The area they had set aside for us at the concert area was better than we thought it would be. The pilots 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. We 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 analysing 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, I thought, but decided against saying so. "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 my torso area, although the reason I decided to get them didn't have anything to do with cardiovascular disease. Perhaps I would have the Ripperdoc finish installing a full synthetic artery system when I got my stealth system installed.
If they looked competent and had an actual operating theatre and weren't doing surgeries in their bedroom, I 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."
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.
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, and I felt a chill. 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 had stealth features in the infrared as well. Hence, it was more than just "Optic camo" that Kiwi had assumed. However, infrared light wasn't external light that bounced off your body; it was light that was generated by your body through body heat. So, just using light-bending technology wouldn't work. It might be possible to make yourself thermally invisible from one angle that way, but it would just mean that you were extra bright from other viewing angles. As such, there were modules built into the system which efficiently wicked heat away from your skin into the subdermal heat sinks. There was a limit to how long this could last, and when the system turned off, it expelled the heat through radiators that were disguised as hairs on my scalp. I think the system would work better with certain kinds of tech hair, which all could be used as heat radiators. That kind of tech hair was popular with netrunners, too.
When I tried a full five-minute cycle of the stealth earlier, it was quite chilly when in use after I turned it off; I felt warm heat rushing through my back and up my scalp, which was actually kind of pleasant.
In addition to the normal visual wavelength of light, the system also bent a number of common radar frequency bands. Altogether my vision was not as good as when I wasn't using the system, but it was still pretty good, especially with the infrared compensating. It was 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
My "merc outfit" was already on its third iteration. The first was little more than casual but dourly-coloured clothes and a ballistic vest. My current one was much different. It was based on a netrunner suit that I had purchased from a supplier of such things, with as much ballistic protection as could be included in such a suit. I didn't include my own modifications to it, though, as I had a biomonitor and a second heart; moreover, the "second heart" functionality was completely disconnected and air-gapped from my operating system and couldn't realistically be disabled even if my entire system was compromised.
I selected such a suit because it was a full-coverage piece of armour that did not constrain my movements. A secondary benefit was that it did have a built-in cooling system. My thermoptical stealth system did have a set of heatsinks underneath my skin, and if I were naked, it would work pretty well. However, the main reason to wear clothes, besides modesty, was because they trapped heat inside. To get the full benefit of the infrared stealth features, I would have to turn that part of the system on for several minutes before activating the light-bending field.
However, the cooling suit was designed to cool an overheated netrunner rapidly, so it would drop the exterior temperature of the suit in less than thirty seconds to close to room temperature, assuming a normal temperature differential inside a building. I was just out of luck if I wanted to sneak around in a snow drift, though.
Normally netrunner suits just vented out the excess heat, so I had to pay extra to get one built with an internal heatsink made out of some sort of space-age super-high thermal mass gel. It was insulated in a little oval blister on my back, so it shouldn't emit any infrared itself. Really, now it was more of a stealth suit than a netrunner suit, and when I mentioned that to the lady who made it, she got a thoughtful expression on her face. Perhaps she was going to break into a new market now?
The only downside was it was form-fitting, and I meant very form-fitting. I solved this issue partly by wearing my normal ballistic vest over it; it covered my breasts and stomach area, although now it would take a little longer to cool due to the heat trapped between the vest and suit! Still, the suit did a lot better job than the heatsinks included in my implant, so it was still overall a good choice. I could still drop to an externally visible eighteen degrees or so within thirty seconds, even with the vest.
I tried wearing a pair of shorts over the suit, but it looked very stupid. What I settled on was a sort of belt that carried a lot of my immediately useful supplies and extra ammunition. It made me feel kind of like a superheroine, and attached to that belt was an armoured skirt in the same colour as the netrunner suit, which was mainly for my modesty. I had the same woman make it after telling her about my concerns. It didn't look like a normal skirt, as it was made up of individual armoured strips, which made it a lot easier to move in.
The woman called it a pteruges, which I had to look up. She thought it was preem, though. Honestly, all I needed was a domino mask, and I would have fit in with the cape scene back in the Bay wearing this, so I privately quite liked it too.
