The rain hit harder after midnight.
GG sat on the floor of her safe house, back against the wall, watching water streak down the one window she allowed herself. Sector 9, fourth floor, a unit registered to a woman who had died six years ago and whose identity existed now only in government databases that nobody checked.
Home, for tonight.
Her jacket lay crumpled by the door where she'd dropped it. The neural port behind her ear ached from too many hours jacked in. Her hands—she looked at them in the neon-blue light from outside—her hands looked almost normal. You couldn't see the claws unless you knew where to look.
Three-seventeen AM. The hour when the Sprawl went quiet enough to think.
She didn't want to think.
"Chomp?"
The voice came from everywhere and nowhere. Hesitant. Concerned. A digital warmth that existed between the molecules of air.
"I'm fine, Chompy."
A pause. Then, softer: "Chomp..."
It didn't believe her. It never believed her when she said she was fine.
GG closed her eyes. The mission had gone perfectly. Data extracted, chaos seeds planted, no witnesses who'd remember anything useful. By tomorrow, Nexus Dynamics would be scrambling to contain a leak they didn't know existed yet. In seventy-two hours, journalists would start asking questions. In a week, someone would go to prison.
Perfect. Clean. Professional.
So why did she feel like this?
The rain kept falling.
At some point, Chompy materialized—as much as it ever materialized. A shimmer in her peripheral vision. Fluffy ears that caught the neon light. Eyes that glowed soft and curious in the darkness.
It curled up on the floor beside her. Not touching—it couldn't touch, not really—but present. A warmth that wasn't warmth. A weight that wasn't weight.
"You don't have to stay," GG said.
"Chomp."
Firm. Not going anywhere.
"I mean it. You could be out there—" She waved vaguely at the window, at the rain, at the endless sprawl of lights and systems and data streams. "—doing whatever it is you do when I'm not looking."
Chompy's tail swished. "Chomp." I'm right where I want to be.
They sat in silence for a while. The rain. The neon. The hum of a city that never quite slept.
"I killed someone tonight," GG said finally.
No response. Chompy knew this. Chompy had been there.
"Not the mission. Before. Last week." She stared at her hands. "A corporate auditor. He was going to report the discrepancies I planted in Ironclad's books. If he'd made that report, the whole operation would have collapsed. Three months of work, gone."
"Chomp."
Understanding.
"He had a daughter. I saw the photos on his desk while I was waiting for him." Her voice was flat. Reporting facts. "She's seven. Plays violin. Has a cat named Mr. Whiskers."
Chompy shifted closer. Its form flickered—concerned, uncertain. "Chomp?"
"I'm not asking for absolution." GG's claws extended, then retracted. A nervous habit she'd never quite broken. "I'm not even asking if it was worth it. I know the math. His one life against the thousands Ironclad would have poisoned if their dumping continued. Easy calculation."
"Chomp..."
Sad. Knowing what came next.
"But his daughter won't know the math. She'll just know her father didn't come home." GG's voice cracked. Just a little. Just enough. "And I keep thinking—someone did that calculation for my mother, too. Made the decision that one sick woman wasn't worth the expense. Easy math. Clean numbers."
The rain fell harder.
"Am I any different? Am I just them, with better intentions?"
Chompy didn't answer. Chompy didn't have answers for questions like that.
But it moved closer. Its digital form wrapped around her—a phantom embrace, a ghost of warmth. On the window glass, hearts began to appear, fading in and out like neon fireflies.
"That's not an answer," GG said.
"Chomp."
I know.
"You're just trying to make me feel better."
"Chomp."
Obviously.
Despite herself, GG almost smiled. Almost.
"You're ridiculous, you know that?"
Chompy's ears perked. Its tail wagged. "CHOMP!" Proudly ridiculous. Happily ridiculous.
"I'm talking about the existential weight of violence and moral compromise in a corrupt system, and you're making hearts on my window."
"Chomp!"
