I narrowed my eyes and said reasonably, "Bob... Bob... I'm sure you don't want to look underneath your car for the rest of your life before you start it. So, talk fast." Sure enough, I got a message from a cryptographically signed address from the Department of Homeland Security right on time.
This caused him to grin and spread his hands placatingly. It might sound weird that he seemed relieved that I threatened to put a bomb underneath his car, but a blatant threat like that was a way for me to say that I didn't really hold it against him. If a Corpo really wanted to kill someone, they didn't warn them-unless they were extra sneaky, I supposed. He said, "Be subzero, Doc, be gato . You know this isn't me doing this. They just stuck me with the detail since I know you. And you're not singled out, either. All the hospitals and clinics that aren't a back alley chop shop in LA are getting one of these."
I read the letter and forwarded it to my attorney for him to review as well. From what I could tell, though, the Defence Production Act was an overly broad law that gave the President or her designee the ability to force a private business to accept and or prioritise contracts for materials or services deemed necessary for national defence, theoretically, even if in so doing the company suffered a loss.
I didn't expect to be forced to take a loss, as I would just shut the clinic down temporarily, and they would have killed the goose. The threat to do so was so obvious I didn't even need to mention it, either. This situation was kind of like temporary partial nationalisation, though, so I sighed and shook my head, "What baka decided this? It's stupid."
He shrugged, "LA will be the main hub for casualties. We're taking over most of the hospitals, too, like I said. What this means for you is you'll get a couple of patients a day, already stabilised, with the goal to assess and, if possible, bring them back up to a hundred per cent using cybernetics or biological replacement, depending on the economic factors involved, of course."
I wanted to groan inwardly. This was the type of medicine I hated to practice the most, the enny-pinching kind. I rapidly sent a message to the three surgeons who worked PRN for me, asking if any of them wanted to come on full-time or at least increase the days they worked and offered bribes. I didn't mind if I had to pay a little bit more; I'd prefer these mandatory patients go to someone else.
Hopefully, one would bite, so I wouldn't have to do this very much. Also, how quickly could I get contractors to come and install one or two more operating theatres on the second floor? I had already moved all production out, so I had the space now. I would definitely need more than just one operating theatre.
"Alright, tell me in detail how badly you're fucking me, Bob," I said in a monotone.
It turned out it wasn't that bad. But I wasn't going to be making very much money on any of the work I did for Militech. Or, excuse me, for the NUSA government. Same thing, really. Militech was still technically nationalised and had been for years and years.
Gloria and Kiwi arrived home about the same time, and David had been home from his Aikido class for an hour. His mom had agreed to him starting martial arts early, and I found an Aikido dojo nearby. I had been a little hard on the discipline, considering, wrongly, it was not very useful for actual fighting.
I'm not sure if that was some of what I knew about from Brockton Bay filtering through and altering my opinions, but here Aikido was a little more useful and taught a little more practically. When some of your enemies might be superhumanly strong borgs, it would be stupid to go punch-for-punch with them. Due to this, many disciplines considered "soft" or that relied primarily on an attacker's force and momentum were much more effective. The most famous Solo in the world, Morgan Blackhand, was supposedly a fifth dan Aikido master, although nobody was sure if he was alive or dead.
It seemed useful enough that I had started taking classes, too, twice a week. Tai Chi, though, was still mainly just for meditation and discipline, which matched NC-Taylor's memories of studying it when she was little.
I said as they all got into my living room, "I'm not making dinner tonight, but how does Chinese take-out sound?" That was agreeable to all parties, especially David, who pumped his fist.
Gloria looked tired and said before I even asked her, "It's been crazy at the hospital! I'm glad I'm only doing one rotation this last semester. We've been taking in a lot of soldiers being evacuated from the north, although some suits kept saying we'd get arrested if we talked about it. I think they're trying to keep a lid on how many casualties they're taking."
That made sense to me. From what I could tell, they hadn't even been informing the KIA's next of kin yet. Gloria looked tired, but it wasn't the tiredness from lack of sleep as she had experienced in the past, but the tiredness of someone who wanted to get something over with. She would be graduating soon. Her focus was critical care and emergency medicine nursing, although she had a minor focus on psychotherapy due to her scholarship.