I got a number of glances standing in the garage, heavily armed, in my get-up, carrying quite a lot of gear, mostly medical, in two large bags. But I guess I didn't look like one to fuck with, so a couple of homeless, almost Scav-like guys that were eyeing me moseyed on down, ignoring me. It might have been my cool outfit or the fact that I was casually carrying a submachine gun in my free hand. Who knew?
A white-panelled van pulled up, and the window on the passenger side rolled down. Kiwi, from the driver's seat, glanced out at me, "Damn! Nice digs! Is that a coolant suit?" she asked, using the other term for netrunner suits.
"Yep," I said, emphasising the 'p' sound, "I'm not really a runner like you, but it is useful for the stealth system I just got installed yesterday." Eventually, I wanted to create a port in the suit to plug in my thermal radiators into so that the suit and thermoptic system could work together and move heat back and forth based on what worked best. Then both the heat dissipation and sink systems would work together intelligently, but that was a project for another day.
She raises an eyebrow, "You have pretty strong ICE for not being a runner. Plus, I'm pretty sure you can't get a suit like that made without knowing someone in the scene."
I tossed my bags in the back and hopped into the passenger seat, carefully clicking my seatbelt into place, "I'm a very private person. And I might be on a few BBS', but it isn't because I am leet, I assure you."
She put the van into gear, "Leet? Dear god. 2020 called, and they want their words back." I just rolled my eyes at her, I hadn't meant to say that word, but for some reason, I had thought of the duo Uber and Leet back in the Bay. I had never really watched their videos online. Still, I had heard about most of them -- I didn't have a phone, and our internet at the house was dreadfully slow, plus I thought that they were really terrible people if the "Grand Theft Auto" stream I heard about didn't involve actors playing the prostitutes.
I didn't know why those two clowns had popped into my head, and I had been having a number of weird dreams about the Bay lately, too. I shook my head and asked, "Where are we having the 'pre-game' feast?" Privately I thought the eating and celebrating should happen after a job, though.
"It's a merc bar. The merc bar. It's called Afterlife," Kiwi said, slightly enthusiastic, excited even, which was a little uncharacteristic of her, "Legends of Night City and the world even have drank and eaten there."
I nodded, "And I bet most of them are dead now."
"Well, yes. That is true," she said, calming down quite a bit before continuing, "I'm all for staying alive, myself. I've been a merc for almost a decade, and you don't last as long as I do without looking out for number one. That's better than immortal fame or a drink named after you, in my opinion," she finished, chuckling, and I definitely agreed with her.
"A drink named after you?" I asked, curious.
She nodded, "Yeah, it's kind of Afterlife's thing. If you get flatlined spectacularly on an op, you might get a drink named after you. A cocktail, you know?" Then she grinned at me, "Are you even eighteen, though? They won't sell you alcohol unless you're eighteen, at least!"
"I am over nineteen," I tell her, sniffing delicately at the affront of being teased. I was not exactly lying nor exactly telling the truth. Objectively speaking, I was barely over seventeen. But I had been living a life three times the speed as the average person for some time now, so subjectively, I considered myself a couple of years older.
The Afterlife bar was in the Upper Marina area, right up against the edge that had been, even ten years ago, the "Hot Zone." The zone was the area of downtown that was wrecked and radioactive from the Arasaka Headquarters bombing in 2023. Even after twenty years, the city had not started remediating the area, although that process was now underway in a limited fashion. It was still one of the no-go areas of the city. Absolutely no ground ambulance would drive there, and neither would any police, for that matter. Year after year, though, the "Hot Zone" shrunk, and today it was only half the size that it was previously.
Having to leave my guns in the van was a bit of a letdown. I should have brought a smaller pistol I could hide... uhh... well, never mind. I did verify that the monowire port on my left wrist was exposed. Since my suit was custom-made, it wasn't difficult for her to create a small opening for it.
Maybe I should start carrying a purse? I could fit a small pistol in there, but it would look really out of place. Only small clutch-style bags were really in fashion at all, and even then, only for those who, every day, dressed better than even I did at my best. It was a high-class woman's accessory. Maybe a larger bag on my belt, like a fanny pack. People still wore those, although it was the opposite problem. It was very low-class.
As we walked to the bar together, I asked churlishly, "If this is a merc bar, then why do we have to leave our guns at the door?"
