I watched the surgical assistant proceed through its self-tests, the four articulating arms stretching out from its housing hanging from the ceiling and going through the full range of motions with a very slight whirring sound. I settled on a design for this first-generation assistant that only had four arms and six tools, three on each of the two special-tool armatures. However, it had two general-purpose manipulators, which resembled a hand with the pinky finger replaced with a second thumb.
I had taken the manipulator design straight from a number of seamstress robots that were in common use. I was probably violating some sort of patent, but I didn't particularly care. The extra thumb allowed it to perform almost invisibly tiny sutures, at least in simulations. Sutures were still a common treatment, especially for people who could not pay for the better surgical-nano glue that held a wound closed and healed it with no scarring at the same time—most of my patients, in other words.
I had a lot of suture techniques in my head, and with my high dexterity and vision options, I could perform almost as well as a robot in surgeries, but that didn't mean that I had muscle memories for every particular surgical technique, especially somewhat archaic ones like surgical sutures. At least, that was before I had gotten a lot of practice. These days, I could practically sew a fly's wings back on if I had a small enough needle and thread, but it didn't mean I enjoyed taking the time to do such things.
I hadn't quite had an opportunity to test the suture mode on an actual person, although it had worked really well on all the physical analogues I had easily accessible. I had shifted the central processing unit into a permanent life support tank, as well, so I theoretically could collect another person's brain if I wanted to. I would need to if I ever intended to finish the arachnid-robot ideas, but my workspace out in my clinic was getting kind of full. In the current design, I had envisioned a robot about the size of a terrier dog which was the smallest form factor for a generalised robot that I could think of, but perhaps I could shift downwards to about the size of a large rat.
They would be less useful tools on each spider, but I could also have many more of the individual bots and specialise them each to a different set of tools and skills. Also, a benefit was if they were smaller, I could keep their home base station in the ceiling in a corner, as they should have no difficulty walking on a ceiling or the walls.
Perhaps fate was favouring me because I heard an urgent-seeming series of doorbells and knocks on my outer door. After checking the cameras, I noticed Hiro and another young man who seemed to be injured. Part of his face was cut, going down his cheek and eye, skipping a portion of his neck and continuing down part of his chest. He had a makeshift bandage covering most of the injury on his face, which occluded his eye.
Despite the bandage, the wounds were bleeding fairly well. I glanced at the surgical assistant and smiled. I may get a chance to test its suture mode today. I buzzed them in, the door unlocking with a clang as Hiro pushed it in, and the two young men hurried into my shop.
By the look of it, the new arrival was a few years older than Hiro, maybe three years or so younger than myself. Hiro came in, swearing, "Miss Taylor, Miss Taylor! Some fucking gonk cut-up Jeremy. Can you help him?"
I motioned him to take a seat at the chair and tilted my head at them both, "Who attacked him?" But then, I focused my attention on the patient, gathering a few things I kept for traumas on hand.
I connected him to my simple cardiac monitor just to be safe. He's tachycardic, which wasn't surprising judging from the wincing he was doing, especially when I removed the makeshift bandage he was using. It was clear he was trying to put up a brave front, but he was in significant pain. His left optic was damaged, as well.
"Some fucking junkie piece of shit tried to rob me on a delivery," the boy told me himself. I nodded and sprayed some contact anaesthetic into all of the open wounds, getting a sigh of relief from the boy as the painkiller started working immediately. Whoever it was, they had gotten him pretty good. I would have to repair some of the muscles in his face if he ever wanted to have a symmetrical smile again.
I glanced at Hiro briefly as I stood up to go get some tools. First, I'd have to debride all of the wounds, dirt and other debris that were present, "I thought you and your minions only delivered to Japantown, Hiro-chan."
He scowled at me for the somewhat feminine diminutive I added to his name but nodded, "Yeah, we do. This fucking happened in Japantown. Don't worry, Miss Taylor; we've already told the Claws." I wanted to raise my eyebrows but didn't. Why did he think I cared? Did he have the impression I was in the gang or something?
"Kumo-kun, connect," I told the surgical assistant as I brought back a few tools, as well as an IV kit. Although my assistant, only presently, had four "legs", I thought the final version might have eight. Plus, he was kind of a first draft of what I might want my little spiders to be like, so I had been calling it "Kumo-kun."
His two armatures that ended in hands folded down from the ceiling and grabbed the data cable that was connected to the biobed and searched for the young man's interface socket. Apparently, this was a little disconcerting to him as his eyes got wide and he tried to sit up, only for Kumo-kun's other hand to semi-firmly press him back into the chair. It might be better if I reassured him, "Don't worry, that's just an assistant robot that I have been testing out recently. You're in no danger." Probably.
He settled down and let the hands put the data cable into his interface socket, and immediately the rest of the Meditech displays on the biobed started being populated with data. It wasn't anything I hadn't already guessed—he only had a basic operating system and optics, like Hiro had.
I sat on the little rolling stool and rolled back over to the biobed, humming as I palpated his body, not just the parts around his injury. I asked, "Do you want Hiro to leave prior to discussing anything medical-related or receiving care?"
He blinked his good eye at me and shook his head, "Nah, I mean, he's paying for half of this." That caused me to raise my eyebrow. Did Hiro-chan have something like a health insurance plan for his employees if they were wounded on the job? How interesting.
Hiro just shrugged at me, so I nodded, "The lens on your left optic here is damaged irreparably. It'll have to be replaced, but I can have one fabricated locally and delivered within thirty-six hours. For that and the repair of that eye, is one fifty. You have some serious muscle damage to your cheek here; I'll have to repair it as well as your chest. One hundred. You're also very dehydrated, and I can detect you've got the incipient stages of clinically significant Vitamin C deficiency. I'll treat that, ten eddies. But it would be best if you took a multivitamin every day or watched what you ate better."
