It's About Saving Yourself Ch 3

And Chapter 3! Here we see Alex's running start down the path of being a bad person!

Please, feel free to leave me a comment.

=][=
Awareness returned instantly, a moment after that, so did pain. A constant, thrumming ache that ran up my back. My vision was weird, simultaneously blurry and crystal clear.

A couple blinks later, my HUD came up, at once there and not there.

“How’re you feeling, Alex?” Vik asked with forced joviality.

I turned to look at him and croaked. “Like I went three rounds with Jackie having a bad day.” 

He huffed a laugh. “Yeah, that sounds about right.” He extended an inhaler. “Two puffs now, two every two hours till that runs out.”

I put the inhaler to my mouth and followed his instructions, the chemical cleared my head, energized me, and vanished the ache in my back and head. I then set up an alarm to remind me to take the rest of it. “How’s my Mom?”

Vik sighed. “Still out, looks like she’s paying some serious sleep debt, but she's stable. She'll probably wake up in a while, but I wouldn’t recommend she walk for a few days, her body will need some time to get acclimated to the chrome.”

I nodded and sat up. “I need to get started earning the money to pay you back.”

“Kid.” Viktor began warningly.

I shook my head. “I can't afford to take things slow, Vik.”

Viktor stared hard at me, then sighed. “Your brother got here a while back. He’s with your mom. At least take the time to talk to him.”

I nodded and forced myself to my feet. It was surprisingly easy. I walked to the edge of the basement where Vik kept two cots for recovering patients and pulled back the curtain. David sat next to one of the cots, staring hard at Gloria’s sleeping face.

“David.” I said, causing him to jump.

He whirled around to face me, his eyes were red and puffy, he got on my face and all but screamed at me. “Alex! What the hell, choom!? I get here and that guy is elbow deep in your guts!? What the fuck!?”

My fists twitched.

I concentrated on my breathing. “David, things are bad.”

“No fucking shit Alex! Why is she here instead of a hospital!?” He jabbed a finger at my chest. “What the fuck where you thinking!?”

Inhale, count to four, exhale, David was scared, he was lashing out because he had no other way to vent his emotions, I had to remain calm and reassure him, it was my duty as the elder brother. “I was thinking that I wanted Mom to see another sunrise. The hospital that her insurance covers is at best a chop-shop. She nee-”

David cut me off by pushing me back. “So you brought her to your back alley Ripper then chipped yourself with who knows what!?”

As he made to poke me in the chest again, my entire field of view narrowed into a pinprick, I broke through his deck’s ICE at the same time that everything slowed to a crawl.

I shut off my Daemon interface and slapped his hand to the side, grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and pushed him against the wall. When the world sped back up to normal, I spoke in a calm and even tone as he caught up to what had just happened. “Say nothing, listen with utmost care.”

My brother’s eyes were wide open, he nodded dumbly.

“Earlier today, after Mom picked me up, we were caught up in a gang hit. I killed six Animals.” He recoiled; I continued speaking without care. “And brought Mom here so Vik could save her life. David, she suffered near total organ failure. Had I taken her to the hospital she’d have been lucky to live till the morning. They wouldn't even have let us see her. More likely than not, they'd have just chopped her up into parts and burnt the rest.

“Vik saved her life, he replaced quite a few of her internal organs. Had she been in better health, they might not have failed, but that ship sailed. The parts alone are well over forty thousand Eurodollars.”

“Fuuuuuuuck.” David hissed.

I ignored the interruption. “Mom will take time to recover. She'll lose her job. We need a way to make money, that's what I’ll be doing. I'll need you to take care of Mom and continue going to school.”

He opened his mouth to object, but swallowed whatever he was about to say at my glare.

“I’m dropping out and they're not going to give her money back. One of us should ensure she sees a return on her investment. Yes, I chipped in, yes, I’m turning Mercenary. Yes, this is a bad idea, but it's also our best option. Stay with Mom, explain what happened when she comes to. I'm going to go start taking care of our problems.”

I let him go and went to Gloria. She'd be so goddamn disappointed in me; I was surprised by how much that thought hurt. I leaned down, gave her a kiss on the cheek and whispered. “You rest up, Mom, I’mma make things better.”

