Still, there was a small number around Japantown as it was a subculture that seemed to be a little bit more popular in the Japanese and Chinese areas. Surely, not little Hiro, though?
I asked him sweetly, "Hiro-chan, why are your eyes' iris pattern set on 'furry'?"
This caused him to scowl and swear up and down, "Fucking gonk Ripper; I told kaa-san we shouldn't have gone there. Not only does looking at things close up make my head feel bangin', but the fucking software on these things is all fucked up! I can't answer my phone as I should, and I can't change the iris patterns; that was the only cool part about these stupid eyes. When I try, the whole system freezes and reboots."
I took in everything he said and asked for clarification, "Clarification. Bangin' means bad, right?" Because I was pretty sure I had heard the term also refer to things in a positive way in different contexts.
"Yeah, bitch! I mean, yes, Miss Taylor, sorry my head hurts," he said, then quickly changed his tune at the narrowing of my eyes.
I sighed and took my breakfast from him, setting the meal on my worktable for a moment and slapped the seat of my biobed, which was currently in its normal "chair" mode, "Hop up, let's take a look, then."
I glanced at my food wistfully, but I had a number of ironclad rules when it came to my workroom and among the most important was "Eat elsewhere." I often did some chemistry out here, and I felt that any chemist that didn't have that rule for their laboratory didn't have a long life ahead of them.
I had come a long way from the girl who had made her first batch of drugs in the kitchen inside the same pot Alt-Taylor used to make Mac and Cheese. I had purified and filtered the end product several different ways since then, but I was curious if Biotechnica would be able to detect the essence of cheese sauce in the sample I gave them and, if so, what they would think.
He waffled a moment in what I thought was either some kind of misplaced male ego thing or fear, saying, "It's not a big deal; it doesn't hurt that much."
I slapped the seat of the chair harder this time and said simply, "Chronic headaches post-ocular implantation could be a symptom of brain damage." That was true if you considered, as I did, that the optical nerves were just a functional extension of the brain. In either case, it could cause permanent damage that was very expensive to fix.
That caused him to gape, and he finally nodded and hopped up onto the chair. I put on some disposable nitrile gloves and plugged a diagnostic cable into the interface socket at the base of his skull, frowning at the inflamed, red skin in and around the newly installed cybernetic system.
Rolling back in my little stool chair, I glanced at the readouts on the Meditech displays, frowning again, "You have a fever and a surgical site infection. Considering this surgery was a transcranial procedure, and both your operating system and optics have direct access to your brain, this is bad." He might have gotten better on all his own, but then again, he might not have and eventually have been rushed to the ER. Still, I had caught it soon enough that it could easily be treated with conventional antibiotics, which I had a number of. I wouldn't have to break out my special sauce version.
He blanched and was suddenly a lot more cooperative. "Stick your arm out; you are also quite dehydrated. I'm going to start an IV, and you're going to sit here while I get some fluids into you. Also, I want to head inside and eat my breakfast real quick. You don't have anywhere to be for the next half-hour, do you?"
He shook his head rapidly, which caused me to raise my eyebrow, "I'd figured you'd have a lot of deliveries to make."
He snorted and said as I quickly started an IV and connected a bag of saline, "I have people for that, Miss Taylor. I still do your deliveries personally most times because you're an important client. But it wasn't like I walked to Hotcake Heaven; I had one of my people do that and just did the drop-off. For important clients, it is important to maintain face-to-face relationships." He said the last bit as though he was quoting someone, and I had to stop from giggling at him, as he was cute as a button. In fact, I nodded at him, lips twitching and turned around, walking over to my medicine cabinet, so he couldn't see me fight it off. I'd seen his "people"; they weren't any older than he was.
Turning around, I carefully compounded some antibiotics, dissolving some sterile powder into saline and then using a disposable syringe to add it to the bag that was running on the boy. I'd send him home with some oral antibiotics as well. I tapped a few keys on the Meditech hardware and triggered a full-systems diagnostic, which would force the entirety of the cyberware installed on the boy to do self-tests and diagnostics, which might take a few minutes. Nodding to him, "Alright, just sit there; I'll be back in a few minutes."