Hiro shook his head, "I told you that Buck-a-Slice is not food, man."
He scowled at Hiro, or at least one-half of his face did, "They're delicious! How much are multivitamins?" Delicious? I might need to perform a psych consult.
"About ten ennies a day or less, but if you're on any kind of government assistance, they're included for free, but there are only certain brands you can buy and only from a few different stores. Unfortunately, my clinic is not one of them, as I do not have an actual business license. But the pharmacy and quick shop across the street are," I told him as I held his arm out and quickly started an IV before he could realise what was happening and complain about it.
Hiro looked interested, "Really? I never heard of that."
"It's a cost-saving measure, plus I suspect some bribery is going on. It's also not advertised. But you should be able to get them for free, as well, if you live in subsidised housing here. If you don't want the hassle, I sell them as well," I told Hiro as I started a yellow multivitamin-infused bag of saline running on my patient. I said out loud while glancing up, "Kumo-kun, light and suction."
Eagerly, the two other mechanical arms unfolded down; they each had a few tools on them, one of which was a bright light, and the other was what was basically a medical wet-dry vacuum with changeable heads. This current one looked kind of like a straw and was disposable.
Although the brain that made up the intelligence of Kumo-kun definitely didn't have consciousness anymore, not how I would describe it anyway, it still had something like the intelligence of a dog, if a dog had a photographic memory and a bunch of medical procedures programmed into it. It was always eager to please, too, as part of the process to train its neural network included wiring its in-tact reward centre to give a serotonin and dopamine reward if it completed a task successfully.
It held the suction carefully as I irrigated and cleaned the kid's wound. When I was done, I tossed the disposable straw away and replaced it with a new one, and then began the complicated task of repairing the muscle damage to his cheek. I had to use a very tiny set of forceps to reach in and grab the severed muscle and have Kumo-kun hold it in place while I sutured it and the connective tissue back together. Kumo-kun's bright light following the entire operation was quite useful. As I was working on him, the young man suddenly asked me, "Wait, is this where the scar will disappear?"
I glanced at him from behind my surgical mask and safety glasses and almost imperceptibly shook my head, "No, not unless you want to pay an extra seventy-five eddies. It will be a fairly small scar, though." I paused just in case he did want to. I'd have to go get some of the trauma nanoglue if he wanted that. I had made certain assumptions about my patient's financial means, and while I wasn't usually wrong, perhaps I was in this case.
However, he surprised me by just shaking his head, causing me to gently donk him on top of the head with my knuckle to get him to stay still. He said, "No way! Chicks dig scars, and this one is one of those vertical down-the-eye deals, like Jake from Bushido X!"
I tried to avoid groaning. Bushido X: Fade to Black was released half a year ago, and it was just now filtering down to the "poor as fuck demographic" who didn't or couldn't afford full price to stream it. It was undoubtedly one of the worst films I had seen in either world.
I did all of the work on his face myself, but when I was done, I shifted the biobed into bed mode and said, "Kumo-kun, finish the rest of the sutures." This time all four arms dropped down excitedly, and I once again had to calm my patient. I watched Kumo-kun carefully just in case he went rampant, but he was doing a fast and efficient job.
Hiro asked me suddenly, glancing at the wall of the room where I had a number of firearms set into pegs on the wall. I had gone ahead and started selling guns, too. "What's the cheapest pistol I could buy that is still really reliable, and he could carry in his pocket? It needs to be able to put down an average Scav."
I raised an eyebrow, glancing between the wall of weapons and Kumo-kun carefully suturing the patient's chest closed. Now that I was selling guns, I had a lot more people trying to pay me with firearms, which I accepted if the weapons offered were not total shit. I finally pointed to the corner where a small snub-nosed revolver was hanging off the peg, "That's a snub-nose .357, five shots. Good pocket pistol, about as reliable as can be, and you don't have to worry about policing your brass, either."
"Policing your brass?" asked the younger boy.
I sighed. Oh, sweet summer child. I educated him, carefully and slowly, "Most modern civilian pistols have a firing pin that stamps a uniquely identifiable marking into the base of the primer, and theoretically, the police can recover the ejected brass and identify the firearm that shot it. Furthermore, most vending machine-sold ammo has its batch number printed on the brass also. Policing your brass is picking up the ejected cartridges after you shoot someone so as to stymy this avenue of forensic investigation. Revolvers don't eject their brass, so there is no need to worry about it unless you have to reload." I accepted that revolver as payment last week; it was old as hell and reminded me of a gun a private detective in a noir film might wear on his ankle.
He looked suitably enlightened but asked, "What do you do when you shoot people, then, Miss Taylor?"
I narrowed my eyes at him and lied blatantly, "I don't 'shoot people.'" I saw him roll his eyes and continued, "But hypothetically, if I ever had to and couldn't immediately pick up the brass, I would have long before replaced all of the firing pins I used with ones with no identifiable marks, either by carefully filing down the firing pin using a steel file or buying a standard, unmarked, firing pin from any gun store." It went without saying that every firearm I sold in my "clinic-pharmacy-gunshop" had this already done to it. It wasn't illegal; the requirement was only put in place for firearm manufacturers—it wasn't a requirement to own a firearm that it be equipped with microstamping technology.
He nodded, then, and asked, "How much for that revolver? And do you happen to have a spare firing pin for a nine-millimetre Lexington subcompact? Like that kind you sold me a while back."
I smirked at him, "One fifty for the revolver. It's over sixty years old but still in good condition. Twenty-five for the firing pin, thirty if you need another spring too."
