That didn't mean you wouldn't feel emotions about them, though, because there had been both films and novels that I had read that caused me to cry like a baby, but the purpose was to untangle the Gordian knot of post-traumatic stress before it got too large. You'd still have to work through all of your experiences, but the idea was to head off irrational self-destructive feedback loops before they got too carried away. Honestly, I intended to take a dose of the drug myself when I got home too. I was just trying not to think about things right now.
I didn't know if administering a barely tested psychoactive Tinkertech drug to David was the correct decision. Still, I thought that I probably would have wanted it myself right after hearing that my mom had died, especially since I had been trying to call her on the phone at the time of the accident. It had been almost impossible to separate the irrational guilt I had felt for years. I knew, intellectually, that there was no way to know she was driving when I called, as well as that it was her responsibility not to be distracted while driving, but there was no way I could have emotionally felt that, much less even admit it. It wasn't until, well, maybe a year ago, that I came to this conclusion.
Watching your mother get, effectively, murdered in front of you... no, I thought what I was doing was the correct decision, even if, as I hoped, I made it home in time to stabilise her. David was intelligent, but little boys were little boys, and little boys were stupid. There was a vast gulf between intelligence and smarts. He was likely thinking some ridiculous thing about how he should have been able to save her, and it was best to head off the guilt feedback loop as soon as possible. All the drug would do would allow him to look back on the events honestly instead of focusing on the emotions he was feeling at the time.
Nodding, I glanced at Kiwi as I continued to ventilate her, squeezing the bag rhythmically with a free hand. Glancing at her neck, I sighed and composed a text message to Johnny Leung. I needed him to meet me at the parking garage with a few things. A gurney would be best, but I didn't have one. But I did have some immobilisation devices. I would get a lot of stares just carrying her back up to my clinic, but if I kept using four stacks of ten thousand eddies and duct tape as a make-shift C-spine collar? While carrying a suspiciously full duffle bag? No, that wouldn't fly, even in my building.
Looking ahead at a minor traffic jam, I started hyperventilating again before catching myself and frowning, trying to find a way around it on the net, but the current path seemed to be the fastest route, even including the traffic. Still, it would likely double the estimated time to return to my building, which I didn't like the sound of at all.
Sighing, I started writing a message to Wakako, although I was ignoring her attempts to call me at the moment. I definitely wasn't going to make our meeting, and she would have to come to see me at my home. She also needed to know what had happened, especially since Jean was still, theoretically, alive.
I couldn't imagine he was in particularly good shape after being ejected from a previously moving vehicle. I hoped that the driver of the large truck we collided with wasn't injured too badly, but our van had hit it obliquely, tipped over and spun out. But she needed to know, and she had a strong motive to track him down as he almost stole from her and almost ruined the whole gig. I couldn't think about him anymore, though, because when I did, I started slightly dropping into a homicidal rage, which wasn't helpful to me at all right now.
Wakako was also the one for whom I had made tentative plans for my "ace in the hole" plan, which, the more I thought about it, the more I felt I probably needed to enact. "Ace in the hole" was Alt-Dad's term, and it made it sound much cooler than it was. To be more accurate, I could have called it the "she bravely turned her tail and fled" plan.
I'd like to say that I spent the rest of the car ride plotting my revenge, but I honestly just never wanted to see Jean again. There was a very good chance he only managed to get away to die of some internal injuries shortly after. If that wasn't the case, I didn't think anything I was willing to do would be worse than what Wakako would likely plan out. I just wanted him dead; I didn't have a large organisation and reputation as a fixer that demanded that people who betrayed me be made an object lesson.
Shaking my head, I just waited for the ride to be over while doing a little first aid on myself. My liver was in a failover mode; although I didn't think it was damaged, some of the arterial connections to it were. I went ahead and shut it down completely, for now, though, as I didn't need slow internal bleeding in case there was damage that wasn't being detected. Although the liver was a vital organ necessary for survival, it would take some time for me to die without it. Toxins had to build up, after all. My nanosurgeons had already stopped most of the bleeding in my organic bits, so I wasn't really in that much acute danger anymore.