Kiwi laughed and rubbed the back of her neck embarrassedly, "Some mercs don't, but you know none of us is in the big league, right? Honestly, we're lucky to be admitted. Now, shush as we get past this gorilla."
The "gorilla" was a man who looked like he was a hundred and seventy kilos if he was a gram, and none of it looked much like fat. I almost started probing him to see what implants he had but stopped myself. It wouldn't do to get kicked out of the bar before I was ever admitted.
The man stared at Kiwi briefly, grunted, and then stared at me much more intensely for several long moments, and then he gave a slightly different grunt and stepped aside. He was a lovely fellow; I imagine he could have a complete conversation with someone just through various grunts.
The "boys" were waiting for us when we got in. The Afterlife was pretty interesting. There was a bar area like I was expecting, but also what looked like a restaurant area as well. That's where we met them, in an overly large half-circle booth set into a wall. Kiwi told me these were semi-private booths. If you had big bucks, you could rent one of Afterlife's privacy-guaranteed faraday-cage lined secure facilities in the back. They would bring you food and drink there, also.
As I slid into the booth, I noticed the din of the rest of the bar vanish instantly, replaced by a soft white noise that was familiar to me. One of those privacy devices, like Kiwi, had the last time. Was this one built into the table? Glancing down at the floor, I noticed a yellow line painted about a half metre from the table. Perhaps that was to indicate to you if someone was inside the line, they could hear what you were saying. What an interesting and in-character addition.
Ruslan greeted us warmly, yelling, "Hey, Madison!" I never really expected to work more than one job with these people, so I didn't really put much thought into my secret identity, and I knew that it was already blown with Kiwi, but I may as well keep it up for pretences sake.
Jean nodded at us both and gave us a perfunctory "Wah gwaan?" I blinked at him, trying to parse his accent a little. Finally, I thought I understood what he was asking.
Kiwi and I each slid into one end of the semi-circle booth, "Hey, Ruslan, Jean... It's going pretty well. How about you? How's it hanging?"
"Oh, a bit to the left, mon. Digs real nice, Madison," replied Jean with a grin.
I nodded at him, ignoring his reference to his plum bob's present orientation, "Thanks. Both impact and cut resistant." Then I grabbed a menu and perused it for a moment.
The menu was mostly liquor, but they did have a small selection of bar food, mostly things you could eat with your hands. "Japanese-Russo fusion?" I asked aloud, amused at the combination of one of the items.
When the waitress glided over to us, stepping inside the yellow line so she could speak to us, I couldn't help but stare a bit. She was eerily beautiful, like a fairy or elf, with obvious serious cosmetic biosculpt.
We all gave our orders. When it was my turn, I couldn't help but try the strange Japanese-Russian combination, "I'll have the Pirozhki and a Cirrus Cola." Everyone but me got a drink along with something to eat as well, usually along my lines of something small.
Ruslan gave me an approving nod and, after the waitress left, said, "So, our job is to assist the Los Diablos of Santa Domingo, who are sure they are about to be attacked by the Los Demonios, who want to wipe them out and take their territory."
I blinked. I didn't really study much Spanish in my twenty months in this world, and that was perhaps kind of stupid considering how many people in Night City spoke it, but I asked, "Don't those two names mean the same thing?"
He shrugged, "Da, probably. In fact, that might be one of the main reasons for the beef."
I rubbed my face, "This is so stupid, already." I then glanced up, "Why are they so sure they're going to be attacked that they're going to hire Edgerunners this particular night?"
"Partly spies and partly, I guess, maybe the Diablos; that's our guys, by the way, shot one of the Demonia..Demonao... fucking Demons this morning, intentionally, to provoke them," Ruslan said simply. He shrugged, "We still get paid even if no combat happens, though."
Kiwi said reasonably, "Yeah, right. These are third-tier gangers we're talking about. They'll welsh for sure if nothing happens."
"Nye, we may not be dealing with a big-time fixer on this job, but it isn't like we're dealing directly with the gang. I wasn't that stupid when I got this job. They've already paid the fixer, and it is him that pays us. Even if they hadn't paid in advance, no fixer that wants to work in this town again would so obviously screw a merc team," Ruslan said, shaking his head.