He tried to haggle down the total combined price of my medical services, the gun and parts on account of it being a package deal, but I only let him get a five per cent or so discount. The prices I charged were already quite low. However, I relented when he asked for some 'loner eyes' for his minion while I was waiting for the replacement lens. I had over five pairs of this model of eyes, so I just swapped his left eye with one of my left pairs.
"Most features won't work until your other eye is repaired. Call me if you get a fever, aches, or there is any sign of infection at the wound sites," I told him, although I specifically left integration unfinished on the implant so he would have an incentive to return my eye to me. I wasn't a swap house, after all. I took this eye, undamaged, out of a Wraith's skull myself. I didn't want to swap it with an eye that was damaged, even if I repaired it later.
One last time I checked over Kumo-kun's work before placing bandages on his chest, finding the stitches to be very neat and professionally done. While Hiro and his minion were leaving, I used a simple app I had created to rate the effectiveness of each task Kumo-kun tried to complete on a number of factors. Altogether he had performed admirably. Kumo-kun self-supervised during neural network training during simulations, and its guess as to how well it had done was in line with mine, too. Excellent!
"So, what are we doing again?" asked Jean curiously, in between bites of his Chinese food. We were in one of the private rooms of The Golden Duck again, although this time, I was just eating some regular Kung Pao chicken. I had been ducked out recently.
Ruslan growled at him, "We are brainstorming a strategy for the gig. The way Wakako told me, you're trading something to a Corp and are concerned they might just murder you and take it?" He scrunched up his face, "As the customer, why are you being involved in the handoff in the first place? That isn't standard."
He was right. Normally, in a gig like this, Wakako would have shielded me from the mercenaries involved and shielded the mercenaries involved from me, in turn.
Moreover, if safety was my real primary concern, I wouldn't be involved at all, or I would act through a proxy. The reason I was involved was in case there were technical questions, as I was presenting myself as a hired subject-matter expert that the mercenaries had hired instead of being the source of the invention. But I could, theoretically, do that through a comms net and have Kiwi pretend to be me, just telling her what to say over the comms.
But... I just had the intuition that I needed to be there. If I sought to attend the exchange remotely, there was a non-zero per cent chance that the Biotechnica people would utilise a low-range but broad-spectrum frequency jammer during the meeting for privacy, and I would be stuck, and whomever or whatever I selected for my proxy would be without the benefit of my wisdom, such as it was anyway.
"It isn't necessarily non-standard. We've all done bodyguard jobs before. They may have some questions about the package, in which case I may need to be present," I rationalised to him, but privately I admitted he had a point.
He made a non-committal noise, and then Kiwi jumped into the conversation, "So you have three real concerns, then. Ambush prior to the meeting, betrayal at the meeting or ambush after the exchange has taken place? I presume you are receiving either money or some other easily fungible store of value and are concerned they might just take it back from you after receiving the goods you are selling them."
Jean popped up, "Hiring us and, you said, another team as backup must mean this is worth a lot of eddies!"
Ruslan cuffed him about the back of the head and said, "It isn't our business how much it is worth, you gonk, only how much we're getting paid, and ten thousand each for a half day's work is definitely worth it. Taylor may be our friend, but you still need to be professional."
I chuckled a little, privately pleased he referred to me as a friend, but I turned to address Kiwi, "Close. I'd say there are three concerns, but a betrayal at the exchange is not one of them. We are going to insist on conducting the handoff either at Veritas Corporation's headquarters or at Konpeki Plaza. Both places rent conference rooms, and both places offer a sort of arbitration service for this type of exchange if it becomes necessary." They weren't an escrow service, precisely, but if either side of the deal tried to welsh on their terms, either the Veritas or the Konpeki Plaza arbiters could be called upon as a trusted interlocutor, with the goal of arriving at a compromise.
If a Corporation had a history of perfidy to the opposite party and being unreasonable to the arbiters, its reputation in more important deals and negotiations would take a hit, so it was one of the few things we could demand that would be more important to the Corporation than us.
I knew for a fact that middle managers in Corps had no authority to damage their standing with important third parties like this. That said, it would only affect the actual deal and exchange. Neither Veritas nor Konpeki's people would bat an eye if we were murdered before the deal took place, for example.
I continued, "So the three main concerns are, first, as you say, an ambush prior to getting to the exchange location. Two, an ambush after leaving the exchange location, and three, us being identified during the exchange and then later being black bagged. This is more of a concern I have for myself, but it is something all of us should be cognisant of." After all, hadn't they helped me kidnap a mercenary to interrogate him about the people paying for his services just a short few months ago?
She looked interested, "How should we go about preventing ourselves from being identified? We can make sure all of our chrome is locked down hard, so they don't get any identifiable R/F spillover. But that is just one way that they could identify us."
"I'm going to pay for us all to get techhair implants, as well as a simple biosculpt treatment. There are mathematical ways to adjust your face to prevent any level of confidence from facial recognition software, while if a person looks at you, you will appear barely different. A different hair colour and this change will make it difficult to be casually identified," I said confidently. I was also going to wear a face mask, in addition to actually enabling my Kiroshi's camera dazzler system. These precautions, along with my temporarily straight and blonde hair seemed like they would be very effective.
I also had a few different devices I had been Tinkering with that would prevent the casual collection of DNA from such things as shed skin cells or saliva, just in case.
Although I was a bit hesitant about getting rid of my natural hair, I already had a specific brand of tech hair in mind for myself that replicated straight or very curly hair without an issue. The simulator on their net site had a configuration that looked very similar to my own natural hair, even if it was labelled "extreme" curliness under its settings.