He dug out his phone from his pocket and asked, "You got wireless here?" Sighing, I gave him the password to the public network I had set up for patients before I grabbed my breakfast and took it into the apartment area. Glancing at the food, I nodded at finding the order correct. Sitting down, I destroyed it rapidly, savouring the combination of savoury omelette and sweet syrupy French-toast flavour.
Glancing at the time, I coughed a little at how little time I had spent eating. I was quite hungry. Cleaning up the trash and washing my hands again, I re-entered the front area in time to hear the conclusion of some phone conversation Hiro had.
"..alright, I'll have one on the way, probably not more than an hour from now," he said in his business-tone before disconnecting. Glancing at me, he asked, "Miss Taylor, do you know where I could buy a gun this early in the morning?"
I blinked at him, deducing that someone had called him for a delivery job. I asked him as I put my Ripperdoc-style glove on, tone still slightly aghast, "You're a gun runner, too?"
"No, Miss Taylor... I really just walk; it's better not to stand out to everyone on the street when you're carrying things like that," he said earnestly, educating me like I was stupid. I stared at him for a good ten seconds, trying to see if he was taking the piss with me, but realised the term "gun runner" was very archaic in a city where BudgetArms had gun vending machines.
"I take it you mean an actual, good gun, then, if you're not running to the BudgetArms vending machine?" There was one of those on this floor, too. It was right next to the Nicola vending machine. He didn't even dignify that with a verbal response, only a scoff and nod.
I frowned. Most gun shops didn't open till ten or eleven. I was sure there were some twenty-four-hour places in this town, Night City being what it was, but I certainly didn't know any. However, I had been accumulating guns like nobody's business. I had brought about a dozen home with me from that Wraith encampment, for example, and left even more than that because they were crap or in bad condition. They had a fully-stocked armoury. I asked him, as I popped one of his eyes out of his skull, "What kind does your client want?"
"He just said a good pistol that had select fire," the kid said. That was simple enough, I supposed. I had about ten full-sized Lexingtons from all the ones I picked up, plus Danny's collection. All the full-sized Lexingtons had either a single-shot or fully automatic fire mode, although I honestly didn't think much of that mode unless you had augmented strength and could use muscle to keep the weapon on target. I was strong enough to just barely keep an adequete grouping on the range, so I honestly preferred the three-round burst that the smaller Lexingtons had.
Was it ethical to sell a twelve-year-old boy a gun, I wondered? In this world, it probably was. Plus, I could see the kid was packing already, which I wasn't going to give him shit over. I wouldn't deliver things to people's homes without a gun in this city, even if he screened his clients well and presumably had the protection of the Tyger Claws. I assume he kicked them up a percentage of his take, as I did.
Finally, shrugging, I asked him, "I could sell you a Militech Lexington in 9mm, single-shot or fully automatic, for six hundred eddies." A brand new Lexington had an MSRP of about a thousand, so six hundred eurodollars was a pretty good price for something I got for free. It was probably cheaper than what he could get from a gun store, too.
He stared at me with his one eye, suddenly all business, "It's in good shape? I take my reputation seriously." I strained hard not to roll my eyes at the boy, which would probably have offended him because I understood what he was saying.
"I wouldn't sell it to you if it was in bad shape. It's barely been fired, and I cleaned it myself, oiled and everything. It's almost like new," I assured him truthfully.
He nodded seriously as I took the eye to bits on my workbench, carefully but quickly refurbishing it. The lens was fine, but the aperture was in bad shape, so I wasn't surprised that he was getting headaches when he tried to focus on things close up, assuming those headaches hadn't been mostly caused by his untreated incipient bacterial infection.
I bet his vision was blurry, too, but perhaps he didn't notice if he had naturally had myopia before he got these installed. I think he tried to use the fact that I was preoccupied with repairing his eyes to haggle with me, as he said, "Five hundred, and you include an extra magazine and a holster."
I snorted and riposted with, "Five hundred, but only one magazine and no holster. Five fifty if you want the extra mag and holster." I did have a bunch of holsters, too, and magazines of this type were a dime a dozen.