I still wasn't sure about the exact composition of the team between the three, but it seemed like Ruslan was, if not in charge per se, then at least the one that handled the administrative aspects of three mercs working together. He was the one that had paid me the last time, too.
For the next ten minutes, he discussed plans, with each of us chiming in here and there. It was only lunchtime, so after we left here, we would immediately head to see the Diablos. It was a defensive action, so they would spend some time getting set up. That was especially important for Kiwi, who used a lot of traps, cameras and cyber-attacks. She intended to set up a number of cameras, sensors and cheap drones to provide both eyes on as well as proxies for her to use to launch wireless-based quickhacks tactically.
I would be in a large room in the Diablos' building, providing medical services for anyone injured. Kiwi nodded, "At first, I was waffling between trying to keep up with Jean and Rus or holding back where you're going to be. I don't really trust these Diablos gonks, though, so the idea of being alone with them while I'm hacking seems retrograde. But if you're there too, it will probably be fine."
I nodded. That made sense. Both Ruslan and Jean were fairly heavily augmented, and although Kiwi was too, they were augmented for strength and endurance, and she was not. She might slow them down if they intended to perform some kind of hit-and-run style of ambushes.
We all quieted as the waitress returned, casually carrying all of our drinks and food and making it look easy, too. Jean and Ruslan each got giant sandwiches, while Kiwi just got a selection of appetisers.
I'd never eaten Pirozhki before, but it seemed interesting. It was a little on the pricier side because it included real, fresh-made bread. They were kind of like a meat pie crossed with a calzone, using soft bread. It was quite good. The Japanese portion was the meat and sauce selected, which was kind of like curry. Altogether, it was quite good.
We went over the plan again, including a number of contingencies they thought of in advance, from things as normal as them being wounded to the mission becoming a lost cause and us having to flee for our lives.
After we finished, we left together after I made sure to leave the waitress a healthy tip. Not only was she stunningly pretty, but it was impressive how many things she could carry at one time; it was almost like watching a circus performance. Was she augmented for unnatural grace, and if so, through what implant? Or perhaps it was a "super waitress" skill chip?
The lair of the Los Diablos was a three-story apartment building in Santo Domingo. I wasn't sure if they were squatting by force of arms or if they owned the place, and I didn't ask.
"Yo, comrade. We set up the game room like you asked, is this bitch the techie?" the ganger who greeted us asked, giving me the elevator-eye treatment that made me feel like I could use a shower, and made me kind of want to shoot him.
Ruslan casually struck the tall, lanky gang banger in the stomach. Not hard; otherwise, he might have had serious internal injuries, but just enough to double the youth over, and Ruslan said, "You are to be respectful da?"
"Fucking, da, you fuck," wheezed the man as he glanced around. I wondered if the only reason Ruslan did what he did was that we were alone. My psychological information suggested that we might have been fighting our own clients if a bunch of his minions were around. Violent anti-social behaviour in criminals tended to be very hierarchal, with no shows of disrespect tolerated in so much as such people did cooperate.
Otherwise, leaders were quickly deposed. Heavy was the head that wore the crown and all that.
I doubted very much that Ruslan knew as much about psychology as I did, but he knew a lot more about the street, so he probably knew the same thing, possibly without being able to articulate it into educated-sounding words though.
"Oh, nice," I said, glancing around at what was around. There were some medical supplies for me already here. I wouldn't have to use entirely my own.
The gang leader nodded, "Yeah, we robbed a doctor's office last night and klepped all this shit, knowing our showdown was gonna go down today. Feel free to use any of this shit you want. We're not entirely sure what some of this is for, but uhh.. the boys, they already cleaned out any of the pain meds, but I'm already calling in one of my dealers to bring in some shit before the shit hits the fan."
It was kind of surprising that a gang was bothering with all of this. I would expect a military force to think about casualties and prepare in advance, but not really a street gang. Perhaps that was one of my blind spots. The room was large, and I saw marks on the floor that indicated a bunch of furniture had been moved out.
