I brought up my private files and found the contingency document my Dad had made. It was actually a small program that gave me prompts. It confirmed my date of birth and the current date and then asked me about my current grades at school, with a number of drop-down options.
I hummed and managed to find the transcript that was e-mailed to me when I withdrew from the corporate school last week. Wow, that was another thing I would have to apologise to Alt-Taylor for. She had straight A's. If she was waking up in my life, she had a lot of work to do as I was barely passing any of my classes due to not being generally able to turn any homework in.
The flow chart was kind of complicated, and it took me another fifteen minutes to work through all the questions it was asking me. That made me feel kind of warm inside; if he did this much planning for his daughter, then Alt-Dad surely loved her.
The suggestions made my eyebrows raise. They were all explained, too, in ways to get the most out of the Corp without completely antagonising them.
As she was a minor, the Corp was essentially her guardian. So, it was going to be on the hook to pay for foster care, public school, and some amount of maintenance until she turned 18. They would basically be paying off Night Corp, which ran the city.
It was spelt out for her that the only thing a Corp hated to do more than paying out to a person was paying out to another Corp, especially Night Corp, which tended to pretend it was some kind of government as it ran all the organs of Night City governance, like the police and courts.
The flowchart and associated plans recommended that she send an e-mail to the HR drone, a template being provided, offering to apply for emancipation in exchange for some additional benefits. Not only would Militech be on the hook for less than they would have to pay to Night Corp, but they would be paying the daughter of a fallen hero instead. The file made it clear that it wasn't that the corporate workers wanted to screw her over, specifically. It was just that they did not have any discretion and had to attempt to screw over everybody. They almost considered it an IQ test, as a kind of social Darwinism which I found repugnant. However, if given a plausible option where they could award me additional benefits and save the Corp money at the same time, they would definitely go for it.
Was this all just a fever dream as I lay dying inside that locker? ' No,' replied my medical sense. My brain was full of ways to test reality or myself for delusions, and I hadn't failed them when I did many of them this morning.
Sighing, I copied over the e-mail template and filled out the relevant portions before sending it to that Alice Newman lady.
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A Moth's Wings and a Tyger's Claws
POV: Taylor Hebert from the Cyberpunk 2077 universe (not our MC.)
Taylor didn't realise it, but the fact that she was sleeping when the swap took place meant she got a much more significant chunk of her alternate's memories than the other girl had. She was also unaware of the fact that a giant crystalline computer was inspecting the process of transfer very carefully, which ensured that it settled upon her brain, much as it began to do to her doppelganger before they were transposed.
She fell onto the flat linoleum floor in front of her alternate's locker with a thud. A crappy way to wake up. She had been wallowing in her own despair in her little apartment, wondering what she was going to do and missing her dad, even though he had a tendency to be gone for weeks at a time on missions. Being gone for a little while was a lot different from being gone. It had only been three days since she came to the Corp-provided temporary housing in the Megablock in Japantown.
Why the hell they put a fifteen-year-old girl, a Militech Corpo brat, in the middle of a Megabuilding run lock stock and barrel by the Tyger Claws Yakuza gang, which had ties to Arasaka, was anyone's guess. Although Arasaka was officially banned from North America following the Corporate War, everyone knew that they had covert operations on the continent. Although you didn't hear about it all the time, it wasn't uncommon to hear about a researcher kidnapped in the USA and later showing up in Japan "working" for Arasaka. Everybody did these types of renditions, and everyone claimed they were rescuing the workers, and sometimes that was probably the case. But who did Arasaka's dirty work in Night City? In the past, it was the Tyger Claws. Could they still be responsible for it, a secret conduit to this day? Her dad thought so. Either someone had a grudge against her dad, or more likely, it was probably at least two eddies cheaper than the Megablock downtown.
She didn't think too much about how her alternate had been handling herself, her life or her depression, but then again, she had been starting to circle the drain herself, so she wouldn't throw stones just because her alternate had been doing it longer.
