As such, for real intelligence assets, which I was pretty sure this man was not, I didn't think they would have ever repatriated him after an enemy like me got him in my clutches for an extended period of time. As if reading my mind, he did not keel over, which proved he was just a regular merc, as far as I was concerned, and instead shook his head and said, "Fuck, he's going to kill me and then you for sure."
Grinning, I pounced, "Who is he?" and got a lot of data from that question. The one part my system didn't have as well as the other was I had to pick all the questions and word associations myself. I was pretty sure that the blonde ninja was given a tree to work down with every word I had said, probably using some kind of weak artificial intelligence, which wasn't my forte at all.
Still, I was clever enough to make my own, I felt. He glared at me and refused to answer, but that just made things easier, "Me. Girl. Client. Ninja. Gigs. Speculation. Who hired you to help kidnap me?"
After that, I went through a list of prepared questions I had already thought up. I didn't really need to run through word associations to get the information I wanted, but I might towards the end.
"Who do you think hired you to help kidnap me?"
"What do you know about the person that hired you to help kidnap me?"
"What do you know about me?"
"How much were you paid?"
"What were the past jobs this person hired you for?"
"Do you have any speculation as to the motives of this person for any of these jobs, including the one where you kidnapped me?"
"What about any conversations with this person?"
I was getting some information which I could review on my optics, but it was only enough for me to know I was on the right track. I kept asking him questions for over a half hour, then shifted to word associations both about the ninja and as well as any other secrets he might have, which I could review later. There was no reason not to wring this man out like a sponge, after all. It was likely what would have happened to her.
I stood there, trying to think if I had forgotten anything to ask but shook my head. I nodded to Ruslan, who took out a dart gun with one of the darts we never had actually needed. May as well get some use out of it. It turned out I could make them easily because they were almost exactly like small little hypodermic needles. Ruslan didn't waste time and shot the mercenary captain in the neck like he was an angry gorilla at the zoo.
A second of shocked realisation and expression, along with an attempt to reach up to grab the dart of his neck. That was all it took before he slumped back in the uncomfortable metal chair. Still, I gave him a few minutes before I approached, "Alright, let's get these restraints off of him. Kiwi, double-check his system to make sure he wasn't able to re-enable it or take any kind of notes. Search him again for any electronic devices. Then we'll take him somewhere more interesting where he can wake up. If we're lucky, he will think he got drunk or high. If not, well... he still won't know what the hell happened."
I thought it was silly that the first thing the man said was that "he" would kill him, as she thought it was incredibly unlikely anyone would ever find out anything untoward happened in the first place.
They dropped me off back at the Megabuilding when we were finished, Ruslan commenting with a grin that this was the smoothest job they'd had in some time. Of course, it was; I had planned it!
After I got back to my apartment, I stripped off, letting clothes and underthings fall to the floor and took a long, hot shower. Then I crawled into bed under my heated duvet and sighed.
I felt better, and then again, I didn't. My revenge as pretty mild as Night City went, but it still didn't really feel very good now that it was over with, but at least I might learn something interesting, but perhaps not. This guy had the feeling of what Alt-Dad would probably have called a cut-out.
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The Solo's Manual
The weeks and couple of months following my "revenge" were more or less pretty quiet. No ninjas had shown up, and as far as I could tell, the leader of that mercenary team hadn't realised anything had gone wrong, or if he had, he had decided to keep it to himself. The latter might have made more sense, considering he had been relatively certain he would be murdered.
At first, it kind of felt wrong that he didn't remember anything, but I finally came to the conclusion that he was of no consequence and that everyone of importance, namely myself, had remembered it. So, I didn't care if the bullies of the world themselves were beneficiaries anymore; it was enough for me to know that I had won.
I had worked one additional job with Kiwi's crew, but it was surprisingly pretty tame. It was a similar job to the last one, a defensive mission. However, the employer was an unnamed corporation, and the people we were defending were just regular people in residential areas. The threat was much less than a full-scale gang war and amounted to just preventing Scavs from assaulting them.
I wasn't sure how the Corp knew that Scavs would attack; it could have been anything from detecting such movements through traditional intelligence operations, or it could have been as nefarious as instigating the Scav attack themselves and hiring us to defend their employees as a morale-building exercise. There was really just no telling.
Scavs were a lot less likely to fight to the bitter end; they were after easy prey, after all, so as soon as a few of their groups were wiped out, they cut their losses and departed the area. I hadn't even needed to do anything myself.
It was a gig that, surprisingly, nothing went wrong during. However, I was starting to notice certain behaviour patterns that suggested that both Jean and Ruslan might be experiencing the incipient symptoms of cyberpsychosis. They were still both gregarious and outgoing, but now their humour had a mean edge to it, even if it wasn't directed towards Kiwi or myself.
I had offered them a supply of the antidepressants I had invented and took religiously once a week, but they declined, so all I was able to do was verify that their cybernetics, especially the new pieces they both got installed recently, were installed correctly and start a file of clinical findings on them. I had researched cyberpsychosis more and more, and I was growing more confident that cybernetics generally acted as an amplifier for any existing mental illness. Both Ruslan and Jean were, arguably, well into some parts of anti-social behaviour simply by their past history and current occupations.
It wasn't as though I could really criticise too much, either. I might like to pretend I had no issues myself, but my continuing issues of self-esteem and irrational distrust of authority were not exactly sub-clinical findings. Also, I didn't particularly have problems murdering people anymore if I thought that doing so would protect myself or even if I just thought they were "really bad people." But that wasn't exactly a strange opinion to have in this world.
In fact, my original opinion that violent criminals should be carefully subdued and tried for their crimes would have been seen as incredibly naive. So much so that I was glad that I had never really spoken to anyone about it, as it was incredibly out of character for a Corpo girl.
