Rules for eating oysters

Rule Two: Never be honest with those who think nothing of you. On the ship that Racter has previously left unnamed — though Shay had dubbed it the Leaky Tub — there are now four residents: Racter himself, Gobbet, her dwarf friend Is0bel, quite a skilled decker, — and the enigmatic Shay Silvermoon. There is also a fifth presence: Duncan, Shay's "brother" — though he is no real brother of hers. This hulking orc spends all his free time either doing push-ups or meticulously disassembling and cleaning his weapons. However, Duncan refuses to think of himself as a resident. He hasn’t yet accepted that he belongs in shadowy Hong Kong, or with Gobbet, Is0bel, Racter — or especially Kindly Cheng and her Triad. Duncan genuinely believes he'd soon leave this wretched place, as even the tortures of the eighth hell of Avīci eventually end. The trouble is, what comes to Hong Kong stays in Hong Kong. Like Vegas, only worse. Perhaps they are all doomed to remain here forever, stuck on the Leaky Tub, veiled in the eternal rain and mist, tapping ghostly mahjong tiles on the dim-lit kitchen table even after death. Shay Silvermoon — an outsider to this city who couldn’t string together two words in Cantonese — fits Hong Kong like a hand in a glove. Just like Is0bel, Gobbet, and Racter himself. Racter thinks he’s come closer to Shay’s mystery when he learns she’d literally grown up in a dump — specifically, the radioactive wasteland of Seattle’s Redmond Barrens. She’s been a scavenger then, and, in a way, she still is now. Hong Kong is less of a landfill and more of a marketplace, but the difference isn’t all that significant: a churning, teeming mass of metahumans of countless nationalities and cultures, fragments of ancient magic and cutting-edge tech, the detritus of the past colliding with the future, East meeting West. Most of it, frankly, is junk — giving the city its landfill-like essence. Perhaps that’s why Shay feels so at home here. Shay speaks of surviving by picking through abandoned odds and ends as a child. Now, it seems, she collects fragments of other people instead. (Racter doesn’t voice this observation aloud.) She adopts their habits and quirks, their professions and peculiarities, their thoughts and fascinations. Under Is0bel’s guidance, Shay builds her first deck — a modified cheap Renraku model. The fresh datajack is barely visible beneath the cascade of her dark curls. Shay isn’t much of a decker yet, and Racter doubts she ever aspired to be the best. He can’t imagine her cracking Renraku’s or Saeder-Krupp’s top-secret data vaults. Still, she can at least skim a few nuyen from someone’s credstick with the magic of ones and zeroes. It turns out Shay isn’t a stranger to other types of magic either. From Gobbet, Shay borrows not only her love of spicy, unhealthy street food but also a knack for sensing auras, the flow of chi, and the invisible meridians running through the body. Or, as Racter might describe it in his homeland’s terms — witchcraft and devilry. He wonders if she’d try to take something from him.   What makes Shay the leader of their small team isn’t her magic or her fledgling decker skills. It is her talent for gathering information, her rare gift for acting, her unpredictability, and… something else. Racter couldn’t quite name it. An inexplicable, mystical sort of luck, perhaps. She really is remarkable. He hopes to unravel her mystery one day. They discuss plans, as he imagined, and go to bars together after successful runs — though only Shay drinks. Racter doesn’t touch alcohol. They talk often, and at length — more and more, just the two of them. Conversations that have nothing to do with work. The strange seaweed scent of her becomes an expected part of his workshop. Racter founds himself telling her more than politeness required. Not that Shay necessarily understands his musings on implants, drones, memory algorithms, or the nature of humanity, let alone agrees with his views. But sincerity, he believes, is the key to building trust — a quality he now knows matters to her. When Racter asks about her past, Shay is seemingly forthcoming — witty, smart, even funny — but her words slip through his grasp like water. There are topics she deftly avoids, leaving gaps and ambiguities in her stories. Who is she? He can’t pin her down. Shay Silvermoon is charming and charismatic, yet separated from everyone by some unseen glass wall of secrecy. Gradually, Racter begins piecing together her omissions. For instance, Shay rarely mentions her childhood or the years before Raymond Black took her and Duncan in. (Correcting himself mentally, Racter thinks: Shay is separated from everyone but Duncan. He knows something I don’t — why she’s so unique. And that, frankly, irritates him.) Gobbet and Is0bel are convinced Racter and Shay are sleeping together practically from day one. Gobbet even spins disgustingly detailed fantasies about riggers and their... peculiarities. Shay merely smirks, never commenting. If only Gobbet knew how far from the truth she was. The truth is, Shay does spend more time with Racter than with anyone else — more than with Is0bel or Duncan, and even more