With that I left her with David and went back to my workbench. Ever since the accidental use of the Sandevistan, I could feel it, thrumming in my back, almost eager to make me feel that same rush.

I'd have to be careful with it. It had felt good to use it, that might well be addictive by design.

Vik joined me and spoke without preamble. “Well, I figured you'd want to see your Mom before getting the last few details. That Kiroshi of yours took without issue, it doesn't have self-ICE to interfere with camera systems, that's new tech and not backwards compatible. I downloaded the NCPD bounty database into your Deck, so if you run into any ne’er-do-wells, you’ll be able to see what they ne’er-well-did. And lastly,” he pointed to a few drawers in the back corner of his garage, “you can’t have your first outing while wearing a knock off nurse uniform. Look through my old stuff from my running days, you should find a few things that fit.”

I felt my throat close tight. My school uniform had been ruined, so I’d switched to the clothes I kept at the clinic. Stuff from Vik’s running days had always been sacred, he'd never once let me so much as look at them, though I think it might have been on a mistaken belief that, if I saw them, I’d want to drop everything and try for being an Edgerunner.

“Thanks Vik…for everything.”

He grinned. “Stiff upper lip, kid. Out of everyone I've met, you’ll make it work, I just get that vibe from you. Do you need me to put you in contact with someone?”

I chewed on that for a few moments before shaking my head. “If you to that now, I’d be a charity case not worth anyone's time. I need to make a splash first, something to get me on the gameboard.”

Vik nodded. “You're not wrong. You've really thought this through.”

I grinned. “I may not be the sharpest knife in the crayon box, but I like to think I have some ability at problem solving.”

Vik shook his head and handed me a paper bag. “Immunosuppressants and Neuroblockers to go with that Speedheal, your chrome is rather beefy but it's best to start with a low dosage. Keep track of your side effects and come see me in a few days, we’ll decide whether or not to increase your dosage.” 

I took them with a nod, opened them up and read through the instructions. I thanked Vik again, popped one of each into my mouth and choked them down dry. Then made my way to Vik’s old clothes.

A lot of it was not to my liking, though admittedly, most of it was made with bullet resistant materials.

It took a while, but I found a pair of black cargo pants, a dark grey shirt with ‘We Lost Everything!’ stenciled in white in the front, a black helmet and a grey colored titanium reinforced gasmask, and fingerless black workout gloves. I added my Militech bullet resistant visor, clipped on the holsters for my pistols and called it good.

After a few moments, I decided to grab Mom’s EMT jacket. The garb was usually comically oversized on her, on me it was a little small. I connected it to my deck and switched its color to grey digital camo.

I’d have to invest in some actual body armor, but that would have to wait until I had money. Until then, my backpack with its ballistic insert would have to do.

I looked at myself in the mirror. A menacing mercenary stared back. On an utterly infantile impulse, I took off the gasmask and painted the lower half of a human skull on it in Smartpaint, then connected a power source to the helmet so I could modify it on the fly as the impulse struck me.

I stared at myself in the mirror again, and a ghoul stared back, a glowing green maw clenched tight in anger.

I huffed a laugh, brought up my HUD and changed the color to a dull yellow. My right eye glowed a malignant red for the fraction of a second that my deck processed the command.

Alright. I'd need to get a lot more ammo, perhaps pick me up a shotgun.

It was open season, and the city may as well be a Safari.

=][=

I’d spent the majority of my time in the Metro uploading my personal Daemons into my new Deck, as well as configuring the OS to my liking.

Jailbreaking the Netwatch deck had, by necessity, nuked anything that had been in it. Vik had done me the favor of installing my OS into it, but while it blew my old equipment out of the water, it still had limited capacity for the programs that could be loaded into it at one time.

It also said something about Night City that my outfit drew few stares. A number of people even asked who I was cosplaying as.

I told them I was Raiden Sentai Neo Kitsch, specifically from the fourth Revengance remake second reboot, best of the lot. A few anime fans were going to be sorely disappointed when they went home and tried to find the series.

The Netdriver ran like a dream, there wasn’t a single ICE I’d run across that I couldn't crack in a fraction of a second.

