It's About Saving Yourself Ch 13

Hey folks, sorry for posting so late. Boy howdy was last week hell week.

I won't go into too much detail. I'll just say four days out of five, I got home a lot later than I was supposed to, with a tension headache, and having read a few dozen pages of technical manuals because each client has to be a special snowflake.

Blegh.

Anyways. I had a lot of fun writing this. The main reason it's being posted at this late hour, is that I was doing last minute edits and searching for grammar mistakes. I'm hoping I caught all of them, but I'd need to sleep on it.

As to the chapter itself. One of my favorite characters from another Cyberpunk setting makes an appearance! There is no greater meaning to it, no crossover or anything like that. I just needed a particular interaction, and that character came to mind.

Hope some of ya'll find it a fun easter egg.

Anyways, enough about me. I'll try and put up a writing update tomorrow, but frankly, I make no promises, this coming week was shaping up to be worse than last week.

I'll still do my outmost to get the next chapter of Kaiju Slaying ready. I don't wanna break my streak.

But man, it just doesn't rain when it can monsoon.

Anyways, here is chapter, hope you enjoy.

=][=

“So, it finally happened. Congratulations are in order.”

I blinked and tried to process Rogue’s words. They failed to compute. “Excuse me?”

 “You may be wearing a gasmask kid, but I know the walk of a man with more than a gun in his pocket. And that ice girl of yours looks like someone gave her a good time.” Rogue said, pointing to Lucy at the bar, the spidery drone that was Apex skittering around her legs, her clothes and hair decidedly…mussed. Rogue snorted and shot back her whiskey. “How far did you two go? Do I need to get that room deep cleaned?”

It was a good thing I was wearing my customary gasmask, because judging by how hot my face felt, my reputation would not have survived my utterly nuclear blush. I cleared my throat to make sure my voice would not squeak and sat next to Rogue at her gesture. “N-No, we uh, we didn’t…you don’t need to have the room cleaned.”

Rogue smirked and refilled her glass and filled a second and passed it to me, then at the press of a button a curtain fell from the ceiling, hiding us from view of the rest of the club. “Come on, take a load off. Relax a bit before we talk business.”

I took off my helmet and gasmask, and sipped the whiskey. It was the good stuff, a genuine barley scotch that gave a pleasant burn to my throat as it smoothly went down. Miles above the synthetic rotgut most of everyone had access to.

Rogue sat back and slowly crossed one leg over the other, and while she was certainly very fit for a woman in her sixties and her good looks hadn’t fully faded, she had nothing on the effortless girlish coquettishness that Lucy naturally exuded whenever she relaxed.

“So.” She said, taking a gulp from her scotch. “Did you finally snatch that sexy Netrunner, or did she finally snatch you?”

My face immediately felt hot enough to catch fire. “Erm…”

“She took the first step.” Rogue said with a sigh. “Gimme a moment.”

Her eyes glowed gold as she sent a communique. I wondered who she was texting and why. But I had a feeling it was best not to know.

=][=

Gloria stopped pacing, she read the text she’d just received and momentarily forgot to worry about David.

“Yyyyyesss!” She hissed, stomping softly in place and quietly squeeing.

=][=

“Anyways.” Rogue said.

I suppressed the shudder that wanted to crawl up my spine for no apparent reason.

She held out a shard, I took it and slotted it into the port at my neck. The picture of one of the snooty bitches from my class at Arasaka Academy immediately filled my vision.

“Urawa Saori. Daughter of Urawa Ryōji. Last seen in Wellsprings, near Berkley Avenue and Market Street. Mister Urawa’s personal assistant has been tasked with locating and retrieving her.” The image I was seeing in my right eye changed, showing the other two snooty bitches from my class and…uhh…shit, what was his name?

And Matsudo. Whoever had reconstructed his face after I caved in his cheekbone had done a fairly good job of obfuscating the titanium lacing.

Rogue continued, unaware of my mind wandering. “Ryōji’s assistant is smart enough to know she’s not an investigator, so she’s putting down a King’s Ransom for the safe return of Saori. Her classmates insist they had gone to the movies together, they turned a corner, and suddenly realized Saori was no longer with them. Your job is to track her down and rescue her, much like you did with that Mox girl.” Rogue scoffed. “Though I don’t expect you to do this one for free.”

I read through the witness statements, and the cursory investigation done by NCPD. “What if she’s already dead?”

Rogue shrugged. “Then retrieve her body. If she’s no longer alive, you will have to submit video evidence that she was dead before you got to her, or your payment will be docked.” She gulped her drink. “Pain in the ass, I know, but this client is paying top Eurodollar, so they get to be a needy gonk.”

