I sat around the NCART station and called the number Wakako sent me, getting an answer after a couple of rings. "You the merc? I am on the next train; I should be there in about five minutes."
"That's fine. I'm next to the Buck-A-Slice, right after you leave the terminal," I told the man. He looked and sounded like a suit, so I would reciprocate with some manner of professionalism. In Night City, that basically meant not using slang or profanity in every third word.
I hung around, just eyeing people, for six minutes or so until a man walked in from the terminal. His face matched the deets that Mrs Okada sent me, so I walked over to him, "Mr Smith?" I asked him, almost certain that wasn't his actual name.
That caused him to smirk, and he nodded. I offered to shake his hand, which he looked a little askance at but reciprocated the gesture, and I casually left a sticky-tracker on the sleeve of his jacket, testing it for both position and audio for a moment. They were pretty cheap, only a couple of Eurodollars at most electronic stores, but very few people actually were prepared for them to be used, which I found rather odd. I had an app that would report to me any unknown and periodic radio source that was collocated on my body. Although it was only a side part of my job to protect him, I figured it would be best if he couldn't get away from me.
"So, what is your plan for the day, sir?" I asked him professionally. This caused him to blink and look at me up and down, as if noticing me for the first time.
He coughed, "Well, primarily, I have this piece of cybernetics I need to get installed. I don't want a record of it being installed for various reasons. But I figured I'd combine the trip with sightseeing, maybe see some of the sights or some of the joytoys of Jig-Jig street. Okada recommended you based on your experience as a Med Techie, so I wouldn't get screwed over at one of the rippers here."
I nodded slightly. "Well, the best dolls are actually in this building, at Clouds, but I am taking it as you wanting something a little more... authentic?" I was pretty sure what he wanted was to visit somewhere that was safe, but had the feeling that it might not be safe. An adventure, in other words.
"Precisely! Do you know any places like that?" he asked excitedly.
Internally, I sighed, "Of course. There are a few places not too far away, either." Internally, I had already sent Mr Jin a text message. Apparently, this was a pretty common request, such that Mr Jin wanted to know if I wanted the extra service like a pretend-mugging that I would have to "save" the man from. I declined that upsell but took his recommendation for a couple of places that Mr Smith could divert a couple of hours in sin.
Before reaching the brothel, I took him around a number of sights on Jig-Jig street, but when he asked if there was anything I would recommend as far as food, I just shook my head firmly. There were a number of good sit-down restaurants, actually, but as far as street food went, Jig-Jig street was best to avoid.
I made sure to turn off the audio tap on his sleeve after he selected one of the call girls, as I didn't have any desire to hear any of their tryst, and instead just waited at the bar at the brothel.
"How about you, then?" asked an older man, someone that could easily have been as old as Danny, bringing me out of my reverie as I was sipping my Real Clean Water ™.
I frowned at him and said, "I am not a prostitute, sir." I mean, I was dressed as a merc, and sure there were some places where roleplaying was encouraged, this being one of those locations, but you had to arrange that ahead of time . Certainly, none of the working girls or boys were dressed anything like me, plus I wasn't really very attractive in the first place.
I was concerned that this might turn into a scene, but the man was apologetic and slightly embarrassed, quickly departing with a blushing face. I supposed it was a little embarrassing to assume that someone, even if they were sitting alone at a brothel, was a prostitute. I tried to put myself in his shoes and would have been absolutely mortified, not just slightly embarrassed.
Thankfully, I didn't have to wait too much longer. My client returned, much more tousled, from the depths of the brothel and looking like he quite enjoyed the experience. He found me and said, "That was great! I think I've seen enough, though, if we could head towards the Ripper now."
I nodded and led him outside and down two more blocks before stopping at one of the best Ripperdocs on Jig-Jig street. The clinic accepted walk-ins, as well, and I introduced him to the doctor.
"Would you like me to stick around while he performs the surgery?" I asked him but got quickly dismissed as it turned out the client and the doctor hit it off pretty well, and the client didn't see any real need for me to stay around. He said he'd get a cab back to his place after he was done here.
I didn't even get to find out what implant he was having installed, except that it was inside a briefcase the client had been carrying. Oh well, I suppose it didn't matter.