The equipment and supplies were both useful and not. There was a pretty nice combination of a cardiac monitor/defibrillator, about ten IV pumps and a ventilator, as well as a lot of consumables. If bought retail, it would be easily thirty thousand eurodollars worth of equipment or more. It wasn't worth that much to the gangers, though. I doubt they could sell it for five hundred since it was such a niche and special set of tools. Also, I expected that most of the high-dollar items were likely locked down, with me doubting they'd turn on at all now that they were stolen. But I think either I or especially Kiwi could likely hack them and reactivate them, disabling any LoJak systems if they existed.
I decided that I would "klep" everything useful here when the job was over, too, it wasn't likely this gang of idiots would need it, and it was a bit better than my current equipment, which was mostly two or three generations old.
"We're gonna head out and start installing Kiwi's gear, ya?" said Jean, to me, and I nodded, waving them off.
I didn't mind being alone with the gang leader because he didn't scare me at all. He was older than me, but not by a lot which kind of said something about how short a lifespan these little gangs had, "Can you find a few more of those cots, in case you actually get people that are hurt?"
He nodded, "Yeah, whatever. I'll tell one of the boys to scrounge some up. It might be an hour or two. Gotta go see my input. Bitch be cray." With that, he strutted off, and I wondered why precisely we, but especially I, were taking this job. Oh well.
"Comms check," Ruslan said over our encrypted conference call.
I unmuted the channel briefly and said, "Loud and clear," and listened to Kiwi and Jean repeat the same.
I got the room set up. I wasn't really getting any extra pay for the consumables I was using; I was getting a flat fee that was proportionally larger in the assumption that I would use them. So, I would be practising the Brockton Bay General style of medicine, which is to say, medicine on the cheap. They always had such a bad reputation, despite being the hospital that Panacea worked at, compared to MedHall.
After I got everything set up, I waited, watching through the cameras and drones that Kiwi had begun to set up for lack of a better thing to do.
I got one customer a lot sooner than I thought; a man was dragged in with a gunshot wound to his shoulder, apparently the result of the nascent gang war beginning on the periphery. In popular culture, gunshot wounds to the shoulder were considered very survivable flesh wounds and a common wound for the plucky hero to receive at the conclusion of some adventure.
In truth, the proximity of neural, osseous, vascular, and muscular structures caused wounds of this nature to be especially challenging sometimes. Having a particularly expansive knowledge of medicine and anatomy led me to believe there really isn't a "good" place to be shot, just some that are less bad than others.
About the same time I started working on this gang member, a second showed up with a literal sack, dropping it on a table that I had been using as a desk and saying, "Boss said this is for ya." I sighed after getting to a stopping point with the whining gang member I was working on to grab the sack and look inside, ignoring the complaint from my patient.
Pulling out a small packet of which there were over a hundred, easy, I frowned, looking for some sort of chemical name or dosage marking on the flimsy package, before opening it and casually sniffing delicately at the opening before turning to the second guy who was about to leave, "Hey! Wait! This is fucking heroin!"
"Uhh... yeah? Youse asked for painkillers, and there ain't no better than this. What are you, a gonk?" the man asked philosophically.
Her patient said, "Fucking awesome, give me some of that shit, doc, this hurts like a motherfucker!"
I closed my eyes and counted to ten mentally before opening them and said, "You know what, whatever." After eyeing my patient for a moment, I came up with a dosing strategy for an opiate that I neither knew the strength nor purity. I would titrate until this man stopped annoying me, and if he stopped breathing, I would know I had gone too far. Easy peasy.
Hours later, I had a handful of other customers, some of which were wounded quite severely and wouldn't be fighting any more this evening. They were either in cots themselves or had been dragged to other rooms in the apartment building to "convalesce" after I had stabilised them, and we'd finally reached the stage of conflict where Ruslan, Jean and Kiwi had begun ambush operations.
Now, Kiwi had returned and was sitting in the desk area I had prepared, insensate, as she looked through dozens of cameras and traversed the local subnet, launching attacks against attackers several blocks away. The staccato of automatic gunfire, interspaced with loud booms, was becoming increasingly more common.
"Things are going to plan. I'm not sure these suckers will even reach your block," Ruslan said over our tac-net conference call. I hummed and nodded while casually prizing a small piece of shrapnel out of the aorta with some extra long forceps in one hand, then sliding an ultrasonic bleeding control wand back into the wound to cauterise the outside layers of the artery belonging to the idiot I was working, before he bled out.
