I sat my gun down again and dragged both the surfer boy and the donor lady inside while Jean grabbed the other one. Ruslan grinned at me and pointed to the first Scav with the Omaha and said, "You know, Madison, sometimes your countrymen are kind of dicks."
"Yeah, yeah... I get it; you don't have to rub it in, you know," I told him, face blushing red. Besides, it was absolutely true.
That caused him to laugh, really laugh, for a good ten seconds before he flipped the pistol around in his hand and handed it back to me, "That's pretty sweet. Normally I'd say it has the problem of over-penetrating, but I'd say it would be a good sidearm in this kind of business. Never know who has dermal armour or armoured prosthesis and shit."
I separated the donor from the dead Scav, and Ruslan glanced down at her, "Looks like a suit." I nodded; she was dressing fairly well. I pulled an interface cable from around my neck from the firewall I was still wearing and plugged it into her interface socket, "Let's see who she is."
First, immediately, I was greeted with my Zetatech system springing into high gear and quarantining a piece of malicious code that had tried to bridge between us through my firewall appliance. That was interesting. What was also interesting was she had quite a few pieces of cybernetics, including a networked internal biomonitor that was trying, but failing, to send a signal out to... ah, she was a subscriber. Although I didn't have any Trauma Team implants, I did have a bunch of their software. I ran it in a sandboxed virtual environment, just like the software from NC Med Ambulance, but it was helpfully popping up, for my perusal, this woman's file.
"Eleanor McKinney, NC18291866, Night Corp employee of eleven years, Trauma Team Gold," I said out loud, disconnecting the connection.
"Fuck mon! Why wasn't Trauma sweeping in on these gonks? Are they fucking on the way here?" Jean exclaimed, looking out the window for any potential sweeping that might be happening right now.
As her eyes scrolled through text rapidly, Kiwi said, "They never got the alert. These gonks weren't as stupid as they looked; there was something in her system blocking it. I guess this 'scrambler' that guy mentioned before Rus shot him."
I nodded and enlightened them, "Yes, there was a virus in her system when I connected; it got through my firewall even, but it was stopped by my ICE," I turned her around and saw a data shard in her shard port. Considering her system read-out said the shard-port was empty, I was guessing that was the culprit and managed to hide from her diagnostics like many malevolent pieces of software could, "This shard, I think."
"Oh, thank god," Jean said, and everyone looked a lot more relaxed except me. It was Corporate Policy that if I encountered a subscriber in distress on my off-time that I was to offer reasonable assistance. I wasn't expected to solo a 'Strom death squad or anything, but I definitely was expected to eject a shard from her head.
I sighed, "Guys, you know how Mrs Okada said I was just as good as a Trauma Team Med Techie?" I got nods from the boys and a confused nod from Kiwi, "Well... she was being cute and literal." There was a slowly gaining look of horror on Kiwi's face, but nothing on the other two except confusion now.
I figured that Kiwi would have already looked me up on similar sites that I looked her up on, but there was a lag on any of those gumshoe sites. In fact, it was part of their way to upsell you on the next available service tier, like you were buying a value meal. The cheapest level on my site was on a lag of months. It was very possible that my employment hadn't been updated yet on her dossier of me if she used a similar site or perhaps the same one.
"My day job is as a med techie for Trauma Team," I tell them, finally spelling it out.
"Ohhh.. shit... well, what does this mean?" asked Ruslan while Jean just got wide-eyed.
I shrugged, "Nothing. There isn't anything against company policy moonlighting like this, so long as I don't use company property or reputation to do so." I paused, "However, I am expected to provide 'reasonable assistance' to subscribers in distress if I happen to come across them."
"Oh, I gotcha. So what's your plan, then?" Jean asked.
I slung my SMG across my back and picked up the lady in my arms easily, "I'll just walk a block away, pull the shard and call her in. One of our teams will show up, and I'll hand her off and come back here, and we can finish up and make like a tree."
Kiwi groaned, "Make like a tree... god, Madison, that is awful; I don't think anyone's used that one in a hundred years. I had to net-search it just to understand what you were talking about."
"Alright, try to make it quick, though," Ruslan said as I nodded and walked out the door.
As the door was closing, I heard Ruslan asking Kiwi what I had meant by my tree quip, and her replying, "Make like a tree and leave."
