Chapter 8: Home, at last

Online guide from AbyssNet Forum, VortexEYE: [So you want to buy an Implant?]. By author: Sevenbees2

Since you’re digging through the much down here, I’m assuming you want your Implant for less than legal reasons. You’re here for function, not one of those bleak Implants that your company gives you to be a better algorithm they can control. Implants are tricky business, they will quite literally make or break your life. There’s plenty to consider, first up is the big choice. A BUG, or a SIM?

Cybernetics or Mutations? That debate has raged the world for centuries, and don’t be smart thinking you’ll just stick both into you. That’s a surefire way to drop your compatibility all the way down to 0%, and you do not want to become a Parasyte or a Fractured.

First, I’m praying you understand Implant Grades. The tl;dr of it is that the weakest is Iron, then you’ll see Bronze, Silver, Gold, Titanium and the elusive Platinum at the very top. Yeah, unless you’re the child of a Founder, stick to Irons and Bronzes — Silver if you’ve stumbled into an inheritance of a couple millions and want to invest it into your body.

Grade determines two things, the effectiveness of your SIM’s Mutations or BUG’s Features and how many you start with. Also related is your Compatibility with the Implant, which does a whole lot to make you more effective with how Warp Energy interacts with your body. In fact, if you have higher than 80% compatibility (which is insanely rare) with an Implant of a lower grade, then almost definitely buy that over something of a higher Grade. High Compatibility = fast Development, stronger powers, more control.

Now let’s get into the two types of Implants themselves. BUGs are for those who want to micromanage every aspect of their lives, you’ll be given a random Feature among a pool of twelve. More info on that in another guide of mine. Now, for Bronze BUGs and above, you’ll want to consider how your Features will interact with one another. Accomodation and Integration? Great combination, you’ll be able to fit more steel into you than ten scrappers combined! Dataweaving and Sustain? Not that good, at most, you’ll notice that your Net Delves give you less of a headache. The only two Features I’d say work with any other are Energized and Database since they’re overall efficiency boosters.

Features, once you get them, are permanent. They’ll update across Versions and once they reach a certain threshold will have a big update that gives you a Protocol. Which is a fancy word for ‘something you’re very good at’. You use Analyze on rocks a lot? Congrats, you get a Mineral Scan Protocol! Some Protocols are weird, especially Psyche ones, but generally they’ll be based on your experiences.

Features are more reliable than Mutations in terms of how they develop according to the shit you go through. But that doesn’t mean scrap if you don’t have the Shardware to fit it. If you buy a BUG, that’s the start of your expenses — prepare to spend a lot buying Shardware and improving it.

Now, SIMs and their Mutations. You start of with the number dependant on your Grade, and at Convergence you can take an additional amount of Mutagen equal that. Now, you’ll probably read the vial you bought from shady genefreak in an alleyway and it’ll say something vague like ‘Muscle enhancement’. That’s bullshit. It could do anything from making your muscles denser, to improving their elasticity or only affect a specific group of muscles. You want Mutagen, get something specific and expensive, luckily — that’s not as pricey as constant Shardware maintenance. It’s a one and done deal.

There are a whole lot of types of Mutations, tens of thousands to millions, and we classify them in five ways which you can read about in my other guide. What’s important is that once you choose them, there’s no going back. It isn’t like Shardware that you can just swap out — they grow as a part of you. Develop them from 0 to a 100% development and go up a Tier, those Mutations combine and you start the process all over again. If you’re extremely lucky, you’ll get what’s called a Meta-Mutation… but don’t expect to be lucky.

Now, the general pricing for Implants are as follows, but you’ll notice their range increases across the Grades as some variations are just better than others.

Iron: 5,000

Bronze: 50k-100k

Silver: 1Mil-5Mil

Gold: 50Mil-400Mil

Titanium: Yeah, good fucking luck affording one of these.

Platinum: Unless you’re a Founder or know them on a first-name basis, you ain’t even looking at someone on this Grade.

Now, there are three exceptions that change a price of an Implant. The first is if the Implant was used by someone else in the past and it was collected back from them either after they died or through removal surgery, that fucks up the Compatibility a lot, and so they’re much cheaper. If you’re willing to suffer for a discount, I ain’t judgin’.

The second is only applicable to SIMs. If it has a Mutation of the Energy Class, you’re not a Mutant, you’re called an Esper and can manipulate some element of the world with your fingertips. So congratulations, everyone either wants you on their team, or on the ground as a corpse.