It took almost twenty minutes to get back instead of the ten I had estimated. I took manual control of the van as it turned into my Megabuilding's parking structure. I didn't drive to my spaces, but directly next to the elevators, where I saw Johnny Leung and a few other minions. I didn't know how the hierarchy of the Tyger Claws worked, but the idea that Johnny was in some sort of supervisory capacity was hard to imagine. Thankfully, I saw the bag of my equipment at his feet. I had brought a small trauma bag with me on the gig, but mainly just first aid supplies, most of which I had on top of the pile of cash.
I kept the van running but opened the driver's door and yelled, "Johnny! Come here; bring that bag."
He walked... nay, he moseyed over to the open driver's side door, thrust the bag out to me and said, "Here you go, ma'am." I grabbed it quickly and pulled it into the car, setting it on the lap of the unconscious man I had carjacked. I unzipped the bag and pulled out a number of things, including one of my ventilators which I regretted not taking with me on the gig.
Ripping a ventilator circuit out of the plastic bag, I quickly set it up and programmed it to provide the best ventilation possible, given the fact that I didn't have any oxygen bottles with me. That shouldn't really be an issue, though, as she stopped breathing due to physical trauma to her spinal cord, preventing her hypothalamus from transmitting signals that keep her body in homeostasis. It wasn't like she had pneumonia or injuries to her lungs and needed one hundred per cent oxygen, although that would have been better.
I pulled the cash carefully off her neck, replacing it with a C-spine collar and hummed. Then I took two of the four stacks of cash that I used to immobilise her neck and stuffed them down the shirt of the unconscious man. I was so worried that I didn't even blush at the sight of his muscled chest and abdomen.
Getting out of the front of the van, I walked around to the back to get everything. I picked up the duffle bag first, carrying it via a strap as I settled the running ventilator just below Kiwi's breasts, resting against her tummy as I then lifted her out of the van. I gave Johnny a side-eye and said, "I need one of your men to drive this vehicle somewhere safe that isn't here and leave it there with this guy in the passenger seat. Make sure nobody steals anything from the van or the guy."
Johnny had remained quiescent as I unloaded the van and lifted Kiwi out using my hand to expertly cradle her head to prevent any further damage. He didn't comment on the obviously injured woman in my arms other than a slight tilting of his head.
Johnny was wearing a pair of genuine Levi's, a faux-leather gun belt that also had a shorter version of a katana's sheath stuffed in a loop on the opposite hip to his pistol. I knew such a smaller sword was called something else, but I couldn't recall the actual word in Japanese, nor did I particularly care. He also had a pair of cowboy boots and a cowboy hat. I thought he looked kind of silly, but honestly, I owed him a lot if Gloria could be saved. After I made my request, he hummed for a moment before turning to one of the men and saying in Japanese, " Tanaka, take this vehicle to the parking garage across the street from Jinguji and leave it there, yeah? Do not molest or take anything from the man or the van. Return immediately on the NCART."
The mook nodded and jumped into the driver's seat, and started driving away after Johnny closed the back doors of the van for me. I started walking quickly to the elevator. If Kiwi wasn't in my arms, I would be running.
I quizzed Johnny about what happened while we walked, getting a better understanding. I was pretty sure this was the friend that Ruslan implied was in the process of kidnapping Gloria and David. Kidnapping two people when you only had one person to do it seemed foolish, and there was no telling what precisely happened.
We did get a few stares from the looky-loos as we walked to my apartment, but it wasn't exactly that unusual a sight, I supposed. I had injured people brought to me by the Claws, although not that often. I eyed the janitorial worker who was sullenly cleaning up what had to be the remains of blood stains off the wall right next to my door. From what Johnny had told me, he was a decisive man, at least which I approved of. He had shot the guy almost before he left my clinic.
I opened my door with my implants, suddenly scared as to what I would find inside. All Johnny had told me was that Kumo-kun started to do things that he found quite disturbing, which sounded about right, but I wouldn't know if Gloria was salvageable until I entered the room. However, unlike Schrödinger's cat, what had happened had already happened. There was no quantum superposition to collapse here, so remaining outside would just be rank cowardice. Sighing, I stepped inside quickly, being followed by the Samurai Gunman.