I got off the Metro at Palms View Way and walked around Heywood. Most of Heywood belonged to the Valentinos, but there were pockets of Animals around the southern parts of The Glen and Wellsprings.

Thankfully, I ran across a Second Amendment. Though it was unfortunately close to the NCPD Precinct one. The man at the counter behind the armored glass wore a bulletproof vest, sunglasses indoors, and had an enviable, well-groomed beard.

He kept a wary eye on me as I approached the counter.

“Hey,” I said into the intercom, “I need iron that can get past heavy subdermal plating with enough punch leftover to shred the internals, and I need it on a budget. Got anything that would fit that criterion?”

He looked me up and down. “I might be able to help, what iron you packing?”

I placed my Tamayura and my Omaha next to each other on the counter. The guy whistled. “A man who appreciates classics, don't see many Tamayuras on the Street these days. And the Omaha is certainly not bad. I was going to suggest an Overture or a Nova, or maybe the DR-12 Quasar. But getting to three pistols, sorting out ammo would get a bit awkward. Tell ya what, tell me what budget you're working with and I'll tell you what I've got available with a decent punch.”

My mouth turned down into a frown, but you've gotta spend money to make money. “Strapped for scratch at the moment, so I’ve only got twelve hundred eddies, a bit extra set aside for ammo and some more magazines for my pistols if you’ve got ‘em.”

He grimaced. “That's tight but…tell you what. That Tamayura there is beautiful, rare to see them so well cared for, and I know a guy would love to add it to his collection. You trade that in, and I'll give you a discount on a crusher.”

I chewed on that while I browsed through his inventory. “Toss me a DB-2 Testera and a Tsunami Nue, and you've got a deal.”

He grinned. “Normally I’d say no. But I recognize guns that have had some TLC applied to them on the regular. If your iron had been a rusted piece of shit, I’d send you packing.”

I huffed. “That’s how I found the Tamayura, took me two months to get it cleaned up and back to a respectable state. Fuckin’ amateur had tossed it in the trash.”

The vendor shook his head. “Fuck it, just for that I'll toss you a discount for magazines if you hand me yours for the Tamayura.”

I ejected the magazine and emptied out the four I carried.

All told, I walked out of the store with a double barrel shotgun, several boxes of shells, a bandoleer that held twenty shells as well as one on the stock of the weapon that held eight more, and a total of ten full magazines for each of my pistols, as well as another few boxes of ammo to refill the mags with. Most of the boxes went to my backpack, but the magazines and more shells went into the surprisingly numerous pockets inside mom’s EMT jacket.

Now I just need to find some Animals to happen to.

Three hours later, I’d had no luck. Sure, I’d seen a few crimes, some asshole got himself shot trying to rob a corner stop n’ rob, and there had been a few people shooting at each other in traffic, but that had been Sixth Street attacking Valentinos, or vice versa, one can never be sure with those two.

I was about to give it up for a bust, when a gravelly roar sounded past a corner. The cold and certainty rose up unbidden and enveloped me as I made my way forward. Peeking around the corner showed me four grotesquely over-muscled…people beating up a pair of Asian women.

I say people, because two of them had rather sizeable tits, but by the tightness of their pants, they may or may not have had a package.

Taking into consideration that both boobs and genital withering were common side effects of the cheaper hypertrophic drugs in the market, and the cheaper sex change options were at best suboptimal…I didn't want to assume but I wasn’t about to ask what their genders were.

While I had been pondering that, I’d cracked through their ICE, downloaded their message history, GPS data, and had isolated the socket with their bank shards. I’d also uploaded a number of Daemons that should be taking effect right about...

The cybereyes of all of them shut down and released an electric pulse that stunned them. Most of their implants were bioware and vatgrown muscle, but the two who had their livers replaced suddenly had to deal with a severe increase to the toxins in their blood, and lastly, they all went blind and deaf.

I turned the safety on my shotgun off and walked up to them while they stumbled, shouted and cursed. Two of them started swinging at each other.

The DB-2 Testera was a ‘tacticool’ double barrel 12 gauge shotgun. It had a side-by-side configuration, it was made of reinforced polymer and steel, and had a hybrid grip. It was ugly, boxy, and inelegant, but it was solid enough to beat someone to death with it and it would still perform its primary function perfectly.