The third is only applicable to BUGs. That’s the presence of a Unique Feature, it means in the whole wide world — you’re the only one with that power.

6:48 PM

June 4th

Ripley

An abandoned warehouse north-side of the District center, that’s where I’d been kept. I’d read reports that seismic activity from the Yellowstone reactor had prompted many industries to move out from the area. It had been an earthquake that trashed Westbrook to becoming the city’s garbage dump after all. That only meant there was a different kind of ‘company’ to be found here.

I practically ran when I saw the first Metal Heavens members. I don’t know why I never saw it with Diamante, nobody on Earth was as obsessed with altering their bodies to that extent other than those steelfreaks. Snake Fangs were small rabbits in comparison to the wolves they were.

You could hear their bodies cranking from the next street over, the gears of their neck’s twisted as they glared at me and the dull thumping of their legs when they neared. It was only Diamante’s quiet company that kept them off me, they must have assumed I was already being taken care of. I couldn’t help but notice their bodies screeching with stiff joints when they looked at him, but whether it was from fear or respect was something I couldn’t tell.

When I’d been working under Shaun, I’d always wondered if that crappy clinic was the best I could be doing. If there were places I’d fare better, higher pay, better tools, more engaging work instead of the hundreth busted gun or fixing up a worker’s face after a drunk patron smashed their head in…

Shard Op’s were in demand everywhere. There wasn’t a street in New California where you’d find a person without some form of cybernetic advancement or Neuroframe. We were in high demand, growing higher every day the Swarm got closer as more of us fled to the safety of a Corporate Nation or NeoCore where we’d be better protected. But the thing was, official jobs required official licenses issued by the New California Government.

That meant schooling, something I was in no place to afford unless I wanted to give up an eye, a kidney and a chunk of my brain. Hell, I was already living with one kidney to afford my mom’s mechanical arm being grafted onto mine. That was under an official Shard Op’.

I was doing surgeries like that for just a meal.

But with Metal Heavens, I’d be doing ten times the work for just a breath. A picture leaked one day on the Net, a simple one, of a dozen Shard Op’s with oxygen masks locked up in a warehouse not too dissimilar from the one I’d just been in.

The implication was easy to decipher.

Each of them didn’t have legs, they were planted in place like trees with screens floating about them, directing their next surgery and move. They worked endlessly, machines in a cog as the strict Daemons in their heads gave them the capacity to wield Warp Energy according to the directions injected by their superiors.

I didn’t have it the best with Shaun. But I didn’t have it the worst either.

I simply had the only option available to me that wouldn’t put me or my mother in danger.

Diamante had disappeared as soon as I made it a foot into what could be considered ‘safe territory’, sinking into an alleyway without so much as a goodbye, and from then on I’d jogged until I found the nearest Monorail station. Only then could I breathe, but even then, it was carefully.

I’d never considered just how others had looked at me until now, did I always have this many strangers slide a quick glance? The monorail traveled quick, gravity locks securing us to the ground during the acceleration, and the steel monoliths we called our homes blurred.

But all I could feel were those eyes. Those piercing glares which cast like spotlights as though I’d just broken out of a maximum security prison.

Sweat spilled onto my neck. Did they know? Could they feel the Gold running through my nerves?

Would I be followed home? Be given a false sense of safety? Only for my door to be burst down as they ripped my spine out to retrieve the BUG? I was the ticket all these poor souls needed for a better life, for an escape… in fact, it was my ticket as well.

Fifty million? I could change everything in my life with that. I could downgrade to a Silver, still leagues beyond what I had ever hoped for, and attend proper schooling. Certification, a top-floor apartment, a career, it was all in my grasp. A life in the top 1%.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

And it was worth the orb in my head. Until Convergence was complete, I could remove it safely, even have minimal rejection to other Implants.

I told myself that this Implant being Gold meant something too good to give up, that it was an opportunity to gain all that and more. But when I remembered my mother, I remembered just how little time I would have.

Two and a half years. 2500.

And the Swarm after that. 2501.

I ran my fingers through my pockets as the monorail arrived at its next destination. I still had the Bronze BUG stolen from Shaun’s table, but I didn’t know its specifications — though I wondered if my mom could use it. If I was back in the workshop, at least I could gauge its two Features, but I didn’t have a Genome Splicer to determine the compatibility she would have to it.

