Speaking of which, "I need to acquire a full biosculpt setup as soon as possible. If possible, I'd rather not have to pay full price for it, either." I was basically asking her to send some of her mercs to steal it for me, which caused Wakako's eyes to gleam.
"Why, what a coincidence; I happen to know a few clinics that are owned by Biotechnica. I can get you what you need for fifty thousand," she replied, probably amused at combining revenge and profit. Considering that was one-tenth of what such a setup cost, I felt it was a good deal and also approved of stealing it from Biotechnica. She coughed and said, "Oh, that reminds me... the news I was going to give you. I think you'll be happy to know that I found Jean."
I winced. I was kind of glad that he wouldn't be looming after me in the future, somehow like a jump scare in a scary movie, just waiting for the right time to startle me. That said, he was my friend once. I didn't want to participate or even know about what was likely going to happen to him; I just wanted to never see him again. I sighed, "Where was he?"
"He was fairly injured but managed to get away. Stole a car, similar to you, although the driver wasn't treated as well as yours. It would have probably taken me longer to pick him up, but he went straight to a net runner with a cred chip he claimed had two million eddies on it, as well as a virus," she raised an eyebrow at that and spread her arms wide, "Turns out it didn't have any money on it, but by that time the word was already out that I wanted him so the runner just called me and we picked him up."
I sighed. I didn't even bother pulling that datashard out of my bag when I fled the van, so I hadn't noticed that it was, apparently, missing. From this story, it sounded like he had klepped it before the accident, perhaps as soon as I handed him the backpack, which would track. Poor fucker. "I, of course, transferred the money more or less immediately, but I pretended like I still needed the datashard so as not to rub the Biotechnica people's faces in it. I'm sure they did the same thing with the data I gave them, but they pretended to take the chip with them too." I shook my head, "That's standard Corpo politeness, but I guess Jean wouldn't recognise it."
Wakao just nodded, wincing, although her eyes were deeply amused, glittering with promised malice. All she said was, "Ouch. Poor guy."
After that, we discussed how we would split the money. Although I trusted her somewhat, I demanded that she take the bag o' cash first, and then once I had a clean amount of cash, I would transmit the digital currency to wherever she wanted. She was fine with that arrangement. I declined her offer to go "speak with" Jean, merely stating that I never wanted to see him again.
After that, we would get all of my belongings moved to a temporary safe house.
As I was loading most of my personal belongings into boxes, the sample of Dr Hasumi's genome arrived, along with a data storage implant in a clear plastic static-resistant bag. I called Wakako immediately, and she said, "Oh, I thought I would give you this too. We took it out of Dr Hasumi, but it is taste-locked, too."
I raised an eyebrow. It was a somewhat high-end data storage implant, similar to the one I had taken out of Kumo-kun's brain, except instead of encrypting through a continual brain scan, it encrypted through a taste lock of the user's genome. It was a little unusual for a random doctor to have, but people did like their privacy. I asked, "Why in the world did you keep it, then?"
"Oh, simple. SNDL," she said over the phone and then at my silence, she said, "Store now, decrypt later. Who knows when some advance in cryptology will occur that would allow us to decrypt it easily? And information can stay valuable for decades, even information from a dead woman. We don't know who paid for her education. Perhaps her family inheritance paid for it, but maybe she's the secret lover of Yorinobu Arasaka, and knowing that would be worth tons. It's very cheap to do, so why not?"
I supposed that made sense, but I said firmly, "She had better not be the secret lover of Yorinobu Arasaka."
That caused Wakako to laugh, "Oh, there's almost a zero per cent chance of that. There is a chance she got her education paid for by a Corp for some reason, though, but you already knew that risk. Maybe you could find out more about her through the data stored in her implant, even if it is just to improve your legend." Legend, that was another spy word that seemed to roll off Wakako's tongue easily.
I was silent, and then Wakako asked, "Have you decided on your destination?" She knew I intended to leave Night City for at least a year, maybe longer. Not only did I not want to be someone who popped up here as soon as Taylor Hebert disappeared, but I kind of wanted a break from this city. Although I knew it would draw me back eventually because there was something magnetic about the place.
