Chapter 26: Walls closing in
AN: I had written a small section that was in the POV of Taylor in Brockton Bay, but the word count got too large to be included in this chapter so I am releasing it as a sidestory, which will be the next "chapter" here on Webnovel
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"Mrs Pegpig! STOP!" I yelled, getting a glance over the shoulder from the pigeon criminal as she casually ate another fly. Her consort grabbed one, too and flew away from me, out the window and landing in their nest that they had made on the side of my wall. He was always the scaredy-bird of the two.
She grabbed and ate another fly while watching me. The bitch! I had moved the FlyHive into my private apartment as I had a few patients from the Megabuilding I had to see, and I didn't want anybody to see my crime against nature. I thought it would be fine, as all my windows had a very effective UV polarisation filter installed on them. However, I forgot that Mrs Pegpig and her consort came in and out of one of them. I left the window unlocked, and they just pecked it open when they wanted to come inside, and the sunlight from their window cracked open was enough to hatch a few flies.
I didn't have enough time to wait around for the larvae and pupa life stages of a fly, so my monstrosity made extra large eggs and out popped a more or less fully-grown adolescent fly. They still lived for about the same period of time, a little less than a month, but I didn't expect I would need them all that long.
I ran over to the FlyHive and glanced at it, sighing. Thankfully, I had already moved most of the eggs into small plastic containers, so I hadn't lost the full production of the past evening. But these hundred or so eggs would have to be placed outside, as I didn't fancy my apartment having a lot of flies in it.
Many people expected that pigeons were herbivores, subsisting off seeds and such, but the truth was that they'd eat insects, too, gratefully if they could find them. This thing must have looked like a free buffet to Mrs Pegpig. "How many did you eat? You're going to get fat!" I scolded her as I scooped the rest of the eggs into a small plastic container.
How should I dispose of these, then? I may as well get some use out of them. My apartment was on a corner, so I actually had a number of windows. I shifted over to the living room and opened a separate window, far away from the Pegpig nest, and taped the plastic to the side of the wall. The sun would cause the eggs to hatch shortly, and they'd fly away. Problem solved. I'd look at the tracking device later and see how they moved. I didn't particularly know a lot about fly behaviour, but I expected them to stick around the same area they hatched in the absence of detecting Armless' blood or person.
After that, I shoved the FlyHive into my sock drawer. It was empty right now because most of my clothes were in a hamper or even strewn across the floor near my bed. Sighing, I resolved to do laundry tonight. Adulting was hard.
---xxxxxx---
As I worked, I quietly sang along to an utterly ridiculous girl band from Korea, whose lyrics were a mish-mash of English and Korean. When they shifted to a section with Korean lyrics, sometimes in the middle of a sentence, I would just hum awkwardly instead of making a fool out of myself in trying to make my mouth pronounce the unusual phonemes.
The microscopic binocular vision I had added into my cybernetic eyes, combined with a set of fast-moving microwaldoes allowed me to make nearly microscopic changes to anything I was working on, although I didn't quite have enough expertise to use the system on anything but cybernetics at the moment.
The delivery from Wakako arrived before I had to return to work, and after looking it over, it appeared to be direct from the factory, so I had no complaints at all and quickly got to work making adjustments to it.
For any kind of subdermal implant, there was some customisationcustomisation necessary. With a newly bought implant, the kit included its own customisationcustomisation and microfabrication system that the cybernetic surgeon would load with data, usually 3D scans, from the patient in order to have a correctly fitted implant system.
It wasn't that second-hand subdermal systems couldn't be reused or reinstalled in other people, but it took a lot more artistry without the included factory fabrication system, which was, of course, specifically designed to be single-use.
At the very least, I wanted to protect myself from all the threats that I experienced in my kidnapping incident. Although there wasn't a lot I could do against super-fast super-skilled ninja assassins that weren't susceptible to traditional chemical or biological threat vectors, I could do something about that electrical taser-like attack, as well as the brain scanner.
My changes to the thermoptical system would protect me from both, although only slightly for the brain scan. Adding an insulative layer and incorporating it with the thermoptical system was slightly challenging, but I had accomplished most of it after about eight hours of work, including time for taking breaks. I had to test three different potential materials, only one of which would work with the implant's microfabrication system.
I still had probably at least that much more work rewriting both the automated installation code as well as the installation instructions for the surgeon. As much as eighty to ninety per cent of most cybernetics implantations were handled by a doctor's automated tools, but there was definitely additional care to be taken when the doctor installed this in me.