That caused both the men to groan and me to frown. It wasn't that bad, was it?
I made a vid call to my immediate boss, which was Dr Anno, and he picked up, "Hey, what's up Taylor?"
"Not a whole lot..." I lied, "... except one thing led to another, and I may have stopped a couple of dumb Scavs after they kidnapped this woman. She's a suit, and they mentioned using something called a scrambler on her. I checked her OS, and she's a subscriber, Gold, and has some kind of virus preventing her system from sending out the distress signal."
There was silence for a moment before he came back, amused, "One thing led to another? What the fuck do you do for fun on your days off? I take it you have the lady. What's her status? I'm working an extra shift on Alpha today. I'm triggering a Gold alert internally now, we'll respond. Give me her deets, too."
I kept walking and glanced around and nodded, heading towards a basketball court that had a few youths playing ball. Not really a game; just taking random shots. "Nothing really; I usually read a couple of books, maybe have a hot bath, you know. Normal girl stuff. And she has a concussion and a very minor brain bleed, but according to her biomonitor, it has already stopped. I bet they coshed her in the head. There's a pretty hot virus on her OS, my systems stopped it, but I have a pretty sophisticated set of countermeasures. It went straight through a standard firewall. She is Eleanor McKiney, NC18291866."
"Interesting to all. Especially this virus, do you think that is what hijacked her biom? It must be pretty new if it didn't set off the heuristics on a firewall, although who knows with a store-bought model. Corporate will be pretty interested; we have had a number of clients just disappear lately. Are the Scavs able to be questioned?"
"Uh... not unless you're a necromancer," I said embarrassedly. "And yes, I think so. They slotted a shard in her data port; I'm going to pull it now and see if that gets her transmitting again. I'll put the shard in her pocket, in any case, and you can give it to the Intel boys."
Four boys stopped playing to glance at me as I showed up; the youngest one said, "Woah, chica! Did you flatline that suit?!"
I shifted Eleanor's body to reach around so I could push the ejection button next to her data shard, yanking it free. I didn't really know if that worked, though, since I wasn't connected to her anymore. I tried my best to glare at the boys and said, "No, I did not! And you boys better 'delta'. Trauma's coming."
One of the other boys, the oldest, scoffed, "She talks like a suit herself! Suit-on-suit violence! Oh, the humanity!" What a little shit! He was Hispanic and built like a brick shithouse. If you didn't look at his face could easily pass for nineteen or older, but I figured he was younger than me.
"We got her transmitting now; we're already pulling off the pad. You're pretty close, in Haywood, so expect us in ninety or less," came back Anno.
"Roger, and shut up, you little shits!" I stupidly tried talking to both Dr Anno and the boys at the same time.
"Uh, pardon?" Anno replied, causing me to blush furiously.
"Not you, sir. There's a number of street boys at the LZ," I replied, which caused all four of the street boys to start laughing at me.
Dr Anno chuckled himself and affected the exaggerated accent of a 1920s prohibition mobster. We had been watching old gangster movies the other day, "You wants me to ventilate 'em, boss?! They'll be sleeping with the fishes."
"No, I don't think that will be necessary. I'll just make them an offer they can't refuse," I said formally.
"Oh, shit. I think she flatlined all the Scavs at that den," the youngest-looking boy said, "Maybe she's a merc, and we shouldn't fuck with her." Well, what a smart kid.
I sighed, muted the call and said, "If you guys leave now, you can pick through what we leave behind in a couple of hours. Just leave the medical equipment alone. But I've seen your faces, now, and if anyone but more witless Scavs show up... I will know who sold us out, Mr Welles." I said, using the real identity of the oldest of the boys I had gotten from NCPD searches of their faces, staring him right in the eyes.
The oldest boy was already in the system, with a couple of small crimes, as well as a notation that he was a suspected member of the Valentinos. Not bad for probably a fifteen or sixteen-year-old, I supposed. But he'd have to try harder if he wanted to beat the precociousness of this sixteen-year-old.
"Was that a threat?" he asked, surprisingly calm and looking rather dangerous suddenly.
I blinked at him, actually slightly intimidated, even knowing that I could probably easily take him and his friends if I just sat the lady down. I grinned as best as I could. "Just a reminder of basic physics. Isaac Newton, you know? For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction."