She nodded slowly, a hand reaching up to touch her hair. Jean did the same thing, except he was scowling because he was shiny-head bald. Kiwi rolled her fingers on the table for a moment before nodding, "In that case, I think I have a way to minimise your exposure to ambushed prior to the meeting."
I raised an eyebrow, "Oh?"
"Yes, insist on the Azure Plaza and pay for a hotel room for one or two nights prior to the exchange. It is most likely that their ambush team, if they have one, would be watching for people approaching the hotel the day of the exchange, especially if you set the exchange time to be in the afternoon," she said, smiling at her own cleverness.
That... was a good idea. A simple double occupancy room was about three to four thousand eurodollars a night. I think a six or seven-thousand-dollar expenditure for the likely elimination of one of the threat surfaces was a cheap cost.
Both Ruslan and Jean looked excited, but I put a damper on things, "This is a good idea, so Wakako and I will pay for two rooms, me and Kiwi in one and you two in the other. But we won't pay for any hotel amenities, especially of the prostitute variety, so that's on your own dime if you want. If you don't have a custom liver, then no drinking within ten hours of the meeting, though."
They both nodded, and Ruslan said, "It seems to me the easiest way to ensure you won't be ambushed on the way out of the meeting is to charter an aerodyne, then."
I scowled. I had thought of that, but there were serious issues with that idea, "Can't do that without leaving a trail right back to me, plus it isn't as good an idea as you think. I'm a nobody, so a flight plan out of Konpeki would have to be filed one or two hours in advance of the trip, with the real identities of all passengers listed on the manifest. They'd notice and would have enough time to swarm me if they wanted to when I landed."
There were occasionally Nomads around that you could pay for wildcat charters using aircraft, including aerodynes and aircars, but none were around Night City at the moment. Wakako had the horsepower to arrange a charter, no problem, even an anonymous one in most situations, but definitely not the horsepower to arrange an anonymous one to and from Konpeki Plaza.
If we were having the exchange in the abandoned warehouse, she could have several options, including runners stealing automated cargo drones or maybe even a gunship, but there was no way I was going down the "exchange at a seedy, dangerously empty location" path during this playthrough of my life.
He nodded, "Alright, that makes sense. That leaves a ground exfil, then." He glanced at Kiwi, "Let's plan out a route that we can take. We can see the most obvious spots where we would ambush someone, and take precautions, including where the other team will be in overwatch. Perhaps this is a time for that idea you had, Kiwi."
Kiwi looked really excited, and I looked confused, "What idea?"
"Stealing a city services truck and filling a bunch of potholes with command-detonated explosives to create a prepared killbox for pursuing cars!" she said, "Do any of you know how to fill in a pothole?"I got word from Wakako at an inopportune time, as we were currently huddled behind a large heavy-duty tracked excavator machine as heavy machine gun bursts tinged off of it. The fire was coming from an elevated position, in the second story of an unfinished construction project just ahead of us. The excavator wasn't an armoured vehicle or anything, but it was made out of solid and very thick steel and was definitely stopping the rounds before they made it to our much less armoured bodies.
Ignoring her message for now, I glanced over at Mercy, who was in cover along with the rest of us, and I decided to say something obvious, sarcastically, over our tacnet, "I think this call was a trap."
"Yeah, no shit, Breaker," he said exasperatedly, paused and then continued, "Just keep hiding behind this fucking thing; Alpha and Charlie are both responding and should be here soon, as is a full platoon of SecForces on the ground."
I didn't nod, but I continued glancing to the side. I was a little concerned that with us so effectively suppressed that the enemy would seek to flank us and direct fire enfilade, raking us with automatic weapons from the long axis. It was the textbook response when you had a dangerous enemy, like us, suppressed, and it was what they had taught me in basic training.
I had decided I would immediately activate my stealth system and leap out, trying to eliminate anyone who tried to flank us if that happened. However, it would be dangerous, as the HMG was obviously using armour-piercing rounds on account of the damage it had done to the AV-4, which had to lift off and conduct a forced-landing several kilometres away on the interstate.
There was a brief hiss as I saw a rocket flying above our heads, and less than a second later, a loud explosion was heard in front of us, muffled somewhat by the giant excavator machine; my helmet quickly normalising the sound and flash to something that wasn't harmful. Mercy glanced at us and said, "Stay down; let's let them pacify the entire area from range first."
I snorted but managed to mute my vox in time so nobody heard it. He didn't have to tell me that. I wasn't stupid.
Suddenly, a very familiar sound started up again, the sound of that heavy machine gun firing off long bursts, but this sound was coming from a different direction. An additional gun, in a separate emplacement, then. Still, there was barely a second of it firing before a second explosion silenced that gun emplacement as well. How interesting. This sounded like an attempt at a double trap. Just what had we done to piss someone off? Really, there was no telling. We did kill a lot of people, especially if they were gang members and in the vicinity of any of our calls, much less responsible for client injuries.
We still didn't move, and I could tell that Mercy was talking on the tacnet with the new arrivals. About five minutes later, our ground-based backup arrived in four armoured scout cars. Modern scout cars had shifted a lot over time, and today they were mostly indistinguishable from wheeled armoured personnel carriers but usually featured a small calibre autocannon and micromissile launcher instead of a machine gun, similar to wheeled infantry fighting vehicles.
One of the cars drove right up to us and opened the back ramp, and Mercy nodded at all of us, and we ran into the vehicle with a quickness. The ramp automatically closed back up, and the vehicle started driving away before I had even secured myself into one of the seats.
Back at the base, we finally were conducting an after-action report now that the pilots had returned with their damaged AV. Mechanics had fixed it on the ground there on the interstate in record time, as it didn't do anything good for our PR for people to see one of our AVs with a mechanical in front of god and everyone.
