"That's a lot of money, Taylor," she said, unsure.
I waved her off, "Money is there to be spent. And what is the most important thing?"
"David!" she said instantly.
I coughed and said, "Okay, what's the second most important thing?"
She seemed confused, "... David?"
"Who do you think will take care of David if you're dead?" I asked her bluntly.
That caused her to blink in shock and consider the question seriously, "My health, then?"
Yes, that was the answer I was looking for. I nodded, "Precisely. A lot of people, especially people used to being poor, underestimate the utility of an internal biomonitor because they are kind of pricey and don't provide any obvious benefits. They're considered a 'suit implant.' But consider that... Corpos don't just waste money on things, at least not until you're so far up the ladder that I've never seen, nor my dad. The modern biomonitors made these days are... comprehensive. It'll tell you if you're not getting enough sleep, not getting enough nutrition and what you need to eat to fix that, or if you're getting too stressed, blood pressure is too high, or if you've been poisoned or drugged well before the effects become apparent. If you've been injured, it'll tell you exactly where, which will help you know where to use bleeding control to keep yourself alive."
After that, I finished with, "Which is cheaper from a medical perspective, preventing a problem from occurring or fixing it after it happened?"
Gloria was smart, so she understood what I was saying right away, "Ah, I see what you mean. That does make a lot of sense when you say it that way. Okay, I'll take it even if I have to pay seven hundred or so eddies to buy out your share."
I nodded. I didn't offer to give it to her for free, not only because I needed the money too, but more importantly, she wasn't the type to just accept charity.
I handed her an inhaler that was full of nanomedicine. "Two puffs now, another two in an hour or two." I was giving her that for free, but it only cost about twenty eurodollars.
She followed my directions, and I asked, "Want to stay here for lunch?"
She shook her head, "I gotta get back to little David, but you're free to come over? He likes you!"
I chuckled, "Maybe another time. I'm going to spend a few hours running maintenance on all these items that are now ours. Oh, wait. I have an early birthday present for you." Gloria's birthday was next month, but I had already decided what to get her.
She perked up, "Really?!" and I nodded and told her to wait for a moment while I ran into the private part of my apartment to grab it.
For some reason, wrapping gifts was somewhat of a lost art here; at least there wasn't any wrapping paper at any of the stores I went to, so I kind of improvised with a small bag with coloured paper sticking out of it and hiding what was inside.
I handed it to her, and she took it and blinked, "Heavy!"
She pulled the thin paper out and reached in, "Oooh... you got me..." she pulled out a pistol, "A gun?!"
I nodded. It was the same M-10C Lexington, the compact version, that I had gotten her to practise with at the range with me a few times. My dad had like six Lexington's amongst his personal effects, including two compact ones, so it wasn't even anything I had to buy.
"And an appendix-style concealed carry holster, three magazines, and a hundred cartridges," I finished for her. I bought the holster, but it wasn't that expensive. I was worried she wouldn't purchase a pistol because of her incessant frugalness.
She chuckled and said, "Uh.. thanks. Do you think I should start wearing it now?"
I nodded and showed her the best way to hide the holster in her pants so that her loose shirt covered it, "And we continue to practice at least once a week for the foreseeable future."
After that, she left, and I worked a little bit on the cybernetics we had secured. I thought now was a good time to slowly stop selling them to Gloria's small-time fixer over a period of a few months. He seemed to be increasingly busy with the drugs I was selling him, anyway. He had sent another message requesting more, and about ten times as much as his last order, so I would drop a few thousand tablets at one of the dead drops I had set up.
Once I had realised such things existed in this town, I raided her dad's book collection. He had a lot of old books, including interesting and suspicious ones from the 1960s and 1970s, about spy tradecraft, like how to run a dead drop. I also remembered one time that Alt-Taylor claimed he was acting like a spy, and his response was telling; he shook his head and said, eyes glimmering in hidden amusement, "Never! Spies, when caught, are simply shot out of hand. Intelligence officers, however, are often traded back, though. Never be a spy, Taylor."
He really was a spy, wasn't he?!
