It's About Saving Yourself Ch 16

Oof, sorry about the late post. The week was rough. Was barely able to write 400 words by Friday evening. Wrote the rest of the chapter yesterday and today, and did my best on editing just now.

That always happens with my work field. It gets really rough, until close to Christmas where it drops off.

Without further ado, here is chapter! I had fun writing it, hope you enjoy reading it.

Expect Writing Update where I shall discuss some other writing for y'all related stuff. Soon(TM).

For now, enjoy, drop me a comment if it pleases you.

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I looked away from the three-story drop in front of me and glanced at my HUD, I looked at the descending number and took a deep breath, trying to calm my jitters.

Soon.

Kiwi spoke into the group call. [T-minus three minutes before they arrive.]

I subvocalised into the call. “Do your last equipment checks, safeties off, check your chambers. Once we stop them we have three minutes for the klept, two for extraction. Roger?”

[Roger.] Kiwi said.

[Yeah yeah, at least this isn’t another milk run.] Rebecca groused. [I finally get to shoot shit from the start!]

[Yes sir.] Jenkins replied, then asked. [Militech guys are usually pretty chromed up, think we should throw a few EMP Grenades?]

“Absolutely not.” I snapped as I absently scratched my right forearm. “We’re here to steal a data shard. EMP ordinance has too high a chance of burning out what we’re here for.”

[Oh, right yeah, that makes sense.] Jenkins said.

Jenkins was a muscular youth almost of a height with me, physically older than me, but I couldn’t help seeing a kid when I looked at him. He was pale skinned, blue eyed, and had his light brown hair cropped close to his scalp.

He was here as a favor to Wakako, my team was getting a bonus for blooding the guy and showing him the ropes while making sure he didn’t get himself killed. So far he’d been attentive, cordial, professional, and had not made the same mistake twice. Which put him above the ninety-five percentile as cyberpunks went.

I could see why Wakako thought he had potential.

[They’re turning into the street.] Kiwi warned.

I connected to the street camera and watched as the Militech armored car rolled down the street. I took the safety off my Nekomata and held down the trigger.

The rail began overcharging, it wasn’t long before the indicator light flashed quickly on and off. Warning popups appeared on my HUD as the charge waltzed past the usual automatic discharge threshold and began to creep close to the rail’s tolerance.

I activated the Sandevistan in my back.

The blinking of the warning lights slowed to a crawl, I grit my teeth and pushed down the nausea, ignoring my body’s instincts as my hearts beat in sequence, reaching a combined total of two hundred and sixty beats per minute.

I levered myself up, my movements feeling weighed down, heavy, ponderous.

I set the bipod I tack welded onto the Nekomata (like hell I was going to buy the ‘proprietary’ bipod, it was an over-priced piece of crap that would break after a bit of rough handling) against the lip of the building and settled the dot at the center of the scope on the forehead of the driver and released the trigger.

The Nekomata howled in cathartic glee, the ferrotungsten spike moved at a blistering pace in my world of stopped time, it tore through the armored windshield of the Militech truck with seeming ease, though if my napkin math was correct, its sheer speed meant that meeting the relative middling resistance of the windshield would cause it to fragment.

If my calculations were correct, the spike’s pieces would drift apart a few hundred yards downrange.

Along with at least some of the driver’s skull and brain, and anything and anyone that happened to be behind him. Which is why, I insisted on shooting from such an elevated position. The worst that would happen now would be my inconveniencing someone’s access to water as the spike burrowed into the concrete.

I dove into the armored car’s computer, brute force hacking my way through its ICE, and burnt out any ability to control the vehicle remotely and slapped a daemon on it that activated every break in the car. I clicked the safety back on and stepped over the edge of the building.

One story down I grabbed the edge of a window with my left hand and with a jolt arrested my fall, I did the same one more story down, then landed with a roll, taking care to make sure the Nekomata did not at any time touch the ground.

I stood back up and slung the sniper rifle across my back by its strap, I drew my Testera and watched as the world sped back up to normal. The sound of my shot reverberated through the street, the armored truck careened off the road and slammed into a parked car.

I had to give it to the Militech guys, they responded without a pause and by the book, swarming out of the vehicle, guns at the ready and cyberwarfare specialist hacking.

Only for two of them to be mowed down in a hail of .308 caliber projectiles. Jenkins swept the legs off another with a shot from his M2038. The rest returned fire as best they were able.

I finished tearing through their ICE and the squad started to drown in their vomit, get dizzy due to heatstroke, dance in place as their cyber-ware electrocuted them, one’s brains leaked out of his nose, and their guns all jammed.

