Epilogue

Lucy sat in the kiddie pool, an energy drink in one hand, the other splayed out over the edge of the pool. She was contorted in a position that was as comfortable as it was bad for her spine.

She had bought a TV, even if it was a stupid luxury to buy when anyone with sense could just look at virtual screens projected from their Augs. Still, she liked having the big flatscreen pressed up against the wall.

It was tuned to a Burlington news channel. It was a small local channel that had been taken over by a few reporters who wanted to... well, report stuff. It was very jank at the moment, with most of their footage being shaky-cam and interviews with randos, and what news they said that Lucy could fact-check came back as mostly wrong. Which was par for the course as far as news went.

Still, it was nice to see that the city wasn't a burning husk now that she was back home.

The lake was on fire, but only a little, and for once it wasn't Gomorrah's fault. Probably that underwater samurai whose name she'd forgotten.

Lucy took a sip of her drink, then suppressed a shiver as the sugar hit her.

She needed to get a better kiddie pool, maybe something with a heating element in it?

But then, she might as well get a jacuzzi.

And if she got one of those, there was a very real chance she'd never leave it again. So maybe it was for the best that she didn't. The last couple of days had been stressful.

Actually, the last couple of weeks had been pretty bad, as far as stress went.

Lucy tilted her head back and took in the massive bedroom which was now hers, with its protector-made architecture, sheltered within a larger penthouse floor that was practically a modern mansion near the centre of one of the largest cities in the world. The kind of place that cost more than most people could ever imagine having.

So yeah, while the stress had been a bit bad, on the whole of it, things were going pretty well. It was a lot of work to keep it all up, but she was glad to do it. It was helping and while she never believed herself to be anything but a practical sort of altruist, she’d help others if it meant coming out on top herself.

She had a couple dozen emails waiting for her. They were offers, polite and otherwise, asking for her to join their company or corporation in one form or another.

Either she’d really impressed a bunch of big wigs, or they were trying to get her to look at them favourably since she had connections to Cat.

The idiots. As if she’d ever leave such a cushy position to work for a corpo.

The door to the room opened, and Lucy casually draped an arm across her chest until she saw that it was Cat who’d stepped in.

Her girlfriend was frowning as she looked around, then she spotted Lucy and froze in the act of closing the door. Her eyes flit from Lucy’s face to Lucy’s chest and stayed there. “You’re in my pool,” Cat said.

“Mhm,” Lucy agreed.

“You’re not wearing anything,” Cat said next. Another statement of fact.

“I haven’t had time to buy a nice swimsuit,” Lucy said. She gently lowered her arm, and Cat stared, as if her breasts were the red dot and Cat was very much the animal she was named after. “I was thinking of getting a jacuzzi, do you think we could get away with that?”

“In the bedroom?” Cat asked, finally snapping her attention up.

“Why not?” Lucy asked.

Cat blinked. “Fuck it, sure,” she said.

Lucy grinned. Yeah, life was a bit stressful, but it was worth living these days.

***