Mercy began, "So, the ground team found two destroyed, remote-controlled, fifty-calibre Dushkas. They were apparently connected to net-controlled servo motors. We have our runners working on it, but this explains why they weren't taking more advantage of the situation."
I raised an eyebrow. That gave me an idea, actually. I still had the Dragoon borg in my storage, halfway disassembled. It was a good source of parts, but I didn't think I could ever get it working again. However, the weapon system was one of the things that were in perfect condition, as far as I could tell. It was equipped with a shortened version of a popular 23mm Soviet rotary cannon that they sold far and wide on the export market.
I wondered at the valuation Alt-Dad had put on the borg because that was an expensive gun just in itself and could easily be removed from the borg by anyone with some tools. It was too big for any person that wasn't borged as fuck to use, and I'd have to ask Wakako to get the ammunition, though, as I didn't have any way to do so that wouldn't paint a huge target on my back in the event we had to use it.
Could Kiwi and I rig a quick and dirty firing platform and have her control it for our exfiltration? We had already planted a number of explosives along our route. The second team was made up of Tyger Claws, which Wakako was providing. Most Tyger Claws weren't what I would call elite combatants, but some definitely were, and she was making up for the rest with numbers. They would be waiting in ambush at an abandoned building that was about four kilometres from Konpeki Plaza.
The idea was that this location was a very good ambush location, but since any theoretic pursuers wouldn't know our precise route leaving Konpeki Plaza that they would only be able to rush to this location after a few kilometres made it clear we would be driving by it.
We would then ambush the ambushers and then proceed to meet Wakako to finalise the deal, with me and her splitting up the loot between ourselves at that point.
It was something to think about.
I was putatively driving back home, but in truth, I was driving on the loop 210 highway that circled downtown for fun. Although Night City was a city that never slept, there were definitely times when traffic was bearable or even non-existent, and we had recently shifted to a 0300-0300 schedule at work, which I hated, but it had the advantage of allowing me to let loose on the highway with the speedo currently inching above two hundred kilometres an hour.
It had taken a surprisingly long amount of time, a couple of weeks, to completely refit my Type-66. In addition to removing all of the previous paints and doing a full respray, they also sold me on a number of physical cosmetic changes, adjusting a faring here and there to make it completely indistinguishable from the previous vehicle. It still looked like a Quadra, of course, but now it was more in line with what a traditional Nomad vehicle looked like, except in purple, which used to be one of my favourite colours once upon a time. This was instead of the obviously Wraith-inspired panelling that it used to have.
Honestly, until the mechanic pointed out the differences using a number of images, I had no idea there were different "styles" of customised vehicles, as they both looked like Nomad cars to my untrained eyes. Still, I took the mechanic at his word. The Nomads did sell their cars sometimes, costly and gas-guzzling varieties like my Type-66, but Wraiths never did.
I hadn't been found out yet, but the mechanic insisted it would only be a matter of time before some Wraith that was in town for some reason noticed me driving, and then the best I could hope for was them following me and stealing or torching the car when I went into a cafe for lunch.
As I downshifted a little bit at a curve before placing my foot firmly on the floor as the loop straightened out, I hummed tunelessly. Listening to Wakako's voice message again, I passed three cars in a flash.
"Taylor, Biotechnica is very interested. I'm in the process of negotiating a final price now, but we should be good to go within ten days. He's already agreed on an exchange in Konpeki Plaza like you wanted, although he grumbled a little bit about it. He is insisting on a technical expert being present on our side, and I have tried to give him the impression I have hired a chemist. I'll make sure we have at least three or four-day notice before the meeting is scheduled," she said and paused, "Let's plan on an early lunch tomorrow to discuss things more in detail."
That last bit amused me. She had made a lot more time for me when it became more and more clear that she was likely to make many hundreds of thousands of dollars off of me. Plus, I had already reviewed the accounting for the enterprise, and she charged every working lunch to the venture, which I couldn't really complain about, but I found amusing. I supposed one didn't get to Wakako's station in life without being thorough with details.
I let off the accelerator as I topped out the speed at over two hundred and sixty kilometres an hour, with the engine closing at seven thousand revolutions per minute at ninth gear. I let the machine coast, slowly losing speed. I was asking to be pulled over going as fast as I was, Corpo or no Corpo.
I certainly wouldn't survive a traffic collision at this speed. My brain had gotten a lot better at doing quick calculations due to offloading them onto my cyberdeck. Two hundred and sixty kilometres an hour was a little over seventy-two meters per second. Deceleration was a simple formula of end velocity minus starting velocity over time, and if I assumed a very, very conservative time of 0.06 seconds to decelerate in a full-on crash, that gave an effective deceleration of over a thousand meters per second squared, which was the equivalent of over one hundred Gs on the body which wasn't survivable even with my augmentations, and that was before all the associated trauma like being crushed.
The weakness, as it usually was, was my brain. A body could be engineered to survive such decelerations, and in fact, my bones might not break even now. But without a very sophisticated shock-absorbing life support pod, of which my skull definitely was not, my brain would still be turned into mush. A borg could survive that, but anybody with their actual brain in their skull couldn't without some sort of high-tech gravity-manipulation-based inertial compensation helmet, the kind that hot-shot Corpo astro-pilots wore in combat spacecraft.
And that was assuming such things weren't just bullshit to begin with, as the only time I had seen them had been on films and entertainment BDs.
It took me five kilometres of coasting to slow down to a reasonable enough speed to take the next exit at a safe speed, and I winced a bit when I glanced at the fuel gauge. I had used quite a lot of fuel, but that wasn't all that surprising.