I sighed and double-checked the encryption on the call before saying, "The city of angels. Going north to the Free States would be problematic, and I already have a visa to work in NUSA. The situation in Los Angeles is almost worse than Night City from a crime perspective, and I definitely will be hired at any of the hospitals there for my residency."
The amusing thing was I might end up working for Trauma Team again, as they had a large trauma centre in Hollywood that was associated with the University of California in Los Angeles. I would have to make doubly sure that all of my implants were scrubbed clean of all of the company apps I had installed. Perhaps I would upgrade my deck and operating system and change everything out that way. Although I very rarely used my deck offensively, so I didn't really need an ultra-performance model, it would be nice to upgrade from the beginner's version I was using now.
"Ah, good choice. Not too far away, but at the same time, a world apart. I'll send you a list of places that I would recommend a young Japanese woman to live, as well as a list of places I would highly recommend you stay away from. I'd recommend you get a dual Japanese-Mandarin skillchip, too, then. The Chinese control that city more than we do, but they run it in a similar way," she said amicably. She was implying that there was a Tong or Triad there that was similar to the Tyger Claws, likely, they were friendly with each other. The Claws protected Chinese and other Asian people in Night City in Japantown, and this currently unknown Chinese organisation probably did the same for the Japanese residents of, I presumed Chinatown.
The more things changed, the more they stayed the same. I disconnected the call after inquiring when the moving mooks would be here.
I'd have Kiwi up and walking by then. I was willing to take her with me, and Wakako approved doubling the pay and giving it all to Kiwi. She might want to stay in Night City with sixty thousand eddies acquired all at once. I didn't know yet. But I owed her my life and more.
The worst part about this was I was going to have to get rid of my car. That and explaining to David why his mom wouldn't be around for a couple of months and about how his last name is now different. Perhaps I could get Gloria admitted to UCLA as a nursing student while I was in LA?
Todd woke up, drooling on himself, in the rental van. He had hundreds of missed calls on the encrypted tacnet and had a sudden fright that he had, somehow, gotten drunk and missed the op as he did not remember getting in the van.
But the last thing he remembered was he was eating breakfast at the wonderful Azure Plaza. Their team had been ordered to watch this pretty girl for months, with no real reason why. She worked for Trauma Team and didn't look much older than his little sister, so he was mighty curious. But, it didn't really do to ask why in his line of work, and it was an easy assignment.
Apparently, she was something of a badass herself. At least, he got that opinion, along with a slight crush on her, after watching footage from a high-altitude drone of her single-handedly wrecking a Wraith encampment out of the city.
His present assignment was to spend a night in the best hotel in Night City and inform his boss when the girl was leaving the building. Why, then, was he inside his van?
He suspected he might be in some trouble. He sighed, and he learned from his stint in the NUSA Army that it didn't do to prolong this sort of ass chewin', so he got on the tacnet, "Eye-5, reporting in."
The tacnet was suddenly full of chortles and a couple of laughs before his boss got on the line and the rest of the men quieted. His boss was terse, "Eye-5, Eye-1, what's your status?"
"Ah reckon Eye-5's up 'n runnin' just fine, but uhh... it's like ah just done woke up, an' there's a dang..." he glanced at his internal chronometer, "... four-hour hole in mah memory. Apologies, boss, I couldn't rightly let ya know when that ol' target skedaddled on outta here. I think I was drugged, ya?"
"Eye-5, Eye-1, delete your West Virginian folksy bullshit. You don't work for the NUSA anymore. Yeah, you got fucking drugged. Are you serious? You have amnesia? You followed the target as planned, and then intervened when she got into a car accident, and she dosed you with something and stole your van," his boss came back on the line.
One of the others piped up with, "It was hilarious!"
Todd snorted. He didn't particularly care who he worked for. He certainly wasn't an American patriot. Before he got this job, most of his family back home barely survived off home gardens and often did a spell in the slammer for shootin' some critter the government was too fond of, so he had no deep abiding respect for the government like his great grandaddy probably did. He didn't mind working for some rich family, it was pretty much all the same to him, and these fellows paid a lot better, letting him send some money back home, keeping his entire clan in food.
