I gaped in surprise for a moment while simultaneously pulling out my pistol and dropping my purse; my first instinct was to run away, however, I quickly discovered what I was dealing with when I heard a slow-mo complaint in Russian, "Blyyyyaaaaaatt!"
Eastern Europeans, dirty, shitty cyberware, and trying to take me down from ambush with a non-lethal weapon without demanding any money meant nine out of ten I was dealing with Scavs, and my fate would not have been a good one if they had managed to knock me out. I recognised the man trying to bash me in the head from the train, and my boosted memory told me he had been there the last two times I had gone to work, too. Had they been casing me in particular? I couldn't recall any port scans on myself on the train, but there were a couple of days recently when I found potential netrunners and didn't do anything in my commute.
I found the possibility plausible that they might have cased targets on the train just based on visible cyberware. I didn't have a lot, but just my current year Kiroshi Mk3s would probably be enough to tempt them. What were my options here?
By the time I had figured all of this out, the man trying to bash me had reached full extension on his swing. I intended to step back to put some distance between us, but my peripheral vision saw the man in the dimly lit connecting street begin to slowly run in our direction, carrying something that looked like a gun.
So, instead of taking a step back and giving him a potential shot, I stepped forward, inside the swing of the first man and casually placed the muzzle of my Lexington against his extended elbow and started squeezing the trigger. My brain was telling me to shoot him in the head, but despite these people clearly intending me a gruesome death, if I was lucky, I didn't know if I could just kill them.
My eyes shifted to the second man and were locked on him, lines of information quickly scrolling down my vision as the loud report from my pistol and the scream of pain from the first guy hit my ears. I had already modified the parameters to his shitty decades-old optics and begun uploading a Reboot Optics quickhack before the cosh the first guy was carrying even hit the pavement.
The second man began slowly raising his weapon anyway, yelling, "Annnnddreeeeeyyy!" but before he could even reach his aim point and have to decide whether or not to shoot through his friend, the upload finished.
I thought he would... not start shooting, but I saw the moment he was blinded and realised what he was going to do and just kept backing up out of the intersection. I was hiding behind a building wall when he let several blasts from the semi-automatic street sweeper, raising my pistol to take a carefully aimed shot. I winced as I saw his blasts tear his friend's calves to pieces, and I wasn't sure I would fair much better. Sure, I had ballistic skin weave, but heavy buckshot at close range could go through a car engine, supposedly.
Everything in my training and everything my Alt-Dad told Alt-Taylor was telling me to go for the simple centre body mass shot, but I was aiming low on one of his legs, almost at his feet and had already flipped the switch on my concealed Lexington to three-round burst. His shitty optics would take another ten seconds to reboot, so I might have been able to just run off, but these weren't good people!
The report of the pistol almost surprised me, and I had aimed low and let the short burst walk up his leg and scored two out of three hits, including one directly on his kneecap, which put him on the ground. His friend was already rolling around on the ground, moaning and pain and bleeding profusely. I would have to render aid to him right away. Otherwise, he would die from the shredded arteries very rapidly. A couple of bystanders around began running away from my shot towards more well-lit areas of the street while I still looked down at the second man.
Seeing the shotgun slip from the second guy's hands when he fell to the ground, and sure that the man's vision was still impaired, I quickly ran at my top speed directly at him and, with a running kick like I was playing soccer, kicked him in the head.
I did it before I even thought about it, and immediately I was aghast and apprehensive that I might have killed him right there, as I was running really fast, but a quick check confirmed he didn't have a broken neck, but he definitely had a concussion. I glanced at his gunshot wounds, and luckily I didn't perforate an artery, so he wasn't bleeding too seriously. I grabbed both his shotgun and his belt and ran back to the first guy, who had lost consciousness by now.
As I used the two men's belts as makeshift tourniquets, I called 911 and reported that Scavs had attacked me and two people had been shot. Then, I called my boss.
"What?! That's almost right by the Heywood base. Have you called the cops yet?" asked Jim, looking like he was not entirely awake.
