Chapter 10

Lizzy and I were walking south down the sidewalk in companionable silence. Stripping the chrome from Fuji had only taken moments with my inventory, and I’d left his boneless corpse where it had fallen in the abandoned apartment, along with the equally boneless mummy that I’d buried in some trash. In the interest of not just immediately walking out of the apartment with a backpack full of bones after a bare minute had passed, I’d taken the time to check out the details I’d skipped over that the mummy had brought up in my inventory, though it wasn’t exactly insightful. It had said, ‘Mysterious mummy found buried in duracrete in megabuilding B9. Who was he? Why was he thusly entombed? What the hell was he doing with such awesome chrome? You’ll probably never know.’ Fuji’s was even less descriptive, saying only, ‘Corpse of Fuji. Fuck this guy.’ Fuji had had some decent chrome though. His bones were BioTech Titan Alloy plated bones, and he also had Titan Alloy subdermal armor. I’d snagged both. The biggest score though was his IA. It was a Samsung Tier 2 Internal Agent, which sounds simple but kinda isn’t. In the world of Cyberpunk:Noir, Samsung was a high end electronics manufacturer that made some of the best netrunner gear in the world, and Tier 2 was typically the top of the line that most normal folks could ever expect to get their hands on. The fact that I had three pieces of Tier 3 chrome in my inventory notwithstanding.

I currently had Fuji’s bones, subdermal armor, and IA in Fuji’s backpack, riding on my shoulder. I’d also added Fuji’s pistol to the left side of my belt, right in front of my knife. Checking that gun in my inventory had told me, ‘IchikoCorp Python. 12 shot semi auto .45. Hated by many for its thick grip, loved for the standard large clip.’ I’d also taken the time to check the smaller gun I’d picked up from my trade with Lizzy earlier today as well and found it was a MilSec CrowdController .38, that was, ‘used by MilSec forces to kill specific soft targets in a crowd, without mowing through the six noncombatants behind them.’ Lizzy hadn’t commented on my newest gun so I figure she’s not expecting a cut from that. Or maybe she just hadn’t noticed it underneath my brand new trench coat. It was a little bit big on me and the cuffs had a tendency to slide down over my hands a bit…but I liked the look, and my inventory told me that it was actually a piece of Tier 1 armor my inventory called, ‘DilloArmor trench coat. Tier 1 armor that will protect against cutting attacks and low caliber bullets.’ I’d need to find a tailor or something to shorten the sleeves a bit, but until then just keeping my hands in the coat’s pockets worked fine.

“So why’re we picking up your sister again?” asked Lizzy from my side.

“Well firstly, her shift just ended anyway, and I wanted to see the look on her face when I told her she can quit her job at BurgerDepot, and secondly, because she wants to get some subdermal armor installed. Figure as long as we’re going to Doc’s place anyway we can kill two birds with one stone,” I replied.

Lizzy seemed to consider my answer before nodding, “Makes sense,” she finally stated.

“Plus we’ll get some burgers out of the deal,” I said happily to a snort from Lizzy.

About 5 minutes later we came up to the BurgerDepot to find Sara leaning up against the wall, her arms crossed, with a BurgerDepot bag in hand. She unceremoniously flung the bag at me, and I nearly fumbled the catch as sleeve covered hands make grabbing things tricky.

“Nice coat,” said Sara with a laugh. “Couldn’t find one that fit?”

I pulled a burger out of the bag and handed it to Lizzy as I sighed as if put upon. “That’s what I get for killing some giant asshole. In the interest of expanding my wardrobe, I should really stick to murdering people more my own size I suppose.” Sara’s eyes narrowed, but I got a laugh out of Lizzy as she unwrapped her burger. I removed one for myself, unwrapped it, and took a big bite. BurgerDepot really does make a respectable burger. According to the wrapper, these ones were Deluxe Style. It tasted remarkably similar to a Burger King whopper with cheese. “Ah, introductions, how rude of me. Lizzy, this is my big sister Sara. Sara, this is my new friend Lizzy.”

The girls looked each other over. “Not sure how accurate ‘friend’ is in this context,” Lizzy eventually supplied.

I cocked my head at an angle as I looked at her. “Well, we’ve saved each other’s lives, worked two successful gigs together, got drinks at a bar together, shared a meal,” I held up my burger as evidence. “What would you call it?”

Lizzy thoughtfully took a bite of her own burger. “Alright, fair, I suppose it has been a pretty full day hasn’t it?”

“Wait, saved each other’s lives? Does that have something to do with why your head is bleeding?” asked Sara.

“Yep, this last gig we worked with another merc who turned on us. Shot me right in the head. I’ve got a total headache by the way, hopefully Doc can give me something for that.” I replied.

Sara just sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. “So, you got shot in the head…again?! You didn’t learn your lesson last time?”

“Well I’ve obviously learned that I am immortal. Which is good to know. Add that on top of being a devilishly handsome evil genius and I’m sitting pretty.” I replied, only to immediately take a slap to the back of my head from the gorilla impersonating my sister.

