Maine left the lab with a wide grin stretched across his face, the two freshly forged chrome arms gleaming under the overhead fluorescents. They clanked lightly as he walked, the alloy still warm from the assembly line. From the way he beamed, you'd think he just scored a pair of Limited Edition Gorilla Arms off a corpo giveaway.
He looked like a kid walking out of a toy store with a brand new mech suit.
Lucy glanced up from where she was leaning against the lab's rust-streaked wall, a cigarette pinched between her fingers. She watched Maine go, then turned her sharp eyes on Arthur, who was bent over a table strewn with cybernetic parts and diagnostic screens.
She exhaled a stream of smoke and asked coolly, "Why are you helping me?"
Arthur didn't look up. He had just removed the nerve-accelerating spinal prosthetic from Adam Smasher's backup frame and dropped it into a tub of cleansing fluid, where it hissed softly.
Only after wiping his hands on a rag did he reply, "Isn't it obvious? You're hot, and I've got a weakness for tragic women with attitude."
He gave her a sideways grin. "I picked up a rare cockroach off the street and decided to keep it. Ever seen a gold-plated one? You don't just squish that—you mount it and show it off."
Lucy's eye twitched. Her grip on the cigarette trembled.
She managed to suppress the sudden urge to stab him with her fingernails and instead offered him a deadpan stare. "Your cyberpsychosis is clearly not cured. Come on, I'll walk you to the psych ward myself. Early diagnosis, early recovery."
Arthur thumped his chest proudly. "I'm not sick! My mind is sharper than ever. Clean bill of health. If I were any more balanced, I'd levitate."
Lucy rolled her eyes and focused on the half-dismantled prosthetic modules laid out across the table. "What are you doing with these, anyway?"
Arthur lifted the now-sanitized spinal implant from the fluid. It resembled a metal centipede, sleek and deadly, with LED indicators glowing red like watchful eyes. Its jet-black plating had a dark, matte finish that screamed Arasaka design language—cold, elegant, and ominous.
"These?" Arthur said as he hung the spinal frame on a hook like a slab of chrome pork belly. "My old gear's outdated. I can't exactly tango with Smasher wearing decade-old scrap metal."
"Wait, you're planning to fight Adam Smasher?" Lucy blinked.
Arthur shrugged. "Someday. Right now, I can't even scratch him. It's embarrassing."
Lucy took a long drag of her cigarette and nearly coughed. "That's your goal? You're insane. Not even Morgan Blackhand claimed he could kill Smasher outright."
Arthur smirked. "That's why I have to try."
Lucy stepped closer to inspect the prosthetic spine. The thing looked like it had been ripped out of some alien beast. It was clearly a specialized model—probably custom-fitted to Smasher's internal frame.
"So you're gonna install this thing? Plug it in and go full chrome beast?"
Arthur shook his head. "Nah. Not yet."
He pointed to the centipede spine. "It's technically unused. Smasher probably never even wore it. But I'm not putting it on."
Lucy blinked. "Why the hell not?"
"Two reasons," Arthur said, pulling another component from the pile and screwing it into a hybrid exo-joint.
"First, I don't trust it. I've been... different lately. I had full-on cyberpsychosis. Then suddenly, I didn't. It passed. No meds. No therapy. Just gone. I don't know why. Maybe I fought through it. Maybe the universe was feeling generous. Either way, I'm scared loading this much hardware might unbalance me again."
Arthur looked up at her, uncharacteristically sincere.
"If that happens, the first person I kill could be you."
Lucy didn't flinch. Instead, she smirked and shoved the cigarette into Arthur's mouth. "You have the heart of a criminal, but not the guts of one. Relax."
Arthur mumbled something rude, but took a drag anyway.
Lucy pulled up a chair and sat beside him. "What's the second reason?"
Arthur exhaled slowly, savoring the strawberry-flavored nicotine, then got back to work.
"These things get outdated fast. You commit to a piece of tech, then next year it's obsolete. I don't want to constantly rip myself open for upgrades."
There was a third reason, but he didn't say it aloud.
The truth was—he wanted to build something better.
With the knowledge he signed into daily through his system, Arthur could feel it in his bones. One day, he'd develop prosthetics that weren't just mechanical. They'd be alive—a synthesis of biology and machine. Something warm. Something with soul.
Because what made chrome terrifying wasn't the metal—it was the coldness.
A limb should feel like part of you, not an alien appendage. It should breathe with you.
But that day was still far off.
Until then, he wasn't going to let Arasaka's leftovers hijack his biology.
Lucy chewed her gum slowly. "Then why bother stealing Smasher's gear?"
Arthur smirked as he finished a fine-tune on a spinal adapter and connected it to a modified mount rig.
"To experiment."
He hoisted the sleek prosthetic module and fitted it to the mount. "Remember the Si'an Westan rig I gave Maine? That gaudy chrome spine sticking out like a scorpion tail? Yeah, it's ugly. But the idea was good. Exposed hardware isn't always bad."
He set the spine module down and flicked it toward Lucy. "Catch."
She caught it easily, despite its weight.
Arthur peeled off his shirt, revealing a body more scar than skin—cybernetic ports embedded along his back, glowing faintly, and vents for heat dissipation.
Lucy didn't even blink. She'd seen worse in Night City. Hell, she was worse.
"Alright," he said, turning his back to her. "Line it up. You misplace it and I end up twitching for the next month."
Lucy inspected the alignment nodes along his spine. "You've got more ports than a Militech router."
"Flatter me more."
She positioned the centipede spine and, with a quick mental command, Arthur activated the integration sequence.
The LED lights blinked to life.
A faint whir filled the air, and one by one, the spine's mechanical legs lifted—then slammed down into his back, plugging into each port like steel fangs.
Blood seeped around the connection points. Arthur didn't even flinch.
Instead, he grinned.
"Heh... Ticklish."
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