Chapter 13

I woke up in the dark with no idea how long had passed. Stupid clock. Getting up I found my way to the stairs and made my way down to the main level of the apartment. Damn, this is even nicer than I thought. The white floor was some sort of soft plastic material that if I wasn’t mistaken was actually heated. I flexed my bare toes pleasantly against it, feeling some slight give to the material. The bathroom was easy to notice as it was the only door with a bead curtain, apparently something of a staple in Noir City culture. Having need of the facilities I parted the curtain and walked in. The light came on automatically and I was somewhat taken aback by the sheer difference between our old bathroom and the new one. It had a double sink, a very nice looking toilet with what appeared to be a padded seat, and a rather massive shower that could probably fit four people fairly comfortably. In the interest of trying out that shower immediately, I stripped off my clothes and made my way over, only to pause as I saw myself in the large mirror over the sinks.

The biggest, most obvious, change in my appearance was a metallic pink ridge of metal flush with my skin that stretched out from behind my ears, making its way over my cheeks, below my eyes, and over the bridge of my nose. Turning my head showed that that ridge wove over the top of my IA’s plates and continued around the back of my skull in a continuous circle all the way around my head. That’s…actually pretty cool looking. I smiled at my reflection and something seemed off. After a minute’s consideration I realized what it was. My teeth hadn’t been that white or that straight before. Oh, sure, that makes sense. New skull, new teeth. I smiled widely at myself, and found that, while I was already pretty decent looking before, I now had an absolutely dazzling smile.

I made my way happily into the shower…and found that I couldn’t turn it on without my IA. Damn thing probably costs creds to turn it on just like our old one. I groaned to myself and exited to get dressed once more.

Leaving the bathroom, I decided to look around a bit more and found a door next to the bathroom that wouldn’t open, presumably Sara’s bedroom. There was a decent sized kitchen that was located under my loft style bedroom, and I found a fridge that I promptly opened. My stomach growled when I realized there was no food to be found.

There were a few types of beverages available though, so I grabbed one at random. I couldn’t read the black writing on the can, but it looked japanese to me. Cracking it open I took a large swig and nearly spewed it right back out. It was truly disgusting stuff. Sugary with a definite medicinal overtone that made it taste something like cough syrup that had gone bad and was then used to brew three kinds of tea simultaneously. And why the actual fuck someone would carbonate this abortion of a soda I’d never know. I managed to swallow without spitting it out or vomiting, but it was a near thing. I walked to the nearby sink and poured it out, setting the empty can next to the sink, so I could examine it more closely in the light of day to make absolutely positively sure I never put that shit in my face ever ever again.

Returning to the fridge, I selected a distinctly different can with golden characters on it this time. All three types of beverages in there were labeled entirely in what I believed to be Japanese script, so I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I cracked it open and this time took an investigative sniff before committing. Well that just smells like beer. I took a tentative sip this time. Yep, beer. Huh, that’s pretty good beer actually.I took a decent swig and found myself enjoying it. Swishing it around in my mouth quickly removed the horrid taste of that previous can.

I brought my can with me over to the couch and settled in to watch some TV, only to realize that I couldn’t even change the channel or turn up the volume from it’s low level without a functioning IA. God damn, everything in this world seems to require one. Feel like I got my arms cut off or something.

I sighed as I decided to just watch whatever the hell was on, and quickly wished I had other options. It was something of a sappy romantic movie about two corpo types from rival corps that fell in love at a conference and tried to make their relationship work. In the end, an hour and two beers later, the woman ended up putting a bullet in the man’s head as she wept and spouted slogans for TedCorp. Apparently the water business was pretty cutthroat stuff.

The next show to come on, after a slew of ads, was another romantic movie, this time about two biker guys out by the docks around Lake Superior. I came to the conclusion I’d had enough TV for a bit and decided to get some exercise. I had no idea if I could gain Body XP while my GEMA app was inaccessible, but it was better than watching whatever the hell that was.

I took my shirt off and started with pushups until my arms felt like wet noodles then moved on to squats. As I tired out one group of muscles I’d move to another. Then I started doing diving somersaults, cartwheels, and even tried another kickflip off the dark window. Wait, is it actually night, or does the window just have some sort of setting to black it out? I landed flat on my face. Still, that was something of an improvement from when I’d landed on the back of my neck the first time I’d tried it back in the old apartment, and the floor here was much softer. It still hurt, but I didn’t have to wonder if I’d crippled myself this time.

