Well, my power invented it, but that was basically me, I felt. I certainly didn't feel bad about taking credit for it, and in fact, I felt a feeling of satisfaction come from my medical sense as if it was happiness I might be getting the accolades I deserved. Silly power, it didn't realise that would likely kill me. I was even a bit leery of admitting this to Wakako, but I did, "Nobody will be looking for this. Yes, I invented it. However, I would like very much if Biotechnica merely thought that it was stolen from a competitor. That's why I'm willing to accept ennies on the eddie as far as price is concerned."
Wakako looked at me for a moment before nodding slowly, "Okay. How do you recommend you prove to me that this thing works, then?"
I fished a small plastic bag with about a half dozen small gel capsules inside and slid it over her desk, "I'm sure you could find someone with a bacterial infection, even a very difficult-to-treat antibiotic-resistant infection that the hospital has given up on since they didn't have the money for the expensive nanomachine treatments." I paused and then explained the eccentricities of the treatment, including that the patient should be near a toilet within twenty minutes of being administered, "After a day, the person will need to undergo bacterial replacement therapy, preferably at a hospital. Although, if you want to keep the patient's sudden condition confidential, which I would appreciate, it might be alright to do it at home, too, if you had the supplies. I just wouldn't recommend it for patient outcome reasons."
The small packet disappeared quickly, and she said, "Okay. I'll tentatively accept this gig, then, subject to verification. Now, we need to discuss costs. I doubt very much you will be able to afford this type of job if you intend to finance it yourself."
"Hmm... I'm not sure. I might be able to, but I thought a contingency basis might be the best if you're interested. That would give you some skin in the game, as well, and would help motivate you to help me achieve the best price possible as well as for the operation to succeed without me getting murdered or kidnapped," I said mildly.
That caused the old lady to grin widely, "Now, let's talk numbers."
I had offered ten per cent, and she had countered with forty, but eventually, we had settled on twenty-five per cent for the old bat. I had told her that the minimum I had to get was one million eurodollars, and that just caused her to laugh, and that assuming I wasn't bullshitting her that we shouldn't accept less than three, and she would try for four. That would put the payout in the range of a tenth of one to two per cent of expected annual revenues, which was the going rate for stolen technology that wasn't patented.
She agreed with me on Biotechnica, as she had a few contacts in the corporation, but she felt that it would take at least a couple of months before we could provide them with a sample. After that point, she agreed with me that the clock would be running.
I didn't particularly know how long it would take them to reverse engineer a synthesis for the chemical, but as it wasn't chemically related to either existing natural or synthetic antibiotics, I felt that it might take the research a year or two to do it, so at that point, if they didn't respond favourably within two to three months we would proceed to offer it to the second choice, which was Arasaka.
Wakako seemed to detest Arasaka, though, despite having connections to a number of their subsidiaries, which made me feel a little confused. It was probably something personal, though, so I didn't press. It surprised me a little bit that Arasaka had a pharmaceutical division, though, but it probably shouldn't have since they were pretty much the definition of a conglomerate.
She said it would take her a week or so to verify my claims, and we would discuss things further then. As such, I was preparing myself to work a solo gig. I had taken a few from Wakako, but they were mostly low-paying jobs, like medical consults or bodyguard work. I also declined one where she offered a job with medical services for a captive, and I felt that it was likely I would be helping prolong someone's torture, so I turned it down.
This one, however, was a job to investigate a location in the Badlands. Apparently, Wakako's client was some manner of a contraband smuggler, using long-range unmanned aerial vehicles to fly his contraband into Night City, and a number of them have been lost around a specific stretch of the Badlands.
Although there was a bonus if I could, somehow, take action if I found proof of something going on, this was really only a recon job which was the only reason I had taken it. The reasons the drones had been downed could be numerous, but Wakako was expecting it to be some kind of human intervention, and in the Badlands, that usually meant the Wraiths, which were something like a much more organised and competent group of Scavs, that usually only operated outside of major metro areas.