I nodded, "Yeah. One of them shot the other with a twelve gauge twice, and just about destroyed his two lower extremities from the sural down. I've got the bleeding mostly under control, but he's fucked. The other uhh has a serious concussion and two GSWs to the lower left extremity, courtesy of myself."
"What? Proper fucked?" asked Jim in his odd British accent.
I yelled, "No, not proper fucked! I think that means something dirty. Damnit, Jim.."
"Alright, sorry. Okay, we'll get toned for this for sure, I'll call your partner, and if you don't mind, I'll give her access to your locker; she can grab your uniform and meet you there at the scene. You might be detained by the coppers briefly, but it shouldn't be a big deal. Then you can just start your day from there. I'll even clock you in now; it's like I'm paying you for shooting those idiots. I'm talking to Dispatch now. Put their gun and yours on the ground and make sure to be far away from them when the coppers come, lass," he said after a pause.
I glanced down and nodded, "Alright. That sounds fine. Tell Dispatch to send at least three units of blood if they're gonna come at all."
He hung up, and I sat my pistol and the Scav's shotgun on the pavement, but I stayed a bit near it until I started hearing sirens in the distance, then I walked a good five metres away. I was a bit impressed with their response time; they must have been nearby. The north part of Heywood was well-policed, but this part was... less so. One squad car rolled up, beating the ambulance. I could also hear just a few blocks away and as they got near, I held my hands in the air just to be safe.
It was a good decision; two policemen jumped out with their guns drawn and aimed in my general direction. It took a force of will not to dart away, and they started yelling, "Hands up! Hands up! Put your hands on your head, interlace your fingers!" I complied, slightly annoyed, but I wasn't about to show it.
One of them covered me with their weapon while the other frisked me quickly, glancing down at the two downed Scavs. Just seeing the difference between how I and the two Scavs were dressed, they had already calmed down significantly. Then they both put their pistols away, and one said, "Sorry about that, ma'am. Alright, you can put your hands down. You're the one who called this in? You said you shot one, and the other... shot his friend? Where's your gun? Where's theirs?"
While one was giving me the fifth degree, the other took a moment to inspect both downed nar-do-wells, relieving the legless one of a BudgetArms piece of shit pistol that I should have checked him for. I pointed a few metres away, for the benefit of the first cop, to where the weapons were sitting on the asphalt; it was still dark, so it wasn't too surprising he hadn't spotted them.
"Over there, sir. I figured that maybe you wouldn't want me to be, you know, carrying them when you approached," I told him mildly.
He chuckled, "Smart. We appreciate that. Phil, take a look. I hear an ambulance, so maybe this idiot will make it. How the fuck did his friend shoot him?"
About this time, one of our ambulances showed up, and two Medtechs popped out, and the cops motioned to the two downed Scavs. I didn't precisely recognise them, but I had to shift to a new working schedule to match up with my new partner, so it wasn't too surprising.
I told the cop the whole story while the other cop briefly inspected both my pistol and the shotgun. After a moment, he grabbed my pistol, dropped the magazine out and then removed the round from the chamber before placing the loose round into the magazine. Then he walked over and offered me the pistol and magazine and said, "Just don't load until we leave, please, citizen."
I blinked, nodded and took the pistol and placed it back in my holster without the magazine in it and then put the mostly full magazine in my purse, picking it up off the ground. "Thank you, sir," I told him.
"Wait, you're a paramedic?" the first one asked after I told him my story.
I nodded, "Yeah, I was on my way to work; it's just a couple of blocks that way. That's one of our trucks. My partner should be here soon, too. In fact, we'll probably be the ones to take the guy I shot to the hospital. He's a lot less injured."
Both of them seemed to find this very amusing. The one who had been talking to me said, "Oh, that's preem. Fuck, it's a shame he's unconscious... nice kick. Cause I would have loved to see you ask him if he was in any pain." That set the other one off, laughing even harder. The first one turned to me and said seriously, "Hey, next time, just save the city some money and uhh... don't save their lives, right?"
