It's About Saving Yourself Ch 4

Here's Chapter 4. Do please leave me a comment.
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I pulled over as the blue-white lights flashed behind me. I blinked bleary eyes as I put the van on park, lowered the window and turned the motor off.

Maybe I should have bought that energy drink? Yeah the cheaper ones tasted like cough syrup, caused cancer, rotted teeth off and may or may not cause blindness. But after three days of little sleep, sparse meals, too much adrenaline and the occasional low-dosage painkiller…where had I been going with that?

I saw the barrel of a pistol and activated the Sandevistan, tearing through the man’s ICE and readying the Daemons that would see him on the floor screaming and puking his guts out.

And realized it was the cop holding the M10-AF Lexington. I looked at him blearily. “Yes officer?”

[Keep an eye on the fucker.] He subvocalized to his partner, then to me he said. “Sir, I will need to see your license and registration.”

“Afraid to say, I only have a learning permit.” I answered. “This vehicle is not registered to me.”

He glanced at his partner then turned to me. “You stole this vehicle?”

I tilted my head. “Borrowed without permission. The Animal it belonged to wasn't going to need it anymore.”

His finger twitched on the trigger. I decided to throw my weapon jam Daemon at him. That's the problem with Smartlink coming standard on your guns. It was shameful, some of the Animals had had better ICE.

I tossed it at his buddy too for good measure.

“Animals.” He half asked half stated.

I blinked again, man I was sleepy, I looked for some music to help keep me awake. “Yes sir, I have the receipts for the bounties if you'd like to see them.”

He narrowed his eyes at me and nodded.

Too tired to manage anything with more finesse, I grabbed the folder that I’d set all those notifications to arrive at, made a peer-to-peer connection, and passed it to him.

His eyes twitched as he looked at it, then widened, then his mouth fell open. “Wait, that was you!?” He screeched.

I tried to put together an answer to his question, then gave up. “What was me?”

“The one flatlining Animals all over Heywood!?” He demanded, the barrel of his pistol wavering in a way that made me glad I’d electronically jammed the weapon.

I had spent most of the last three days putting Animals out of my misery. I glanced at my account balance and…fifteen thousand? When had that happened?

Well…at least that was expenses covered for a while. Still, the cop had asked a question, and I didn't want him getting an itchy trigger finger and learning I hacked his gun. “I needed the money.”

His mouth opened and closed a few times before he spoke again. “And…why did you take the vehicle?”

I thought back, ruminated on the eight corpses I’d piled in the van.

“I contacted a meat shop. They were going to pay good enough money for the choicer Animals. I didn’t want to drag them ten kilometers, that’d be a mess and a half. So I piled them in the van and…well, here we are.”

The cop swallowed a few times and pulled on his shirt collar. He should hydrate better. “R-Right, well, sorry to have bothered you, we’ll let you get back to your business.” 

“No problem at all, have a nice day.” I said and turned the van back on. They went back to their car, and I drove off. It’s always nice when cops don't decide to give you a bad day for no reason.

While searching for that music, I realized I had my Agent on Do Not Disturb. Turning that off, I received notifications for over forty calls.

Whoops.

I dialed Mom back.

[Mijo!?] She shouted, the mixed hope, fear, and relief in her voice making me feel rather guilty.

“Hey mom, yeah it’s me, sorry ab-”

[Alexander Martinez you are in so much trouble!]

Well fuck. “Whatever it is, David did it.”

[Don't you try to blame your brother!] Mom screeched. [Now come home this instant!]

I thought back at the already decomposing Animals I’d piled up in the van. “Uhh…I'm kind of in the middle of something time sensitive, but-”

[Alex!]

“I swear I'm not being difficult for the fun of it. There is something time sensitive I’m doing, but it's in the general direction of home. So I’ll be there in a bit.”

There was a long silence before Gloria sighed. [What have you even been doing, Alex?]

I thought back to the last three days spent killing gangsters, my too numerous bruises and scrapes throbbed. “Been working, good news, I've got enough money not to worry about rent for a while. So you can rest easy.”

There was another long silence. [And why haven't you been answering my calls? I was so worried!]

“I forgot I had my agent in Do Not Disturb.”

There was a long, soulful sigh. [Just come home, Alex.]

“Will do. I’ll be there in an hour.”

[Brat.] Mom said and hung up.

Wow, rude.

Still, I got three hundred eddies for the bodies and ditched the van at the meat wagon terminal. Maybe an Animal would get it back, maybe they wouldn’t. What I did know was that rigging it to explode when moved was a bad idea.

I thought that from the very beginning, because moving derelict vehicles is a thing, my dismantling of an IED composed of a grenade I found and a string was entirely coincidental.

People gave me a strangely wide berth on the Metro as I tried not to nap.

For my part, I read through the latest batch of messages I’d taken from the last Animal Lieutenant I killed.