I pulled into the first filling station I saw with a deep sigh at the cost.
Our working lunch didn't take that much time, and towards the end, I asked her about the high-explosive armour-piercing shells I wanted her to source, which surprised her.
"What in the world do you have that would fire those?" she asked, half-amused but mostly curious.
I said, "It's a six-barreled Soviet rotary autocannon, an export model. I thought I could build a simple control mechanism and turn it into a remote-control turret that Kiwi could operate. We'd leave it in the same building the Claws will be watching out from. One of the biggest what-ifs is if they bring armoured vehicles. I don't think they have any actual military vehicles in town, but they definitely have a bunch of bullet-resistant trucks and cars. This would put paid to that threat."
She blinked at me for a couple of moments before shaking her head, "You know, Taylor. You think too much. Why would you build a remote-controlled turret? There are dozens of such models commercially available that support pretty much any weapons system. Tell you what, I will acquire one, as well as a goodly amount of shells. In exchange, you let me buy this gun after the mission. I can both by tomorrow, and my team will set it up at the primary ambush site."
Ah. Yes, that probably made more sense. The Trauma Team after-action report said that it was likely Maelstrom that had attacked us, and I just assumed that they had built the turrets from scratch as that was something that they tended to do, but I still occasionally forgot what world I was in. Of course, there were dozens of models of remote-controlled or autonomous turrets that you could buy in this world. Why would I have expected there wouldn't have been?
I kept my mouth closed for a moment because I was honestly expecting to leave the turret after the fight if we did need to use it. I intended it to be a one-use, disposable device. But if she could cart it off again, selling it to her would be fine. Ideal, even. Weapons in Night City were like sand on a beach, very easy to find. But large rotary canons that fired explosive shells and would be more at home mounted on a combat aircraft were a little more difficult to get.
Again, I wondered why Alt-Danny considered the hulk of the Dragoon valueless. Irreparable, I agreed with. Perhaps he didn't want to part it out for sentimental reasons. It made me wonder who was piloting the device before, presumably, Alt-Danny killed it.
I got a sly expression on my face, which Wakako instantly mirrored, "Let's talk price, then." I wouldn't walk away without at least a quarter of its MSRP!
It was finally the day, or rather the day before the day. I was gathering all of what I would need, some of which I would take into the hotel with us and the rest, what could be considered dangerous, would have to be in their lower-security parking garage, along with our vehicle. We weren't using Ruslan's van this time, but a stolen one.
I was a little concerned about that, but he reassured me that he knew precisely which vehicles wouldn't be missed for several days. Nobody would be reporting it stolen until we were well and truly done with it, which I would just have to accept on faith. They were the experts on this sort of thing.
However, it was Ruslan's van that pulled up to pick me up. I guessed he had the stolen van stashed somewhere so that it wouldn't be able to be associated with any of the buildings we lived in, just in case the authorities later attempted to backtrack the vehicle through the city's camera and traffic system.
I waved at them; it looked like it was all of them picking me up. I got into the passenger side door. Once I had closed the door, I triggered my techhair to change from what was indistinguishable from my standard to a straight, glossy blonde, lengthening by over twenty centimetres in the process, "'Ello, Rus, Kiwi, Jean. Are you lot ready to get a wiggle on and get this bleedin' thing started, eh?"
They looked at me like I had grown a second head, "Don't yer worry, I jus' bought a British accent skillchip. I figgered it'd be one more bleedin' layer in me attempt to disguise meself. Dead cheap, it was, too."
Kiwi started laughing at me, having to quickly press the auto-drive button because she was closing her eyes in her mirth. This caused the other two to start laughing at me, too. What? What was the problem?
Finally, Kiwi said, "Uh, Taylor... you may want to check the settings. It sounds a little low-class, which is the opposite impression of what you were trying to go for."
I frowned. Certainly, the accent sounded a bit different from my favourite characters on Downton Abbey, like Mary Crawley, but was it really so different? It wasn't like I was an expert in British dialects. I paused for a moment to pull up the settings for the skillchip, my mouth coming to a fine line when I realised it was set on "Cockney Whore." This had better not be the only option.
I switched it to "Derry" for a moment and said, "Oi switched it ta da Derry, Oi wonder how dis sounds. Jaysus, dis is awful, jist awful." Everybody cracked up again. I shook my head and started doing quick net searches for each of the options. Apparently, Derry was an Irish accent. Was that even considered British? I thought the Irish people fought a few wars to settle that question in this world. These days, after the resumption of the Irish monarchy, His Royal Navy was as likely to sink refugee boats coming from England as from anywhere else.
I finally found a candidate in what was labelled "Eton public school (RP)." Net searches revealed that contrary to what I would first think, a "public school" was really a very, very exclusive private school. That didn't make any sense to me at all and seemed to be entirely backward.
Still, I coughed briefly before stating, "Alright, I think I've got the correct one set. This is what they call a public school accent, I suppose." I blinked and grinned. Oh, I sounded just like the people from Downton Abbey now!
Kiwi chuckled, "Yes, that sounds a lot better."
Jean still laughed at me, but I pointed a finger straight at him. He had his techhair set in a ridiculous pompadour hairstyle and must have added a huge if neatly trimmed, silly beard that would look more at home in Afghanistan than here. He must have made these changes during the biosculpt treatment, and the combination was insane, but he definitely wouldn't be easily associated with his previous appearance, I supposed, "You're one to laugh! You look absolutely ridiculous!"
Kiwi and Ruslan started chuckling, and Jean ran a hand through his neatly trimmed dark black beard, "I think I look really distinguished."