The way she arrived in this world left a lot to be desired, too. Luckily, she didn't sleep in the buff, but she still found herself flat on the floor of a dark school familiar only to memories that weren't hers.
Welp, what did Dad always say? Take stock, plan, adapt and then overcome. Take stock came first. She sat up. She had one Kerry Eurodyne branded duvet-style comforter, one pair of Militech-branded panties, worn, one bra, worn, two socks worn, one Miltech Paraline cyberdeck and operating system, one pair of Kiroshi Mk3 cybernetic eyes, one superpower that seemed to give her ideas about how to enhance her body to be resistant to the cold, and finally one Militech M-37AF compact variable-velocity SmartPistol.
Her dad purchased this pistol for her last year. She had been holding it under her pillow more as a remembrance of him than as a form of self-defence. She doubted she would have been invaded in the Megablock she was in — it really was pretty safe, Tyger Claws or no Tyger Claws, but if anyone came through her locked door, it would be those selfsame Tyger Claws, and one pistol wouldn't have saved her from them. It was Militech's top-of-the-line in concealable personal defence pistols; although Taylor did have a set of Kiroshi optics, her dad finally allowed her some 'ware, but she didn't have the Smart-Link cyberware that would allow her to designate targets for the homing flechettes to take full advantage of its features. That said, it was still a very nice pistol that she had already switched to three-round burst mode. Her dad always told her that ammo was cheap, but being sure the other fucker was dead was priceless.
She momentarily ejected the cassette to ensure all of the ammunition was there. Yep, sixty rounds of 2mm caseless gyrojet-seeking flechettes. Cheap as though ammo was, she somehow doubted she could go to a vending machine down the street and get more of the specialised 2mm flechettes, so her pistol was of purely limited utility. Plus, the ammunition was distinctive, and even her memories indicated that the BBPD would be able to link any deaths to the single weapon, which would be linked to her if she was ever discovered with it. Unless she surgically removed every single flechette from anyone she had to shoot, which her power was aching to do.
The ammo itself, though? The sense of her "superpower" gave her was that she could build a lot of things, but replacement ammo for a high-tech gun was not one of them unless it was ammo made out of bone shards produced by a specialised organ in her body. Hmm.
Perhaps she could save a few of the flechettes for when she had the resources to hire someone to reverse-engineer and duplicate them, but most likely, she would either discard the gun entirely or keep it as only a memento the first time she had to use it, but first things first.
She stood up and glanced around. It was past twenty-three hundred according to the clock on the wall. Her dad must be worried sick. Honestly, she didn't think much about her alternate's dad's behavior, either. He hadn't handled mom's death as well as she remembered, but perhaps it was just that her actual dad just shoved everything into his work. Or, growing up in Night City, they had both internalised the possibility of not living to ripe old age? Although there were some weird superpowers in play, Brockton Bay seemed très tame compared to Night City. Well, no matter. She would fix him, one way or another. She wasn't about to lose two fathers.
Taylor paused and considered her appearance and compared it with her alternate. She looked... mostly the same. She considered the differences. She didn't use glasses as her alternate had to do, as she had a pair of top-of-the-line Kiroshi cybernetic eyes, and of course, she made a few minor changes in her appearance as well.
She suspected she would have looked identical, but body sculpt clinics were so cheap in Night City, and it only cost a few hundred eddies to increase her bust a little, narrow her waist and adjust her hips and slightly adjust the symmetry in her face. And it wasn't like they checked her ID or required her to be 18 to do it, either. It wasn't like she did anything major. Otherwise, her Dad would totally have noticed, but she did it the last time he was deployed about six months ago and just claimed she had a growth spurt when he got back.
It should be fine; her memories indicate her alternate Dad barely noticed anything, anyway.
She needed to either call him soon or decide to make her way back home on her own. She wasn't sure which was the better decision, tactically. She was leaning towards the latter, as she wanted a clean break with this place and didn't want any phone records tying her father to an outbound call from this location in the middle of the night. However, first, there was something she needed to do.