This would be her third Implant, the chances of a random BUG being usable at a 50% Compatibility for her were one-in-forty. As for me, my Compatibility was something I’d only read about in fiction.

99%… just what did that mean? You needed to be above 50%, that was set in stone as evidenced by my mother’s hasty reaction to her second Implant, an Iron which slowly degraded until it began attacking her; blindness in one eye, motion impairment, damage to her respiratory control centers. You were considered lucky to have 70%, it meant you had conscious control over that proportion of the BUGs influence on you.

Higher Compatibility made you more efficient, and purposeful in your manipulation of your Implant — even directing the speed of it’s growth and how a Feature would develop. We were called Adapters for a reason, to grow in strength we needed to experience stimuli to propagate our Implants to develop in such a way that we adapt to the phenomenon.

Get shot by a gun a lot, you’d get better at dodging.

Shit aim? You’d get better at shooting.

That was the simple of it, but for BUGs… it would always correlate to one of twelve Features. I’d hoped for Technician, the Feature most specialized in Shard Operating… I still had an opportunity to get it. Psyche was my only unlocked Feature as of now until I progressed it, it would update to harden my mental fortitude and mindset… but what worried me was that I already has something to help me control my emotions. What would their combined effect be?

And with 99% compatibility, my Implant would always adapt when it sensed it needed to. It already updated once to… propagate a constant filter on my memories of that night. That wasn’t what the update said, but I knew that was what it was doing. That thing I’d put in my head far before the Implant was specialized in compartmentalizing memories — especially those of guilt, grief, shame and sorrow. Instead, I focused on my memories of when that MAL attacked me.

Was the strange compatibility because the MALignant ate my Op-Claw to grow? Then maybe… maybe it could work on my mother as well? She’d used my claw longer than I ever had.

But then she would have a fifty million target in her head.

———

I stared at the door, I’d reached home five minutes ago but I couldn’t enter. I was scared, too much had changed. Was I going to work for Metal Heavens now? It wasn’t too late to run.

Instead, I flashed a tag stuck into the skin of my left palm and the door swung open. I took the first step.

Then another, and here I was. Home. A tiny apartment no bigger than my workshop. But it had four walls, a roof, a toilet, a couch around a coffee table, and a workstation. It was meant to be an office, but we just threw a mattress on the ground between it all. Ever since I’d started working full-time for the club, the couch had been where I slept… right now, it was occupied by a woman who held the blanket I used close to her face.

My mother was hunched on the one table. Flimsy gray hair tangled down her face and neck, her singular arm and singular eye focused on the laptop in front of her.

“It’s been two days, Ripper.” She sounded tired, on the verge of crying as she refused to look at me. “Two days since I’d heard what happened there… I’d thought-“

“I’m home. I’m sorry, I’d… needed some time. A lot has changed.” I sat on the couch beside her, tapping my new metal peg leg. “What was it you said… that the old shows had pirates with a wooden leg? Guess I’m one now.”

She turned her neck, that eye focused on her son who had taken too long to come back home. Who’d come back home with a metal leg.

And a Gold Implant.

She stayed silent for a moment, her aged but wonderful face flickering between too many states. “Hoaqin said he hadn’t been able to reach you… I thought… Rip, you- fuck why did I let you… your leg.”

“It’s okay, mom… I’m safe. I’m alive. That’s what’s important, I always told you I’d get it removed one day… this just sped it up.” I put my hand on her shoulder, letting the density of my blood and steel settle into her feeble body to let her know I was real. That I was home.

Her momentary silence dwelled on my leg, only broken by a laugh. “Now I know for a fact you didn’t do that yourself, you let an NC-Med touch your leg like that? Terrible work. I thought you had more self respect?”

“Oh you should have seen the guy when I pointed out his mistakes. A real hardass! But unfortunately I was knocked out for two days straight, and was dealing with… a Convergence.” A smile creeped up on me.

Her eye tore open, and I saw her shift between wonder and confusion. “Convergence? As in…”

“The first stage of getting an Implant.” I confirmed, my face plastered in joy. I’d done it after years of working to that goal. One could say, I went the badass route and harvested it right out of that monster.

I didn’t know my mother could move that quickly when she hopped off the chair and hugged me, her sole arm tight around me. “Ripper… h-how… how dare you?!”