Russian engineering at its finest.

I put the barrels two inches away from the armpit of the one that had best kept his/her head, flicked the fire selector to firing both barrels at once, dug the stock into my shoulder and pulled the trigger.

The gun kicked, there was a deafening boom barely muffled by my helmet, the arm nearly came off in a welter of blood, meat and pulverized bone. He/she fell screaming, arterial spurts covering the ground where the majority of their shoulder used to be, in their thrashing, he/she tore through the last few muscle fibers that had still held the arm attached to the rest of the body.

I cycled the break action, the two spent shells popped out and I put in two new ones from my bandoleer.

I walked to the other calm one, he was calling out for a Jason and had his hand held out, his eyes moving uselessly about. I switched to single fire and put the barrel in front of his groin.

There was a flash, bits of blood, meat, and torn clothing littered the ground. He didn't scream like I’d expected, he merely stood there with a look of serene stupefaction on his face as he palpated the pulpy mass that had replaced his reproductive and urinary systems.

“Whuh?” He asked intelligently, I used the other shell to turn his neck into blood and macerated meat and left him to gurgle his last.

The last two had stopped fighting, but not because they were smart enough to realize they were beating on an ally. The two Animals had lost track of each other and were now swinging at the air and screaming profanities.

Click went the break action.

Boom went the shotgun.

Splat went an animal that lost both legs at the upper thigh, he screamed even louder when the protruding, jagged shard of wetly gleaming yellow and red bone ground into the pavement.

I clicked open my shotgun and left him behind. He’d keep while I dealt with his friend.

The last Animal had stopped stumbling around, the Daemon impairing his senses timing out as I uploaded another one. He looked around, his eyes widening in horror as he found one corpse, one overmuscled brute suffering hypoxia and rumbling giggles to themselves, and the last one holding the spurting stumps of his legs.

“What the fuck?” He said in a surprisingly high voice, huh, maybe he was a she?

Either way I shot her right arm off just below the elbow, the pellets of the shotgun macerating the meat and bone of a forearm that was half as wide as my thighs into minced meat.

She screamed, but it was hard to hear her over the pounding of blood in my ears. I slammed the stock of my shotgun into her temple, the shivering impact on my hands informed me she’d reinforced her skull, I think she fell over due more to shock than the strike, she easily had over a hundred pounds on me.

I planted a boot in her upper back and leaned my weight down, pressing her face against the asphalt, and stuck the barrels of my shotgun against her neck, she screamed harder as her skin sizzled. “Whuh, what the fuck!? You motherfu-”

“Say nothing.” I spoke in a quiet, mechanical, emotionless voice as the ringing in my ears grew deafening. I drew my Omaha with my off hand and put nine flechettes on the chest and arm of the one other still-living Animal, the action convincing it not to rummage around for its weapon as it lied in an expanding pool of its own blood. I continued as if I hadn’t noticed the interruption. “Listen with utmost care. You are a part of the so called ‘Animals’ gang, a group of lowlifes obsessed with hypertrophy and the ‘law of the jungle.’”

I pressed the barrel harder against her neck, causing her to whimper. “Well, you forgot the most important part of the law of the jungle. So I am here to remind you, and you in turn, are going to go to whatever pack of wild dogs you call your people and you will tell them exactly what I said.

“You tell them that the most important thing that the animal kingdom learned, was not to fuck with Man. Because when they did, Man would come back and decimate their pack nine times over and more in retaliation.” I shot her left forearm with the Omaha, one of the flechettes embedding itself in her bone while the rest left jagged holes, her whimpers vibrated my entire leg. “Well, consider the culling started. Did you get all that?”

She trembled and other than the occasional sob, remained quiet, so I shot her farther up the arm. Then, when she stopped screaming, calmly stated. “I asked you a question.”

“Yes, yes I got it all! Please, just let me go, please, I'm sorry okay? Just let me go.”

I holstered my Omaha and stepped away, keeping my shotgun trained on her. She stayed still for a bit, then took off into a stumbling, sniveling run.

