I was being stupid. Computers could generate fakes of anyone, and this woman was counting on me not being able to contact anyone. But I was connected to all of my bodies simultaneously. I had Taylor call Kiwi, who answered after the first ring, "Where's David and Gloria?" I asked her, not waiting for a hello.
"We're all at a safe house, along with my boys. I grabbed them when I saw what happened at your place. Uhhh... is uhh.. Dr Hasumi..." she used air quotes, "... okay?"
I had Taylor roll her eyes, "Probably. They kidnapped her, obviously. Do you know anything about who it could be?"
Kiwi shook her head, and I sighed, "Alright. I think David and Gloria need to get back to Night City. It's weird, thinking Night City is safer for anyone."
That caused Kiwi to snort and chuckle with amusement, but she nodded, "Yeah. I don't think anyone came after them or us, but perhaps it's time for our Los Angeles adventure to come to an end. What about you? You're going to lose a shitload if you abandon everything there. Trauma Team is swarming the south side of Los Angeles, but as far as I can tell, they haven't found Dr Hasumi yet."
I waved off the question and transferred a quarter million Eurodollars, "This is to get everybody out of the city. Consider it a gig." Then I hung up.
I didn't really feel that more charitable to the woman that she was only threatening to kill computer versions of my friends and not the real ones. I didn't know if they didn't care or just didn't have the time and resources to actually grab us both simultaneously. Still, I sighed and said, lying, "Occasional employees and acquaintances are, unfortunately, not sufficient for me to sign this agreement, and it is a little bit weird that you would think threatening them would work on me."
She raised an eyebrow, and someone shot the computerised Kiwi in the head on the display. I sighed and shook my head, "A waste, but that doesn't change anything."
This caused the woman to frown again and then scowl, waving a hand and causing the display to deactivate. Then she grinned, "I guess we'll have to do things the hard way."
Killing my friends wasn't the hard way? Well, for a dyed-in-the-wool Corpo, it probably wouldn't be. This would likely be some sort of torture, then. That was both good and bad. Bad, because torture bad, duh. But good because it might take a while.
I had a tentative plan to use the Haywire pairs in my body to track my location; the only problem was that they weren't designed to serve as a tracking system inside a dimension. They were designed to serve as an inter-dimensional tracking system. Professor Haywire had never anticipated being held incommunicado; he had been laser-focused on building tracking systems to find his way back home if he had made a mistake and found himself marooned on some random Earth.
I had an idea that would introduce a little bit of latency based on distance in the Haywire pairs. Less than a picosecond per kilometre, but enough that I could possibly triangulate my present location using all of my connected pairs. It was something I should have definitely thought of before, but I hadn't. I didn't know how long it would take, and my body in Night City was working on it right now.
Alternately, if that didn't work, I would attempt to knock this jammer device off my neck before they murdered me, but it seemed stuck on there pretty good, like a choker necklace.
It hurt me that I didn't have an "ace in the hole" plan here. I needed some additional integrated weapon that was hard to detect. Maybe I could hollow out my distal phalanx and add a dart gun to my index finger. I could have custom load-outs from sedatives to nerve agents, too. That was a good idea, but not one that would help me too much.
I was about to make a snide comment about how she wasn't scary, as the woman had made a whole display about producing some torture implements, but then I realised that would just make it proceed quicker. She could waste as much time as she liked.
Before I could wonder what that particular instrument was for, there was a loud crash, and an armoured vehicle drove straight through the wall like the Kool-Aid man. It made a pretty large hole in the side of the wall, which now I was focused on as I could run out of that hole since the chair wasn't bolted to the ground. It would be awkward, but possible. However, before I made the decision, the turret on the vehicle shifted, and an electromagnetic heavy-machine gun riddled the woman threatening me with flechettes, turning her into chunky salsa right in front of me.
Men dressed in all black ran out of the hatch of the vehicle, and over to me and quickly cut me free with a vibroknife and tossed me over their shoulders with a polite, " Pardon me, Hasumi-sensei ."
They were speaking Japanese, which surprised me. In less than twenty seconds, we were all back inside the infantry compartment in the back of the wheeled APC, and I could feel us driving away. One of the ninja-looking men sat me on a chair and said, "Excuse us for the familiarity, but time was of the essence."
I just blinked and asked, "Who are you guys?" Although, I liked these new kidnappers better than my last kidnappers.
The one that had spoken said, "Ah... before we get into that, did you happen to have your solar sprocket with you?" I blinked at him several times until the word clicked. It was one of the signs that Dr Hasumi had been told before she left Japan. This particular one was for Arasaka Intelligence.
I fumbled with the countersign, no doubt sounding super lame, "Uhhh... No... but I'm sure I could dig another one up if I had a golden shovel. "
This caused the ninja to nod, satisfied, " Hasumi-sensei; we're pleased to rescue you. You have two options. You can accept employment with Arasaka Corporation, or we can let you out here. In my opinion, you will be immediately renditioned by Militech if you choose to leave our custody. In either case, we will abide by the tentative licensing agreement we agreed to, but if you want to leave, we'll need you to formalise it before you go. We have a terminal to upload it to Veritas Corporation right here. "
That's about what I expected, although I was a little surprised that they said that they would abide by the terms of the license anyway. Arasaka had a reputation for playing hardball when they could get away with it. I agreed with their assessment of Militech, though.
Would Arasaka really let me go, though, if I wanted? I frowned, " Would you be willing to add a clause to invalidate the contract if I disappeared? " I was a little concerned that they'd just shoot me too, rather than let Militech rendition me if that is what they really thought was going to happen. They were basically enemies, after all. It would be denying an enemy an asset.
He looked uneasy at that and shook his head, " I don't think so because we expect you to promptly disappear, at least for a long time, if you don't take our offer. Plus, if we filed a contract with such a clause, you might never reappear. At least not until we lost the patent case in court. I assure you that we will not harm you whatever you choose, however."
I sighed. Well. My choice was clear. It wasn't like I wasn't expecting something like this, though. Arasaka was a bit suboptimal, but they had been playing less hardball than Militech had been lately. I said, " I'll take the job, but I want to see the signed license agreement filed first. I don't want you to try to claim that now I am an employee that it is actually Arasaka's work product."
That caused the ninja to smile and chuckle, " Of course. That won't be a problem at all. Let's do that right now. It will take some doing to get you out of LA."
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Nine to giving it
April 2067
Tegucigalpa, Honduras
Confidential Arasaka Compound
"You know, Phillipé, if I had an eddie for every time I have been kidnapped, well... I would only have two eddies, but it is weird that it has happened twice," I told my former employee and current co-worker. It had been six weeks since my kidnapping, and it had taken almost a whole week to exfiltrate out of Los Angeles without being noticed.
I had become something of a celebrity, again, in my kidnapping, and there was continuous speculation about the economic and military impact of the widespread adoption of sleep inducers. The world had woken up to how useful and lucrative such a product was, though, and there had been several segments on them in the business channels and net feeds the week following my disappearance.
Then, when Arasaka publicised that I had been "rescued" and accepted a position with their Corporation, it had been enough to send the share price of Arasaka shares soaring almost fifty basis points, which didn't sound like a lot until you realised the total market capitalisation of Arasaka.
Sneaking out of the city had been slightly difficult, with everyone looking for me. The ninjas who rescue-napped me were from a group of "advisors" that had been working in Northern California and, for some reason, happened to be in Los Angeles. They had decided that it would be less likely to be discovered if they went south instead of trying to go north back into the Free States, so we ended up in Honduras. It looked like Phillipé didn't buy the company line either because he grinned, "Perhaps thrice?" He waved a hand to indicate our present location.
I inclined my head to surrender the possibility. I didn't know who was behind my first kidnapping. It was professionally done, and I was still a bit sore about how I had let my overconfidence let a random mook disable me. No, not just a random mook. My random mook. I had expected something to happen soon, but I hadn't expected to be betrayed by my own employees.
In the subsequent weeks, some of my Arasaka minders made sure that I saw articles that reported that the people behind the attack were traced to a group of mercenaries that Militech had hired. This was based on the fact that the aircraft used were drawn from stocks Militech was using for their mercs and Southern California militia members. But that didn't mean anything, as they could have been stolen. In fact, the armoured vehicle that Arasaka used to rescue me had been stolen from the Los Angeles police department. Why the LAPD needed an APC with an automatic Gauss cannon attached to it... actually, I could see why they needed it.
The fact was that I didn't know who was behind it, which rankled me. I liked to have neat lists of people or groups that wronged me, so that I could settle accounts later. I had started that habit back in Brockton Bay. I hadn't carefully detailed all of the Trio's bullying in one of my diaries solely for evidentiary purposes, after all. But now I was left with some uncertainty.
It could have been Arasaka themselves, attempting to glad-hand me, or it could have been Militech or any other Corporation. It could even have been exactly what my interrogator claimed, a private attack that sought to steal something from me and then sell it to the highest bidder.
My personal opinion was that the timing of Arasaka's rescue was mighty convenient. I had only been unconscious for about an hour before waking up and having that woman attempt to coerce me. Either they already had me under surveillance themselves for their own kidnapping and noticed the attack, or they arranged it themselves to rescue me right before I was tortured and possibly murdered. Their alacrity in responding could be explained no other way.
I had never conceived of the possibility that someone might kidnap me and then kill me afterwards, either. I had such a high opinion of my own value, so that seemed like an impossibility. Kind of stupid, in retrospect. Stupid, like talking to my security manager every Monday at ten in the morning on the dot.
I was also kind of upset when I learned that the original kidnappers had just shot him on the factory floor instead of paying him whatever bribe he was owed for his perfidy. I thought he got what he deserved, but... I also felt as though I got robbed of revenge myself.
At least I was self-aware enough to realise that wasn't exactly an opinion that helped my mental hygiene, though. Still, I couldn't help but go 'Tsk' when I heard about it.
With Phillipé, I decided to change the subject, "Have you heard anything from your team about any changes to the Arasaka version of the wreath?" Arasaka hadn't screwed Phillipe on what they had promised him. He was the Technical Project Lead for the sleep-inducer wreaths, both the consumer and military versions, but not for the cybernetic versions, which they thought that long-term would have even more of the market share than the wreaths.
After we got to Honduras, instead of shipping me straight "back" to Japan, Arasaka told me to start working on both the Arasaka-version of the wreaths as well as the cybernetic versions and had Phillippe waiting for me. It was a new and interesting experience trying to explain exactly how my technology worked.
The electronics themselves weren't that novel; it was how they interfaced with the brain that was the improvement, so there quickly was a number of neuro-scientists added to the team. These served as subject matter experts who could consult with both Phillipé's team as well as the one that was handling the cybernetics, which was tentatively being led by myself.
I already had designs of two different versions of cybernetics, but I had never even prototyped them; however, like the wreath, they had to be redesigned to use Arasaka electronics and design philosophies. Arasaka couldn't be seen to sell a sleep inducer that was based primarily, on a Fuyutsuki Electronics braindance wreath, for example. That wouldn't do, plus they wanted to cut them out of any potential future revenues from the licensing agreement I had signed with Fuyutsuki earlier.
The cybernetics versions I had designed mostly from the ground up, but now that I had a team of cybernetics engineers behind me, I could see how amateurish I had been. I had reinvented the wheel in a lot of places, so it was mostly being redesigned, as well.
Phillipé smiled and nodded, "Yes, the final version for the MkI entered fullscale series production a few days ago, with tens of thousands already running off the assembly line in the factories in Osaka. They're focusing on the militarised versions right now, with a small run of the consumer-grade versions being run off and sent to product reviewers, VIPs and the like. A couple hundred of each version should be couriered to this base soon."
I nodded. I had heard from my temporary boss how they were prioritising the military versions of all of these products due to how much of an advantage their strategic planners felt an Army with reduced sleep needs could achieve over a peer adversary that didn't have a similar technology would have. The tempo of modern combat was high, and thinkers (not Thinkers, though) felt that an equivalent force could be fifteen to twenty per cent more effective if they had the sleep inducers in a straight attrition-style war. That was a lot.