Never mind, she was choking me. “You should have shown me first! This is something you discuss with your mother and you know that! At least tell me it’s a BUG!”

“It is…” I wheezed, poking her flesh to let go off me.

“And- how the hell did you find one in the middle of a MAL-attack? I’d heard it was Gold… don’t tell me you ripped it off one of the victims?!” Her grip got tighter.

“I- No! Of course not! I got it from the MAL!” I managed to speak through.

“I thought I raised my son better- WHAT?!” Her grip got tighter again. Then she let go. Then she put things together. “A… a Gold?”

I could only nod, I was afraid the first expulsion of air would send me into another two-day coma.

“Ripper…” She said, her voice as stern as possible as she digested my words. “If you even think about taking that thing out of your head, I will single-handedly ensure that you will not have one happy day with that money.”

I blinked, was… she telling me to keep it? I think she was?

“I couldn’t imagine- oh Ripper… when you were born we promised to each other that you would get a Silver… but Gold? I-“ Tears flooded her eyes, and only then did I get a hug.

And yeah, I cried too — all my emotions which had been welled up by the changes to my brainchemistry cracked to my mother’s gentle touch, like an earthquake shattering a dam. I didn’t know what having a Gold in my head meant, but I meant it.

I would give it a reason that my skull was its rightful place.

“A Gold BUG…” My mother seemed to repeat that as many times as I had in my head. “You can do anything with that. And the chances of Technician are… significantly higher.”

“I’ve already gotten Psyche.” I tapped my Neuroframe, prompting her to look at my Implant overview. “What do you think I should… do?”

My mother’s legs wobbled, that hug was more energy from her in a moment than I’d seen across the last three months. Using my body as support, I eased her next to me as she rested her head on my neck, the depth of her words reaching my core. “Still going to be a Shard Operator?”

“I was always following in your footsteps.” I chuckled, letting my arm rest on her shoulder. “Technician or not, I’ll be working with Shardware.”

“Don’t go back to Shaun.” She said seriously, pleading with her voice. “If he figures out what you ha-”

“Shaun left me to die.” I interrupted, a firm hammer in my voice. “I’ll wait a bit to contact Hoaqin, once I’m settled… I’ll let him know I’m alive.”

“That’s cruel.” My mom said, no emotion behind it. “But necessary. From what I know, they’re in hiding — other gangs preying on them like Vultures to a corpse. Shaun’ll be busy rebuilding in the next few months… which means…”

“I’ll have to find a new job.” I did not like the prospect of putting myself out there, but it necessitated my next few words. “I was saved by mercs.”

“Mercenaries?” Caution flooded her, I had to pin her down to keep her from shaking.

“They didn’t kill me, means they need me for something.” I was the one who began to shake and now she had to comfort me. “I don’t know if they’re better than Shaun… but he wouldn’t have let me even wake up. Whatever their plan is, I’ll be smart about it.”

My mother took a few deep breaths to calm herself down before nodding, this was hardly the life she’d struggled to give me, but where I lacked in comfort I’d been gifted with her wit. Throughout all that we’d lost, all that she’d sacrificed, everything she’d passed down to me… I was all she had left. “Tell me everything.”

And she was all I had left now that Sel-

My Frame grew hot, and I spurned that into focus.

I told her everything, there was no keeping secrets from this woman, and now more than anything… I needed her to help me. If not that, just to be there. Whatever world I’d entered — of MALs being sold between corporations and plans to commit MALterrorism on the government — was something I couldn’t handle alone.

She tensed as I told her about that part, it probably reminded her of my father. Corporate conspiracy was a surefire way to end up dead, but I had some sort of protection in the form of Missy and Diamante.

Her lone eye popped opened when I told her my theory on the Implat’s compatibility. “Ninety-Nine percent?! You’ve given me enough of a heart attack already! Do you want your poor mom to die today? Next thing you’ll say you also got that Gold MALignant’s SIM?”

I shook my head. “Fortunately… no. That went to a woman that helped me, an officer. Diana Jones.”

My mother studied the name. “An officer? And the two of you share the same MAL-sourced Implant. Ripley, be careful — if you two have Implants from the same MALignant then that’s…”

“That’s what?” Was there something I didn’t know?

Her voice seemed grave, heavy with burden. “The two of you are linked to either be fateful enemies or allies, there’s no inbetween.”