He looked really... something. But it wasn't distinguished. Still, at least they were all wearing the semi-nice clothes I had demanded they get. If we were going to be spending one day and night in a high-end hotel, then we didn't need to stick out more than we had to. I intended to eat dinner at the restaurant downstairs at the hotel to give a chance for people to hear my posh accent and see my blonde hair. Also, the mask I would wear in the deal would not completely cover my hair, so it would be theoretically possible for investigators to correlate my identity to the guest staying the previous evening.
I did not think that Konpeki Plaza would reveal my identity, as they had a reputation, so this would hopefully send any Biotechnica investigators down a wild goose chase for a blonde-haired British girl that didn't exist. Still, I went ahead and activated my Kiroshi's camera dazzler system right now, in advance. It wasn't a perfect system, and I didn't have any clue how it worked, actually, but it was very effective in all the tests I had put it through.
Hopefully, none of this would be necessary, and everything would go smoothly and simply, but if not, I had a plan, a backup plan and an ace in the hole, just like Alt-Danny recommended. Hopefully, I wouldn't need to use the latter, which I had made tentative plans with Wakako for, as it would seriously impact my life going forward.
After everyone got done laughing at each other, we were more or less quiet for the ride over to where the other vehicle was stashed. We switched over to a similar van quickly, but this time Ruslan drove. It was hard to identify either Ruslan or Jean as anything other than "muscle" or "hired help." Kiwi was playing the role of a hired professional, so it would be weird for her to drive us to the hotel, even if she preferred to be the driver in our ops most of the time.
She could really multitask, watching numerous feeds from cameras and drones while simultaneously either driving herself manually or minding the car's auto-drive system; this generally left the two boys free to fire from the moving vehicle if necessary, and it was sometimes awe-inspiring to watch.
This stolen van had tons of weapons, which would be permitted inside the hotel's parking garage but definitely not inside the building itself. We wouldn't be able to take so much as a popgun inside.
The drive to the hotel was uneventful, if a little long. We weren't commented on, aside from getting a parking slip from a man sitting in a guard shack next to the entrance to the parking building. I had considered having them drop me off next to the entrance for verisimilitude's sake but decided us all entering the hotel at once would be better.
We walked together into an antechamber, nodding slightly at a doorman that said, "Welcome to the Azure Plaza."
The antechamber was slick as hell and looked like a place where you could briefly wait with an associate, but my keen eyes identified it as a security chokepoint despite all the gilding. There were men as big and strong looking as Jean and Ruslan standing next to a non-invasive scanning system of some kind. It was similar to the ones used in the Trauma Team tower, except gilded with real oak panelling.
Ruslan and Jean went in first, and they both tripped the security detection system. Two of the large concierge slash security personnel stopped them. "Sirs, you will have to step this way so that we can make safe your integrated weapons systems."
I had been expecting that and warned them both to expect something of the sort. One of the other "concierge personnel" smiled briefly at us and said, "It should be just a moment, ma'am." I gave him a cursory glance and a short nod, barely acknowledging his presence. I was in character, you see.
I noticed that the bracelets they put on Ruslan and Jean were both heavier-duty as well as a little more stylish. Still, they were thin enough that they could be hidden inside the long sleeves of their shirts well enough.
Kiwi walked right on through without any comment, but when it was my turn, I got the red light again. The security guard said, "Ma'am if you would mind stepping over here for a moment to make safe your internal weapons." It was pretty much the exact same thing I had overheard them tell the boys.
I didn't notice what they had done, so I was pleasantly surprised when another man brought out a tray of bracelets sized to fit my more delicate arms. The security man asked, "Please select the one that is most pleasing to your aesthetic, madam."
I glanced down at them and picked one that looked like a silver charm bracelet, but I was sure it was made of something much more indestructible than that, as I was strong enough to break silver myself. I didn't touch it; I merely pointed to it and got a nod. I held my bare arm out and allowed them to affix the device to my wrist, allowing a gentle sigh at the indignity of it all.
"Thank you, ma'am. You can proceed," the security guy said politely, so I joined the rest, and we walked together to the front desk to check-in. The girl behind the desk surprised me. She wasn't quite a full-body replacement, but I judged that she had more cybernetics than me and Ruslan put together.
She bowed rather prettily, giving us all a glimpse of her sizable and cybernetic décolletage while saying, "Yōkoso. Greetings, and be welcomed to the Azure Plaza."
I returned the bow on reflex, although it was more of me inclining my head. Plus, it helped me to look down her blouse to identify which total skin replacement she had installed. It was an Arasaka model judging from my inspection at various zoom levels, which probably shouldn't have surprised me. Also, it wouldn't do to bow the same as the hotel's hired help, after all, if I wanted to pretend I was high class. I was trying to give the impression that I was at least a middle manager somewhere. Still, I was polite, "Thank you. We're checking in, one suite for one night," I told her while sending to her system my identification through peer-to-peer wireless transfer.
Although I had intended to rent two separate rooms, it was actually cheaper to rent a nicer suite that had two bedrooms but a shared living area. Plus, it was more in keeping with the illusion I was trying to portray, which was that they were my security.
The pretty girl rose up again and nodded, "Of course, ma'am. It also looks like you have the Sakura room booked for tomorrow from thirteen hundred to seventeen hundred hours; is that right?"
I nodded, "Correct."
She smiled and said, "Everything looks to be in order, ma'am. Please enjoy your stay at Azure Plaza." With that, she sent a digital file which turned out to be the unlocking key for our suite, which I forwarded to Kiwi and the boys. It looked like we were staying on the fifty-fifth floor. Not too shabby, when you considered the top twenty floors weren't hotel accommodations so much as either apartments on long-term lease or penthouse-style rooms that you needed to be a billionaire to even be allowed to rent.
