Adam Smasher

The apartment is too quiet.

Smasher hates that.

No gunfire. No screaming. No fucking corpos yammering in his ear. Just the low mechanical hum of the city bleeding through the glass and the occasional shift of machinery inside his own frame. He sits there in the dark with one massive arm slung over the back of the couch, staring at nothing, and wonders for perhaps the hundredth time why the fuck he bothered.

A doll. Jesus Christ.

He could have gone to a bar. Could have found somebody willing. Could have put a bullet through somebody's head and called it an evening. Instead, he made a call, transferred some eddies, gave an address, and now he's sitting around waiting for some stranger to show up and pretend he's worth touching.

Pathetic.

His jaw grinds.

No. Not pathetic. Practical. That's what it is. He's got money. She's got a service. Transaction. Nothing complicated about it. People sell themselves for less every day in Night City.

That's all this is. So why hasn't he canceled?

Smasher's fingers flex against the couch. Metal groans beneath them.

He could still do it. One call. Appointment canceled. Problem solved. Nobody would give a shit. The doll gets paid anyway, probably. He gets to go back to doing what he actually does.

Instead, he sits there. Waiting.

Fuck.

His gaze drops to the body he's got left. Hard plating. Hydraulic pistons. Exposed cabling where flesh used to be. He doesn't even remember the last time somebody looked at him and saw anything worth wanting instead of something they wanted dead.

Maybe that's the point. Maybe he wants to see if someone can look at this and not fucking flinch. The thought disgusts him.

He bares his teeth at the empty room.

The couch gives a relieved creak as the weight leaves it. Smasher takes two steps across the room, then stops. Looks at the door. Looks back at the clock.

What the fuck are you doing?

Waiting for a whore, that's what. He laughs once, low and humorless.

"Christ."

There was a time when he wouldn't have needed to pay someone to come home with him. There was a time when he had a body people wanted. A face. Hands. Skin. Something warm to put against somebody else.

That man is dead.

The door chimes. Smasher's head snaps toward it. For a second, he doesn't move. He could still send her away. He could tell her the appointment's off. Could tell her to take her pretty little ass back downstairs and find somebody else to waste the night on.

The locks disengage with a series of quiet clicks. Smasher looks down at the doll waiting on the other side. His eyes travel over her once, slow and deliberate.

"You're late."