There was a saying: jack of all trades, master of none. That somewhat described the additional insulative layers I was adding to the thermoptical system. It wouldn't actually impair the stealth features of the system at all, so perhaps saying master of none wasn't appropriate, but I couldn't get a top-down super effective insulative layer when adding on to an existing product. The stealth field emitters were already taking up a lot of space, after all.
For one, it would always be kind of difficult to reach total electrical insulation when my real skin was still going to be retained and attached to my body. I could add insulative layers below the skin, but the skin was still connected to my vasculature, and through that, an electrical current could access the rest of my body. So it was more correct to call the addition to the implant a high form of resistance.
Still, I didn't think tasers, even the high voltage system that knocked me out, would stop me anymore, though, and that was the main thing. A secondary benefit was that it would be very difficult for an electrical induction cap to work on me, so the standard brain scanning system that I had already lived through wouldn't work.
I wasn't so naive as to expect that there weren't workarounds for that. Insulative skin implants were pretty commonplace after all, and I could already think of a few ways to bypass it, involving changing the probes to slightly penetrative spikes and just shoving them through the top layer of my scalp. So this wasn't a true defence for having to go through another interrogation backed by a brain scan.
I did have an idea for that, as well, though. I didn't know if it was the same solution that spies would use, as I kind of expected many of them might have some kind of automatic suicide implant instead. Spy agencies would likely consider most defences to be merely slowing an attacker down if the attacker already had physical custody of the spy and his or her brain, after all. And I figured secrets were likely much more valued by such agencies than their spies being alive.
Since that wasn't a useful solution for me, I had been thinking of ways to trick such a system but no matter what, I couldn't think of one, at least at present. I had a tingling sensation which gave me the idea that if I proceeded down the path of research of artificial neural tissue like I had begun for my spider-bot designs, eventually I might be able to create a "fake brain" that housed a "fake personality" that could be interviewed instead of me.
Until then, though, I thought that instead of tricking the brain scan, I should instead trick myself. That was a lot easier!
This would be a longer project, possibly as long as a month or more, as it was entirely software related; although it was using many open-source software modules, the idea was pretty simple. It would integrate with my operating system and cyberdeck, and when I turned it on when I realised that I was captured and about to be quizzed, it would use a simple neural network to, in real-time, recognise the question the interrogator asked and dub over the actual question I heard with a different one.
Ideally, the system would ask me a question that would generate a response that would trick the interrogator into thinking everything was working fine on his end, with my secrets being hidden.
For example, if they asked where I was born, instead I would hear where I live right now, which would trigger me to think about Night City instead of Brockton Bay. If they asked who my father was, instead, I might hear the question: "Who was Major Daniel Hebert?"
I would have to preprogram a number of problematic question areas that the system should treat as secrets and possibly how to alter them, as there was no real way for me to digitise my memories or anything for a machine learning system to trawl through to make that decision in real-time.
Although, there were hints of technology on the Dark Web, of AIs that weren't really AIs. The conspiracy theorists called the technology Soulkiller, and it was billed as almost as big a boogeyman of the Net as Rache Bartmoss was.
Supposedly, it killed you and then copied your entire self, all of your memories and a complete brain scan to the owner of the system. I could definitely see how such a thing might be possible, considering the way cyberdecks were deeply interactive with most areas of the brain, so I couldn't deny the possibility, even if I couldn't presently reproduce it.
Could I build something like that eventually, though? Probably. I thought I definitely could, but the brief idea I got from my medical sense was that I should finish learning to walk before trying to run. Although I had already done some preparatory work in researching neural tissue, I would have to continue a fair bit more into researching human brains, memories and consciousness, but I definitely felt that wasn't an out-of-reach goal, although a copy of my memories living on as a pseudo-AI was probably the worst of the ideas I had on the subject if my goal was immortality.
I never had before thought that the idea of immortality was appealing before arriving in Night City, but I thought that was because I subconsciously felt that the world I lived in was circling the drain already. I didn't put it into words, but looking retrospectively, I was pretty confident that a more extended life just meant more suffering back there.
That wasn't even a result of my bullying, either. Although Emma was an utter bitch, she wasn't on the level of Ziz, and everyone knew losing a few cities a year wasn't sustainable, even if nobody ever talked about it. Perhaps I could have lived to old age back there if I dodged being murdered by villains and literal Godzillas, but I didn't think that luck would last me one hundred or more years, so why even think about living longer than that?