He got back on the radio and, this time, was using purely standard radio phraseology, "Eye-1, Eye-5, Affirmative. I'll need to be examined by the medics. I kind of want to watch my video download now, more than ever. I'll head back to the RP, now," he said amusedly.
When he stood up to slide into the driver's seat, he felt something rough rubbing up against his chest, inside his shirt and blinked. He glanced down into his shirt and raised an eyebrow, seeing two thick stacks of bills. Pulling them out of his shirt, he inspected them, seeing the marking of €10,000 on a band of paper that was holding each stack together. Twenty thousand? Not bad. A little more than he made every two weeks, still, he got on the radio delightedly, "Boys, the drinks are on me tonight!"
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We're the government & are here to help
David had asked me if he could sleep in my bed that night, and so I found myself lying in bed, holding the boy while my mind was still wide awake. I didn't have the heart to tell him that I hardly ever used my bed in the first place, so I was just laying there, silent, still and waiting for the morning while considering the previous day. Every now and then, I would check Kiwi's vitals and a visual feed of my biobed, as well as plan out her upcoming surgery. Although I made sure all of my medical equipment, especially Kumo-kun, was disconnected from the net itself, I could still make direct wireless connections to the devices so long as I was close enough.
Explaining to David that his Mom wasn't dead was hard when I couldn't show her to him. To me, his eyes had the look of someone desperately trying to convince themselves the lies he was hearing were the truth.
My EQ wasn't low enough that I had the idea to show him my hatbox, either. As far as he knew, she was in a specialised hospital, which wasn't, by some definitions, a lie. He understood that she was hurt very badly, and he was intelligent enough to realise that there was no way she could afford treatment at a traditional hospital for an injury this severe, so he wasn't asking questions. That he was so aware of money at his age was kind of sad, but Gloria was so frugal that she must have talked to David a lot about money, even when he was just in kindergarten.
For now, he accepted what I had told him, that I would be able to fix his Mom up as good as new, although I intended for her to be better in the end. I hadn't quite told him about possibly leaving town with me because I didn't know for sure that Gloria would want to. I was setting up the options for both Kiwi and Gloria to do so if they wanted, though. I think it would be the safest thing they could do, but Gloria wasn't in as much ongoing danger as Kiwi would be and might want to stay in Night City.
However, the current state of the art in cloning technology required about a half-year to fast-grow a complete adult human body to full maturation, so it wasn't often done. Merely growing a specific organ, or in the case of the food industry, one "cut" of meat, was a lot quicker as they used more specialised machinery, but it still took days to a week, depending on the mass and complexity involved.
I was certain that I could increase the speed in the cloning vat I intended to build by a lot, but unless Wakako managed to steal two biosculpt setups, I would need to have priority use of one to begin transitioning to my disguise.
Adding or removing a little over ten centimetres of height could be done, but it was the most time-intensive, and therefore expensive, thing that biosculpt treatments could do. I would need over sixty hours in the tank to take that much height off myself safely. If you considered my current non-organic augmentations, especially my stealth system, that I would have to adjust at the same time, it would probably take half again as much time in the tank, plus however much time it took the traditional surgeries on myself to adjust these non-organic parts.
In other words, even after I got the biosculpt tank and even after I converted it into a dual-use cloning vat and upgraded it, not only would I need to monopolise it for at least a week, perhaps more, but I would need three weeks minimum to grow Gloria a new organic body. That meant she wouldn't be back for two months after the physical therapy, depending on how things went. It's likely closer to three when you considered that I was fleeing the city simultaneously and wouldn't be able to start growing a clone until I was somewhere where we wouldn't be moving the equipment around.
I felt it was too long for David to be without his Mom; by that point, he would start to think I was just lying to him and Gloria was really dead. That wouldn't be good for his psyche, even if he learned it wasn't true later. Attachment and co-dependence and a number of other psychiatric issues could easily develop that way. Not to mention my own guilt meant I wanted her back as soon as possible.
