Chapter 2: A strange hospital! David's resolve!
David dozed, riding the edge of sleep, and snapped awake every time the doors creaked.
Which was often. The whole room kept rolling slightly from side to side, it already had two 'patients' getting acquainted with their breakfast. Even back alley cyber trash like him knew that meant they were on a boat. Some kind of floating hospital?
He should have cared more. Should have been figuring out how to escape from this weird gang. Should have bought the update properly and kept his mom out of the crossfire. Should have spotted the animals and pulled the handbrake. Should haves were piling up around him like trash outside a slurp shop.
Hands shaking, heart pounding with fear, David just kept his eyes on the exit and waited for confirmation.
His mom was gone. She was gone and it was his fault. All he was waiting for was one of these Scavs to come tell him what he owed for their attempts to 'save' her.
Instead, he jerked awake to find the doors swinging wide open as two of them came in with a hospital bed rolling between them. Bright red hair visible at one end of it.
Bare feet on a cold metal floor was the first hint he had that he was moving. His brain took a back seat to the instinctive need to see for himself. Every scrap of good sense about not pissing off gangers or walking into their blind spot, he forgot. Brushing past one of them so he could bump up against the bed and see her.
Wrapped from head to toe in casts that looked straight out of some old cartoon, Gloria Martinez was dead to the world in a way he'd never seen before, even in her most exhausted four AM slumps onto the couch. Hair loose across the pillow, her face was two-thirds yellow with bruising and her eyes were swollen, despite the odd smelling patches that had been stuck anywhere there was enough skin to fit them.
She was breathing.
She was breathing smooth and steady and without any of the tubes he'd imagined in his more optimistic moments. Nothing but an IV line in her arm and some sensor wires waiting to be plugged back into a monitor.
The sobs came from the same place that had urged him to get up off the bed. Neither bothered consulting his brain and David was heaving for breath past the flood of tears before he could stop himself. Snot dripping, eyes streaming, he was so relieved that he didn't even care how far from chilled he was showing everyone he was.
'She's alive.'
Lucky him, instead of pistol whipping him, the jumpsuit backing his mom's gurney into the room just nudged him aside enough that they could get her situated in an empty bay. One of the two started messing with the monitor next to her, but the one nearest him, a big guy with a mop of brown hair and eyes as angry as his mouth was wide, took one look at him then walked up to the bed next to his mom's.
The woman in it, thin and nervous looking already, looked about ready to pass out. When the jumpsuit reached out and picked her bed up by either end of the frame, she made a sound that instantly made David feel better about crying. The ganger ignored all of it, casually hefting her over to the bay where David had been put.
He figured out what was going on before the guy got done swapping the beds. Then had to be practically shoved into the thing, so caught off guard was he by the gesture. David didn't even raise a stink at being told -firmly enough that other patients were looking over- that if he got out of bed again they'd tie him to it. Then the guy shoved his bed to within an arm's length of his mom's and wandered off to check the others.
He just lay back and stared across at his mom. Watching her casts shift slightly with every breath she took. Every breath that told him she was still there. Still with him.
Waking up from a far more restful sleep, David took a moment to realise what had woken him up. Then his heart near enough stopped dead as he registered what had changed. His mom's steady breathing had shifted.
Cursing the shitty antique monitors these gonks were using, he opened his mouth to yell for help. Then stopped at the sight of his mom, eyes open and fixed on his face.
She was straining against the brace around her neck, barely able to turn enough to see him out of the corner of her eye. So he sat up and leant over to make it easier on her, using the corner of his sleeve to dab at the tears suddenly leaking from her eyes.
"Mom, it's okay. I'm okay. How are you, how are you feeling?" He said. Stupid fucking question but he didn't know what else to say. Not that it mattered. His mom just kept crying and staring at him and muttering to herself too quiet for him to hear.
He leant down closer, close enough to catch, "-not D, not him, oh god why him-" and reeled back.
'Everything that happened, and she's still worried about me.'
Sometimes he didn't know which of them was more of a gonkbrain. Probably him. But still.
He found a smile somewhere and offered it up. Leaning down further when her eyes cleared and she jerked her head a hair and winced at how painful even that looked. "Mom-."