"Very well, I am marking this gig as concluded. Have a good day," I told him and sent a similar text message to Mrs Okada. Humming to myself, I stepped out of the clinic and turned left down a fairly well-lit street and the quickest way to return back to my apartment.
However, after about ten metres into the small street, I stopped humming and frowned. The street was too quiet. It's too well-lit and too quiet. There should be other people around here. It wasn't a busy street, but it wasn't a totally quiet street either.
An instinct causes me to turn around and pull out my pistol as I see a slight flickering distortion, ' Thermoptic camouflage?!' I tried to bring the pistol around to bare at the ghost that was closing in on me fast, but it was moving as fast as I was, maybe faster and right before I started to squeeze the trigger as I lined up a shot, I took a strong hit to my solar plexus, doubling over. The ghost used this opportunity to quickly and efficiently disarm the pistol out of my hand, causing it to clatter on the ground.
Hand-to-hand fighting is not my strong suit. I had learned how to throw a punch just from being around in the gym in my building on a daily basis, but it seemed like I was being worked over by an artist. I jumped backwards, hoping to create some space while simultaneously triggering my monowire to pop out. Growling, I scythed a loop of the deadly wire at my assailant, moving quicker than most people could see but he, she, it casually dodged out of the way, looking as if they had just taken a casual step back when I knew dodging me like that was a lot harder than that looked.
I darted out with the wire three more times, once causing the invisible person to look like they were actually dodging me, but at least I was keeping them at somewhat of an intermediate distance.
I wasn't one to be stupidly self-confident. I wasn't a shounen protagonist that would allow myself to be beaten down by an enemy just to get stronger. That wasn't how the world worked. I triggered my Trauma Team subscription internally using my operating system and internal biomonitor to call in a rescue alert.
A soft, kind female voice in my head said, "Greetings, Taylor. If you are conscious, please assume-KSSSSSTT." What the fuck? I was being jammed and broad spectrum. Phone and data were out now, too. Trauma had gotten the call and might know where I was, but maybe not precisely. It kind of depended. But what was sure was they weren't getting any more telemetry, and if this ninja motherfucker knocked me out or cut my head off, he, she, or it could drag me off somewhere they couldn't find me.
' Alright, fuck this,' I thought and turned around and started to run away, directly away from the threat, but skidded to a halt when I saw about a half-dozen armed and armoured men blocking the street. These fucks I could see, at least. Their weapons looked a bit odd until I finally catalogued them all as non or less-lethal weapons. So they were trying to incapacitate me. That didn't really bode well, but these were a lot higher class than Scavs, so at least that wasn't what was waiting for me if they got me.
That made some things easier. It was a lot harder to subdue a person alive when they were able, willing and capable of killing you. I started moving again, at my fastest speed, dodging some sort of net shot out of a rifle-looking object and a taser, lashing out and taking the arm clean off one of the men ahead of me. While using my monowire in a series of dangerous one-handed whipping attacks, I grabbed the anaesthetic grenade off my hip and awkwardly pulled the pin and tossed it directly in front of me, clouds of smoke-like gas billowing out of it shortly thereafter as I stood directly in the centre of the expanding gas cloud.
The gas was opaque and a sort of maroon colour and was hiding my presence; although I felt it somewhat start to affect me, I didn't move out of its radius. This was specifically designed to be less effective on my own biology, and it would take at least two minutes of constant exposure to actually incapacitate me, while I could see, barely, all the men surrounding me start to drop after no more than ten seconds.
I reeled back my monowire into my arm and decided my best bet was just to run straight out, past the group of downed mooks. The ninja behind me, hopefully, was prevented from entering the gas cloud, but I honestly didn't know what kind of load-out Mr Invisible had. Maybe he had a full respirator. It was standard equipment on most corporate extraction teams. Was that what this was? I couldn't see how it could be; I had been keeping a very low profile.
I started running straight out, but no more than a second after I cleared the cloud, something slammed on me from above, knocking me down and skidding me face-down on the street for a half metre. I caught a glimpse of the fucking ninja on my back, visible now like he was fucking Super Mario, and I was a Koopa Troopa before he casually touched the back of my head, discharging some sort of electricity attack directly into my skull.
