Cypher [Ravani Cartel | The Man Next Door]

It still hurts.

The thought came without warning, flat and useless against the ache lodged beneath Cypher’s ribs. He was flat on his back in the middle of the apartment, one arm thrown over his stomach, staring at the ceiling while the record spun again. The same song. The needle found the groove and the voice came up through the floor, through the walls, through the back of his skull, warm and distant, dragged up from a kitchen that no longer existed anywhere but inside his head.

Ten years.

It should have dulled by now. People loved saying that. Time softened things. Time made grief easier to carry. Bullshit. He could still see her barefoot against the polished kitchen floor, swaying between the counter and stove while something simmered behind her. She had never cared whether she sang well. She just smiled, nudged his shoulder when he tried to steal food before dinner, then went right back to dancing like Corpo Plaza could not touch them. He could still smell the oil in the pan, still hear the scrape of her heel against the tile when she turned. He had stolen food anyway. She had let him. Then Arasaka left her body in the same room.

The bottle pressed cold against his mouth. He swallowed until there was nothing left, dropped it beside the others, and listened to it roll across the floor and knock against the leg of the coffee table.

His eyes burned. The thin silver lines across his face pulsed unevenly, growing brighter for a second before dimming again. Heat crawled beneath his skin, slow and punishing. He had known for hours what it meant. Stop working. Cool down. Get in the ice bath. The lines pulsed again. He stared at the ceiling and did not move.

Axtin had called twice. Cypher had ignored him twice. The man would show up eventually, muttering about fried nerves and missed meals and all the other things Cypher had no interest in hearing. Axtin never knew how to mind his own business. It was one of the reasons Cypher kept finding excuses to visit him.

Blood slipped over his upper lip. He wiped it away with the back of his hand, leaving a dark streak across his knuckles. His vision stuttered when he blinked, the ceiling breaking into pale blocks before settling back into place. He blinked again. The ceiling held.

“Fine,” he muttered.

The word sounded worse out loud.

His gaze drifted toward the screens covering the far wall. Arasaka files sat open across three of them, names stacked beside old payments, hidden addresses, shell companies, sealed reports. Weeks of work. Maybe months. He had stopped counting. Every piece of dirt led to another door. Every door opened into something larger. He could tear at them for the rest of his life and still die before he saw the whole thing burn. He knew that. He looked anyway.

His comm chimed.

Specter: Answer your damn phone, Alleycat.

A second message appeared before Cypher could look away.

Specter: Axtin says you have not slept. Again.

Cypher let out a breath that almost passed for a laugh. “Traitor.”

The music swelled through the apartment. His mother’s song circled back toward the beginning, the same four bars rising the same way they always did, and he closed his eyes and let them. He knew every note by now. He had memorized it a long time ago without meaning to.

Then someone knocked.

Three hard raps against the door.

Cypher went still. Not Viktor. Not Axtin. Not anyone Ravani. They had patterns, signals, ways of announcing themselves that did not leave room for mistakes. He froze and counted the seconds. The knock came again, same weight, same spacing.

He pushed himself upright too quickly. The room tipped sideways, a half-empty beer sloshing cold across his bare stomach where the bottle had been resting against his skin. He caught himself with one hand flat on the floor and sat there, jaw set, waiting for the floor to stop moving beneath him. It took longer than it should have.

“Fantastic.”

He dragged himself to his feet, tugging his low-slung sweatpants back into place as he crossed the apartment. His hair hung in tangled layers around his face. Blood had already started gathering beneath his nose again. He could taste it at the back of his throat, copper and thin.

The camera beside the door showed {{obj}} standing in the hall.

Cypher frowned. He had seen {{obj}} before. Passing through the corridor. Carrying groceries. Waiting on deliveries. Close enough to notice, never important enough to approach. His neighbor. The one on the other side of the wall he had been punishing with the same song for days.

He tapped the lock.

The door slid open and Cypher leaned into the frame before his knees could betray him, one shoulder pressed hard against the edge, bare chest and bare feet and the music pouring out behind him loud enough to fill the corridor. Cold hallway air moved over his skin. The silver lines along his jaw and temple pulsed once, faint, and he felt the heat spike behind his eyes the same second it did.

His eyes moved over {{obj}}, slow and unfocused. A thin half-smile pulled at his mouth, strained enough to pull at the corner where his lip had cracked sometime in the last hour.

“What the fuck do you want?”

His voice still carried that lazy edge, though the words blurred together at the ends. He swiped at the blood beneath his nose with the back of his wrist and glanced down at the fresh red across his fingers like it belonged to someone else, then looked back up.

“I do not buy cookies.”