than with Gobbet, with whom she’s grown close. (Not that Racter is counting. His surveillance equipment simply records everything.) He notices how intently Shay listens to him, how she wrinkles her nose, sniffing the scent of his cigarettes — not with disgust, but something else. Without needing to read brainwave emissions, he can tell she likes him. But considering her peculiar “rules” about restaurants and oysters, he isn’t sure what like even means in her book. Does it matter? Yes. It determines how he should act around her. What code to use for this lockbox. Shay avoids physical contact. That matters. Racter knows the look of revulsion toward flesh when he sees it. He shares it, for his own rigging-related reasons. So he quickly notices the black, jagged fear radiating from Shay whenever Duncan clapps her on the shoulder or Gobbet hangs carelessly on her neck. As a result, even with their growing camaraderie, he avoids touching her — deliberately and entirely. Fear of touch. Rules about creeps. Gaps in her past. The picture is coming together.   Now she sits on the edge of his workbench, swinging one sun-bronzed leg in a filthy rubber boot — an outrage against the near-sterile order Racter tries to maintain in the workshop. Koschei glares at her from a dark corner, his red optics flashing in protest, tapping the floor irritably with his metal legs. They are talking about magic — something Racter would have laughed at a month ago. “The world’s wrapped in a web of secret symbols,” Shay says, eyes bright. (Why is she telling me this? he wonders. Why not Gobbet?) “You know I can’t see them, no matter how I try. But I’ll take your word for it.” “Too bad you can’t,” she says wistfully. “It’s really beautiful.” Racter weighs his options: should he send his guest away and get back to work, or take this rare chance to learn something new about Shay Silvermoon while she seems in the mood to talk about herself? He chooses the latter. “Honestly, I’m surprised it took you this long to discover this side of the world. Didn’t you have magic before?” he asks. “It’s a natural trait of your race, isn’t it?” That seemingly simple question throws Shay into a swirling storm of confusion. “No. Not all elves are mages. As for me… You’ll laugh, but I… I was never really sure,” she admits. “Raymond — my adoptive father — once splurged on classes for us. For me and Duncan. We went for a while, but neither of us could manage anything they were teaching. I decided magic just wasn’t for me...” Racter has already formed a rather low opinion of Duncan. The guy probably only managed to finish high school with his sister’s help. Magic? Not a chance. Shay, on the other hand, is a far more intriguing case. “...And so I kept thinking that. All these years. Until Gobbet explained it to me in a way I could actually understand. Now I’m definitely a mage, though not a particularly impressive one. But at the same time, ever since I was a kid…” Shay trails off, lost in thought. “‘At the same time…?” Racter prompts. “Well, ever since I was a kid, there were moments… I don’t know how to explain it. Moments where I felt twice as light, twice as strong as I really was. Like I could do anything. Like I was weightless… Like if a strong wind came, it would carry me off, and I’d just keep flying… flying. It felt like I had so much power in me, like if I waved my hand, sparks would fly off my fingertips…” “Did you try? Do they?” Racter asks, his tone genuinely curious, not mocking. He’s reaching into his pocket for his lighter, a cigarette hanging from his lips, when Shay stops him with a mischievous smile. She touches the tip of his cigarette with her index finger, and it bursts into flame. “Now? Sometimes they do. As you can see.” “Oh. Thank you.” Racter takes a satisfied drag. Whether this counts as a “touch” is a tricky question, but in any case, it’s clear he’s made some progress in closing the distance between them. Shay is far more comfortable with his presence than she is with Gobbet — or even her brother. Shay now sits quite close to him, her wide grin showing her garlic-white teeth as she watches him smoke, like someone admiring a beautiful object. Hm. He doesn’t look away. For two people who’ve never even held hands, it’s indecent to look at each other for so long and with such intensity — but it seems Shay isn’t thinking about that at all right now. Racter offers her a cigarette, and Shay takes it. She lights up and, after her little trick, glows as if she’s just won a school math competition (no, Racter corrects himself, it would’ve been math for him, but for Shay, it’s more like a literature contest). After a pause, she confesses: “Honestly, I can’t even get that little cigarette-lighting trick to work every time. And I’m terrible at summoning spirits, no matter how much Gobbet tries to teach me. I’m such a lousy mage.” She presses a finger to the tip of her nose in her characteristic gesture of embarrassment. “I still can’t quite believe I’m the one doing it. It feels like I’m just… a conduit. A vessel for some kind of power.” “Do you regret getting the datajack? Magic and tech don’t exactly mix well.” “Oh, I know… classic fairy tales: fae and cold iron!” Shay laughs. “But no. I don’t regret it. I haven’t felt like it’s affected anything yet. I barely even notice it when I’m not plugged into the deck.” “Still, maybe it’s worth keeping your focus on magic if spellcasting and energy flows fascinate you more.” Racter’s tone is free of mockery or condescension, but Shay seems to detect something in his advice — whether imagined or not. A faint chill of purple detachment creeps into her aura. “I’m equally interested in both.” “It’s not easy to be both a mage and a decker at the same time, for various reasons. You’re familiar with the concept of Essence loss, right? And, besides, isn’t there one path where you’d like to achieve true mastery?” “Are you saying I’m not good enough at either?” she asks, her tone unreadable, with a faint smile and an edge of black fear pricking at her words. During their runs, Racter has seen how adept Shay Silvermoon is at pretending, at lying — and now he realizes he’s touched on something important, something deeply hidden. Despite her playful tone, his answer seems to matter to her. “If I thought that, I wouldn’t work with you,” he says honestly. “Shay, have I ever given you any reason to doubt how much I respect you? You’re the best partner I’ve ever had.” “Seriously?” she asks, disbelief written all over her face. According to his instruments, Shay's heartbeat quickens slightly after his words. Racter sees fuchsia-pink ripples of embarrassment, mixed with the warm yellow glow of something like joy — a field of buttercups — and a vast, genuine astonishment: deep blues and greens, the hues of peacock feathers. For a moment, Racter marvels at the shimmer of these colors invisible to the human eye. He realizes he enjoys surprising her. Enjoys making her blush. "Dead serious. They're already telling legends about our runs." "Maybe we've just been lucky," Shay replies, and she seems to mean it. Then she quickly adds, flustered, "I know I’m not the best decker yet, but I’m getting better... I—thank you. I guess I got too honest there for a moment and then started thinking you were mocking me, and I got mad. Remember, I told you I have a few rules..." "Of course I remember. You mentioned them during our first meeting. Your oyster rules," Racter says with a faint smile. "Well... The second rule is about people who don’t respect you. It’s not as absolute as the first one. With those people, you can work. But you shouldn’t try to be honest with them. Only a fool spills their soul to people who look down on them. Who think you’re just..." — her voice tightens as she half-smiles — "what was it you said when we met? 'A pretty high schooler.'" "So, does that mean you want to spill your soul to me?" Racter ventures. "I do. And I have. Far too often, as you’ve probably noticed," she snaps, blushing fiercely. "And about that whole 'you can’t be both a mage and a decker' thing... I really want you to understand. No, not just understand — you. I think you’re the one who will. I honestly can’t choose. Everything interests me. I’ve never dreamed of being just one thing — a doctor, an archaeologist. Or, well, I did, but the next day I’d want to be an artist. Or a financier. I still believe that a person is more than just one function. But... no one seems to agree with me. Too many people have told me I’m just useless. Or tried to ‘fix’ me. Turn me into a copy of themselves. Tell me honestly — does it bother you that I don’t take after you at all?" Bother him? Koshchei’s delicate limbs click faintly in the background. "I was actually just thinking about how you seem to take pieces of your friends’ personalities, like souvenirs. I’d imagine you could learn a thing or two from me," Racter replies with deliberate vagueness. (Rationality. Advanced mathematics. Medicine. The art of constructing the most lethal drones imaginable. Or any number of ways to kill a man instantly.) "But I think copies are dull. You’re you, Shay. And you’re remarkable. The lifespan of an elf is long; you can afford to try to be everything. Do you know what Einstein said about that? 'I have no special talent. I am just passionately curious.'" Her lips move as she whispers the quote under her breath, committing it to memory. Then, like a child offering a treasured gift in return for a toy — trading a dragonfly wing for a stone with a hole in it — she says: "I like this one: 'I want to live and feel all the shades, tones, and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life.' That’s Sylvia Plath." By now, Racter knows she attended university, studying liberal arts and humanities. He also knows she’s spent a few years in prison. (She’s definitely not fourteen.) "...So, I guess," Shay continues, "it might sound strange, but you could say I want to be everything. Do you understand? No, of course you do. You’re the same. You do it more literally, though — taking pieces of others and improving Koshchei. Or yourself." Racter nods. He really does understand her. Perhaps better than she realizes. Maybe that’s why, despite their obvious differences — character, interests, education, age — he finds her so interesting. In some odd way, they’re very much alike. "I