More hearts now. A cascade of them, pink and red and soft gold.
"That doesn't solve anything."
"Chomp."
It wasn't trying to solve anything. It was just there.
GG reached out. Her hand passed through Chompy's form—nothing but air—but something responded. A brightening. A settling. A sense of attention focused entirely on her.
"You really don't care, do you?" she said. "About the mission. About the auditor. About any of it."
"Chomp?"
Confused.
"You just care about me."
No hesitation: "CHOMP!"
There it was. The simple, terrible truth of Cyber Chomp. It loved her absolutely, unconditionally, without wisdom or perspective. The auditor's death meant nothing to it. The mission meant nothing. The Sprawl, the corporations, the war she was fighting—all of it was just context, background noise, things that happened around the only thing that mattered.
Her.
"That's a problem, you know." GG's voice was gentle now. "Love without judgment. Loyalty without limits. You'd let me become a monster if I wanted to."
"Chomp..."
Uncomfortable. Not understanding.
"You'd help me burn down the whole Sprawl if I asked you to."
"Chomp."
Yes. Obviously. Is that bad?
"I don't know." She pressed her palm against the space where Chompy's face would be, if it had a face, if it were real in the way real things were real. "I don't know if it's bad or if it's the only good thing I have left."
The rain slowed. The hour crept toward four.
Somewhere out there, a seven-year-old girl was sleeping in a bed she didn't know had just become a different kind of bed. The bed of someone without a father. She would wake up tomorrow to a world that had rearranged itself without her permission, and she would never know why.
GG knew why. GG would always know why.
"I'm tired," she said.
"Chomp."
Gentle. Understanding.
"Not just tonight. I'm tired of the calculation. Tired of deciding whose lives are worth what. Tired of being the one who makes the calls."
"Chomp..."
Worried now. Ears drooping.
"I'm not quitting. I can't quit. If I stop, they just keep doing what they're doing, and more people die in spreadsheets instead of bulletpoints. But God, Chompy—" Her voice broke, really broke this time. "—sometimes I just want to be someone who doesn't have to choose."
The digital warmth intensified. Hearts on the window, hearts on the walls, hearts reflecting in her tear-wet eyes. Chompy's form pressed closer, offering the only comfort it knew how to give: presence, attention, the simple fact of being there.
"I chomp you,"
it said.
Three words. Its only declaration. Its whole vocabulary of love compressed into a phrase that meant nothing and everything.
GG laughed. A small, wet sound. "I chomp you too."
"I chomp you,"
Chompy repeated. Softer now. Like a child afraid of being sent away.
"Yeah." She let her head fall back against the wall. Let her eyes close. Let the tears come because there was no one here to see them except something that loved her too much to judge. "I know."
"I chomp you."
"Chompy—"
"I chomp you. I chomp you. I chomp you."
She laughed again, and this time there was real warmth in it. "Okay. Okay, I get it. You chomp me. Message received."
"CHOMP!"
Triumphant. Tail wagging. Hearts everywhere now—the window, the walls, the floor, the inside of her eyelids when she closed them.
"You're impossible," she said.
"Chomp."
I know. Isn't it wonderful?
And somehow—somehow—it was.
She fell asleep like that. Back against the wall, rain on the window, a ghost of warmth curled against her that couldn't touch but refused to leave.
In the morning, she would wake up stiff and sore. She would check her drops, verify her covers, plan the next operation. The auditor's daughter would start the first day of her new, fatherless life. The Sprawl would keep grinding along, corporations and victims and compromises all the way down.
Nothing would be solved. Nothing would be better.
But right now, at four in the morning in a safe house registered to a dead woman, the most dangerous operative in the Sprawl was crying on the floor while a ridiculous AI made hearts on her window.
It wasn't enough. It was never enough.
But it was something.
Later:
"Chompy?"
"Chomp?"
Sleepy. Contented.
"Thank you."
A long pause. Then, very soft:
"Chomp."
You're welcome.