The gang would likely figure out what I was doing before too much longer and shore up their digital defenses. But I’d probably be able to hit the human trafficking subgroup that Pecs had been in contact with before they plugged their information leaks.

Working my way through awful grammar allowed me to remain just awake enough to get off at my stop, the walk home felt interminable, I wanted nothing more than to get home, take a shower, give Mom the money, and go to bed.

Oh, I forgot to get a burrito for Kamil, oh well, I’ll owe him one, weird that he's giving me looks too.

As I neared the door, I came to the realization that I was still wearing my new Edgerunning gear, and I think the stock of the shotgun was peeking out.

I should probably find a place to stash these.

When the door swished open, I was confronted by the sight of my mom and little brother sitting next to each other in the couch, their backs and shoulders hunched, in front of them were a near on fully ‘droid jackass built like a brick shithouse sitting on our table, a muscular woman dressed like a mix of a boxer and a stripper, a blonde wearing a pink trench coat, and an asshole with obscenely long arms wearing a punk jacket.

I saw red and the Sandevistan on my back thundered on without my input.

=][=

Gloria had not been having the best couple of days.

By the time she’d woken up, she’d already received an infraction for missing work without calling.

She’d received a second for calling out without three weeks notice.

To top that off, her smart and diligent son had gone off the deep end and disappeared. For all she'd known he was dead, until he’d called and informed her he’d forgotten to turn ‘Do Not Disturb’ off which…God that was so Alex it hurt.

That boy may be a prodigy, but he was sure brainless sometimes.

Maine had freaked out when he finally got in contact with her. She’d tried to explain, but he’d already been almost to the door. Explaining that she could give him his money back had only mollified him slightly.

Still, at least he’d understood when she explained what had happened. Gloria felt her guts clench, she would swear she could feel the cyberware inside her thrum and whir.

“So…yeah,” she said, hugging her baby boy to her side, he was looking at Maine’s crew with a mixture of fear, which was good, and excitement, which was not so good. As Gloria opened her mouth to say something more, the door swished open.

Before she’d finished turning her eyes, her heart jumping in joy as the only other one with the biometrics for the apartment was Alex, a grey blur stopped between her and Maine, and resolved into a huge stranger with his back to her.

“Back off.” the stranger said in her son’s voice, his tone filled with such malice that Gloria felt an icy hand take hold of her spine. “Way off.”

“Woah what the fuck!?” Pilar screeched, falling backwards.

“Maine!” Dorio screamed, then froze when, faster than the eye could follow, the barrel of a pistol was pushed against her left Kiroshi.

Kiwi looked from the stranger to Maine and back, her eyes glowing.

“If that carbide plate on your left arm so much as twitches, I’ll spatter your neck across the wall.” The stranger growled. Gloria shivered; her son's voice was not like this.

She leaned to the side to look past the stranger and saw that he was holding a boxy gun tight against Maine’s throat.

“Say nothing.” The Edgerunner, who must somehow be Alex, said. “Listen with utmost care.”

Pilar opened his mouth to say something, but kept his peace when Kiwi raised her hand to silence him.

“I will give you one chance, and one chance only, leave this room, do not touch any of your weapons. Or I will kill you all.” Alex finished.

“So,” Maine said slowly, “this is the kid that took my Sandevistan?”

“If you don’t stop poking my ICE, I’m killing the big one and the muscle woman.” Alex said, his head not moving. “After that I will peg long arms with my shotgun, and I’ll tear what remains of your throat out with my teeth.”

Gloria couldn't help but wonder when her little boy had gotten so big. He seemed to tower in the room, his back so broad it took up nearly all of her vision, a small bit of metal just barely poked out of the collar of his jacket, jacking into his occiput.

That's when it finally clicked for Gloria, her boy had mutilated himself for her. The ripperdoc had said that Alex had started running the Edge, that he'd hit the ground running. He'd also refused to tell her how much the operation had cost, saying that was between him and Alex.

Her little boy, her cautious, polite, smart boy had taken up weapons to protect his failure of a mother.

Slowly, so as not to startle anyone into doing something they'd all regret. Gloria stood.

“Stay behind me!” Alex barked at her.

She ignored him, stepped to his side, and once again, slowly and gently, put her hand on his forearm and pushed down. It felt like trying to push down on a statue. “Put it away, mijo, they’re…guests.”

As was his way, he did not immediately do as she said, he weighed the action carefully before acquiescing. He took the barrels off Maine’s neck and the pistol off Dorio’s head but kept the weapons near their silhouettes rather than put them away. He did, however, allow Gloria to pull him away, Alex shifted his weight to once again put himself between her and Maine’s crew.

Maine had not blinked through the entire ordeal. “Well Redeye, you've made quite the splash.” He grinned. “Nice work, you got the whole city wondering who the new Merc killing all the Animals is.”

“Yeah, well they hurt my mom.” Alex said calmly, his voice holding a promise more than a threat.