After that, there was just blackness.
I woke up in a comfortable chair, although the aches and soreness told me I wasn't actually unconscious that long. I had a bit of a headache, which wasn't surprising, and I immediately checked any kind of connectivity but couldn't get anything. Surely they couldn't still be running a broad-spectrum jammer in the middle of Night City? That would get noticed.
However, when my eyes started working better after going through a safe-mode reboot cycle, I realised I was sitting in a chair in the middle of a fairly clean-looking room, inside a cage. A cage constructed of wire mesh. A faraday cage, then. The cage was surrounded by the now-awake group of men in armour and weapons, although one of them was sans an arm and looking surly about it. This was, at least, a professional enough organisation that injured mooks received prompt first aid, at least.
Directly in front of me, sitting in a plain metal chair, was that fucking ninja. He wasn't wearing a helmet now, and looked average and personable, a middle-aged blonde man. I wanted to decapitate him. He must have realised what I thought because a British voice calmly said, "I would advise against that, Miss Hebert." I didn't have one of those bracelets on my arm to stop me from yanking out my monowire, but he was very close to me, and honestly, I thought my chances were nil, so I just sighed and stopped myself. Even if I intended to attack, it was better to wait until chance gave me a better opportunity instead of doing it when he was ready and waiting for it.
Who the hell has British accents these days, anyway? I growled, "Who are you, and what do you want?" Although I wasn't really in the best position to make demands, it wasn't really in me to accept my captivity without being a bitch about it.
"Just for you to answer a few questions. You notice that I am being quite civil with you; that is because either you will be dead soon or not, and there is no reason to be uncouth about these matters. Do you know what this machine is?" the excessively polite ninja asked, indicating a table with a briefcase. It was one of those metal-style industrial briefcases, the kind you expect the President's nuclear button to be carried in. It was open to reveal a complicated-looking electronic device.
I frowned at it and then identified it with a little bit of dread. "A trainable brain image scanner." In the popular vernacular, they were just called mind readers, but it wasn't actually how they worked. Still... they were not too far off, either and were the standard in very high-end interrogation technology, although it generally would take quite some time to get a baseline neural map for someone — after you did, you could run word associations against them. You didn't even need them to answer your questions verbally.
The devices were originally invented decades and decades ago, before the first neural interfaces, to give people that were paralysed an effective interface to computers, but these days they were only used for this niche application of separating people from their secrets.
Supposedly, some high-end espionage cyberware could defeat these devices, but it wasn't like I fucking had any of that.
"Yes, precisely," he said as he pulled out a cap that was covered in electrodes from the device and casually extended it and his hand, offering it to me. "If you don't mind, Miss Hebert."
His hand was quite close to me now. This was what was called a chance. After installing my after-market fingernails, I had to make a number of changes to them. I had to install a mechanism that hid the bioactive pads inside my fingernail, covered by a little sliding door that I could trigger in my operating system. Otherwise, I would tend to paralyse about half the patients I saw at work.
Regular nitrile gloves may as well have been tissue paper. The nails weren't sharp, but they were still made out of metal and would go straight through such gloves. Then if I had to touch a patient or control their bleeding, I would paralyse them. That wouldn't be good; I probably would get in trouble for that.
Now though? I triggered the mechanism, which exposed the bioactive pads and reached out to take the cap from his hand, and at the same time, jabbed one of my nails directly into his exposed palm, getting a startled look from him... and that was it.
"Was that... cyanide or something?" he asked, casually, after a moment of nothing happening.
I frowned at him, glancing between his hand and face and using all the clues to realise that the man in front of me was borged more than a half-dozen Maelstrom gangers. In fact, I was pretty sure I was staring at a Gemini full-body replacement now, based on how it felt pushing my nail through the top layer of skin on his palm and the carefully generic and symmetrical facial features. Switching my modified Kiroshi's through a number of scan modes made me much more confident. Infrared was wrong for a person, and now that I had noticed it, the way he breathed wasn't one hundred per cent congruent with human biology; it was just a gesture that he was doing, I thought.