Now though? This new world wasn't great. And there were monsters in the Old Net who might or might not want to destroy humanity as a whole, too, just like Endbringers and possibly had a good chance of accomplishing that goal, but at the same time, I definitely thought the society, as fucked up as it was, was metastable. If so, perhaps living a lot longer might be nice.
My understanding of ageing was pretty complete, and even though the rejuvenation drugs and treatments were billed as huge secrets, I didn't think they were all that revolutionary. Evolutionary, like most advances in technology, were, but it wasn't that more advanced than existing biosculpting and genetic treatments already on the market, at least the way I understood how they probably worked.
I reached a stopping point and glanced at the small dark-plastic containers I had been loading fly eggs into. The small little plastic containers cost about fifteen ennies a piece when bought in bulk and were opaque against most light frequencies, including the ultraviolet. I would load up five or six before I left the apartment. When I saw a place I wanted to add some fly coverage, I could just take one out of my pocket, slide the top off and toss it somewhere inconspicuous, like an open dumpster.
I had already made a few trips to plant a little less than a dozen of these containers in and around Japantown. I was very relieved to see that the flies actually worked, as they were already grouped around the now-dry blood in that alley. The attraction instinct on these flies wasn't enough that they were completely clumped together. It would ruin the purpose if they didn't still have some random movements, still. It was on the same level as their existing phototaxis, or attraction to light. So if you had a group of flies around, you could definitely be sure that at least some of them would be clumped together, even if some of them went on their business later.
I stopped and frowned at the fly egg containers. The FlyHive was a lot more complicated a construction, especially since it bypassed the fly's larva and pupa stages than, say, a brain digitiserdigitiser was. Why, then, did my power help me so much in making the FlyHive? I closed my eyes and thought about it. Even though I wasn't sure my power could think, let alone speak, this was the clearest instance of me getting a response that I recalled. The idea I got back was because it, the FlyHive, was "cool."
That didn't really sound like something I would say, even the subconscious part of my brain that supposedly controlled parahuman powers.
I shook my head. I was in the wrong universe if I really wanted to research parahuman powers. As far as I knew, I was the only one with one here.
---xxxxxx---
"Yo, Breaker. What the hell happened?" asked Mr Mercy as I came back to work.
Scowling, I told everybody an abbreviated version of the story of what happened.
"And you don't know why?" he asked.
Shaking my head, I said, "Not really. Although I have some suspicions it might be related to my family, but I don't want to talk about it." The best guess I had was that it was something related to Alt-Dad. It was pretty clear to me now that he was not solely a traditional military man. I had done some research on him, from the things he left behind, and he had worked for several years for the NUSA State Department right after leaving the NUSA Military.
Maybe it was just my overactive imagination, but a "State Department" job seemed like the perfect cover for some covert intelligence operative, especially if he was doing such work abroad. I also remembered the grin he had when he had told Alt-Taylor, "Never be a spy! They shoot spies! Intelligence officers, however, they often trade if captured."
Everyone accepted that, as everyone had secrets they didn't want widely known in this city.
After we finished our morning checks, we got some bad news from Dr Anno, the base lead. We had Alpha-base on a conference vidcall. Not today, but on our next shift the day after tomorrow, we had to decide between Alpha and us who would be posted up at a remote location. Apparently, there was a concert that day in Pacifica. It was that Korean girl group who sang those likely AI-produced ear-worm songs that had been stuck in my head so much that I had even sung along to them a few times.
It was bad news because regardless of which choice would be a shit sandwich. If we posted up in Pacifica, it was very likely that the accommodations they had available to us near enough to the AV would be utter shit, but if we stayed here, we would have to do two rotations on ready-five, which amounted to half the shift.
"That's a dick or balls choice, man," said one of the Alpha-base Security Specialists, shaking his head ruefully.
I blinked and tried to imagine what the hell he meant. I sort of realised from the context it meant a choice that was bad whatever you chose, but I asked, "What is a dick or balls choice?"
Mr Mercy glanced at me and said, "It's a hypothetical situation where someone captures you and says they're going to cut off either your dick or your balls, but you get to choose." What? Do men actually think about these sorts of things? Apparently so, because almost everyone was nodding sagely as if Mercy had said some sort of profound philosophical question that hadn't been solved in thousands of years.