"Shut up D." She hissed. "For once in your life, listen."
"M-mom?" He whispered back. Something heavy sinking into his guts at how she was talking.
"You gotta keep quiet. Gotta listen to me." Her breath started to wheeze towards the end of the words and they both stopped to let her get it back under control.
"Easy mom, easy. I'll get one of those guys to give you something. Help you breath steady, you hear?"
The look she gave him stopped him dead, one hand braced to get up from the bed.
"David. How can you be so naive? Haven't you learned better than this?"
"Wha-?"
"Whatever these psychos are doing, whatever their angle is, we do not have the kind of money they're gonna want from us." She looked him dead in the eyes, even as hers were already fluttering. Exhaustion slurring her words. "What, what do you think they'll do when they realise that?"
The realisation hit him like a truck. But his mom didn't give him time to get a handle on it, pushing on like she was on a timer to get the words out. Probably because she was.
"That cyberpsycho. The one on the news? Nova, you remember?" He nodded, wondering if she was delirious, and then she swept the world out from under him. "I klepped his implant. A milspec Sandevistan. It's wrapped and stashed in my work jacket. That's your ticket."
"What?" He barely kept it to something like a whisper. "What the hell mom."
"D. You gotta get my jacket back. Don't tell them what's in it, just get it back and say we have the sandy stashed somewhere. Don't say where, don't even make something up. Just say you'll get it for them if they let you out of here."
What she was asking finally started to dawn on him. Lead in his belly turning to ice in his bones.
"I'm not leaving y-"
"Yes you are D. You leave me or, or I'll never forgive you. You hear hear me?"
He nodded. Lying without hesitation.
"Good good." Her optics flickered, like she was trying to make a call. Staring over his shoulder at the ceiling. "Maine. That's who you sell it to D. Detes are, are-"
"Mom. What do you mean sell it, you just said-"
Her eyes focused back on him. "Sorry. Sorry, I think, I think my chems are dry." Sure enough, the implant peeking out from under a bandage on her unbruised cheek had shifted from red to blinking white. "Can't, can't think. Sorry. Sorry D."
The jumpsuit's warnings about touching her echoed in his ears. The idea of rebreaking her fingers was the only thing that kept David from grabbing for her hand. "You got nothing to be sorry about mom."
"...I…fell…the…edge…"
No meaningful last words. Just the same guilty sleep-babble he'd heard a thousand times before, trying to get her into bed after she collapsed on the couch in the middle of the night. That was all he got before the monitors on her went crazy and a pair of jumpsuits were shoving him back onto his bed as they rushed to her bed.
Fear gripped him. Every memory of a Scavved corpse he'd ever seen was painted inside his eyelids. But all they did was mess around with her IV until the beeping stopped. Trading words he didn't understand as they did it.
David sank back onto his bed and waited, but his mom didn't wake up again. Not for what felt like hours.
Not before the world flickered blue and two things changed.
The gentle rolling motion of a boat on the water, stopped.
And Fur Hat appeared in the middle of the room, holding his sword in one hand, hilt propped over his shoulder it was so fucking long.
All the gasps for breath at once, David almost wondered if the pressure had dropped. Not that he was an exception. Teleportation was a hell of a thing to have confirmed like that. Made things feel even more hopeless than they had a moment earlier.
The scary bastard didn't start cutting them up though. Just tapped the sword against his shoulder and started pacing from bed to bed. Occasionally picked up the charts -actual paper charts, the dirtiest of dirty tech- from the little sheath on the bottom of every bed.
Finally he got to David, not bothering with the chart but looking him over like he was a dull article in the morning screamsheet. This close, David could see the tattoos across his chest and arms, Fur Hat's shirt hanging open in the least doctor-y display he could imagine. None of them made much sense, though the ones on his fingers looked a bit like letters of some kind.
Fur Hat moved on to his mom and didn't even glance at the chart before calling over one of the jumpsuits who had stabilised her after the monitors went off. Whatever he was saying, David didn't understand, but the jumpsuit was speaking English.