“Idiot. You need to be more careful. You’re just lucky they hit the one part of your head with an armored metal patch. You should be dead.” She sounded pretty angry.

“Thus I refer you back to obviously being immortal. But, if it makes you feel better, I’ll get a nice shiny metal skull to minimize the chances of potential brain damage recurring.” I flippantly responded. I noticed a smile on Lizzy’s face at our byplay as she finished her burger. I offered her another, but she declined, so I stuck it in my coat pocket and pushed it into my inventory. I’d eat it later. Sara was grumbling irritatedly to herself as we continued walking, and she totally stole my last burger out of the bag. I’m pretty sure I caught the words ‘death wish’ and ‘dumb fuck’ repeated a few times as she mumbled through her/my burger.

We spent a good 15 minutes chatting as we walked south to Doc’s ripper shop. Lizzy had thanked Sara for the burger as she apparently loved them, but rarely got to eat them since her little sister was obsessed with salads, and as such that comprised the majority of her diet.

I got to know a bit more about Lizzy as the girls exchanged stories. Lizzy had been the daughter of a netrunner father and a corpo mother who had worked for ChemCo. Her mother had died a couple years ago on the job. Lizzy had tried to look into the cause of death but had found several conflicting reports. Either she’d died during an industrial accident that breached a massive chemical container, she’d been killed during a break in, or she’d been poisoned by a rival, Lizzy, to this day, wasn’t sure which, if any, of those explanations was the truth. Her father had been a solo netrunner who had taught Lizzy everything she knew and had purchased her a low end Tier 1 IA, as well as the pretty decent support chrome that covered the back of her neck..He’d died last year. Lizzy had woken up one day to find him fried in his netrunner chair. Her dad’s hardware and software, what little hadn’t been destroyed, had been locked down hard and she’d never been able to find out what caused it. Since their parents’ deaths, she and her sister had been living in B9 up on floor 150 due to her mother’s life insurance package covering rent for her and her sister until they were 18. Lizzy’s little sister, Emma, was only 13, so they still had 5 years rent free to look forward to, even though she’d turned 18 herself a few months ago. I’d been a bit surprised to find she was actually a bit older than me considering how young she looked.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Sara had responded with our story, which I found interesting since I hadn’t known some of the details she revealed. Our mother was actually originally a Noir City native that had run off when she found herself being hunted by someone powerful. Sara wasn’t sure if it was gang or corpo related, but either way she’d stolen a levbike and taken off into the badlands. Our dad had found her some time later on the verge of dying of thirst due to the lack of drinkable water outside cities. Apparently that was a common cause of death out there. Dad had nursed her back to health and she’d ended up joining The Pirates. Dad was a second generation Pirate, who’d been robbing and killing people for whatever they had out in the badlands since as long as he’d been old enough to hold a gun. About 5 years ago a few dozen Pirates, including our family, were camped out and got ambushed by a large crew of Cannibals. Story went that Sara and I were sleeping in the car when Sara woke up to the sound of bullets bouncing off the car’s armor and a message from Mom telling her to take the car and drive. When Sara had eventually reconnected with the remnants of The Pirates that had escaped, it became clear that only a half dozen of us had survived the attack. We’d all convoyed to another group of Pirates, and the rest was history. Sara’s comment that she just hoped that our parents died before they were eaten, not after, put a shiver down my spine. This world is just crazy dangerous no matter where you are.

As we reached Doc Brown’s ripper shop, the garage door opened for us, and we walked into the dark garage. Lizzy seemed a touch jumpy as the garage dropped behind us and she literally jumped a bit as the bright lights popped on almost as soon as it closed. She followed a bit tentatively behind Sara and me as we entered the sole door and found ourselves back in Doc’s operating theater.

“Hey there, Doc!” I called out and heard the spinning of his chair’s wheels a moment before he slid out to a stop next to the ripper chair in the center of the room.

Doc’s eyes all but bulged out as he saw me standing there waving nonchalantly. “What the actual fuck?! How’re you even standing up kid?” He flicked his feet beneath his chair and slid over to a stop in front of me. He pulled a small electronic wand out of a pocket and waved it at me like a deranged wizard in a lab coat while looking at his tablet. “That’s impossible,” I heard him mumble under his breath. “Not synth muscle…BioTech muscle grow present but…at the prescribed dose?! How?!” He looked at me over the top of his tablet with clear suspicion in his eyes. “What did you do kid? No way you corrected 3 months of atrophy in 3 days. How’d you do it? What’s your secret?” The curiosity pouring out of him just put a smile on my face.

“Oh, you know, Doc. The usual. Good genes, healthy living, followed my doc’s orders, plenty of burgers and exercise, a little magic. Nothing you wouldn’t expect.” I counted those off on my fingers as I listed them and then gave him a nod and a small smirk.

“What’re they talking about?” I heard Lizzy ask Sara behind me.