I looked from my shotgun to the one still breathing gangster, looked over his biometrics, and switched on the safety.

Bullets and shells were an expense. A man in my position needed to be frugal when possible.

The stock slammed into the Animal’s head with a deep ‘thud,’ the hardness of his skull informing me that he had cranial reinforcement, so I raised the weapon high and brought it down again with a grunt.

And again.

And again.

His skull indented at the seventh hit. I was panting hard by the twelfth. By the eighteenth, his head was deformed to the point he no longer looked human.

The bone started making crunching sounds by the twenty-third.

Once I got to thirty, I stopped keeping count. The world blurred away into the methodical movements. Raise the gun, ram it down, up and down, up and down. I made sure not to scream, such noise would only attract scavengers.

My diagnostics program incessantly informed me my breathing was irregular, I ignored it and continued. Slamming the stock into the red spongy mass.

I do not recall stopping, but when next I became aware, I was breathing heavily as I stood over a corpse, above its jaw there was a collection of broken bone shards, blood drenched meat, and grey matter.

It took me five tries to be able to reload my shotgun, reloading the partially spent Omaha magazine was an exercise in frustration until I closed my eyes, took several deep breaths, and forced the lid closed on what was making my hands tremble. My next attempt at reloading the magazine was a little easier to accomplish. I absently scanned the bodies and saw that they all had bounties to them, so I registered the kills, and eight hundred and fifty eddies entered my account.

That was a respectable amount of money for…however long I worked. Picking their sockets and breaking the ICE on their bank shards netted me another two hundred eddies, rifling through their pockets got me an RT-46 Burya and a Malorian Overture, both of them poorly maintained and beat to shit. The last idiot had a baseball bat with nails crudely hammered into it.

I removed their ammo, set the safety on the Burya, and tossed them and the gangster’s spare ammo into my backpack.

As I hefted it and looked around, I saw the two women the animals had been beating on, their faces already starting to bruise and puff up. Both of them flinched and whimpered when my eyes landed on them, trembling like newborn foals.

As I looked at them, the pants of one of them turned dark by an expanding stain.

I turned my back on them and pulled up my GPS app, following after the one that was running home.

There were more Animals in need of culling.

=][=

Denzel Cryer, better known as the Brain, was no longer having a good day. And when the Brain didn't have a good day, ain’t nobody but nobody would have a good day.

He grunted a rumbling snarl at the sniveling coward crying on the floor in front of him. “So you just let the fucker off?”

Joanne flinched. “But he killed Jason, Matt and Homel! He was like a fuckin’ ghost, one minute we’re beating up the two bitches what didn't pay protection, the next two fuckers are dead and Homel was missing his legs! And his eye, fucker’s eye glowed red! Ain’t nobody’s eyes glow red and they're normal!”

The Brain, as usual, would have to slap the stupid out of someone. “So he got some fancy Kiroshis you stupid cunt! You should have torn his throat out!”

“But Boss! He was like a fuckin’ ghost with some magic shit! How the hell do you silence a fucking shotgun!?”

He could see the boys and gals muttering and looking around, a few of them even made the sign of the cross. Fucking weaklings. The Brain opened his mouth to yell a proper spine into them. There was a far away boom, and Daniel's life signs flatlined on his HUD.

Joanne’s eyes went wide as saucers. “Oh fuck! He's here! The red eye fucker is here!”

The Brain slapped her across the mouth to shut her up at the same time that a second shotgun blast sounded out. “Kill the fucker! Bring me his balls on a platter!”

There was a deafening noise as his boys and girls all screamed and roared and hollered, running out of the gym and toward the sound of gunfire.

Then one of them broke out into a sweat, stumbled and fell, several others started gagging, three of his boys convulsed and fell to the floor.

“What the fuck!?” The Brain reached for his Russian gun, he didn't remember its name, but it was big, it was loud, and he could beat a motherfucker to death with it.

There were firefights silenced by a solitary boom! Sometimes there was a shout beforehand, sometimes the shout was defiant, more often it was not, most often there would be nothing and his deck would inform him one of his boys or girls had just been zeroed.