All while Rebecca and Jenkins happily shared their ammo with them at muzzle velocity.

I put a slug through the head of the one who kept his head enough to draw his sidearm as Kiwi spoke. [There, their Netrunner has been neutralized. Also, for the record, the ass-munch gave me a splitting headache, so if we could hurry this up?]

“Wilco.” I answered. “Becca, overwatch, Jenkins, on me, just because they’re down, don’t assume they’ll stay that way.”

The back doors of the armored transport opened as I approached, I was greeted by the sight of a corpse with acrid smoke wafting out of its eyes, ears, and mouth, and a second corpse with a ferrotungsten spike-shaped hole through its torso, I’d say he was an idiot for not wearing his helmet, but that had nothing to do with how he died. A quick search netted me a locked box, according to our intel, the only two keys were at the Corp we were stealing it from, and its destination.

I extruded the interface port from my right pinky finger and plugged it into the lockbox.

I wasn’t as good as Lucy at cracking through ICE but…

The corpse with the hole in its stomach twitched and tried to raise a pistol.

The left fist slapped the weapon aside and slammed into the side of its head before my conscious mind fully registered what was happening. The now corpse-in-truth’s head caved in, the side of its skull making a dull thudding breaking noise as blood spattered over my fist.

I wasted several seconds looking at my gore-covered hand, then pushed that down to deal with it later and concentrated on carving through the box’s ICE. Two extremely long minutes later, the box clicked open. I took the shard, slotted it in the neuroport in my neck with the thickest ICE and physical cutoff switch, and checked its contents.

The information that flashed on my HUD about the manufacture of cheaper cyber-ware meds told me I had indeed found the right shard.

“We have the package, Falco go for the pickup. Let’s go people, move move move!”

I got a smattering of confirmations, put a round through the head of one of the Militech goons who was playing dead, and followed along behind Jenkins.

I twitched and changed direction. “Talk to me Kiwi.”

I checked the mission clock. We had less than a minute to guarantee no police involvement.

I activated the Sandevistan and sprinted to the building where Kiwi had set up. The world of stopped time held until I was crouching over Kiwi.

“I need a picku—gah!” She gasped as I picked her up and trotted back down. “Some warning next time!”

“No time!” I huffed.

By the time I got back downstairs, Falco had backed his car to the building doors, I sprinted at it and jumped in backwards, curling my body around Kiwi’s to protect her as we landed with an impact that drove the breath from her lungs but fazed me none at all, even though the hit I took had both of our combined weight.

Rebecca closed the doors. “Alright, they’re in! Floor it!”

The car took off, I looked at the timer in my HUD and saw it was at negative nineteen seconds.

Mission success.

I lay on the floor, barely registering Kiwi’s weight on top of me and tried to get my hearts rate under control as I cleaned my hand of gore.

“Anyone injured?” I forced myself to ask.

“I got hit by some concrete chips, it’s just a scratch tho.” Rebecca answered.

Jenkins palpated his side. “Uhh. I took a ricochet, but it hit my armorjack, I think I’m fine bar some bruising.”

“I lost my jaw and now I can’t find it.” Kiwi deadpanned.

“Alright alright.” I muttered and carefully sat her on one of the benches Falco had on the back of his car. “I’mma jack into your system real quick, alright?”

Kiwi’s only answer was to expose her collar to me. I lay my right hand on her neck and clavicle, extruded my interface port, and jacked into her neural port.

I ran a thorough diagnostic of both her body and system. Physically she was the least battered of all of us, barring the few thousand neurons she burned killing that Netrunner. The initial quick and dirty scan showed nothing, so I did something more thorough, and found the problem that way.

“Found the thing. He managed to upload most of a virus, nasty one that forcibly controls your cyber-ware.” I said as I ran several programs to scrub it from her system. “Not sure what it would have done, seems like you managed to erase most of it while you fought the guy…okay that should do it, you’ll go briefly blind and may feel a wormy, crawling sensation as your neuro port restarts. Lastly, here’s a cool pack for your headache.”

“Thanks…Alex.” Kiwi said softly as I disconnected from her port and put her own hand on the cold pack on her head.

I gently squeezed her shoulder. “Anything for my second favorite Netrunner.”

“Siiiiiiiimp!” Rebecca called out.

“You know what they say. You are what you eat. This clearly makes me a pussy.” I said glibly.

Rebecca blinked, then gave me a narrow-eyed glare. “Fuck, how the hell am I supposed to top that?”

I grinned beneath my mask.