I was the only female currently on shift on either base, although we had another female Senior Med-Techie on Bravo, and there were a couple in Alpha as well, just not working at the same schedule I did. I glanced around and said simply, "Balls are the correct choice."
"What makes you say that?" Mercy asked, intrigued now. I saw that I had the full attention of both bases.
I sighed. I should have kept my mouth shut. I decided to be clinical in my response, "Although it is a commonly held belief, even by non-lay people, that castration would result in a male being unable to have sexual intercourse, this is based on a flawed premise on the data we have about pre-pubescent male castrations in history such as castrati or some ancient Chinese eunuchs, not to mention equivalent endocrinological medical conditions that prevent male puberty from taking place."
I paused for a moment, glancing left and right, and then continued, "For a male that has reached full maturation, although it would be more difficult to achieve an erection, it would still be possible, as would sexual intercourse and orgasm. Especially with hormone replacement therapy if we are following the thought experiment in which cloned testicular replacement therapy is unavailable. Ergo, 'balls'..." I made the air quotes with my hands, "... is the less bad of two bad choices." Plus, some of my co-workers might do well with a reduction of testosterone, I privately thought.
Dr Anno got a thoughtful face for a moment and then nodded, "That makes sense. In that case, Bravo will take the concert posting. Perhaps we will get to see something interesting at the show." There were some objections, but the assignment was first-come-first-served, so they were only perfunctory.
The day proceeded slowly after that. There was a constant debate on whether it was better to have no calls or better to be busy with a lot of calls. The latter involved you working harder, but it really did make the day pass by quicker. Personally, I preferred to have two to three calls a day. That gave me some downtime, as well as some interesting medical cases to treat.
My phone rang, and it was Gloria. I smiled. She hadn't yet started her own "practice" at her Megabuilding, but she planned to in the next six months or so and was slowly accumulating all the equipment and drugs she would need to offer service. In the meantime, she had shifted her schedule on the ground ambulance to be off on the days that I worked, and on my days off, she would work in "my clinic."
I trusted her enough to allow her the full run of the clinic area of my apartment and a limited run of my private area. I kept my bedroom closed but allowed her and the gremlin to relax in my living room and kitchen. At first, I thought she would be turned off by the explosive charge I had carefully installed on my door, but she looked at it thoughtfully and just nodded, getting me to carefully show her how to activate and deactivate it. It was pretty idiot-proof, you couldn't arm it if the door wasn't locked in the first place, so it wasn't as though it could be set off easily.
I shifted to my private bedroom at the base before I answered the call and asked, "Hey, Gloria. What's up?"
"Hey, Taylor. There's a rather large delivery for you outside, and I wanted to make sure I wasn't about to be home invaded before letting them into the clinic," she told me right away.
I hummed and nodded. I had a lot of deliveries pending, some of them large, "Ask them on the intercom for the delivery countersign. I'll tell you if it's valid."
There was a pause before she came back and read off a short alphanumeric code. I checked my spreadsheet of pending deliveries and nodded again, "That's valid. However, I generally meet them at the door with my dad's shotgun, which should be hung on the wall in my living room. I recommend you do the same. The recoil is a bitch, but it will make mince out of pretty much anyone in front of it."
She looked a little unsure on the vidcall. She had begun carrying the pistol I gifted her after several months of training, but she was still a bit unsure as far as other weapons were concerned, "How do I operate it? Where is the safety located?"
I sighed, "There's no external safety on a Militech Crusher. It's already loaded, so it is just point-and-shoot. You could use your own sidearm if you like if you feel more comfortable with that, but it is hard to beat a shotgun in a closed space like an apartment."
"Is that safe?" she asked, aghast.
I nodded, "There are three internal safeties on it. A safety's only purpose is to prevent the firearm from going off unless the trigger is pulled by the operator. Preventing the trigger from being pulled before you are ready to fire the weapon is up to operator discipline. What is the third rule of firearm safety?" I quizzed her at the end, my responses and personality shifting to be more like Alt-Taylor's, as I had a lot of memories of her being drilled with guns by her dad, and they tended to colour my reactions.
It made me wonder if I was really Taylor Hebert from Brockton Bay at all, or perhaps I was some chimaera of the two people now. I had about a quarter of her memories, and although that didn't sound like a lot when you talked percentages, it still amounted to years and years of memories, though.
"Keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to fire," she said with more confidence. Then she nodded, "Okay, thanks. I think I'll run and grab that shotgun, just to be on the safe side. I'll just have them leave the deliveries in the front area. I'll talk to you later, Taylor!"
She disconnected, and I thought a little bit about that philosophical question. Alt-Taylor was somewhat like me in some ways but radically different in others. I wouldn't call her a sociopath precisely, and while she hadn't killed anyone in her life, she thought it was only a matter of time until she had to.
She also would not have given those four Voodoo Boys who I had killed protecting Gloria and myself a second thought if she were me, whereas I had thought about and dreamed about them off and on for months afterwards, especially the one I had executed simply because I thought nothing good would come from there being any survivors.
It made me worry about her and Danny in Brockton Bay. I had the feeling she got the same power I did, or at least one that was similar. Although I had no basis for that guess, I was pretty confident about it. If she got a reputation as a villain with the things we were capable of doing... it didn't bear thinking on. Hopefully, she got some of my memories as well and knew well enough to lay low.
However, biotinkers had a bad reputation, and I wasn't aware of a single heroic example of one, although I hadn't really followed capes as closely as some people I knew. It was possible for me to hide here in Night City, but pretty much anything I have done thus far, especially the rapid medical expertise, would scream parahuman in Brockton Bay.
A Gold subscriber alert brought me out of my reverie. I grabbed my MCU off the rack in my bedroom and slid into it with practised grace.
---xxxxxx---
AN: SIDESTORY: Retainer was to be placed in this spot on this chapter.
---xxxxxx---
The area they had set aside for them at the concert area was better than they thought it would be. They landed the AV-4 in a grassy area, and the venue management had three large RVs that they could use to sit around in, the kind that famous actors might bring on set while they were filming. They split up, with the pilots taking one, the security guys the other and Dr Anno and I had the last.
That was nice. I had done posting up at similar events at the ground ambulance, and this was a lot better. We were also quite close to both the stage as well as the VIP areas, probably intentionally.
The performers even showed up and said hello. They were a group of four girls that appeared to be in their late teens, and they were specifically designed with specific focus-group tested roles, like the cute one, the rebellious one, the bookish one and the athletic one.
"You Trauma Med Techies are supposed to be the best in the world, and you hardly look older than even we are!" said the rebellious one to me, smiling. In private, they were playing the roles much less, and they were all pretty casual. "Why don't you give me a check-up, then?" she asked me, jutting out her sizable chest in my direction.
Wait, was she coming on to me, or was she just joking? I squinted and must have taken too long to answer, considering Dr Anno said, "You'll have to forgive Taylor; she is a bit dense about these things if your intention was trying to flirt with her. I think she was raised on a Mennonite farm or something."
Hey! I resent that!
That caused her to laugh, "Well, maybe a little flirting. But I am curious too. Do you have time?"
He glanced at me and shrugged. She was a VIP, so it was best to play along; finally, I said, "Sure, but this will be very abbreviated without me taking and analysinganalysing labs, you understand."
She agreed, and I quickly connected her to all of our equipment, asked her a number of questions and palpated her body, being especially careful to stay away from her prodigious chest area as much as possible, skipping even listening to her lung sounds with my digital stethoscope so I wouldn't have to touch them. The report from her internal bio-monitor was useful, as well.
If this was a net novel, she would at this time find something seriously wrong with the girl, saving her life and adding a new member to my harem. What actually happened was a lot more banal.
"Overall, you're in good shape. However, you are showing the beginning signs of atherosclerosis. That is the hardening and or narrowing of your arteries; this level of it is pretty unusual for someone of your age," I told her, considering the possible causes. I had mainly diagnosed that through the feel of her aortic artery underneath her ribs, as well as ultrasound images I had taken when I thought the artery didn't feel quite right, "Certainly, you four should have a doctor you see regularly; I'm sure he or she mentioned that?"
"Well, he did mention something, saying that I showed some beginning signs of cardiac disease and said I should avoid recreational drugs," she said in a surly voice, "I'm surprised you could tell, too. It took a bunch of tests and days for him to say that."
Well, he probably knew before that and was using tests to confirm his diagnosis, she thought, but she didn't say that. "Well, I don't think many medical professionals would recommend the use of recreational drugs, but I don't think that is the cause. Stimulant abuse damages the heart and cardiovascular system differently. While this is still what I would call a sub-clinical finding, it is a lot more pronounced than what I would expect from a woman your age."