I glanced at the giant handgun I had pulled out of the duffle bag. What was I going to do with this... beast? It would be effective against borgs or people with subdermal armour, but I could get similar anti-armour penetration using the M-76e. The solid steel slugs penetrated fairly well, and there were options for tungsten tips for penetration, although they were a bit pricier. The Constitution Arms pistol was a good, reliable and effective weapon. It was just... nobody would take her seriously if I was carrying it.
It was like what a BD star would use in an action film. If you saw a sixteen-year-old girl carrying a Desert Eagle, you'd be a bit perplexed too. It was the same with this thing.
I had a sudden idea and triggered my contacts list to pop up. I had gotten somewhat on good terms with most of the low-level Tyger Claws that worked in the building. And I recalled treating one of them who talked shit about my "tiny little girl's gun." That the only way he would ever carry a gun was if it was a man's gun, he said!
Perfect. I found his name, Johnny Leung, in my contacts list and called him. The Tygers Claws wasn't strictly a Japanese gang, per se, and Johnny was one of the few Han Chinese members. Although that said, he did go big into the whole Japanese culture thing about Samurai and swords, anyway.
He picked up after the third ring, "Doc girl, whatchu need?"
I sighed internally, "It's what I got. I remember you saying you'd be interested in a gun, but only if it was a big manly one." I held out the giant pistol in front of myself, so it could be picked up on the vidcall, "Constitution Arms, 12.7mm, in really good shape. Two magazines and a belt holster are included. Interested?"
"Fuck yeah, girl! If the price is right! I'll give ya five hundred for it," he countered.
Priced new, it would be about fifteen hundred eurodollars or more. But that included the cleaning kit that I didn't have, though. I countered with a different price, and eventually, we settled on six hundred dollars. He was working security at the front door today, so I took it out to him, belt, holster and all.
"Here you go, Johnny," I told him, handing him the pistol, magazine and belt and holster. The holster was kind of ridiculous; it was faux leather and almost looked like it was out of the old west, complete with little bullet loops. Why you'd have bullet loops when your gun used a magazine, I didn't really know.
"Oh fucking preem!" he said, putting the holster on, "You didn't say the holster was sweet as fuck, choom! I look just like a fucking Samurai cowboy now!" He said, posing with the pistol on his belt and sword in his hands. "Man, I'm gonna get a sheathe on the other side for my sword."
Oh god.
He transferred six hundred and fifty dollars, the extra fifty for how extra sweet the holster was, in his words. His friends gathered around him, and they all tended to agree that it was, indeed, badass, with one recommending he get an ambidextrous co-processor so he could swing a sword in one hand and shoot in the other, like Victor Chang, the BD star.
"Later, Johnny," I told him and left as soon as possible before he decided to ask me about such implants. Was he stupid because he ended up in a brutal street gang, or was he in a brutal street gang because he was stupid?
I then transferred half the proceeds to Gloria with a text explaining what it was from. Although I had done all the work killing those assholes, she did get shot in the chest for it, so she was definitely due an equal share.
A week later, I introduced Gloria to Dr Taylor, who was more than happy to install the provided biomonitor. He charged a little bit more than average, but he provided a comprehensive service that I honestly felt was worth it.
She felt pride in her work when Gloria told her that Dr Taylor was impressed with whoever put her optics in, too.
She said as she walked back to her car, "This thing says I'm chronically dehydrated, deficient in a lot of vitamins, chronically fatigued, malnourished and am close to getting a repetitive stress injury, and I have pre-hypertension."
I gave her a side eye and nodded, "I could have told you all that." In fact, I had told her all of that.
Sighing, she said, "Fine, I get it." She paused and asked, "Do you think you could sell me one of those sleep things you built?"
I blinked and hadn't considered that. Maybe that would have been a better birthday present than a pistol? I nodded slowly, considering the price of the component parts, "Sure, for three hundred eddies. That's friends' pricing." The version I could make now hardly required any of my maintenance at all.
Time passed as water does, and before long, a few months had gone by. Gloria was stoked because she passed the Advanced EMT test on her first try.
"Congratulations!" I told her after she told me the good news as we both started walking from the parking lot into work. I finally couldn't stand riding the train anymore and bought a pretty nice Thorton Colby CX410 for thirty thousand eurodollars from a nomad group that lived nearby and dealt in a lot of vehicles. You could even buy aeroplanes from them.