The fighting had heated up quite a bit, but I hadn't had one death yet, although I had a couple of DoAs, including one man dragged in absent a head with his buddy looking at me expectantly. I kicked him out and made him body bag his own friend, too.
Kiwi said ominously on the digital link, still staying motionless, "Uhh, guys... we may have a problem."
I glanced at her and casually looked around, verifying the locations of all the things I intended to klep out of this room, plus the stuff I had brought with me. I had intentionally set up my clinic in such a way that it would only take about five minutes to depart in a hurry.
"What's wrong, Kiwi?" asked Ruslan.
She sighed, "I'm seeing activity as close to three blocks to the south. It isn't the Demonios, either. Here, take a look." With that, she transferred a number of images to us, and I peered at images of armed people in fatigues and camouflage moving slowly, with a purpose, towards our location. I asked, confused, "A paramilitary unit?"
"Fuck! Not really, but sort of. It's 6th Street. Okay, start closing up shop. We contracted to defend the Diablos from the Demons, not from one of the biggest gangs in the city," Ruslan said.
Frowning, I did so while trying to act like I was not. Kiwi roused herself, glanced at me and nodded, also arranging some of my equipment as well. A minute or two later, Ruslan came back, "Bad news, our 'allies' realised something was wrong. We're going to try to just tell them we're backing out in accordance with the contract, but if that doesn't work, we may be in a Charlie situation." He used the code word when our client was betraying us.
Not long after that, the gang leader comes rushing into the room with a large pistol, waving it around. For some reason, he didn't have any minions with him, and the wounded in here would be no help to him. I had increased their painkiller dosage already in anticipation of running off, and they were almost all insensate now. He screamed at Kiwi, "Yo, bitch! Tell that fucking Soviet piece of shit that if he doesn't keep fighting like we fucking paid him to that, I'm going to fucking shoot you in the face!"
He was an actual threat to Kiwi, too, because, oddly, he didn't have any cybernetics at all. There were some people like that around, but most people at least got an operating system when they turned thirteen. He was, for the moment, ignoring me, which was very stupid. I didn't like the idea of gunshots in here because it might tend to cause a bunch of our supposed allies to swarm us. I triggered my stealth system to begin pre-chilling and casually popped the monowire out on my left wrist.
The end of the monowire terminated in a tiny weighted cylinder. This was both so someone, such as a maintenance technician, could handle it, even without the monoresistant ceramic treatments on their fingers as well as to give the wire a little bit of weight when performing whip attacks. Single-handed whip attacks were one of the hardest moves when using the monowire. The traditional whip attack was a two-handed affair, where your dominant hand held the end or a length of the wire, and you used both hands to whip a loop around. However, I had practised single-hand attacks quite a bit.
I slowly stepped around a patient, hoping the slow movement wouldn't startle him as I was unspooling enough monowire. However, he must have been at sufficiently high tension because as soon as he saw me moving from the peripheral vision, he started turning rapidly, with his arm carrying his pistol traversing like a tank's turret. I abandoned stealth and threw out my left hand, fast and I got a glimpse of a shocked look on his face as the wire to coiled around his neck like a snake. I didn't waste any time and just yanked back quickly with my offhand, causing his head to pop off with a gross plopping noise. Thankfully, he hadn't fired his weapon, and I glanced around to see if anybody around had noticed, but no one had.
"Eww.. ahh thanks, though," Kiwi said aloud while saying over the tacnet, "Our principal threatened to kill me, so Madison decapitated him with her monowire. So, uh... yeah, Charlie."
I quickly used one of the provided bodybags to bag up the gang leader and his severed head, placing him in a corner so that if someone walked in, it wouldn't immediately look like something had happened. There were already a couple of dead bodies stacked there, after all, 'Your boss? No, haven't seen him!'
"Get our things ready; I'm going to go see how we are going to sneak out of here," I told Kiwi, who nodded. She already knew I planned to steal anything valuable that the gang had already stolen. She had helped me jailbreak all of the medical electronics earlier, too, so they all worked and no longer had any tracking code installed.