Now she looked both interested, relieved and worried all at the same time, "If it isn't ... hypothetically, the occasional use of drugs, what would the cause be, and what treatments would you recommend?"
I frowned at her, "I wouldn't recommend anything because I am not a doctor. However, and this is just a guess, I suspect a genetic factor, along with aggravating contributing factors, including stress and lack of enough sleep. Your blood pressure is actually quite good right now, so I don't think you are suffering from chronic hypertension, either." She didn't need any real fancy recommendation anyway. Any doctor could tell her that she could just replace her arteries with a synthetic replacement, which was superior in every conceivable metric to a person's natural ones.
She performed an honest-to-goodness princess stomp, glancing between Dr Anno and me, "Surely you can give me a guess?"
He glanced at her and then at me and sighed, "Synthetic bio-polymer replacement arteries would prevent your condition from developing into anything dangerous, and they're very reasonably priced, and it's a very safe procedure. It's probably the most common cybernetic implant installed in the country. It's impossible for plaque to attach to them, nor is it possible for chronic hypertension to stiffen them. I'd recommend almost everyone get them, really. Heart and cardiovascular disease is the second leading cause of death, after homicide, after all."
He was right; they were very safe. Safe enough that I had replaced a lot of my arteries with these replacements while I was awake. Doing your own heart bypass was thrilling and perhaps stupid now that I thought back about it, but on the plus side, now I had my replacement liver working in secondary heart mode as well.
She glanced at me as if questioning him, and I just chuckled and nodded, "That's true. I have mostly synthetic arteries myself." At least in her torso area, although the reason she decided to get them didn't have anything to do with cardiovascular disease. Perhaps she would have the Ripperdoc finish installing a full synthetic artery system when she got her stealth system installed.
If they looked competent and had an actual operating theatre and not weren't doing surgeries in their bedroom, she might.
Finally, the singer grinned and nodded and, before I realised what was happening, rewarded me with an embrace and kiss before departing the RV with her colleagues, all giggling. Dr Anno sighed, "Why didn't I get the kiss?"
I carefully wiped my mouth off with my hand, frowning. She had given me a little tongue, too. I glanced around and found a Lemon-flavoured carbonated drink I was drinking earlier and quickly took a large gulp to wash the flavour of her strawberry lip gloss away and then told him, seriously, "I would have preferred that you get the kiss, too."
---xxxxxx---
On my next string of five days off, I called Kiwi and asked if she was interested in looming over a local Ripperdoc in exchange for some eddies. She was, so I picked her up in my car, with the box containing the stealth system in the truck bed in the back. My car was really nice, but it wasn't the greatest at hauling a lot of stuff despite the fact that the trunk had been replaced by a small truck bed. It was still only a two-seat vehicle, after all.
"Hey, Madison..." Kiwi said as she jumped into the passenger seat and looked around my car. I kept it in very clean condition, both on the inside and out, and she whistled, "Nice car!"
I smiled, appreciating the compliment as I took time to keep it looking nice, "Thanks. So I just need you to make sure he doesn't part me out and sell all my bits on the table like a Scav."
"Uhh... girl, just what kind of shady Ripper are you going to? Because I know a guy," she said, looking at me like I was crazy.
I waved a hand, "I'm going to the best guy in Japantown, actually. He has a really good reputation, as a matter of fact... but... I am a belt and suspenders type of girl, ne?"
"What... the fuck does that mean?" Kiwi asked, perplexed.
Sighing, I shouldn't have used that expression. It was dreadfully old, even back in Brockton Bay. Nobody wore suspenders or garter belts anymore since the stretchy fabric was invented in the 1960s, after all. Well, garter belts were still probably worn but only for aesthetic reasons. Shaking my head a little, I said, "It is an attitude of wanting several layers of safety procedures in place for minimising and mitigating risk. I don't expect any trouble, but the fact that you are there makes it that much less likely. This is my first time seeing this doctor, so I want to set expectations."
"Ohhh... you should have just said so. Hey, choom. Has anyone told you that you talk kind of funny? Do all Corpo girls talk like you do?" she asked me with a cheeky grin on her face.
Frowning, I answered by shifting into gear and pressing firmly onto the accelerator, shoving her back into her seat with the G-forces. I was past third gear by the time I left the parking lot, which wasn't very large. Superhuman reflexes helped driving a lot!