I wasn't like most girls from a Corpo background in thinking that absolutely any nomad was the same as the psychos, but there wasn't any shortage of the psychos. Some of the files that Alt-Dad had left behind included general information about any of the movers and shakers in and around the city. Data on nomads was a bit more sporadic since there were a number of nomad families, and they didn't always loiter around cities, but Wraiths were a bit different in that they often did — preying on people stupid enough to leave the protective confines of a city's metro area, kind of like me, actually.
My car was a pretty good fit for driving in the Badlands, it even fit the aesthetic more or less, but I wasn't stupid enough to drive straight to this location and ask anyone there if they had seen anything suspicious lately, perhaps some drugs falling from the sky? That would get me killed.
Honestly, the entire job was pushing right up against what was acceptable in my risk profile, and I would not have accepted it had I not had a stealth system installed. But I was kind of curious about the Badlands, and if I had to be honest regular people didn't frighten me that much anymore. That feeling was a bad sign and something I had to be careful to reign in because a big enough bullet could kill me regardless of who shot it.
Pulling up to the checkpoint that separated Night City from the Badlands, I didn't get hassled by the NCPD manning it. They even double-checked that I had a full tank of CHOO2 and a lot of water, which I did even though I only intended to drive thirty kilometres at the most. I was obviously well armed, even if I was forgoing the Kang Tao submachine gun this time in favour of a small folding stock scout rifle with a sixteen times optic and suppressor. The suppressor wouldn't do much to hide the sonic boom of the supersonic 7.62mm NATO projectile, but it would help a lot in preventing someone from noticing a muzzle flash, especially at night like it was now.
The rifle was Alt-Dad's, a customised version of a bolt-action rifle made by Steyr, and the cop manning the barricade saw it in my passenger seat and nodded, "Nice rifle."
"Thanks, it was my father's," I told him honestly.
He hummed, "Well, be safe out there." I nodded and pressed my foot against the accelerator, smoothly taking off into the lawless desert.
[Taylor, you have entered a degraded service area. Trauma Team response times to your locations can exceed ONE FIVE minutes! Please take care!]
My target area was in the southwest, but before driving off to my destination, I drove straight south to the former town of Laguna Bend, which was now a giant reservoir, the last of the straggling citizens of the town having been dragged out over sixteen months ago. I remembered watching a News piece about it that characterised them as crazy people who were getting in the way of Night City's need for fresh water.
The truth was that they were probably getting in the way of something but judging from the rainbow sheen on top of the water detectable even after sunset. There was clearly some chemical contamination of the reservoir.
I pulled my car in next to a shack that was built next to the bank of the reservoir, figuring it empty but I was surprised when a man stumbled out as I was leaving my car with my rifle.
"Ya hear to finally kill me?!" the man asked, his speech slurred slightly and a bit uneven on his feet after taking in my militant appearance.
I didn't see a weapon on him, but I kept the muzzle of my rifle carefully pointed in the air but still in a position where I could sweep the muzzle in his direction very quickly; it was a fairly lazy port arms stance. I peered at him some more, "I don't even know who you are. Why the hell are you living next to a toxic lake?"
"Cuz that fucking lake used to be my home!" he said angrily, gesticulating wildly.
I hummed and walked past him to stand on his deck. His house wasn't much, it was a mobile home, but it was set right on the bank of the reservoir. That alone made me think that the company NC Dams was having a lot more trouble than they were letting on. Not only was the water here obviously toxic, but allowing an agitator to live right at the bank? Alone? Why hadn't they shot him? They clearly hadn't cared much about the rule of law when they flooded his entire town.
Even if they didn't want to shoot him if it might have been bad optics, why hadn't they just closed the dam's gates briefly? It would only take a day or two to completely flood away the man's house. That could have been managed well enough that I wouldn't have been surprised if it got thirty seconds on one of the late-night comedy shows in an "idiot Luddite does something stupid and pays the price" type of segment. Good for a laugh at his expense. The fact that neither of those things had happened was telling me things weren't roses at NC Dams Limited.