His hand started shaking as he pointed it at the door, he was starting to regret welding the back door shut. The holographic sights on his Russian gun trembled too much to be useful, jumping every time the shotgun blast sounded closer. Of the two that had stayed in the room with him and hadn’t been knocked cold, one was Joanne and the other screamed and lights on his back glowed blue.

Danny had his Sandi, most everyone gave him shit for it but the fucker could fight. He rushed off in a blur, there was a flash at the door, and Danny’s head came apart, his body tumbling through the floor.

A skull faced man stepped through the door, one of his eyes glowed an angry red, the barrels of his shotgun smoking as his glowing red eye pierced into the Brain.

He screamed and pulled the trigger, he flinched at the roar of-

Nothing had happened.

He had just enough time to realize that before he felt two handfuls of buckshot bounce off his subdermal armor.

“Fuck!” he screamed more in surprise than pain and ran for cover, fumbling for his other gun. He’d expected another shot, but he got a wall between himself and the fucker without trouble.

“Oh God no, no please! I told them! I swear I was going to tell them! You got here too soon! No no no n-!”

Joanne’s pathetic begging was cut off by a pair of shots, subdued in comparison to the roar of a shotgun.

“Who the fuck are you!?” The Brain demanded, pulling out his revolver and swinging it around.

His only answer was the sound of spent shells hitting the ground and the click of the shotgun being reloaded.

“Fuck you!” The Brain bellowed. “You heard a hard-working man was setting up his operation and just had to come ruin it!? Who was it? The ‘Tinos!? Maelstrom!? I bet it was James! That fucker never could stand someone being better than him!”

The Brain’s breathing sped up, his teeth ground together so hard one of his replacement teeth cracked again. He'd come too far to let some jumped up merc zero him! He was the Brain! Give him a few more months and he'll be the number one provider of Juice in Wellsprings and The Glen!

Yes, most of his men were dead, but they’d be easy to replace.

Would he let some gonk asshole zero him? No! He was the Brain! He had the smarts and the brawns!

He activated his BioDyne Berserk Mk 3 and rushed toward the last place he'd seen the asshole, roaring and swinging his gun.

The glowy-eye bastard got his shot off first, but the Brain ignored the gutpunch, his muscle and dermal chrome enough to soak up the double load of buckshot.

The Brain leveled his revolver at the fucker and pulled the trigger. The fucker blurred away, disappearing from sight, and the Brain felt a double kick to his back, the blast of the shotgun making him stumble forward.

He turned around, revolver leading, and received another double load of buckshot to his side.

The Brain snarled and emptied the revolver, the fucker running around like a demented cockroach, but the last shot must have clipped his side, because it all but turned him around and threw him to the floor.

The Brain lost no time pouncing on the bastard, driving his fists down on Red-Eye, but the squirrelly motherfucker squirmed like a worm and kept dodging, making the Brain repeatedly hit the floor.

“Stay still you fuck!” The Brain demanded, then convulsed as lightning literally crawled up his spine, he all but bent over backwards and convulsed on the ground, trying to ride out the agony as his very spine electrocuted him. It felt like a long time before he stopped shaking, but it probably wasn't more than a few seconds.

While the Brain's body was still unresponsive, the fucker stood up, pulled out an elegant looking peashooter, and put two bullets into each of the Brain’s knees and elbows. The world went white with agony, he tried to shimmy away but the fucker put a boot on his neck and pressed down.

“Say nothing.” The bastard said as he reloaded his pistol, panting each word out through gritted teeth. “Listen, with utmost care. The following minutes will define the entire rest of your time on this Earth.”

The Brain was very glad he’d decided to put down the extra scratch for those titanium joints, had he gone with the plastic lacing, he’d not have been able to sit up and punch the fucker in the stomach.

The bastard literally folded around his fist before the Brain sent him skidding away. 

“Hah! You thought you could kill The Brain!?  The Brain is too strong! Too tough! Too fucking genius! The Brain is the strongest there is!” The Brain said as he pushed himself to his feet.

At least, he tried, his left knee bent the wrong way when he put weight on it, making him flop back to the ground.

When he looked back up in the direction the guy that had killed his men had ended up, Denzel Cryer couldn’t help but think that the peashooter looked awfully big now that he got a direct look down the barrel.