Honestly, I blamed the PRT back home, and I was more and more perplexed why they treated villains with such kid gloves. It did make me wonder if I could copy the famous containment foam that Dragon, the best tinker in the world, had made, but my only ideas were using organometallic foams, which would more or less work, but you couldn't breathe through it, so it would immediately asphyxiate anyone caught with them.
In between my work weeks at Trauma Team, I began accelerating my plans to sell my antibiotics to, preferably, Biotechnica. I had already finished synthesising it on video camera, carefully explaining each of the steps in the process in such a way that even an undergraduate could likely follow along in the process. That had actually taken quite a bit of time, as I had to create most of the precursors as well, which I left out of the video.
I had just finished visiting the corporate offices of Veritas Corporation in downtown Night City. They were an interesting corporation and had almost as good a reputation as Trauma Team did. They were a European company, and their services were essentially what you would expect some parts of governments to provide, provided in areas where trust in government was non-existent or governments themselves were non-existent.
For example, you could hire them to conduct depositions and to perform binding arbitration, and for my purposes, you could hire them for a number of notary services. Even the government courts wouldn't really trust a notary public these days, but they did trust Veritas Corporation. I left three copies of the video, along with the full steps needed to create the chemical, encrypted, at their offices.
This was a necessary precaution, as I would have to give Biotechnica a sample of the drug to entice them. If the deal fell through, they would definitely follow through on reverse engineering it anyway, so I would need to provide the second party I sold it to proof that I had invented the drug before Biotechnica had, and the European Community, as well as US courts, would trust the timestamps on the digital and physical vaults of Veritas. In my case, the vaults were digital, and while the contents were encrypted by myself, the Veritas Corporation would attest to both their cryptographic hash and the time the files were uploaded, which should be sufficient proof.
My next step was one I was a lot more hesitant about, but I could find no better solution. I definitely couldn't approach them alone, as I wanted to stay anonymous. My distrust of authority extended to those that had authority merely by force of arms; in fact, I probably trusted them the least. Still, I had made an appointment to see Mrs Okada once again.
Walking through the pachinko parlour, I noticed that most of the people here were the same people who were there the first time I was here, months and months ago. Were they animatronic constructs, plants in Wakako's employ, or did people really like pachinko that much? I didn't know.
The guard at the back of the parlour was different while being almost indistinguishable, including the grunts of the last guy. Stepping into her office, I was greeted by the old lady, "Ah, Taylor. Have a seat. You weren't precisely verbose about the reason for this meeting, except that you would be a client. What do you need?"
I sighed, "I need someone to act as an intermediary to a Corp. I have something that is worth a lot of eddies that I want to sell them, but it is intellectual property, so I don't want them to just shoot me and take it, or black bag me and see if they can wring me dry like a dish rag. I want your help in making contact, providing them a sample, and ensuring my anonymity during the exchange if they're interested."
Wakako raised a single eyebrow like Spock and placed her hands on her oversized desk, "I actually get requests like this fairly often, but virtually all of them never pan out to anything or are from people who are delusional. I very rarely proceed with gigs like this because I don't want my Corp contacts to think I am an idiot. You don't look delusional, so tell me more about what you think you have and how much you think it is worth."
"It's a pharmaceutical. A novel one. Specifically, it is an extremely broad-spectrum antibiotic that is very effective at killing single-celled eukaryotes while at the same time not being toxic to human or even animal cells. That last part is the key, as otherwise it would just be a poison and pretty common. It is much more effective than the current state-of-the-art in discriminating nanomachine-based treatments, and I believe it is worth at least one to two billion eurodollars in sales per year," I finished, setting my hands in my lap.
She tilted her head to the side but didn't mention, "If it is as effective as you say, wouldn't it be worth a lot more than that? And how can you be sure it is a novel pharmaceutical and not just kept as a trade secret?"
Those were insightful questions, so I coughed, "Because there are certain complications in utilising it, that would make it suitable only for hospital-based situations where the patient is under the care and supervision of medical professionals. You see, it is so effective in destroying bacteria that a single dose will eradicate the entire body's microflora biome or digestive bacteria that exists in your stomach and intestines. This is treatable, but realistically only in a hospital-based setting. That is the same reason I know it isn't merely a trade secret, as like I mentioned, the current state of the art in medical-based nanomachines can accomplish a similar thing, but it is much more expensive."
"Perhaps they know of it and don't want to introduce a product that would compete with these nanomed-based products?" she asked mildly.
I shook my head, "You of all people should know that there is no real monolithic 'they'. The nanomachine-based immunity treatment is also something that can only be accomplished in a hospital and MedTrans are the market leader in this segment — it is really more of a medical device compared to a pharmaceutical treatment. The patient has to be hooked up to computers the entire time, as discriminating between cells to kill and cells to not to kill is too computationally intensive for nanomeds to do on their own, at least this current generation." This was one of the main reasons I wanted to sell this as a product. It wouldn't shake the entire world up, and would just compete with an existing product line, "We definitely couldn't sell it to MedTrans, but we could sell it to one of the traditional Pharmcorps — I was thinking Biotechnica, as they don't have any similar products this would compete against."
She hummed, "Why not the Trauma Team? They have a lot of pharmaceutical products, and moreover, they have a lot of hospitals. If its a product that can only be used in a hospital setting, that would be a good synergy. Plus, you work there."
I shook my head emphatically, "The fact that I work there would queer that deal. If they managed to find out my identity somehow, they might argue that I invented this product while working for them, and therefore, they own it entirely without compensating me, even if I don't work in a research capacity."
" You invented it? I was worried you had stolen it, possibly from Trauma Team, which was why I mentioned them... You didn't steal the tech from anybody? I won't care if you had," she said amusedly.