"Fuck, fuck... let me put my seatbelt on, you crazy bitch!" she hollered, fumbling with the seatbelt as I blew past an NCPD squad car, which started to accelerate up to me for a moment before slowing down considerably and taking a left on a side street. Kiwi saw it and was flabbergasted, asking, "I thought for sure that pig was going to light you up."
"He ran my registration and saw I worked at Trauma Team. The same thing happened when I worked on the ground ambulance, though. The coppers are a pretty light touch when it comes to Med Techies; after all, they get shot, too," I told her with a smirk. I would have to learn to drive reasonably when I quit my job to start medical school. Otherwise, I'd be arrested several times a month!
"Oh, by the way... are you interested in a gig tomorrow night?" Kiwi asked me, now that we were cruising at a reasonable speed. I wasn't Squeeler; I wasn't about to cruise down the street a hundred and sixty kilometres an hour, especially when my own mom died in a car accident herself.
I gave her the side eye as I took the onramp onto the freeway and asked her, "Is it like the last gig?" I wasn't really interested in any more Scav den assaults.
"No, it is nothing like that! We've been hired by a small street gang, who has it on very good authority that their rivals are going to attack their territory tomorrow night. It's a defensive mission, and we could get a lot more eddies if we had a good Med Techie who could patch up not only us if we got wounded but, more likely, their own gang members. You wouldn't be involved in the fighting much at all, but the boys and I will be planning and conducting ambush missions and the like," she said excitedly.
So it wasn't assaulting a den of criminals but defending a den of criminals from assault? That just seemed like the same thing, except changing roles! However, I thought about it some more, and it definitely did seem less risky, especially after my visit to the local Ripperdoc today. If it looked like "our" gang of criminals was losing, I could just sneak away.
I asked her, "How awful are each of these gangs?"
She didn't understand what I meant for a second, but when she realised what I was asking, she just shrugged, "Neither is very good, I suppose. But nothing out of the ordinary, and neither is any better or worse than the other."
So it would be more of a morally neutral decision, then. I thought about it as I pulled off the freeway and into downtown. I got off a little early, rather than waiting for the Japantown exit because I had a few streets I wanted to toss fly eggs out to. Kiwi noticed what I was doing and asked curiously, "Why are you randomly tossing small objects out of the car?"
"Don't worry about it," I told her, which made her grin in amusement. Then I said, "Fine, I'll take the gig but for medical support only. Don't expect me to defend these scumbags to the last man; if it looks like they're losing, I am out of there."
She nodded, "Nova. We feel the same, don't worry. We'll have a signal, and if we think it's a lost cause, we'll attack them and extract you out, as we wouldn't expect them to let you just leave on your own." I didn't expect that either, and I wouldn't make my plans with that as either my primary or secondary escape strategy, as it seemed stupid. My ace in the hole could be the same as last time; I had made a few more anaesthetic grenades. I wouldn't volunteer any for the mission this time, though. I was pleased with how well they had worked when those kidnapped me. I would have gotten away clean if it wasn't for the ninja.
I parked near the clinic. It was the same one I took that client that might not have been a client to. He really was the best in Japantown and probably my reputation as a sometimes worker for Wakako and being in good standing with the Tyger Claws would keep me safe, but who knew the depravity in the heart of man? It was better to be safe than sorry, especially on my first visit.
I pulled out a small drone camera. It looked like a sphere and used a pretty impressive electrically powered ducted fan to stay aloft and move in three dimensions. "Here, pair this. I'll put this in the operating room. I've already set it to record the surgery, but you can watch it as well. If he chops my head off or starts taking a lot of my implants out, feel free to shoot him in the head for me."
She grinned at the small drone. It wasn't military hardware, it was actually a kid's toy that was popular about two decades ago, but it got the job done, she said wistfully, "I had one of these when I was a kid."
I tilted my head to the side, doing some mental math and gauged her age as late twenties or early thirties, then. She didn't look much older than nineteen or twenty, but she was heavily augmented with both cybernetics and biosculpt. You could look as old as you wanted with biosculpt, and I had seen some women who had made themselves look fourteen or fifteen, which I found somewhat disturbing.
"Okay, but what work are you having done? You need to tell me in broad strokes, so I know what to look that is out of place," she said reasonably.