Or, David realised, what was coming out was English. This particular jumpsuit wore a trilby-ish hat and extremely neat facial hair, with his jumpsuit collar folded down to show it off. Which also showed off the band of cloth that held a translator over his throat. About the nicest model David had ever seen that wasn't an implant.
There was something off there, but he focused on what mattered. They were from far enough out of town to need help with the language. Not that the translator helped him to understand the medical jargon they shot back and forth…but if they didn't know Night City that well…
A plan began to take shape in David's head. A way that did not involve even considering doing as his mom had asked.
Step one. Scared the shit out of him. He spoke up anyway.
"Hey. Hey doc!" Fur Hat turned to look at him and David told himself that he was hard. He was the hardest guy at Arasaka Academy. He could look someone who cut down Trauma Team security like nothing and say, "Can we talk outside?"
The image of being cut in half and dumped into the bay came to mind as he said it, and sure enough Fur Hat raised an eyebrow and the world tinted blue. Instead of being diced into scop David found himself floating a foot in the air above his bed, then he and Fur Hat were in the hall on the other side of the door. Same metal walls he'd seen every time it opened.
No flash of lights or rushing tunnel of energy. They were just somewhere else in an instant.
Crazy as that was, David found himself being lowered to his feet and knew he had no time to waste. Assuming the taller man was wearing the earpiece that he probably needed to understand him.
'No wait. He might understand me without it.' David reminded himself.
It was dangerous to underestimate anyone on the street, and standing in front of Fur Hat already felt more dangerous than having the Animals blasting lead a foot from his head.
"Uh, so." 'Get it together gonk.' "I just wanted to ask if, is it chill if I delta for a microsec? We're late on rent, me and my mom, and if they chuck all our stuff then, well my mom floats chrome on the night market. Preem stuff, no dirt, and they might find it-" 'Wait, fuck.' "-I mean, find her stash co-ordinates. You, you get me?"
Fur Hat's expression didn't even twitch. Not once. He just stared down at David with the same vaguely murderous expression.
But gangers were all the same in the end. The promise of bleeding a high-end cyberware dealer dry would get his attention if anything would. Just like the idea of that wealth getting snatched up by some megabuilding corp would feel real. Hopefully.
Doubts were bubbling up in his stomach, but David didn't let them show. Didn't make it a stare down either. Just stood his ground and did everything he possibly could to look sincere.
"Three days." The words were stilted, but clear. Not so much their meaning.
"You mean I can leave in three days?" That got a slight raise of an eyebrow. "Or I can leave for three days?" This time it was a miniscule nod. Which was good. Three days might be too little time, or too much, but he was sure he could work with it. If he could just-
Fur Hat flexed a hand and the world went blue again. "Wait! Wait!" David practically spat out his words in his rush to speak before he got teleported who knew where.
Actually, he realised with rising horror, he had spat them. There was a light mist of spittle on Fur Hat's trousers and David really hoped he hadn't noticed. Wasn't your mouth supposed to get dry when you were nervous? David swallowed reflexively and said, "Could I get my mom's jacket first?"
That got him a fully raised eyebrow and flared panic up his spine.
"She's in such a bad way, you know? And, uh, thanks for fixing her up like you did. Jacket would be nice to have while she's all laid up is all."
He could have sworn Fur Hat's stare softened, but it was gone so fast that he probably just imagined it. Then they were standing back at the foot of his mom's bed. David didn't even have time to be confused before one tattooed hand was pointing under the bed.
Wincing a little, and noticing for the first time that he'd had a bunch of the weird smelling bandages stuck to him while he was sleeping, David managed to bend down and peer underneath, to see a plastic tub on a platform under the bed. All of his mom's stuff piled haphazardly within. It'd been in arm's reach the whole time.
He felt the package as soon as he touched her jacket. It was hidden in the lining, but obvious if you felt for it. So David made sure to sweep the jacket up onto his shoulders in a nice big motion. Hiding the lines until it was settled around him. Safe.
With a nod to Fur Hat, David braced himself for another shift. Running through the detes in his head.
Maine. Contact had to be somewhere in the apartment. Sell the Sandevistan for whatever he could get then get back within three days and pay Fur Hat not to chop her up for spare parts.
He could do it.
He would do it.
For mom.