean—I didn’t mean...”

He frowned. There it was. The same bullshit came out of everyone’s mouth eventually. “Sure, it’s okay. I’m used to it. Why would anyone do this if they didn’t have to?”

Next, she’d ask if he had any of the bio-engineered nanites running through his veins to maintain his inner mechanics. He wished he could pick up the pace, get ahead of her and not have to listen to the pathetic apologies and backpedaling.

Fucking humans always had a hundred and seventy-nine questions about his cybernetics, but God forbid you ever actually suggest they would mutilate themselves the same way. Every one of them stumbled over their words to assure him and anyone around that they would never do such a thing. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Fuck them all.

In the skycity and on the space stations people have biometrics, implants, and all kinds of things, but they don’t call themselves Cyborgs. No, they’re ‘enhanced’ or ‘transhumanism.’ No one wants to be made of metal and gears if they can avoid it, so those with the means buy and sell bio-materials to make high-grade technology. People with money, they think it’s more natural to have a replacement or enhanced arm made out of one hundred percent human biology. Fuck, he’d opt for that too if he had a fucking choice. The difference though was that what those fuckers can't grow, they buy. And those parts come from the streets of the Cyborg Slums. Chance knew more than one sad sucker who had been caught unaware and left with a temporary organ or tunicate and the comm data for a cynker – if they could afford one.

The rain fell a little harder, and the smell turned crisp. Time to get the show on the road, drop her off, and make his way back to the after-hours events at Ball & Joint.

“Chance, I’m sorry.” Verity stopped in front of a square concrete apartment building.

The original stairs led down into a pit of water shining with a rainbow swirl of oil. Wooden, unfinished stairs led up to what had once been the balcony of a second-floor apartment. Every year the water rose higher from beneath them and beat against the Deluge a little harder, and yet every year, people found ways to reclaim their city.

“It’s not a problem. Believe me, people usually say a fuck of a lot worse.”

“I’d never seen anyone like you until a few weeks ago. Where I’m from, there aren’t any cyborgs.”

He winced at the word but forced himself to nod. Where the fuck was she from to not have cybernetics? Even skycity had a few working the hard labor and construction jobs, out of sight out of mind, but they were still there.

“I’m new to Cyn City, and you’ve been really nice. Well, tonight anyway.” She corrected, wrinkling her nose adorably. “And you’re right. I would have been in a lot of trouble if I’d been out there alone with all three of those guys. So, thank you for walking me home.”

“Even though you didn’t need it.” Chance cracked a reluctant smile.

“Despite that self-evident fact, yes. It was kind, and there isn’t a lot of kindness around here. Please forgive me if I stumbled over my words.” Her look was full of genuine innocence. The kind that got stamped out or drowned with the rats faster than you could blow out a match. He wanted to hold onto it for a moment, believe it was real, and bask in the possibility that she could see passed what everyone else assumed and actually recognize the man beneath the metal.

“Don’t spend much time worrying about me. Made of metal, remember.” He tried to joke it off, but it sounded hollow in the night air. The memory of her hand on his chest ached with wanting.

He wished she would touch him again.

He wished she would just go the fuck inside and release him from her spell.

She leaned up and placed a timid kiss on his cheek, sending a thousand megavolts of electricity through him.

He was frozen solid, shocked still, completely immovable like a statue of the man he once was.

She smiled up at him sweetly and climbed the makeshift stairs, a bag thrown over her shoulder, one heel in her hand. When she turned around at the door, keys already in the lock and smiled again, broader this time, Chance’s chest thumped, like someone hit him with a defibrillator, but then it died again, as she disappeared inside.

He stood in the street for a moment, stunned.

And then the rain came down in earnest.

Like a fucking comic-book joke.

But his feet were planted in place. He watched the windows in the building, hoping to see a light turn on, so he’d know which unit was hers and that she’d gotten inside safely. Home wasn’t the building you lived in but the locked door you hid behind around here. Anything could happen to her between when she left his sight and when she blockaded herself in her own space.

Not that he should care. Or did.

But he still couldn’t move.

He ran his fingers through his hair, pushing it back off his forehead and letting the rain slick it down flat. Nights like this almost smelled clean, fresh. The rain washed away all of Cyn City’s stains for at least a little while. Maybe if he was lucky, it would carry his crimes away with them, sending them swirling down the storm drains and back out to sea.

A light flickered on in a third story window, and Chance released a sigh. Not a good apartment at all, still in the flood zone, but at least she was home.

Chance thrust his hand into his pocket and watched for a while. Movement in the room caused the candle to sway, casting shadows across his view. After a moment, he shook his head. What was he doing, standing out here in the rain like some teenage stalker? She was fine. She was safe.

Why did he care?

He headed back south along one of the side alleys with planks and debris laid over the permanently flooded sections of road. He should return to his real job, running the Cyborg cage fights that happened after hours beneath the bar for Garvan, but the cool night air filled his lungs and eased his mind. His clothes were soaked through anyway, so it wasn’t like hurrying would keep him any dryer.

He passed a few boarded shut restaurants which had once bustled with life during a time when Cyn City had been Manhattan and humans hadn’t used up the earth and spit her back out. They were probably occupied by drifters or rats. A few building faces had crumbled down completely, leaving the insides exposed and uninhabitable.

This area hadn’t been so bad when he and Rayanne first moved here. It hadn’t been nice, sure, but it hadn’t been the kind of place he had to make sure Rayanne avoided after a certain hour. He had loved her enough to… Well he’d loved her more than anything.

But back then, he hadn’t even been able to afford this quality of slum.

Then she got sick, and as her lungs filled with infection and fluid, Chance had only one option to make the kind of cash he needed to keep her alive. Sacrifice his body to save hers. A useless gesture.

He was a monster.

And one moment of kindness from a wisp of a girl new to town didn’t change that.