We walked past a trendy-looking bar and restaurant that I would likely patronise later that evening and boarded the elevator. The elevator would only allow us to go to our own floor, which was interesting.
Our suite was down a hallway at the end, and I triggered the door with the digital key, which opened and allowed us entry. The room was... large, quite larger than I thought, and this was just the living area. The door closed behind us, and I said, in a bored-sounding rich girl's voice, "Please non-destructively disable all of the cameras and listening devices."
Jean already had his mouth opened, probably to comment on the swankiness of the room shut his mouth when he heard I was still talking in character. Kiwi nodded silently and got to work.
Ruslan and Jean silently explored all of the rooms in the suite, looking as though they were searching for threats, but I felt it was more likely they just wanted to see how nice the digs were. A couple of minutes later, Kiwi returned and said, "Got all of them. I'll be able to reconnect them all no problem tomorrow, so we don't have to lose the security deposit."
Wakako and I both appreciated that very much, I thought. I nodded at her and said, "Thanks." Then Ruslan and Jean returned from their explorations, and I said, "Alright, it's eleven hundred. We don't have anything to do until fourteen hundred tomorrow, so we're all on our own until then. Can do whatever you want inside the hotel. You're each given a seven hundred and fifty eddie budget, so you don't have to look poor. Anything above that and its on you and will be deducted from your pay."
They both grinned; even Kiwi smiled a little. Although we were in a resort where prices were inflated, seven hundred and fifty dollars a piece was enough to eat and probably hit the BD parlour or some other amusements. I was going to get a massage myself. When I mentioned that, Jean grinned, "Oh, that sounds like a good idea."
I frowned, immediately realising what he was thinking, "Jean, here, massages are just massages. If you want companionship of some carnal variety, that is a separate service. Don't embarrass us by assuming all of the masseuses are prostitutes."
Although I was pretty sure that was an extra service that you could ask for when you got a massage, I imagine it shifted the masseuse to one that was also a sex worker. Jean had the decency to look a little abashed as he rubbed the back of his neck, "Ah, yeah, a course, mon."
Ruslan just grinned at him and then turned to me, "So, when should we meet back here to do the preliminaries?"
I thought about that. We had to meet the Biotechnica people at two in the afternoon, which meant we should be in the Sakura room by one. In the worst case, and they got drunk or didn't sleep enough tonight, it would take me a little time to detoxify them. I had some stimulants on hand for the latter contingency. I nodded, "No later than eleven thirty. We'll plan to be in position at the Sakura conference room at thirteen hundred."
Everyone nodded. I grabbed the small luggage I had brought with me and had Jean carry, and Kiwi did the same. We each went into our separate bedrooms.
Kiwi, with no shame at all, stripped naked with me gaping at her. She had a number of unusual body art as well as two obvious Midnight Lady accessories. She laughed at me as she saw my expression and then said amusedly, "You know, you're pretty old-fashioned." She fished out a set of silk pyjamas and, with that, jumped into one of the two beds, disappearing under the covers and sheets.
"These got to be Egyptian cotton sheets," she commented, muffled from being under the sheets and the duvet.
I just chuckled and grabbed my pyjamas as well. However, I intended to take a long bubble bath first. I had been on a shower-only lifestyle since I arrived in this world. A long, luxurious hot bubble bath while reading a book sounded divine.
After William awoke at zero five hundred, exactly, he reviewed some of the non-urgent correspondence that he had received in the three hours that he was down for a sleep cycle. While it was technically possible for him to go without sleep for weeks, it was universally agreed that at least a small sleep cycle every night was beneficial for, well, everyone.
Although he had never really had the same issues with cyberpsychosis as the average man did, it wasn't entirely because he was "built different." He also followed all the directions of his very expensive doctors, as well.
The report he was reading was from the team he had built in Night City to look after Annette's daughter. They had reported several weeks ago that Taylor was working with a Yakuza fixer, who had been in contact with so many people that it was difficult to say precisely who was related to Taylor's business.
The old Japanese witch did not speak or send a message that wasn't highly encrypted. Although the family had giant quantum computing supercomputer clusters for signals intelligence reasons, not only was the encryption somewhat quantum-resistant, but he didn't really have the justification for trying to snoop in depth on her. The costs were not inconsequential, considering the many other uses the family had for this limited resource.
Taylor was almost as paranoid, which privately made him feel good about Annette's girl, but he worked along the periphery, using the metadata from both parties' communications, if not the actual content, to build a fairly good idea of what was going on.
He got confirmation not too long after that Biotechnica's Night City office activity increased. Although the family didn't have any contacts inside the Italian Megacorporation as a whole, they did have the usual intelligence assets in lower-level positions. Biotechnica Night City was expecting something that the upper tier of management was very interested in.
From there, his team put Taylor on twenty-four-seven surveillance. The message he was reading now suggested that the exchange was going to happen imminently, as they had trailed her to the local Konpeki Plaza. That was an ideal place to make an exchange with someone you didn't trust, as Arasaka would ensure no violence would happen on their premises.
He put his thinking cap on and sent a message back. The team captain was to send one team member on an overnight stay at the resort, and his team should expect the exchange to happen sometime tomorrow or perhaps the next day. They would know when they saw a Biotechnica convoy head towards Konpeki.
He also took a moment to reconfirm their standard orders per his principal's instruction. They were to observe the exchange as much as possible and only intervene if it seemed like Annette's daughter was in immediate danger of death. If all they were going to do was kidnap her, then they should not intervene.
Privately he disagreed with these orders, but he always had a soft spot for Annette.