Maine tilted his head forward in a slight nod. “So, how’s that Sandi been treating you?”

Alex seemingly relaxed, but pressed as she was to his back, Gloria could feel the taut tension in her boy’s whole body. Still, when he spoke his tone was, if not relaxed, at least conversational. “It’s difficult, I suspect it was modified to increase aggression, the activator is on a hair trigger and there’s a subroutine somewhere in it to activate without input if it reads a particular neurological pattern. That said, it has proven undeniably effective, though I fear it might not play nice with other cyberware.”

The two of them descended into a conversation of the technical details of cyberware and bioware.

Maine’s crew looked between him and Alex as if following a tennis match. And all throughout it, Gloria could see her genius little boy was ready to snap and do his best to kill everyone in the room he did not have a blood relation to.

At that point, something ‘clicked’ into place inside her, and Gloria realized she had utterly failed her son. He’d always told her he didn't want to be an Edgerunner. Unlike David, Alex had never lost an opportunity to describe how unstable and untenable that lifestyle was, how ultimately futile it would be. Alex had never once had a kind thing to say about Edgerunning, something that made his brother angry, idealized as Edgerunning was on most media.

Gloria had always feared that Alex had been trying to set her mind at ease, he'd started working for a Ripperdoc of all things! But she had not put a stop to that because the money he brought in made it so she could actually put a small amount of her salary into savings. But she'd always been deathly afraid he would throw everything away to chase the dream.

Now, after feeling awake and mostly rested for the first time in…years. It finally struck her that Alex had been telling the truth. That his job being Edgerunning-adjacent had truly been a coincidence. The most illegal thing he did was scavenge scrap and cyberware off the landfill, and he told her of everything he did so she knew where his money came from.

Her boy had thrown his future away to save the life of his failure of a mother. He couldn't go back to school with that Sandevistan in his back, she'd looked it over, it was Milspec, one of the very few things Night City government would enforce its laws on. He was stuck Edgerunning at the very least until he could pay off Gloria’s medical debt, he may well be stuck regardless.

As Maine’s crew was leaving, Gloria stepped forward and was stopped by Alex’s arm. “Maine, wait!” Alex’s hands tightened on his weapons, but other than keeping her mostly behind him, he didn't do anything more to stop her. Maine looked over his shoulder and arched a brow. “Let my son join your crew.”

For the first time, Maine’s face broke from its sternly uninterested façade, Alex glanced momentarily at her before facing forward again, and both Dorio and Kiwi stared at her in open confusion.

Out of all of them, David was the first to recover. “Wait, what!?”

“Please,” she begged, unable to meet the man’s eyes, “he’s…he’s in that life for now. I know him, his mind is made up. He’ll continue running the Edge. It’s safer to do with a crew. And you’ve heard of what he’s been doing. He’ll be useful.”

Maine studied her and her boy for a short eternity, but he nodded. “Yeah alright. We do have a job coming up, we could use the extra pair of hands.” He smirked. “Who knows, maybe the knowledge that Redeye is running with me might finally get us back into the Afterlife. I’ll shoot you the deets later.”

With that, Maine and his crew retreated. Alex did not move and did not let Gloria step around from behind him as he faced the door. A few seconds later he relaxed minutely and muttered. “They’re leaving.”

Just like that he deflated. Whereas just a moment before, Alex had seemed to fill the entire room, now her son sprawled on the couch, a tired teenager wearing cosplay of some undead mercenary.

And holding two very deadly weapons.

So not a lot like cosplay after all.

Alex flipped the safety on for both the weapons and put them on the table where Maine had been sitting. Gloria took a seat next to her boy and worked up the nerve to ask. “Alex, where have you been?” She asked, then felt herself get angry when he didn’t answer, he merely stared down at the table in front of him. She grabbed him by the shoulder. “Alexander Martinez you will-!”

Alex toppled sideways and fell onto her, she squeaked and fell backwards, fear rocketed through her body when she realized he smelled faintly of blood. A quick perusal through her diagnostics program helped her relax. He had contusions, several shallow cuts, a few burns, and he’d bruised a few bones. But her boy was alright, he was merely sleeping. Judging by his blood pressure, heightened cholesterol, and the amount of synth-caffeine in his bloodstream, he may not have slept at all since the accident.

He must have been dead on his feet for the amount of adrenaline still in his system to fail to keep him awake.

Gloria swallowed until she could be certain she wouldn’t cry in front of David. “Mijo, bring us a blanket? I think your brother needs to rest.”

David must have sensed something in her voice anyways, as he merely nodded and went for the blanket.

Alex had never been a clingy child, not like David. Precociously independent from the cradle as she’d told anyone who would listen.

And now he had used that independence to start running the Edge, because his failure of a mother had landed him with a heaping ton of medical debt.

Gloria held her boy tightly and did her best to swallow her tears.