It had the common modification where the trunk was replaced with a truck bed, so it kind of reminded me of a Chevy El Camino. We didn't have those types of cars in Earth Bet, but it was iconic in Earth Aleph media. The engine was recently fully overhauled, and it purred like a kitten. It was a lot nicer than Gloria's car, but it was still only your average middle-of-the-road used vehicle. The papers on it seemed legit; at least the city didn't make any noise as if it was stolen or anything (even if it might have been), so I thought it was a good deal.
Before this purchase, I had accumulated over a hundred and sixty thousand eurodollars from my various income streams, but now I was back down to one hundred and thirty, which was barely more than when I started out. I had been here for over a year and barely made any progress with my ultimate goals, although I was in a much better position in a lot of ways. Two steps forward and one step back.
Several months ago, I was tempted to keep the Syn-Lungs for myself, but they were a pretty shitty version, so I ended up selling them. I did keep one of the replacement livers and used it as parts to build my armoured liver-heart-detoxifier. I hadn't gotten the guts to cut into myself yet, and the system looked pretty weird, so I was too afraid to take it to Dr Taylor; if he became aware of my monowire, he'd have to tell the coppers, so I would have to just bite the bullet and perform surgery on myself I wanted it, and I did. Perhaps on my next five days stretch of days off.
I was closing on my six-month anniversary working for NC Med Ambulance, and I figured I would start sending in my application to Trauma Team when I hit the nine-month mark. Our record spoke for itself; very rarely did people die in our ambulance unless we were dealing with injuries that were incompatible with life, and their body just hadn't realised it was dead yet.
I think the only reason the bosses hadn't split us up to try to increase the stats of other units was that they were positive I was going to leave here in a few months anyway, so they felt it was better if I managed to get Gloria as shit-hot as she could be in my remaining time here. Personally, I agreed with that; plus, I enjoyed working with Gloria, and we had a business that made us each a small but steady amount of money.
We'd be keeping the same relationship after I left, although I would get less of a share as all I would be responsible for would be refurbishing and performing maintenance on the cyberware she would bring me. But I was trying to think of ways to raise a lot more money at once, though. It seemed like no matter what in this city, the more you made, the more you spent, and it seemed really hard to stick to any saving goals.
In a lot of ways, Night City was like being tossed overboard in the middle of the ocean; all you could do was keep your head above water without ever getting anywhere.
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Base visit
As I ran on the treadmill, I started letting my mind wander. I had switched to a workout routine that combined fast-paced anaerobic sprints with slower-paced endurance running, it was a training regimen that I read about online, and it was supposed to have good results. I had finally bit the bullet and performed the first surgery on myself, removing my liver entirely and installing the replacement. It was locked into liver-only mode right now, as I would have to graft either synthetic polymer-based or donor arteries to connect it into my cardiovascular system in such a way as to support the high-flow operations a heart would need.
I was kind of kicking myself for not ripping some of that borg's polymer arteries out when I had the chance, my other option was letting my power help me individualise a set of donor arteries, but I would need to thoroughly dissect a donor body for that to be possible. We didn't really have too much time when we came across people we could swipe cybernetics from. Certainly not enough time to do a thorough, full pathological dissection.
I could buy either a set of polymer arteries or even a cloned and individualised set of arteries specific to me, but since I wasn't a doctor, it would be kind of weird for me to do so. It didn't matter too much; I would find something eventually. It will probably be pretty soon, too.
I still wasn't including any weight training, per se, but since I was so much stronger than Gloria, I did most of the lifting while working, so I counted that as a stand-in. She was interested in the same muscle and bone lace treatment I got until I told her the cost.
The application process to Trauma Team was supposed to take a fair bit of time, so it wasn't weird that I had recently applied fully three months before I would have the experience necessary to qualify. I sent my application using my internal Militech's dependent net address, and there was some back and forth. Trauma Team was still split into regional sub-corporations since the last Corporate War when they had to ultimately deny service to both Arasaka and Militech; they hadn't quite reorganised into one global corporation yet, but there were signs that they were in the process of doing so. I was applying to Trauma Team Night City, which was a wholly owned subsidiary of Trauma Team North America. All training was standardised and performed by the Trauma Team North America headquarters in Seattle, for example.