He said, "Lemme see if my guy wants to pay extra," and started texting on his phone quickly, and after a moment, nodded, "Deal, but the extra mag has to be the 30-round extended version."
This little shit. I did have some of those, and I had little to no use for them as they made carrying the weapon very uncomfortable and impossible to conceal. Still, they were interchangeable with some Militech submachine guns, though, like the Saratoga, which I had a few of as well. Still, I liked the kid's moxie, so I said, "Fine. I'll bring it out when we're done."
Finishing up with this eye, I repeated the procedure on his other, which was in a little better shape, before downloading and reflashing both the optics firmware and the operating system with the latest versions, doing a complete format of his storage as well, after he assured me that he didn't have anything on it worth saving. Both of the implants were second-hand, I was sure, and not only was their software out of date but who knew what the last person left on there.
Glancing at the empty bag of saline, I nodded and sat three pill bottles, one of which was a lot larger, on the little table next to him, "We're about done. How's your vision now?"
"It's great!" he said, which caused me to smile a little.
I nodded, "Good. These first pills are antibiotics. It is important, very important, that you take them as directed. Once every eight hours. So three times a day for five days, OK?" He glanced at me and nodded, seeming to take my statement seriously.
"Next is just some naproxen. It's an anti-inflammatory, standard over-the-counter stuff for fever and pain. Lastly, however, are nanomeds for the shitty installation of your chrome. Every day for sixty days..." I paused, "However... the antibiotics, naproxen and the checkup, I can give you on the house because I like you, but these are kind of expensive. For sixty days, this will cost you about twelve hundred eddies, but I assure you that it is vital that you take them. How do you want to pay?"
This infuriated him, with him cursing at the shitty Ripperdoc that put his implants in again for a moment. Then he sighed and said, "They're really important?"
I nodded.
"I'll give you a two hundred eddie bonus if you accept payment in 'store-credit'," he offered, but I noticed he did use his phone briefly. I assumed he did a net search on the nanomed name, as he even looked in the bottle to make sure they looked like a legitimate product. The fact that he didn't trust anyone made him seem cuter, and I wanted to pinch his cheek.
I considered that. Both the food and his delivery fees had cost me about seventy-five dollars for breakfast, and I did use his services fairly often. I'd probably run out of credit before he ran out of nanomeds. Finally, I nodded and held my hand out to him to shake, "Deal."
He grinned and shook my hand, and I stood up, taking off the Ripperdoc glove and setting it on my workbench for the moment. "I'll go get the pistol. It'll just be a second," I told him and went into my apartment to grab one, an extended mag and a holster. I threw in a small reusable bag that I used for groceries, so he wouldn't have to walk around with a bare pistol. Rather than free plastic bags that you would throw away, most places offered heavier-duty plastic or fabric bags that you could reuse for a eurodollar. A few upper-scale stores had started doing that in Brockton Bay as an environmental measure, but here I felt it was just because petroleum and other plastic feedstocks were scarce.
Handing him the bag, he glanced inside and nodded, sending me the money, using his optics to do so, grinning, "Sweet, they pair fine with my phone now." I noticed his eyes had shifted to a bright blue, which wasn't his natural colour, but they looked nice. He waved and left in a hurry, and I sat there wondering. Already, a lot of people just came in to buy drugs from me to the extent I expanded the products I bought wholesale to things like toothpaste, soaps and other toiletries that people often forget when they're at the store. They were all on one shelf by the entryway.
Could I expand into guns? I definitely had enough initial stock, and I no longer felt that they were an immoral product to sell to the average person. I've had a few people try to offer payment in guns, but offering me a gun was like trying to sell an Inuit person in Alaska ice.
Before I could decide one way or another, the doorbell rang. I assumed it was Hiro and that he had forgotten something, but it turned out to be Mr Jin and a young girl. Was this the girl that was kidnapped? No, looking closer, I saw that it was his daughter. If it was his daughter kidnapped, he would have told me. I let them in.
"Taylor, it's nice to see you. I, and my daughter, wanted to thank you for your help last night. We were able to rescue the girl, along with about a half dozen other young girls and boys. Those, we just dropped off at the NCPD," he told me.