I nodded. “Timeframe?”

“ASAP. She’s been missing for a day. I don’t need to tell you what happens to rich girls missing for more than two days in Night City.”

I nodded again and quaffed my drink and snapped on my gasmask. “I’ll get it done.”

Rogue nodded, then saluted me with her glass. “And congratulations. I’ll preempt Gloria and ask when we can expect some children.”

I twitched to a stop. Horror crawling up my spine.

“You told her.” I ‘asked.’

Rogue’s grin grew until it would have made the Cheshire cat slink away in shame. “I told her.”

=][=

I drove in an increasingly charged silence. Lucy fidgeted in the seat next to me, Apex had chosen not to display her avatar on my car’s crystaldome panels, if I guessed correctly, because she was feeling shy.

Okay. There’s a gorgeous young woman in the car with me. This is fine. I’ve only seen her naked a few times because of work, there’s no reason to be worked up about this.

It's fine.

It doesn’t bother me.

I am the picture of calm, the eye of the storm. Tranquil as the forest, but on fire within.

I shut down the alarm about my heightened temperature and elevated heart rate, it really was not very helpful right now.

I parked on Lucy’s apartment building and waited. Lucy did not exit the car, and I didn’t ask her to leave. The car’s internal camera flicking back and forth between the two of us.

“So uhh.” The both of us started at the same time, and the both of us stopped roughly at the same time.

I cleared my throat. “G-Go ahead.”

Lucy looked away, her cheeks turning red, she crossed her arms, the movement drawing my eyes down to her breasts like iron filings to a magnet. “D-Do you, erm, wanna come in? N-Not right now, you know, we uhh, we have the job, and I need to start scouring the Net for any leads. But umm…after the job, do you wanna come over and hang out?”

My mouth went suddenly dry, my heart hammering against the walls of its cage.

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Using that to center myself.

“I would love to, Lucy. I can bring some snacks, maybe a few movies, you know, make an event of it.”

‘Make an event of it’? Who the hell talks like that!?

I kill people for a living and regularly speak with some of the most dangerous and politically connected people in Night City. Why am I panicking like a dumbass teenager!?

Oh wait…I am one.

“R-Right.” Lucy said. “An event. Yeah. That’d be pretty fun. I’ll uhh, I’ll let the rest of the crew know it was a false alarm.”

Oh hey, work. I was good at talking about that. “What will you tell them about…everything?”

Lucy sighed. “I’ll say it was a random attack from a Netrunner looking for trouble. We still have that Maelstrom hit out on us, so I’ll just say some gonk ran into me, tried to collect, then the two of us dealt with it. It was just bad timing and some of his programs that made him look like an Arasaka Netrunner…Or something along those lines.”

“Thanks Lucy,” I said, then reached out and took her hand, squeezing gently. Once again cursing my cyberarm. I really should consider prepping a cyberarm for civilian use. Give it all the sensors it would need to provide the same feedback as a flesh and blood arm.

It wouldn’t be too bad of an idea actually, put to use that modular shoulder joint I installed.

I mentally shook myself. “Right. Give me a sec.” I said, stepped out of the car, jogged to the other side of the car, opened her door, and held my hand out for her to take.

She stared at my hand in confusion, then blushed and glanced away. She did put her hand in mine and used it as support to get out of the car. Swallowing my fears and ignoring my heart jumping to my throat and slamming at my Adam’s apple, I intertwined our fingers and gently squeezed her hand.

Her face turned a brighter red and she would not meet my eye. But she squeezed back.

I proceeded to float a foot off the ground as we went up the stairs. I walked her to her door and paused outside of it as she pressed the button to open it.

Okay. Okay. I should probably let go of her hand, her warm, soft, callused hand. When had I started caressing circles on the back of her hand? I stared into her lilac eyes as she looked into mine, then leaned down and kissed her.

I kept the kiss mostly chaste as I nibbled on her lower lip, if it got as involved as it did at the Afterlife, there was no way I was getting any work done for the rest of the night.

Lucy gave me the goofiest smile I’d ever seen her make, then we parted ways.

I had to fight the urge to skip down to my car. Once there, I set a marker for Market Street and Berkely Avenue, and hummed as I drove.

+Dad?+ Apex asked, appearing on the passenger crystal dome panel.

“Yeah?”

+Should I call Miss Lucyna mom now?+

I almost careened off the street as I choked on my spit.

