Rachel and Dorian Burkes, all that remained of their broken family, waited outside the seedy little door, eyes scanning the street and fingers twitching in fear. This wasn’t the part of town they were used to, although where they lived didn’t look much better. The gutters overflowing with trash, the flickering streetlights above; it wasn’t their hovel, which made it alien and dangerous. At least where they lived, they knew which gangs to prostrate themselves before. Here, on the lower-East-side, they had no idea.

They heard movement behind the small door, sluggish stumbling, and Dorian hammered the cracked, plastic buzzer a couple more times for good measure. It wouldn’t be a great end to the day to get mugged while they were waiting to be let in.

“Keep ‘yer pants on, I’m comin’,” a voice from the other side of the door shouted, and the accent was so unlike what either one of them expected that they shared a fearful look. What if they’d chosen wrong. What if he couldn’t do it? What if they’d wasted all of their money on a hope and a dream?

A yelp and a crash, then the door slid to the side. It stuck halfway open, just for a moment, before a motor whined and the door shunted the rest of the way into the wall. The man on the other side was in a dirty wifebeater with dark sweatstains down the chest and below the arms, and a pair of sweatpants that Dorian wasn’t sure had been that shade of brown when they were new.

“Yah? What d’ya want?”

Rachel was the one who noticed the 10mm pistol held half-concealed in his hand against the doorframe. Her confidence flagged for an instant, but she pictured light brown curly hair and steeled herself.

“Mr… Fiberhopper?”

“You with the Dogz? ‘Cause their money ain’t due yet.”

“No, I’m… we’re…”

“We’re the Burkes,” Dorian cut in. “We paid you… to…”

“Ah yah, I ‘member. Little kid. Come on in.”

Fiberhopper stepped back over a bag of trash that was leaking something foul and brown onto the bag just underneath it. The inside of the apartment smelled like stim pods and tobacco, and Dorian’s heart sank with regret. They’d made a huge mistake, but there was no getting their money back now.

Past the entryway was a small room with marginally fewer trash bags littering the floor. Here was the stim popper in question and a pile of used cartridges, right next to a deck and headset combo. It looked like Fiberhopper sat either on the floor, or on a particularly lumpy cardboard box when he used the deck, because there was no proper chair that they could see.

“Make yerselves comfortable. Or don’t, I suppose ye won’t be here for long. To be honest, I weren’t expectin’ ye for a while yet.”

“We got your message,” Rachel pleaded. “You said it was time.”

“Aye, I did. Thirty minutes ago. What’d ye do, run over?” In fact, they’d chartered the first cab they could grab as soon as Dorian’s deck pinged with the message.

“Something like that,” he said. “So… how’s this supposed to work? Are you going to do the hack here? Do we… watch?”

“What? No, this ain’t a movie. I messaged ye when I was done, and I’m done. Here it is.”

Fiberhopper picked up a storage card from a pile on the counter. How the man knew it was theirs, Dorian had no idea. In fact, he had more than a little suspicion that it was just a random storage card the man happened to lay his fingers on. But if he was cheating them, there wasn’t anything they could do about it. Especially with him hauling that 10mm around.

Rachel started forward, but when Fiberhopper pulled back, her hands went to her mouth and she gasped. Was he toying with them?

“I jus’ wanna make sure. You know wha’ this means, yah? He’ll never be able to grow up. He needs a real body t’do that. Brains, hormones, all that jazz.”

A real body that would cost more than a hundred thousand dollars to have printed. A hundred thousand dollars that they’d never make in their lifetimes. Most people would move on, would let their plans expire and the digital snapshots be deleted and just have another kid. But not them. Not for Benny.

For twenty thousand—their entire savings and half of their furniture—they’d bought a powerful deck, a pair of headsets, and a single job from a low-tier hacker; Fiberhopper. He’d said he could break into the backup systems, that he could get a copy of Benny’s brain scan, and if he was to be believed, he was currently rubbing his grubby fingers all over it.

“We know,” Dorian said, and ground his teeth. “We know.”

Fiberhopper shrugged and held the card out again. Rachel stepped forward and took the thin piece of plastic and circuitry that might or might not have held the suspended consciousness of their baby boy. She stepped quickly back and Dorian put a hand on her shoulder.

“Job’s done, far as I’m concerned.”

“That’s it?” Dorian asked.

“That’s it. Now shoo, I’ve got work t’do.”