“Umm…”

Oh right, Jenkins. “Good job out there, Jenkins. That was solid all-around Soloing.”

“Thank you, sir!” He said, sitting at attention, at the same time that I got a confirmation from Blue Team.

I nodded and called Wakako as Rebecca poked and prodded at Kiwi.

[Redeye.] Wakako said as she took my call.

“Wakako, a pleasure as always.” I said and jumped straight to business. “Job’s finished, shard is ready for delivery, and the servers at the Nightcity location that housed this information are quite thoroughly fried. This shard is the only thing that remains of that project.”

“He did.” I answered. “He performed quite admirably. Took a bullet to the armorjack and didn’t bitch about it at all.”

[Good, good, expect a bonus, both for your aid with Jenkins, and for your discretion and professionalism. Goodbye, Redeye] Wakako said, and ended the call.

I slotted an empty shard into a different port. What Wakako did not know, could not hurt me.

“Okay cool, what now?” Jenkins asked.

“Now? Now we go get the royalty treatment!” Rebecca said.

By which, of course, she meant Lizzie’s.

At least, flanked as I was by Rebecca and Kiwi, and with the spreading knowledge that I had an input, I only got joking catcalls. Not that I didn’t enjoy the catcalls, but some of the things these women said gave me the heebie jeebbies.

Unlike my crew, Jenkins didn’t have the Mox’s favor, though I did inform Mateo to put any of Jenkin’s drinks on me, so long as he sat at my table with my crew.

Something the Mox seemed to take as a challenge, as less than ten minutes later he’d been led away like a lamb to slaughter. Poor bastard never even stood a chance. Still, the woman pulling him didn’t have a medical history of her venereal diseases being too bad.

I stayed long enough and paid for Kiwi and Rebecca’s drinks out of my own pocket, thanked them for a job well done, and made my way out, where my car was waiting for me with a familiar drone magnetized to the roof.

I felt a familiar knocking at my mental firewall and granted access.

‘Hey Apex, how did your end of the job go?’ I thought at her as I climbed into the car and put on my seatbelt.

+It was great!+ Apex beamed, projecting her avatar on the crystal dome panel next to me as she drove me home. +There was a system administrator, and he was super mean, and he’d done a lot of stuff with air gapped systems. But I crawled through the vents and I slipped right past him, and Miss Lucyna started an attack on the network from the outside, and that made the mean administrator be all distracted, and then—+

Apex happily and excitedly narrated her and Lucy’s end of the job, making a video appear on the windshield which I was fairly certain was embellished somewhat, because I doubted she ninja walked over a pit of bubbling acid.

I relaxed and enjoyed Apex’s chattering away until she parked the car, then made my way to my apartment. Once inside, there was a nostalgic scent I couldn’t place, David was sulking in a corner of the library, working on homework. And a smile came to my face as I saw my mom and girlfriend at the kitchen, chattering away while nursing a bubbling pot. With other dirty pots around them. So engrossed in what they were doing that they didn’t even notice me come in.

“—ery important step, you know? And it’s best not to over salt it, because then you end up with a weird balance in flavors.” Mom said.

“Okay yeah but, where did you find actual chicken to make this? How did you even afford it?” Lucy asked.

Mom preened. “I won a bet against Rogue. So, for my winnings, I had her source the ingredients for actual mole. I just hope I’m doing it right; I haven’t made one since my grandma taught me way long ago.”

“…What was the bet?”

“Don’t worry about it, anyways—!”

I left them to it and went to my armory to put away my things and run maintenance on my guns, Apex lay her body down on its charging station while I did that.

I left my armory feeling like a completely different man and watched the two most important women in my life chattering away while cooking.

I had been quite correct in my belief that Lucy and my mom would get along well; Gloria had all but adopted the Netrunner as a foster daughter, and Lucy had mostly been bewildered and caught up in the older woman’s wake.

I had also been pleasantly surprised by the lack of pushing about grandchildren. Though a part of me feared she was merely biding her time.

Lucy had spent almost as much time hanging out with my mother as she had me, a natural result of her insistence to look after me after the operations to install my list of Cyber-ware.

Today had been the first job the crew had taken since my freakout with the Animals. I had been worried about reprisals, but it seemed that the Animals were currently too busy trying to consolidate their territory, Maelstrom and the Valentinos, scenting blood in the water, were pushing hard to be rid of the gang of muscleheads, leaving them no time or funds to satisfy a vendetta.

I thought back to the job today.

I’d spent the better part of a month training to get used to my new baseline, and still I had been surprised by how different it felt to do a gig. How many more options I had.