=][=

As I had feared, Saori had been taken straight from one of the safer areas of Wellspring. The ‘alleyway’ was one of the wings of the entertainment district. It was just like the place Saori and her friends had been visiting, but seedier, tucked in between the infrastructure that maintained the megastructures and megabuildings.

There was a movie theater, a high(ish) end BD parlor, a brothel, a back-alley ripper, and an abortion clinic, all next to each other. There were a few children running around, their eyes jaded and more world-weary than David’s, weaving their way through the crowd.

I ignored the whores plying their trade on the corners, there were a few drug deals between shady men in coats and people whose health was clearly in freefall, taking into consideration that you could get perfectly good synthetic cocaine in most corner clinics, it was probably black lace, glitter, or rat poison.

The place was overcrowded, lit by too many neon lights at five in the fucking morning, and had music blaring loud enough to wake the dead. A mixture of J-pop and Narco-Corridos that did not at all sound good next to each other. I spotted a few dead bodies, two muggings and an overdose if I was any judge.

I wasn’t going to find anything here.

I looked around, and huffed, realizing I was being an idiot. “Apex, be a dear and mark the nearest interface for the city’s cameras on my HUD.”

A nav point immediately appeared in my vision. +Got it!+

“Thanks, you’re a gentle-lady and a scholar.”

I enjoyed her giggles as I made my way to the terminal, Apex skittering next to me.

Looking around, I didn’t see any cops, so I unscrewed the covering off the terminal’s internals and disabled the hardwired alarm, I then looked at the rat’s nest of wires and scoffed in professional disgust.

“Seriously, is it so damn difficult to do your damn cable management? Friggin’ wannabe technicians being lazy, stupid friggin’ goddamn…” I grumbled as I took a picture, then cleaned, rearranged, cut, soldered, and cable managed over the next half hour.

Once I was done, I stood back with my hands on my hips and took in the neat, tidy, straight lines of the sensibly cable-managed terminal. It wasn’t my best work, but not only would further repairs be easier, I measured a full eight percent increase in data transfer efficiency due to lowered signal interference.

Yep, good work all around.

…

I wasn’t going to be paid for this.

I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose.

At least it would make my actual job easier.

I extruded the interface port from my right pinky finger and paused as I was bathed in light.

“What are you doing there!?”

I turned and saw a young woman in a NCPD uniform shining a flashlight at me, her right hand was on the grip of a pistol holstered at her waist. She didn’t have any visible cyberware and was wearing a light armorjack.

Running her likeness through the NCPD database I’d ‘acquired’ returned the name Akane Tsunemori, a recent graduate of the NC Police Academy with a 98% score on her final exam, currently on her first tour as a beat cop.

She was pale, had brown hair and eyes, five foot four, and a hundred and ten pounds soaking wet, and as far as her job went, greener than grass.

I finished bypassing her ICE and prepped my usual Daemons, the gentler ones that would incapacitate her without hurting or harming her too much. As well as locking her firearm.

Oh right, she’s still waiting for an answer. “I was cable managing this terminal.” I said, stepping aside so she could see the majesty of my workmanship. “As you can see, it is now cable managed.”

She blinked and stared at it with a look of incomprehension.

“Here’s a picture of what it looked like before I fixed it.” I said, showing her the picture of the rat’s nest of wires I took with my agent. “As you can tell, it is a marked improvement.”

“Erm…s-so it is.” She said, trying not to sound confused and failing utterly.

I pinged Apex for a view from her drone, unfortunately, at some point she’d gotten bored and flew off. I’ll have to work with her on that.

“If you’ll excuse me, I’ll just finish a few things then.” I said, turning back to the terminal.

“Hey, wait! You’re not supposed to, you know, do things to those!”

I turned back to her and sighed. “Look lady, I don’t tell you how to do your job, don’t go telling me how to do mine.” I turned back to the terminal and started checking the connections.

She looked taken aback for a moment before she tried to look intimidating but ended up pouting. “Well…you don’t look like an electrician!”

“Yeah well, I’m on hour fourteen of my five-hour shift, and to top things off, this is unpaid overtime! Forgive me if cosplaying as my favorite anime character gives me the bit of willpower I need to get through the day and not do a shit job!” I turned back around, pulled my gun cleaning rag out of my pocket, and threw it to the ground for dramatic effect. “Who cares what I dress as so long as the job gets done!? I went out of my way so my cosplay met all the safety regs, so what the hell’s the problem!?”

“Erm…”

“Look, lady. I’m overworked, underpaid, stressed out and sleep deprived. Most of the other maintenance techs drink on the job to cope. I dress up as an anime character. Which of us is causing less potential danger to society?”