“Oh, Malcolm was in a coma for a few months. He just woke up a couple days ago. Doc said it’d take him a month minimum to get back on his feet. Malcolm didn’t care for that prognosis, so he spent every waking hour working out like a crazy person until he could. Said he needed to get out and make some creds,” Sara helpfully explained.

Doc was scowling at his tablet, “Fine, don’t tell me. I’ll figure it out eventually.” He waved his tablet at me threateningly but I just continued to smile happily. The tablet beeped at Doc and he stopped waving it to give it a more thorough look. “Hmm, looks like you fractured your skull pretty good. Should take care of that first thing, otherwise you’re going to pass out.” He looked a bit closer at his tablet. “Or die. Whatever, you’re leaking cerebrospinal fluid. 300 creds to fix it. Take a seat.” He waved his free hand at the ripper chair.

“Huh, guess that headache was a bit worse than I thought, go figure.” I said as I set my new backpack down on the floor and sat down on the reclined chair.

Little arms shot out of the chair and ceiling as I heard Sara cursing and grumbling for some reason. The arms sprouted a series of needles and shot towards my head from a dozen different directions before I could even think to flinch. I felt the needles for only a second or so, and before I could even feel pain I instead felt an odd cool sensation flowing over my head, numbing my face, and everything else above my jawline.

“This’ll just take a minute ladies. Just need to plug the worst crack and add some synth bone. It’ll take a week or two to fully set, at which point normal bone will just grow over the lattice over the course of the next few weeks.

I tried to tell the doc that that wasn’t going to be necessary since I was just going to upgrade my skull, among other things, but all that came out of my mouth was sort of an odd grunting groan.

“Shut up, kid. I’m almost…done. There ya go. The anesthetic will wear off in a few minutes.” The needle wielding arms pulled away from my face, folded the needles away and then pulled back into the chair/ceiling. I stood up, tried to move my jaw, and found I couldn’t feel a thing. I poked at it with my hand and found I was drooling. With a sigh and a shrug, I just transferred 300 creds to the doc. “Excellent, now that that’s taken care of, I believe you mentioned you had some chrome you wanted appraised, yes?” Doc asked.

I found myself groaning again as I tried to speak. I stopped trying and just nodded, picked up the backpack, and shook it at him, a telling clank from the metal encased bones within hopefully told the doc where the merchandise was. Doc waved me over to a metal table in the corner of the room, it had a raised lip around the edge and a drain in one end…oh, right, that’s an autopsy type table. I mentally prodded myself out of the macabre inspection and dumped out the bag of bones on the table. Ok, maybe that style of table was appropriate in this instance.

Doc moved his chair over and stood up to wave his little sensor wand over the bones while studying his tablet. “Let’s see here…BioTech Titan Alloy plated bones. Guy this big…I’d give you 5 grand for ‘em. That much alloy is worth a bit more but it costs to remove it, and I gotta make a profit ya know? Hmm, oh damn, that’s a sweet little internal agent in the skull there. Samsung Tier 2 IA. That’s worth 40 grand, easy. Shop it around and you could probably get 50 to 100. Lizzy seemed to teleport to the table and had picked up the skull. She was stroking the side of it with a somewhat disturbing look on her face, and…ok my face is all numbed up, so I have an excuse to be drooling. So why is she literally drooling over…Oh, right, she’s totally a netrunner wearing a Samsung shirt, guess it kinda makes sense.

I went ahead and opened up a chat, since I couldn’t speak, and invited all three of them. They accepted moments later.

Malcolm: That IA is all yours if you want it Lizzy. Basically for half price since you’re already the half owner of the thing. Minus an additional 2500c from the bones, and minus whatever this is worth…

I opened a smaller side pocket on the side of the backpack. Moving the bones out of the way, on the side of the table without the drain, I carefully poured out the contents. The subdermal armor primarily consisted of tiny rings that were surgically implanted beneath the skin and had the ability to grip each other under certain conditions, like getting stabbed or shot. They formed a pile of tiny black metal rings, I patted the pocket to make sure they were all out before looking at Doc.

Malcolm: I know my sister wanted some good subdermal, so I was thinking this might do the trick. Still need to know what it would sell for though so Lizzy gets her cut.

Doc was immediately there, waving his pseudo magic wand over the new treasure on his table. “Nice, nice, I do like working with Titan Alloy. Yeah this is good stuff. Yep BioTech brand for sure. Hmm, I’ll have to make a few adjustments for your sister though, looks like this came off a big fella.” His eyes went to the bones, “Ah, makes sense. All from the same source then. Let’s see, this much? Call it 20,000c. Oh and the install is a bit time intensive. It’d take a few hours for the install, with anesthetic, and a few other odds and ends…you’d be looking at about 5000 for the install,” Doc said clinically as he continued poking at the pile of tiny rings.

“Mal, we should really put together a bit of a cred cushion before we make a big purchase like that,” said Sara, doubtfully.

The look on her face when I sent her 100,000 creds was totally worth every single one of them.