How much more effectively I could defend my people.

I’d used the Sandevistan twice in quick succession and was barely even winded, the two hearts and the blood pump spreading the load of the needed heart rate between them beautifully, the adrenaline booster ensuring my adrenal glands weren’t damaged by the increased production.

I stared at my left hand, recalling the feeling of a human skull caving in around my balled-up fist.

Were it not for the skeletal enhancement, the bones in my hand would have shattered. Were it not for the titanium joints, I would have had to take the long way down from the roof, adding at the very least thirty seconds to the operation, which considering the corp we stole from had the platinum subscription with the NCPD, that would have meant we likely would have had to contend with cops or Millitech reinforcements.

Or both.

The neural-ware made me a monster combat hacker against non-Netrunners, even troops with a dedicated Netrunner were not safe from me, as with Kiwi or Lucy to back me up, I could bruteforce hack my way through their ICE with little trouble now, magnitudes faster if I used the Sandevistan in conjunction with my hacking.

My neural-load had more than doubled as a result of the chrome…but I hadn’t even needed to change the dosage on my meds to stay regular.

I could go farther.

Stabilizers on my wrists so my hearts beating won’t cause a tremble in my off hand, shock absorbers on my wrists to more easily keep a weapon on target, subdermal armor so I’m bullet resistant without armored clothing. A monowire or projectile launch system so I am never actually unarmed. An Adreno-trigger and a Jenkins’ (no relation) Tendons system so I can run even faster while using the Sandevistan.

Though if I did that, I’d also have to get cyberlungs, my organic gas bags would not be able to keep up with the demand, and I’d need bioplastic blood vessels to handle the increased blood pressure…

My right arm itched.

Absently scratching the matte black plating did not alleviate the irritation.

The symptom was something new, akin to a phantom pain. My subconscious mind insisted something was wrong and manifested this insistence as an itch on an arm I no longer had. Considering it had happened after I upgraded my chrome; it was difficult to miss the probable cause.

And that was the issue. I could think of dozens of configurations in which I could mutilate my body into an outstanding war machine. I had the connections, and, in all honesty, the money, to go full-borg. Become a walking weapons platform. A creature of plastic and metal whose only function will be to hurt and kill.

It would only cost my squishy, inefficient human body, with all of those human frailties I am told I should despise.

But with a body like that, the list of those that could reliably kill me would shrink considerably. We’d be able to do even more dangerous jobs, with me taking the brunt of the danger, as most of my body would be disposable and replaceable. I could design key parts of it so each individual extremity would be close to modular.

Yes…with such a body, I would not need to worry. I could do whatever needed to be done to keep my people safe.

“Oh, hey Al, when did you get here?”

Lucy’s voice snapped me out of my head a moment before she crashed softly into me, tucked her head into the crook of my neck, and hugged me tight. My arms went automatically around her waist, enjoying her softness and warmth.

“A bit ago.” I said offhandedly, taking in the scent of her shampoo. “You and Ma looked like you were having fun, and I didn’t want to interrupt.”

Mom snorted. “Next time tell us you’re here, you could have taken care of the dishes.”

“Oh no, anything but that!” I laughed and squeezed Lucy a little more tightly.

We ate dinner, even my sullen little brother lured in by the siren call of genuine chicken meat. The spicy and savory dish was phenomenal. The only low point to the meal being that Apex could not enjoy it with us.

And I realized that I could very well lose this. This everyday interaction devoid of deep meaning. If I replaced my other arm, I’d not be able to hold my loved ones and give them comfort, the more I chromed up, the less of my body remained, the more meds I’d have to take, the more my ability to taste, and smell, and touch would all be impacted.

And that’s disregarding the possibility that I take augmentation too far and pull a Maine on them.

As I washed the dishes, Lucy leaning against me and drying the dishes I finished washing, I resolved not to lose what I had, not to lose sight of what was, to me, the most important.

As we all sat in front of my gigantic TV and put on a movie, I reached out for Lucy’s hand, without taking her eyes off the screen, she shifted her grip to intertwine her fingers with mine.

David begged off then, citing needing to do his homework. But Apex was happy enough to take his place on the couch, not minding one bit when mom used her drone body as a cup holder.

Lucy rested her head on my shoulder, and I made sure to relax my deltoid so she’d be more comfortable there, as Apex reached out with one of her spidery legs and bumped it against my metal arm.

Yeah. This was good. Whatever changes I made, whatever additions I decided on, they had to be made to protect this.

Though I really could do with a shock absorber on my wrists…