She searched her memories and couldn't find any hint of surveillance cameras or drones at this school, so she started walking with purpose to the maintenance room, where she knew the janitor had kept some tools. It was locked, and she considered shooting the hinges off but realised the door was installed improperly and managed to just kick it open without too much trouble or even damage to the door itself. The door opened inwards, and the latch was barely keeping the door closed, locked or not.
Nodding, she grabbed a stout prybar and then visited the locker room by the gym. She pried open about a dozen lockers before she found clean clothes that fit her, even if they were gym clothes. Then, thinking about it, she grabbed the rest of the clothes that were either dirty or didn't fit her, along with everything else the girls had in those lockers and threw them in a trash can down the hall. Except for thirty eddies... err dollars, she pocketed that. Waste not, want not, after all.
She didn't want to give anyone a clue that she precisely wanted a clean set of clothes to fit a tall, lanky girl — that would point directly back to her. She knew many of the fucks at this school were well aware of what happened to her alternate today.
Sighing, she found the janitor's room again and got a lot of cleaning supplies. This part she wasn't looking forward to doing. Nevertheless, she put on plastic gloves and a full-mask respirator and spent two hours cleaning her disgusting locker, bagging all the biohazard waste and everything that was in it.
She didn't want any record of this incident, and there surely would be one if she didn't do this herself. Hell, with the way this school administration tried to cover for those three bitches it was possible they might accuse her of doing it... for some reason.
She had to stop herself from using the cleaning supplies to concoct an odourless contact poison to put on each of the girl's lockers. That would be very obvious, and she'd likely be under PRT investigation within days. Even if she wasn't, eventually, her power would become known, and it would look very suspicious if her three bullies died of a tinkertech poison the day after they put her alternate in that locker.
No, if she was going to take her alternate's dad, then at least she would take revenge on her behalf too, but it had to be smart. Not least because she experienced much of that same locker experience herself in her dream, let them think they have won, and let them think they had driven poor Taylor completely out of school.
She was definitely never returning to this place. Six months when nobody remembered her, and the psychopath Sophia was making some other girl's life hell, well... that girl is the one who the cops will investigate when Sophia Hess, track star, is sniped from a klick and a half away when coming to school. That or the Empire 88. Growing up in a society where almost every part of your body could be malleable and changed, Taylor certainly didn't understand the concept of hate-based purely on skin tone. You could have that changed for two hundred eddies at any biosculpt clinic.
In any case, any hypothetical future death of Sophia Hess wouldn't have anything to do with Taylor Hebert, GED graduate and secret bio-tinker, that's for sure. Even once they figure out that she is a Tinker, what bio-tinker snipes someone, anyway?
Sighing, she carefully peeled off her gloves and threw them with the other biohazard waste, which she would triple bag and toss in the dumpster. Not exactly how you're supposed to deal with biological waste, but what could she do?
Her locker reeked of bleach and other chemicals but was quite clean. She left the janitor's room exactly how she found it, if down a number of supplies. She doubted they would notice.
Now, she just had to go steal some glassware from the chemistry lab and someone's backpack to carry them in. They'd probably think some Merchants broke in and stole it to cook meth, but she needed to make her dad some antidepressants, which she would give to him surreptitiously in some lasagna tomorrow. In fact, she'd probably need some too. As for the lasagna? She'd have to do something to make up for the fact that she had been keeping such bullying a secret from him. If there was one thing her actual dad had made sure she knew, it was you didn't keep secrets from family.
Only if all the facts were known could a proper strategy be devised. She was already going to keep one secret from him, that she wasn't actually his daughter (oh and that she was going to drug him secretly), so she had to tell him everything else. He was going to be upset, but at least he would be alive.
Then she had a number of exciting possibilities to explore with her own body or, instead, modifications to it. She would have to study a little to pass the GED as, no doubt, the curriculum in Shittown, USA circa dinosaur times was different than a Militech school in 2062, but that wouldn't be a problem. It especially wouldn't be a problem when she gave herself a photographic memory and deleted her biological or psychological need to sleep through some judicious auto-brain surgery.