That caused him to grin and rub his neck, "Aw, shit. I never did too well in school, lady. But sure, but you better make sure there are a few things worth it for us in there." That switch from dangerous to folksy was pretty cool, I had to admit. And he didn't have to worry about that. Even if we looted everything, we didn't have enough room in their van to load everything . There would be a number of guns and other things that would be worth looting that we would just not take. And I wouldn't drive their Supron if my life depended on it. The tiny MaiMai was safer. Sure, you would get crushed like a can in an accident, but the Supron tended to spontaneously combust for no reason at all and was made out of semi-flammable recycled hydrocarbon-derived products. And the engine was made partially out of cheap magnesium, so it went up like thermite or white phosphorous.
"Sure, plus there's a Supron FS3 in the parking lot. I'll leave the key shard in the driver's seat, just for you. But it used to belong to some Scavs, just so you know," I told him as Alpha's AV-4 swooped in from the sky in a cacophony of noise.
One of the quiet ones up till now yelled, "Shit, she wasn't fucking around. That's Trauma! Let's jet, Jackie!" And with that, the four of them ran off. I shoved the shard that was still in my hands into one of the lady's pockets, and she was already starting to stir into semi-lucidity in my arms. I wondered if there was anything on that shard to keep her unconscious, too?
As the AV sat down, the team hopped out, and I waved awkwardly, one-handed. Then, one of the security guys yelled, "Yo, 'breaker!" I didn't recognise his voice, but I had gotten pretty popular with the security guys after saving Bandbox.
I sighed. Well, at least the shortening of the nickname was better than it all together. Heartbreaker was a weird villain; he was reasonably well known in Canada and the northern part of the United States, like where I had lived, but I almost thought the PRT downplayed him since he more or less kept to himself. There wasn't much they could do to stop him without endangering many innocent people.
After living in Night City for a while, I got the feeling that they probably did that for threats they had no good way to deal with. It still didn't explain why they tolerated the Slaughterhouse Nine, though.
"You want to set up the gurney, or should I just set her inside?" I asked them, and Dr Anno said, "May as well just set her in. I forget that you've got strength mods."
I nodded and sat the woman on the biobed inside the AV-4 and then said, "Alright, I know you're on the clock..." response time and time to the hospital was one of the primary KPIs for a team, "... so I'll see you in a couple of days."
One of the security guys saluted me with his carbine, and they all jumped back into the AV before lifting off and darting off to the north. I unslung my submachine gun and jogged back to the Scav den. Although probably things wouldn't happen, it was true that I had brought attention to this area and possibly compromised the operation by calling my compatriots to rescue Ms McKinney, so I would work fast, triage any interesting cyberware left and yank it all out.
I told the shits we'd leave in two hours, but since one of them was a suspected Valentino, I planned to be done in less than one.
Wakako asked the leader of a small-time team who she had asked to evaluate the Hebert girl. The job was real, and the girl's competencies aligned well with the particulars. Still, she didn't get to be this old in this industry by not being a belt and suspender's sort of woman. "So, any complaints?"
"Not really. She did save two Scav donors on-premises, which theoretically cut into our profit margins as she put their implants back in, and then we had to drive them to the hospital after we were done, but..." he shrugged and said, "Honestly, it felt kind of good to feel totally good about a job, for once. We didn't miss out on too much money anyway, and she made the job simple and easy, too."
Wakako raised an eyebrow and asked, "Put their implants back in?"
"Yeah, she said it was no big deal, as they came out of them in the first place, right?" he said and shrugged.
Wakako was silent for a moment. She was almost certain that wasn't how it worked. She made a note of that. "How did she assist with the actual gig? I was under the impression she wasn't to be involved in the actual combat."
"She wasn't, not really, although she was watching the back door and did shoot one Scav and bashed the other over the head when they were running out the back door. But she gave us this anaesthetic gas grenade and said it was expiring soon anyway, so it might as well be used. Kiwi tossed it in the ventilation system, and almost everyone was falling unconscious by the time we kicked the door in," he said and gave a thumbs up. "Easy money!"
Wakako hummed in thought. There was no telling the number of things that she might have received from her father, so that wasn't really unusual. She was more concerned about anything left behind by her mother.