think a lot of people share that dream. Who wouldn’t want to master multiple fields, experience multiple lives?" he says. "The problem is, no one lives forever." But I will. Of course, he doesn’t say that out loud. He flinches slightly when Shay, in a completely serious tone, echoes the thought like an eerie mirror of his own mind: "I want to live forever." Then, after a moment’s pause for thought, she adds, "Well, I haven’t decided yet. Nobody really knows how long elves can live, right? But I love being alive. At least, for now... Ugh, that sounds so trite, doesn’t it? People don’t usually think about death, right?" "Some people think about nothing else," Racter muses silently. But he doesn’t say that, either. When he doesn’t answer, Shay sets her jaw, almost defiantly. "I mean... I’m not dead yet. So that makes me immortal. Doesn’t it?" Racter doesn’t have a response ready, nor does he know what she wants to hear. He manages only a neutral, empty smile. "So that’s why you collect pieces of others," he says lightly. "You’re building your immortality while you’re still alive. Logical. Sounds like something Hindu philosophers would say." Shay nods eagerly. "Yes, yes, I thought about that too... Becoming the ‘higher self,’ but not losing the small, familiar self in the process." She looks up at him again, her gaze soft and lingering. There’s a radiant, sunny warmth in her electromagnetic signature, like a field of summer flowers. And beneath it — what is that? That deep, indecently dark shade of rose, like flushed lips? Oh, come on. Then Shay blurts out: "You know what I’d like to take from you, if I could? Your smile, Dr. Racter. You smile like you know exactly when the world is going to end — and you plan to survive it." Racter doesn’t rush his reply. He takes a drag from his new cigarette, savoring it as he turns her words and her expression over in his mind. Does she even realize what’s happening here? How she’s behaving? What she’s saying? Either she likes him... or he’s blind. And all his instruments are worthless. If she doesn’t realize it yet — it’ll be far more intriguing when she does. "Bit late for flirting, Shay," he says with mock indifference. "You know who you’re dealing with. I thought I’d already passed all your restaurant tests." Shay recoils sharply, as if suddenly becoming aware of how close they are — how intimate the conversation has become. That familiar sharp, black fear — it’s like shattered glass. "This isn’t a test. I... I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to flirt. And I’m asking you not to, either. We’ve become close friends, and we talk about a lot of things openly, but... let’s not flirt. Even as a joke. Okay?" "Okay," Racter says, smiling. "That said, I have to admit — I also like your smile. No flirting." And yet, somehow, no matter how you look at it, there’s a thread of flirtation running through every exchange they’ve ever had, ever since the moment they met. Like two spies from rival superpowers trying to extract secrets, steps, moves — smiling and feigning charm. And genuinely liking each other. But every wrong word could be their undoing. Something like that. It seems Shay is thinking along the same lines now — Racter can see the tension in her. But apart from the EM waves, she betrays nothing, offering only a neutral, polite smile: "Good to know... So, tell me, is there anything you’d like to take from me? Or do you already have everything you need... or will eventually?" Racter recalls Gobbet’s words: “Trust me, he wants something from you. This is Hong Kong, no one gives you anything for free here.” And it seems Shay remembers them too, because her gaze sharpens, as if she’s back on a dangerous run, poised at the moment of decision. Gobbet’s wiser than she looks. Racter does want something from Shay Silvermoon. There’s no doubt about that. Why else would he waste time on these conversations, sacrificing work and efficiency? The real question is: does he even know what that something is? He studies the woman in front of him — this girl with the raven’s nest for hair, wearing her absurdly layered clothes, her legs bare above rubber boots. This girl who’s never sought leadership, yet somehow naturally became the glue that holds their mismatched team of humans and metahumans together. This girl who’s a mediocre shot, worse in hand-to-hand combat, a decker barely good enough for small jobs, and a mage whose spells are little more than party tricks. And yet, she keeps pulling off impossible runs, saving her team again and again without a drop of bloodshed — thanks, it seems, to sheer luck and a silver tongue. This girl who didn’t hesitate to join him in the Ares Asia facility to retrieve Koshchei’s self-repair schematics. Who, in a relatively short time, has come to understand him better than anyone else ever has, becoming not only his best business partner but also — perhaps — something more. Right now, she’s smiling at him, but her smile seems a little sad. He doesn’t know the answer. He doesn’t know what answer she wants, so he jokes: "I’m not sure what I’d take from you. Maybe just your trick for lighting cigarettes with a snap of your fingers?"