"Ah, good, the Demon Wind left," Johnny said, his tone brightening as I looked for a place I could set Kiwi down, frowning at the poor choices all around. Finally, I cleaned my long workbench off as well as I could and rested her there for a moment as I walked over to see the state of Gloria, wincing as my eyes took in her injuries.
Although I was curious about this Demon Wind, I asked him, "Can you see if Mr Jin will lend me the gurney in Clouds' clinic?" There was a rolling gurney in that room, kind of like what I would have found in a hospital back in Brockton Bay, with no technology installed at all, nothing as my biobed had. But it would prevent her from waking up and rolling off my work table, and killing herself.
Johnny rubbed the back of his neck, "He's in a meeting with the bosses, but I 'spect he wouldn't have an issue. Let me go get it."
I ignored Johnny leaving as I looked down at Gloria's body. The sensors that Kumo-kun placed on her were, of course, reporting that she had flatlined and that she had no detectable SPo2 levels, which wasn't surprising because the pulse oximeter sensor was on her finger. With the vampire cuff on, she would not have any oxygen or blood perfusing her extremities at all.
I unclipped the sensor and clipped it onto her earlobe, getting a good reading of about ninety per cent, which was a good sign. I let out a sigh, seeing that Kumo-kun had succeeded. I didn't know how long her brain was without oxygen, but it didn't seem to be that long, given Johnny's story and Kumo-kun had performed the procedure correctly.
The damage to her body was... catastrophic, though. Much more than what I was expecting two shots from a shotgun to accomplish. I noticed the likely weapon the dead man used as I walked into the clinic and went and picked it up, frowning. It was a short-barreled, break-action, double-barreled shotgun. Opening the breach, I ejected two shotgun shells that were much larger than twelve gauge. Writing on the side of the weapon was in Cyrillic text, and part of it read in all caps, "ЦНИИТОЧМАШ."
My Kiroshi optics switched automatically to a measuring mode, detecting my intent with the scanner pulling up and measuring the barrel to be almost exactly 23 millimetres. That was a significantly larger diameter than a twelve gauge and instantly answered my question as to the extent of Gloria's injuries. It looked like she had been shot in the chest four, five or six times instead of twice like Johnny suggested.
Shaking my head, I tossed the weapon aside and put on some nitrile gloves and turned to her body, mentally vacillating between a few treatment plans as I inspected the damage close up. I was now positive that I could save her life, so I relaxed some, but I wasn't sure I could save much of her body.
Every organ in her torso was damaged beyond repair, and her body had already begun necrotising due to the lack of oxygen, although that could be fixed. Her spine was completely destroyed from below the brainstem. Everything was just fucked. If I had unlimited time, I was certain I could repair everything, but I was very worried that I didn't.
When the door opened, I spun around, my hand dropping to the pistol on my thigh for a moment before I recognised Johnny rolling in a hospital-style gurney. "Put it over here," I ordered him while I removed the gloves I was wearing and tossed them into a special red medical waste trash receptacle that I kept on hand. I easily picked up Kiwi again and placed her carefully in the bed, and spent a couple of minutes connecting an IV to her and starting some opiates and other sedatives to keep her from waking up.
Kiwi was in critical condition, but any hospital in Night City could handle her injuries, but that was asking for her to be murdered. I was worried about the same for Gloria, too, actually. I honestly didn't know how much time I had, but I was hoping I could ask Wakako's opinion when she came around. She had already texted me, telling me she would arrive when she could.
The problem was that our "car accident" would be quickly investigated and determined to be something else. The van was shot to shit, and there was a high likelihood that it would be linked to the running street battle that occurred not too far from the accident site. If that happened, Biotechnica would muscle in on the investigation. Ruslan's body was right there and could be identified. In fact, all of our genetic material was in the van. Mine, obviously, was from getting shot. Kiwi's nose was broken in the crash, and Jean went through a window.
I had wanted to torch the van before I left, but I didn't want to do it while carrying Kiwi; plus, I didn't have that much experience doing anything like that. I suppose I could have cut the fuel line easily enough with the van on its side, but I didn't have anything handy to light the subsequent fuel on fire, and I knew that randomly shooting a puddle of CHOOH2 didn't actually set it on fire, despite what the films and BDs would like you to believe.