Spooling my monowire back into my wrist, I triggered the stealth field for the first time in an actual real-life situation and ghosted out of the room. The Diablos weren't really an on-the-ball organisation, but they did have about four guards that would be a problem, I discovered after searching each floor of their headquarters, plus at least two across the street. Their state of vigilance was low, even for an ongoing gun battle, but they would still see us departing the building and driving away in Ruslan's van, for sure.
Coming back into the clinic, I deactivated my stealth field and turned off the cooling systems entirely. There was no sign of any automated cameras, defences or men with infrared goggles. I had spent almost four minutes sneaking around, though, so I had used most of the charge for the stealth system. It would recharge on its own in about fifteen minutes, but that wasn't the only way to recharge it. I plugged a standard power and data cable into one of my interface sockets, using mains power, and watched the system quickly recharge.
"Alright, fuck. We managed to zero the fucking group of Diablos that was with us, but I don't think we're going to be able to make it back to their HQ to extract you before 6th Street gets there. We're having to move west to dodge the fighting," Ruslan said worriedly.
I told everyone what I had discovered over the net, and Kiwi nodded, "I think we should be able to get out ourselves. If so, we will meet at RP two, okay?"
I glanced at Kiwi and asked, "So, what do you want to do?"
"If you can get to the guards in this building, I'm pretty sure I can take out the ones watching us from across the street," she said simply, all business now.
I nodded, grabbed a handful of premade syringes and said, "Okay, give me a few minutes." I unplugged myself and triggered the stealth system again. It wasn't difficult to find the guards again. The one that was by himself was easy; I just used one of the syringes to give him a fairly large dose of heroin. I doubted it would kill him, but he wouldn't be caring about guarding anything for a while.
The other three were together, playing cards but in a game, I didn't recognise. How much of a trope is it for guards to be playing cards? I saw it in every film I watched; it was weird to see it actually happening in real life. I sat there, invisible, for a hand, and when one of the men threw his cards down in disgust, he stood up and said, "I'll be right back."
I followed him, and as soon as he turned a corner, I dosed him as well. Quickly returning, I glanced at the last two, sitting across from each other. Well, it was worth a try. I had a syringe in each hand and quickly dosed the one that had his back to me, dropping the used syringe and shifting the unused one to my good hand, but the man across from me yelled, "What the fuck!"
I think it was more luck, but he struck out with a hand in a reflex move that knocked my last syringe away when I was leaning across the table to jab him with it. Frowning, I just activated the paralysis pads on my fingernails and casually swiped his arm like an annoyed housecat. I didn't draw a lot of blood, but four deeply red lines were visible on his arm as he yanked it back, bleeding slowly.
That was good enough, and it only took him a couple of seconds of looking confused and terrified before he slumped to the side, falling out of his chair, and twitching.
He hadn't gotten a large dose, and I could see some of his muscles were working on and off, and it seemed like he could take breaths if he tried really hard about it, so I thought that he had more than a fifty per cent chance to survive. If he lived the next five minutes, he would likely survive, I thought. I didn't really have enough time to treat him, nor did I have anything to do so with besides intubating him back in the clinic, so I just left him there. As I was returning to the clinic, I glanced outside a window and used my eight-times zoom just in time to see a man looking terrified and not entirely in control of himself point his gun at his head and pull the trigger. Shit! Was that Kiwi? Could you do that? What kind of virus made you kill yourself? I wanted to know.
I would ask her later. Without speaking, we started taking loads of equipment and threw it in the back of the van. It took us three trips to steal everything. Kiwi said, "You drive; I'm gonna have to pick out a route for us that won't get us shot to pieces. 6th Street is already one block to the south. If I had a guess, I bet they are also approaching the Demonios from the north. I think this was a set-up all along, or they're being real fucking opportunistic."
Well, that sounded good. I didn't want to get shot to pieces. I jumped in the driver's seat, pressed the ignition button and put the van into gear. Kiwi said, "Left, take this left!"
Amusingly, the radio started playing a rap song. I didn't particularly like rap too much, but both Jean and Ruslan did. The lyrics were prophetic, though, so I vowed to download this song.
The radio played our escape song, "We're getting the fuck out! Getting out! Of this shit town and this shit life! And none of you gonks can stop us!"
Well, I still had to stay in town, though.