"They're sending stabilised patients to my clinic that I have to accept, or else, too," I told them, which got both Kiwi and Gloria to raise their eyebrows, as it was definitely not usual.
Gloria seemed upset, glancing at her number on priority, David, before saying, "This war sounds serious, then. I hope nothing happens here."
"I doubt it. It's not like the Free States want LA," I said wryly, and then turned to Kiwi, "I've decided I can help that merc you told me about if she is still in town."
Yesterday Kiwi mentioned that a woman she knew as an acquaintance was in a bind. She had done something kind of stupid and needed a new identity, kind of like the person Wakako had sent me. I didn't want to advertise that I was capable of such things, so I brushed her off at first, but everything going on today had me accelerating some of my plans, and she could be perfect for one of them.
From what I could tell, this lady needed a new identity or to get out of the country and was pretty sure she would be murdered if she stayed anywhere inside the continent. That said, she really didn't want to leave North America and had been saving that as a last resort. She had, allegedly stolen from a semi-powerful central American crime family. They could project power enough to assassinate her in the NUSA, but probably not in Europe, which had been her plan if she couldn't find someone to adjust her genome.
Kiwi mentioned her as she often mentioned people around the area that had problems that I solved in a way that got the elf-girl to think I was a Fixer.
Kiwi nodded, "Okay... I'll bring her by tomorrow. She is lying low right now while trying to find a way to get out of the country. This whole unpleasantness isn't helping."
"If you're the CEO of your company, how much do you pay yourself? I would set my salary at a million eddies!" David asked me and declared after the Chinese food arrived, and we sat down to eat.
I snorted, "My salary is one eurodollar a year."
"What?! Why?!" he asked, shocked and dismayed.
I chuckled, "Because I have to pay forty-five per cent income tax on my salary. But I'm the only one who owns the company, so if I just issue a million dollar dividend to the shareholders, myself, then I only have to pay ten per cent tax on that because it is considered a capital gain." I couldn't claim to have come up with that idea, but the accountant I hired did and made it seem like I was stupid for not realising it. There were dozens of different tax loopholes like this, and it wasn't surprising that they were structured so, mainly, the rich were the main beneficiaries. It had been the same in my last world, too. The more things changed, the more they stayed the same, after all.
I personally didn't think the NUSA government was in any way working for the benefit of its citizens, though, so I didn't feel bad about avoiding taxes.
This caused David to laugh, "Nova!"
I glanced down at him and smiled. In a few years, David would be old enough to start life extension and genetic therapies. I'd do the life extension myself, but he would need the cover of some common genetic tweaks on the commercial market, so it seemed like that was where he got the LET too. The current consensus, which I mostly agreed with, was the ideal time to do initial life extension and genetic therapies was just before puberty, after all.
I got to my clinic fairly early in the morning the next day, as I had two Militech-delivered patients waiting for me. I blitzed through them but had a few issues finding the correct people to send the treatment plans to, which had to be authorised and returned to me before I could perform the procedures, but I ended up finding the correct net address to submit in the end, after talking to three people on vidcall.
The two soldiers were both missing some limbs and had organ damage in a few places. Not a big deal at all.
"Tsk..." I said as I finally got the treatment plan back, as Militech was nixing the scar removal biosculpt. Penny-pinching bastards. This was like dealing with an HMO, or worse. I vastly preferred my normal "cash on the barrelhead" business. I would do it anyway, even if Militech didn't pay. My vats didn't use very many nanites these days with the multi-level filtering systems I had installed, after all. I'd just call this a freebie and doing my part for the GIs, I supposed. I stood with a Rosie the Riveter pose for a moment before I realised I wasn't alone, glanced at my receptionist and then fled to my office. The truth was it upset my sense of medical elegance not to include it.
I spent most of last night doing more research on my alleged grandmother. I dug through all of Alt-Danny's old things and did find Alt-Danny and Alt-Mom's marriage certificate, and sure enough, her maiden name had been Annette Rose Astor-Armstrong, so that made this note more credible. Although, with the wealth that Grams had, she could have afforded a ninja to sneak in and alter this physical document, and I might never have known.
Wait a minute... Wait a fucking minute! I smacked my palm on my desk. A ninja? I had put down my kidnapping and interrogation under brain scan as to a friend of Alt-Danny's. It was pretty clear to me that my behaviour since coming to this world raised some flags with people who knew NC-Taylor. In retrospect, it had been obvious that the main thrust of the interrogation was ensuring I wasn't a doppelgänger, and only after that had they branched out into general questions and subjects of interest. Only I definitely was a doppelgänger, just one close enough to NC-Taylor not to be detected.
I was still a little sore about that, but most of it was because of how easily that man with the British accent took me apart. I had to admit it had been something I had been trying to forget, too, which was kind of stupid. I had thought I was dangerous at the time, and seeing someone who really was dangerous had been a stark wake-up call to me. I didn't like feeling helpless. I hated it, in fact, so I avoided thinking about when it had happened to me.
But, yes, it fit. I always thought that the British ninja seemed vaguely butler-like, and this family was based in the UK and Ireland, from what I could tell. I tried to work up some righteous indignation about a grandmother who had her granddaughter kidnapped and interrogated under brainscan, but I had to admit if I had a daughter or granddaughter and I thought they had been replaced by someone who murdered them and took their identity, I would... likely do the same-but probably not as a first resort, at least!
Couldn't they have... just knocked on my door and asked, though? I mean... that would have worked. Of course, meeting someone whose first step was kidnapping and interrogating you would have to be taken very carefully. But it meant I couldn't ignore the invitation. I didn't want to wake up to a polite man standing over my bed or comfortable chair some dark night.
I waited about twenty more minutes before Kiwi brought in the woman she had mentioned. I already knew what she looked like, but I was surprised at her height. At least a-hundred-and-eighty-five cems, and she looked jacked. Her dossier said she was a former US Navy petty officer that may or may not have been in the special warfare department. After she separated, she worked as a mercenary for numerous legal, quasi-legal and outright criminal enterprises.
After introducing herself to me, she sat down in front of me and asked when we were alone, "Tron said that you have connections that could get me a new ID. I need more than a physical change, though. Otherwise, I'm dead eventually, anyway. What will it cost me?" Kiwi was going by "Tron"?! Who came up with that name, anyway? Avocado was better.
Still, I grinned at her, steepling my fingers like a proper villainess, "It will cost your everything."
She expected to pay in eddies, of which she had quite a few, possibly from her thievery but ended up more excited by what I charged her. Namely, her entire identity. She was perplexed at first why anyone would want to assume an identity that was marked for death, but from her perspective, someone else continuing on her life was great for her, as nobody would ever suspect her of being, well, her. I tried to give the impression that I had another client, and I leaned into my mistaken identity as a Fixer here, that needed a "real" identity and wasn't planning to remain in the Americas anyway, so it was a perfect trade.
She had spent over eight hours recounting for my recording devices a detailed account of her life's story, especially her military service and jobs afterwards. She wouldn't divulge some things, mostly to do with her criminal career after she left the service and a few governmental secrets, but that was fine because I didn't really need to know everything about her. I just needed to know everything she would disclose about herself. If there was no way she would tell any other person about it, then I, too, didn't really need to know.
She was unconscious now and going to remain so for some time inside my personal biosculpt vat in my laboratory. The body she had helped design with me was downright petite, and it definitely didn't resemble her. I had to take all of her implants out, as well, and I would be replacing them with comparable models or biosculpt treatments that could mimic their functionality.
"I always wanted to be small and cute," the Amazon said bashfully before the surgery. Well, she'd get her wish, I supposed.
"It's nice to see you again. How, how can I help you today, Miss Hebert?" Wakako asked me after a little polite small talk in her pachinko parlour office. My discussions with Wakako reinforced my belief that Wakako had come up from the streets, so to speak. She certainly didn't have a Corpo background, but I would have been a little bit surprised if she had.