“I uhh…w-well.”

“Exactly. Now I’d rather not pick up drinking, so please leave me to my job and my cosplay. Okay?”

“R-Right. Sorry to bother you.” She said, her face beet red as she slinked away, her shoulders drooped.

I sighed and turned back to the terminal, I felt a little bad for shouting at the rookie, she seemed like one of the good ones, hopefully she’ll survive long enough to make a positive impact in someone’s life, and not to fall for a lie as blatant as ‘I’m cosplaying.’

“And don’t think I forgot about you young lady.” I said into my call with Apex.

+Drat.+

“I counted on you to have my back, Apex.” I said. “That could have turned violent. And because I was counting on you, she could have gotten the drop on me.”

+I’m sorry.+

“If you need to leave you have to at the very least inform me, Apex! Give me the notice to put my guard up!”

+Yes dad, I’m sorry.+

=][=

I lay with my back and head on the floor, my legs on the sofa. Mom had gone to her shift at the Afterlife, David was off to class, which left the apartment to Apex and me.

While Apex was puttering around putting googly eyes on things that absolutely did not need googly eyes, I was muscling my way through hours of video footage. I was trying to find Saori to see if I could follow her up until her kidnapping. But I didn’t have a program that could do it, and there were enough degenerates on display that I didn’t think it appropriate for Apex to do it.

So, it fell to me.

Or Kiwi and Lucy, whichever one of us found it.

A pop-up for an incoming call intruded on my unwilling voyeurism of a man and a whore at the public transit station,

“What’s up Becca?” I answered in a bored tone.

I choked and sputtered.

There was a most un-Becca-like squee over the call.

“W-Wait Becca, we didn’t—”

“Becca we just—”

There was a betting pool? No wait, that’s not important.

Thankfully, Kiwi came to my rescue as she called me. “Oh hey would you look at that, this most likely has to do with the job, let’s continue this conversation never.” I said and made the call into a group call.

Little did I know, salvation was but a mirage.

[Hey Kiwi, Alex and Lucy fucked last night!] Becca said before I could say anything.

[Did they now?] Kiwi said. [Interesting.]

“We did not!” I don’t care what anyone says, my voice did not crack.

Ghrk!

Kiwi transferred a video file, booting it up, I saw the Wellsprings market, bustling with people. A red box helpfully highlighted the girl I had to rescue. It followed Saori’s group through several camera feeds, until the group of four with Saori bringing up the rear walked out of frame, and a group of three walked into frame on the next cut.

[Then what, this wannabe corpo rat’s fucked then? Ain’t like we can just wave a magic dick and know where she is.] Rebecca interrupted.

Kiwi sighed, but otherwise ignored the interruption. [It took quite a bit of searching, but I found this.]

The video changed to a traffic stop; the image zoomed in to the windshield of a large van. The video was low quality, but it was good enough to see a blurry image of a girl struggling while forced to sit on the lap of an over-muscled brute.

Another mountain of unnatural muscle behind the wheel.

Kiwi continued her explanation, the video changing to trail the vehicle as it drove toward Pacifica. But I heard none of it.

In my mind’s eye, all I could see was the highway, mom’s car crumpled and upside down.

My hopes of a good, safe, productive life where I used Arasaka to set myself up for success, stillborn.

Mom nearly dying time after time, as Vik worked tirelessly for hours to pry her away from the jaws of death.

The poisoned well, dormant for so long, geysered, the rage so much stronger due to its time spent in slumber. I had to work to keep my breathing steady. This time, there was no cold, no clarity. The edges of my vision tinted red, my teeth hurt as I clenched my jaw hard enough for them to creak.

This time, there was no urgency to keep me focused on a goal, no overwhelming necessity to shield me from the uncontrollable need for retribution.

I could feel the Sandevistan on my back thrum, begging me to use it, demanding I break metal and spill blood.

And I would not deny it. Because the Animals, long in hiding to lick their wounds, were back to their old habits, inflicting themselves on those who were just trying to live happy lives.

[Alex?] Kiwi’s voice broke me out of the spiral my mind was in, reminding me of where I was and forced myself to focus.

“Yeah, sorry. Got distracted.” I said, doing what I could to bottle everything I was feeling back up.

[As I was saying.] Kiwi said after clearing her throat. [As you can see, I can’t be completely certain that this is our target, but it’s the only one I was able to find, and its timing does line up well enough.]

Kiwi continued to fill Rebecca and I on her findings and suspicions. But I could barely bring myself to listen.

I had Animals to kill.