Well, I guess I wasn't getting in any trouble. The first crew was already wheeling the first guy to their unit; I had watched them work on him for a couple of minutes, and they were pressure-infusing a lot of fluids and running blood besides, but I didn't know if the guy would survive. I was almost certain I could save his life, but in this case, it depended on how adventurous the doc at the hospital was. He might live if they amputated both legs below the knee immediately, but if they tried to do something fancy, he probably wouldn't.
I rubbed the back of my neck, "Ah... it's kind of a reflex," I explain away. It's weird, feeling like I did something bad for not shooting these two guys in the head or letting them die on the street. The police spent a moment talking to the first ambulance crew and got the information on which hospital they were going to take the guy to so that they could have him arrested if he survived.
At about that time, a second ambulance pulled up, and a woman jumped out of the driver's seat. She was a redhead, and fiery red, to boot. She ran around, looking, "Taylor?! Taylor!" I waved, and she ran up to me, "Oh! You look fine, actually. Hahaha, the way Jim said it, I thought we'd have to transport you. No wonder he had me get your uniform. Uhh... I'm Gloria, Gloria Martinez. Nice to meet you."
She looked fairly young, in her early to mid-twenties if I had to guess. Jim had told me she started working for the company when she was seventeen, having gone to a specialised health science high school and graduating with a basic EMT certificate. Now she was up to an intermediate, and he said she was as good as many Paramedics, that she really had a gift.
"Taylor Hebert. It's nice to meet you too, Gloria. Uh, yeah. Our guy has two GSWs in the lower left leg, missed the femoral and isn't bleeding too badly. He also had some blunt-force trauma to the face..." I begin telling her, finding myself blushing as I reported the injuries I dealt this man in the passive voice as if I hadn't inflicted all of them, "Can you start assessing him while I go change in the truck?"
She snickered, "Yeah, no problem. We can try some of that new pain medicine if he wakes up, the normalisine." It took me a second to understand what she said, and then I laughed a little, despite myself. She said the words "normal saline" really fast, as one single word, and pronounced it as if it was a medicine. She was implying he would receive nothing for pain, at all.
She did a fist bump, "Yes! Jim said this was your first job; all these hundred-year-old EMT jokes will seem brand new to you!"
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Stop! Not like that!
I decided to get the nanosurgeon treatment at the same I bought the Self-ICE system. Dr Taylor strongly recommended I not get any further augmentations, bioware or cyberware, for at least a year if I wanted to stay off the city's radar, so I figured that my time visiting his clinic was probably over, at least for a while. Unfortunately, as the nanosurgeons cost eleven thousand eurodollars, my bank balance was just less than eighty now, so it was getting to the point where I couldn't afford to go back in the first place.
He did say that I didn't seem to have any issues that he considered symptoms of even incipient cybernetics correlated mental instability, but remarked that the city was remarkably paranoid and that once you got on their radar, it was kind of challenging to get off of it.
My current augmentations were split between bioware and cyberware. On the bioware front, I had the ballistic skin weave, the muscle and bone lace and the nanosurgeons.
On the cybernetic side, I had my Biotech Sigma Mk1 cyberdeck, which was on the low-end of mid-grade models, my Kiroshi Mk3s, which were state-of-the-art, a cognitive memory boost co-processor, a top-of-the-line internal bio-monitor, my Zetatech Self-ICE system, my Kang Tao-derived Kerenzikov and my basic operating system, including interface sockets and data shard ports. Soon, I'd have the monowire as well, and I felt alright leaving things as they were on that basis, although I had the idea to build a replacement for my liver that would also function as a secondary heart in a pinch. Not only was it a much better liver, but it would be much smaller and armoured, as well isolated from all of my other cybernetics.
There were a number of liver replacements, but none that did double duty as a secondary heart, at least as far as I knew. It wouldn't necessarily save me in the event someone shot me in the heart because the haemorrhage would likely kill me before my nanosurgeons could fix it. However, from what I learned from friends online, I thought it was likely that a number of the "black ICE" on the Net functioned in a way that caused either an unstable arrhythmia or immediate cardiac arrest in the netrunner. And it might save me in that situation if I ever encountered it.
I had begun dipping my foot into what was considered the "Dark Net", but it was really just unpublicized, private net sites that you generally needed invites to read or contribute to.