"Anyway, I'm not here to shoot you, old-timer. I was just told the reservoir looked nice at night, and I have to admit that rainbow sheen does look rather pretty, even if it doesn't seem very healthy," I told him, carefully positioning myself so that he remained in my peripheral vision as I used my 8X optical zoom and infrared vision to look at the opposite side of the reservoir's bank. Two twenty-five metres, according to my Kiroshi's built-in rangefinder. That was good enough. I carefully clicked the optics on the rifle a few times, setting it to as close to that as I could, but I was guessing.
Keeping him carefully in sight, I used his deck as a brace as I took sight of an empty can on the other side of the reservoir. Just because I wasn't here to shoot him didn't mean I trusted some crazy prospector-looking guy. He didn't actually look that old, despite me calling him old-timer. He could have been in his late forties or early fifties, but he looked unkempt as hell.
That caused him to snort, "That it ain't." He looked at me slowly, then sighed and said, "Wait a second." He departed back into his house, and I casually put my hand on my sidearm at my side in case he returned with a weapon, but instead, he came out with a fancy set of Zeiss binoculars. Raising an eyebrow, I watched him track my target. He asked, "That can near the water's edge?"
I nodded and shouldered my rifle again, going on one knee to brace the barrel on his deck's wooden handrail. I carefully sighted down the can, and he said, "Go ahead, send it." Realising what he was doing, I squeezed the trigger gently, trying to surprise myself with the report of the rifle just like Alt-Dad taught Alt-Taylor.
"High, one metre. Left half a metre," he said dispassionately. I was surprised I had gotten that close on my first try. I wasn't exactly a markswoman, much less a sniper; however, my increased strength, the steadiness of my hands and my reflexes allowed me to fake it a little bit. I worked the bolt action quickly and adjusted slightly before firing again.
"High, close. Left, close," he said, and I casually corrected the crosshairs before firing a third time again.
"Hit," he said. With that, I reacquired the bouncing oil can and shot it three more times until the magazine was empty, nodding with satisfaction.
I sat my rifle down and glanced at him, my medical sense tingling. "Thanks. Now sit down for a moment." He frowned at me but took a seat in his lawn chair that he had on his deck.
"Oh, now is when you're going to shoot me," he said knowingly.
I rolled my eyes and said, "Are you suicidal? Nobody is here to shoot you! I'm a Med Techie; just sit there for a moment." I didn't have any of my equipment with me, except for my highly calibrated eyes, fingers and a flashlight, but those would be enough.
Sighing, I said, "You need to leave this fucking house. You're starting to show signs of chronic low-level organophosphate toxicity, as well as possible exposure to heavy metals."
"But this is my fucking home!" he growled, waving his hands.
I stared at him, "And if you don't want it to be your fucking grave, leave. At first, I thought you were just drunk, but that doesn't explain everything. It's clear you have some money; ordinary people wouldn't be able to set this mobile home up here, complete with power hookups. Get the fuck away from this place, or you won't last another six months." I paused and then shook my head, "Even I'm not planning to come back here now."
He sighed and went limp in the chair, "Ain't mains power, but some off-grid solar and battery system." He then shook his head, "Maybe you're right. It just doesn't feel right what they did."
I shrugged, grabbed my rifle and said, "If it makes you feel better, they're undoubtedly going to go out of business. This was supposed to supply the city and Biotechnica's farms with fresh, clean water. That's not fucking going to happen without a lot of expensive remediation. I doubt that is in the budget."
He growled, "I've thought that for months, girl, but that just makes it worse! They did all this for nothing, then!" He then stared off into space and said, "Except... maybe... you're not wrong, I do got some money — not here though, iffen you plan to rob and murder me... but enough in the bank that maybe I could order a big bag of puts contracts on NC Dams Limited. Their share price hasn't moved at all, but that can't last. Maybe you're right. If I can't have my old town back, at least I can get rich off these bastards' failure."
Puts contracts? A quick net search told me that was one of the ways to "short" a publically traded company. It was a type of security that allowed you to make money if the share price of the company fell, but if it didn't, then you lost the entire amount you spent on the contract. I didn't precisely know how it worked, but I mentally made a note with my deck to look into such short positions on NC Dams Limited when I got back to the city. The only problem with that was the stock and securities market was undoubtedly corrupt.