That did make sense. I nodded, grabbed the slick-looking container out of the truck bed, and showed it to her, "This is a subdermal system. So I am having that installed on every part of my body, and additionally, I am getting more synthetic arteries installed. I already have a number installed near my heart, but I am getting the full system installed everywhere else today as well."
She nodded, "Is that subdermal armour? And do you think that synthetic arteries are a good choice for a merc?"
"No, it is a stealth system. Running away is my number one survival strategy. And yes, but not the everyday ones that most geezers get. The kind I have and am getting today are self-sealing, so if someone slices your jugular, there is a good chance you won't die, ne?" I tell her and then consider the question further, "BioDyne is the current market leader in these types of combat-arterial replacements, even if some of their other gear sucks ass." BioDyne optics were pieces of shit, but they were ever-present because they were cheap as hell.
Kiwi grinned, "Optic camo, you're going hard, Madison!" And then she nodded, "I've heard that optic camo doesn't make your skin feel all weird like subdermal armour does, either. Maybe the gonks don't care about that, but I think it's an important factor for a girl."
I nodded. It was true, and the reason I had gotten the ballistic skin weave biosuclpt treatment instead of the subdermal armour, even though I was paranoid about my safety. Speaking of which, I told her as we walked through the door, "You should get the ballistic skin weave 'sculpt treatment, then. It stops most small arms, and armour is cumulative, after all."
She considered that and nodded, "Maybe I should."
The doctor met us in the waiting room and recognised me, "Ah, Taylor-san, it is good to see you! We are all ready to go if you want to come in the back."
I introduced him to Kiwi, and he wasn't at all put out that I had someone watching my back or that I wanted a drone to record the surgery. It seemed like it was a pretty common practice, even. Kiwi was grinning at me and said, "Alright, Madison, I'll see you in a bit."
I sighed and followed the doctor inside.
---xxxxxx---
I looked at myself, naked, in the mirror. For as much work as the Ripperdoc had done, he finished fairly quickly. I would judge his competency as barely adequate, but I had very high standards. I would still need a couple weeks of nano-meds to get everything the way it should be. I would also need, ideally, to see a biosculpt clinic to repair the ballistic skin weave, as he had to make numerous incisions to install the subdermal system.
I might be able to do that by myself, though, but it would be quicker to just go to one of the numerous black market biosculpt places in Japantown. Most of them didn't handle practical biosculpt and were just places people got cosmetic alterations, but they should still be able to do the work, especially if I helped them program the nanites.
I triggered the stealth system, and instantly, the world darkened. Still, less than a second later, my Kiroshi optics shifted into a composite image mode that I had already programmed into it. It used infrared, electromagnetic and visual sensors combined together to give a better image. The thermoptic camouflage bent light around the user, so invariably, your vision would be impaired. Not as much light was reaching my eyes.
If I was totally invisible, then I should also be totally blind. This model of thermoptic camouflage also bent infrared light around me and a number of common radar frequency bands, so the infrared vision seemed muted as well. Altogether not as good as when I wasn't using the system, my vision was still pretty good, definitely enough to sneak or run away, and I looked almost totally invisible in the mirror. If I moved, you could see a slight visual disturbance, though, but it was still enough that you could walk very near people and not be discovered, so long as you didn't make any noise.
I turned the system off and smiled. It didn't have the power cells to run continuously, but I could run it for a good five minutes before it needed about four times that to recharge completely. That was very good and a lot better than the previous generation systems, even as the stealth bent a larger fraction of light, too.
I put on my "merc outfit" and tried it again, pleased to see it was calibrated correctly, and I still vanished. I spent most of yesterday recovering from the two surgeries, which were fairly invasive, even though the surgeon completed both in only three hours.
Kiwi had texted me that she was headed to my building in Ruslan's van to pick me up. We were going to have a pre-gig dinner at some bar that used to be a morgue, then head over to the mission area afterwards. I made sure to pack some anti-intoxicating pills; if they were going to drink heavily before a mission, I would shove them down their throats. Considering that while they were very effective at stopping alcohol intoxication within five minutes of ingestion, they were universally considered "an awful, awful experience", I expected that they would likely refrain from drinking anything except, perhaps, one beer after I threatened them with it.
I grabbed my large backpack full of medical supplies and my submachine gun and headed out into the world.
Tomorrow I would spend some time driving around, looking for clumps of flies. I already had some interesting returns from parts of Heywood, but it would take a while to pinpoint whether they were my man or not.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone