After securing his vest, she handed his carbine to him and said seriously, "Do not use this unless we get separated, and then only to save your life. It's just in case." His eyes widened a bit, which hurt her heart. She'd like to spare him the possibility of anything happening to either of them, but that wasn't really something she could do anymore. He nodded rapidly and did a quick function test of the weapon, checking to make sure that it was both loaded and presently set on "safe." She took the time to do the same with her own main weapon, a heavy automatic twelve-gauge shotgun. It was of the street sweeper variety, with a large drum magazine, and she was strong enough to fire it on fully automatic one-handed like it was a pistol.
Finally, she told him their destination and made him repeat it to her twice. If something did happen to her, she didn't like his odds, but they would be a lot better if he actually knew which landing pad to go to.
"Alright, keep your flashlight off. I can see in the dark, and I don't want to draw attention to us," Gloria ordered, and he nodded, turning his flashlight off and stowing it in his bag. She grabbed his hand and led him out of their apartment and through the hallways. There were other people outside milling about, but she ignored them and continued walking with a purpose to the centre of the floor, where both the main elevators and stairs were.
Unfortunately, a group of the most obvious of Santo Domingo's thugs were already loitering around, shining everyone who got near with a seriously bright flashlight. They were high school-aged toughs armed with an assortment of things like bats and knives, and they pointed their flashlights at her and David as they approached the door to the stairwell.
"Yo, chica! Hand over those guns if you know what's good for you. And anything else you might have," leered the one closest to her. The flashlights they had were every bit as bright as the two that she and David had, and they were bright enough to blind or dazzle normal people at short range. They were almost a self-defence tool themselves, but her eyes just shifted to compensate for them, and she could see his grabby hand reaching for the barrel of her shotgun.
They were being stupid, as the simplest solution would be to just shoot at each of the lights. That's what she would have had to do if she couldn't see them. Instead, she pulled the barrel of her weapon out of reach and casually stepped towards him, delivering a quick muzzle strike with the shotgun to his throat, which caused him to immediately fall to the ground, gurgling. She spared him a glance and felt that he would survive.
Now, to stop the rest, who started yelling invectives and taking steps towards her. At the same time, Taylor called her back again. She answered the vidcall, aimed, and fired a shotgun blast into the ceiling above the miscreant's heads. The walls were close to bare cement, so she was worried about ricochets if she fired a "warning shot" anywhere else, but the drop ceiling absorbed the buckshot fairly easily, although it probably fucked up the now dark lighting fixture.
She yelled in her best imitation of the "command voice" that the Drill Sergeants used while she was in basic, "Stay the fuck back!" Surprisingly, they did, opening a hole through to the stairwell. She kept them at gunpoint until she and David could make it through, backing up through the stairs.
After they were in the stairwell, she glanced up briefly before continuing to stare at the door just in case that group of idiots followed them. She said, "Sorry, Tay. Things are a little heated right now. I hope you didn't call me to tell me that you couldn't find someone to pick us up because we're already heading upstairs."
"No, I got Combat Cab to accept a contract. They'll be on the westside AV pad on the fortieth floor in five minutes," Taylor replied calmly while simultaneously sending her a digital file which included the reservation information and code words. This made Gloria sigh in relief. She would have really regretted trying to take David up the stairs if there wasn't going to be anything waiting for them.
They met a few people who were going downwards, who gave her a wide berth. The fact that she was waving an eight-kilo automatic shotgun in one hand, and easily, was a pretty good indication that she wasn't entirely 'ganic, and that made smart people wary all on its own.
The fortieth floor had another group of toughs out loitering in front of the elevators, but this group was busy trying to open the elevator doors. It seemed that one of the elevators was halfway trapped in between floors with some of their friends on it. That was fine with her, as they were better armed than the ones on her floor, and she didn't want to be stopped by them.
The AV was waiting for them, with a crew member in the back aiming a machine gun sort of in the direction of where they stepped out, which caused her to pause. He wasn't pointing the light machinegun at them, but it would take less than a second to traverse it on its pintle mount so that he was. She stopped a fair bit away from the aerodyne and yelled out the verification code that Taylor had sent her, "Green-Green-Fife-Seven-Niner-Tree-One-One!"
The door gunner paused for a moment, then motioned to her and David to board, and she hurried to get aboard. This was an older aerodyne, and it didn't have the automatic child restraint system that Little David really needed, but she tried to get him seated and secured as best she could before she buckled her own belt.
It was flown single pilot too, which was a little unusual from her experience but it was true that the second pilot in Trauma Team's aircrafts generally worked the weapons systems and electronic warfare suite, which this aircar obviously didn't have. The door gunner nodded and asked, "We got a double drop off here. One pax at the Megabuilding in Japantown, and another at Trauma Team tower?"
She hesitated and then nodded. She had assumed that she would have to make her way to the Trauma Team from Japantown herself, perhaps calling for a pickup, but this was a lot simpler. The only reason she hesitated was because she didn't like the idea of parting with little David so soon.
The AV lifted off the roof and climbed to an altitude about five hundred metres above the city. It was a relatively quick flight to Japantown, and she looked out both the window and missing door, where the machine gun was mounted, and sucked her teeth a bit. More than a third of the lights down below were out, and there were fires everywhere. The door gunner noticed her looking and said over the intercom, "It's going to be a blood bath."
"Why would the NUSA do this?" Gloria asked, more rhetorically than anything.
The door gunner snorted and shrugged, "My guess is something surprised them, and if the city's forces are stuck dealing with keeping the peace, then they won't be able to do anything else, but hell if I actually know, ma'am."
They were silent the rest of the flight, and Gloria spent the time arranging for a clearance to land on one of the public pads at Trauma Team Tower without them being shot down. She was surprised not to see Taylor waiting for them. Instead, it was the peculiar Tyger Claw that probably saved her son's life and "avenged" her, Johnny.
David really liked the guy, and she saw his eyes light up when he saw him. Johnny ducked his head close enough to speak and said, "Doc Hebert was in the middle of a surgery when the recent unpleasantness started, so she asked me to take care of escortin' young David upstairs to her apartment."
Gloria nodded but still quickly verified that with Taylor through text messages. She helped David out of the aerodyne and said, "Stay safe. I'll be able to talk to you online, and I'll be back as soon as I can."
David nodded seriously, and then both he and Johnny backed up so that the aircar could power up and lift off the pad again. She sighed and stared out the window on the quick flight downtown.
I finished up the surgery about the time David arrived and only had a few things to clean up with. I didn't have the benefit of two surgical nurses here as I did at work, so I had to perform all of the tasks myself. Still, I would be done pretty quickly, and after I was sure my patient was safe in Clouds, I would head upstairs to check in with David.
I would have to go to work myself tomorrow, so I had already talked to Evelyn, who had agreed to babysit. I think David would like this very much. He wasn't old enough to be interested in girls, and especially not women, in a sexual or romantic way, but he was right at the correct age where he liked being doted on by beautiful women, and he probably had crushes on a number of the dolls. That was pretty normal for boys, psychologically.
Johnny, the Samurai Gunman, had said that they had planned to stretch out their supply of fuel to run the building's generators, so she should expect load shedding and rolling blackouts that would last no more than thirty minutes at a time, although they would make sure that the internet and wireless connections stayed powered even during the blackouts. People wouldn't mind sitting in the dark if they knew it was temporary and they could still get on the net during that period. It was pretty smart.
They needed to stretch the fuel supplies because they didn't know precisely when the city could have power restored. The Tyger Claws had already surveyed the damage, and the damage was pretty total to a number of transformers in multiple electrical substations. This wasn't really expensive to repair, but nobody knew how many spare transformers the city had, nor did they expect them to be enough. It might take days to get more in from the Free States, or perhaps longer if the NUSA military was going to invest the city in the meantime.
I shook my head, a little worried, as I carefully used nanomed gel on the doll's surgical site wound and bandaged it closed. This would begin a rapid healing of the bone in the girl's skull that I had to temporarily remove for the surgery.
Herr Shadow had already performed reconnaissance and relayed that the NUSA presence in the southern part of Pacifica wasn't expanding, which surprised me. I had expected that they would use the cover of this chaos to begin attacking or at least send sappers into the city to attack the NCPD or city government.
Instead, they had turtled up even more than they already had, which I couldn't understand. Of course, I wasn't really a military-minded person. It was one thing to see a weakness and ruthlessly exploit it, and I thought I had that kind of temperament, but it was another to understand how an actual organised military force of thousands of individuals thought or planned.
I began waking the doll up. Sadly, she would have to wait a little while to regrow her hair, which wasn't part of the surgical plan. Unfortunately, the nanovat used a lot of power, and it wasn't the sort of thing that handled interruptions in power too well. It was a bit of a shame, as she had beautiful blonde hair and a body to match, kind of reminding me of that vulpine-grinning woman that I worked with briefly in Los Angeles.
"How are you feeling, Miss Anderson?" I asked, congenially as she fully regained consciousness.
Aoyama, Tokyo
Hasumi Sakura's Apartment
At about the same time that normal order was breaking down in Night City, I was returning from a long day's work at the office.
It was already in the middle of the night, and I already had a reputation for keeping unusual hours, so I wasn't too surprised when Yuki came into the living room where I was lounging and said, " Hasumi-sama, you have a visitor from Arasaka Intelligence who would like to ask you a few questions. It's a matter of some urgency. Do you wish to see him?"
I had entertained a few people from Arasaka at my apartment, so it wasn't out of the ordinary, but this was the first time a spook had knocked at my door. Finally, I nodded and said, " It would be fine; you can show him or her in, Yuki-san. If you'd please make some tea for me and our guest, as well."
Yuki nodded, seemingly brightened that I hadn't told the unannounced visitor to take a hike. Shortly thereafter, Yuki escorted a non-descript man into the living room. Yuki introduced him as "Mr Tanaka," which caused me to raise an eyebrow. The man looked incredibly ordinary. He was dressed in a cheap, but not too cheap, suit and had a face you would immediately forget, and he was named Tanaka. Tanaka was like the Japanese equivalent of Mr Smith, an incredibly ordinary surname.
" Tanaka-san, hmm?" my voice expressed my disbelief, but he just smiled and nodded. Internally, I shrugged, and said, " How can I be of assistance? And would you care for some tea?"
He took a seat opposite of me and said, " That would be nice, thank you. Something occurred recently, and we're getting the opinions from most of our geneticists this evening as it has the potential to be a serious issue."
"I'm not really educated as a geneticist," I temporised, but I was only being polite. My last project for Arasaka involved the modifications to a novel bacterium. It was a successful one, and they were already constructing the first pilot plant to see the effectiveness of the bacteria in recycling metals. In my opinion, it wasn't going to be a wildly successful project, not like the sleep inducers, but it still was going to reduce the costs associated with some metal recycling by over fifteen per cent, perhaps more, if they built a lot of the plants and got up into economies of scale. Still, when you consider that many industries were highly mature, a reduction of some costs by fifteen percent was considered a great boon.
He smiled and said, " Of course. We're not really interested in credentialism here. You've obviously educated yourself on the subject significantly. Are you aware of the team that is attempting to understand the fuel-algae?"
I nodded, " I am. It wasn't really something that interested me — perhaps when they figured out how the genome was encrypted. Until then, it is probably more of interest to our bio-cryptologists." That there actually was a field of study called bio-cryptology was amusing to me.
" Ah, of course," he said, and then paused as Yuki brought out the tea service. After Yuki left, he continued, " Something unusual happened today, worldwide, with the algae, and I was hoping I could have your first impressions." I was pretty sure I knew what had happened, but I inclined my head and he sent me a fairly large packet of data.
It was just as I expected, but I let the man explain, " All of a sudden, the genome of the algae harvested started to radically change worldwide, starting sometime yesterday or today."