By the time I’d pretty well worn myself out, I found another show coming on on the TV and decided to give it a shot. But first I walked over to the fridge and decided to test out the third type of beverage it contained. This one had blue Japanese script and what might have been charitably considered a depiction of blueberries, if you were generous to the artist that designed it. I found it smelled a bit fruity and when tasted was some kind of fruit infused tea. It was pretty good, and as thirsty as I was after working out it hit the spot.

Lounging back down on the couch with my very decent tea, I found myself watching a fairly interesting movie called Net Thief, which was unsurprisingly about a netrunner/thief stealing pretty much anything from anyone. Corporations, gangs, mercs, their own mother, it didn’t seem to matter to the protagonist. I found it hard to keep up with a lot of what was going on, as I felt like I lacked the relevant context, but just watching them access damn near anything that used electricity was pretty neat, and the scenes in the net were downright cool, even if they were that much more unintelligible to me. The movie ended with the thief being captured by MilSec and locked up so the corp could study them to improve their own netrunners. The last scene showed the titular thief’s jail cell opening on its own and the thief stepping out with a malevolent smile on their face. Not a terrible flick compared to most of the stuff I’ve seen in Noir City thus far.

When the TV happily informed me of its complimentary hour of ads coming up next, I decided to get back to exercising. I did some more pushups until my arms tired, and when I got up I decided what I really wanted to do was get in a good run. I hadn’t exercised much in my last life but damn was I starting to get into it in this one. The door to the apartment opened up as I approached, and I made my way out into a wide unfamiliar hallway. Turning to make sure I knew which apartment was ours, I found it was B91500134. Damn, that’s a long apartment number. So…B9 for the megabuilding, followed by 150 for the floor? I thought back to the view and figured that seemed about right. It still took me a full minute before I confidently felt like I had it memorized, but when I thought about it as basically being apartment 0134 on floor 150 it seemed a lot easier to remember than just trying to commit the 7 digit number to memory.

Looking left and then right to try to figure out which way to run, I ultimately shrugged, as it made no difference, and took off to the right at a jog. There weren’t very many people walking about, which was a nice change of pace from running the sidewalk outside. As the apartment was on the outside of the building, there was essentially a long ring all the way around the interior, just under three miles at a side. Deciding to push myself, I was going to try to run the entire circuit. Twelve miles might be pushing it, but it’s not like I have anything better to do right now. Worst case scenario: I can’t finish it and just walk it in.

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As I jogged, I tried to come up with a plan for my immediate future. I had some damn fine chrome now. I could probably handle some merc gigs without too much in the way of problems from getting shot or whatnot. My brain should be pretty safe from headshots, and with the quick application of AeroMed inhalers I should be able to fix up pretty much any flesh wounds I suffer. I’d definitely need to stock up, and wondered if I could get a discount if I bought in bulk. Now that I’ve got that nanomachine organ upping my healing I should probably get one or two of those perks I remembered seeing to supercharge it. I smiled as I thought of myself healing up at a visible rate like Deadpool and Wolverine, they were always my favorite Marvel superheroes in my last life, and it’d be amusing to turn myself into something similar.

I felt myself smiling and shook off the fantasy, as I tried to focus on what I could personally do next to level up some more. Could check in with that bartender down at The Drunk Kitten, see if he’d throw me any work. Or I could go down to sub 10 and just start mowing down knife wielding children. Hmm, if the entire level is taken over by those little fucks…how damn many of them are there? That would be a lot of bullets required, and at a certain point, if they failed to swarm me, they’d presumably just start hiding and/or running away. So how do I root out all those little rats? And that’s when the idea hit me. How does one kill rats? With rat poison of course. Well sure, rat traps work, dogs bred to kill rats work, a decent bat would do the trick in a pinch. But these weren’t actual rats, they’d presumably have some basic intelligence…and where the fuck would I get a dog anyway. So…poison? I’d need to do some research and figure out where to get it and what kind of options would be available in my price range.

I briefly considered taking out some of the scavs down on level 13, but I kept coming back to the feral kids down in the sub basement. It just seemed easier. Fight smarter not harder. If I could kill literally thousands of kids that’s a LOT of XP and a LOT of levels. I can only imagine what kind of perks and skills I could get with all that. I stumbled and missed a step as I realized I was planning the mass murder of children... But this is Noir City. Murder is a daily necessity. And my GEMA app demands I go full murderhobo if I want to level up and succeed in life. So murderhobo it is.

As I found myself passing the halfway point in my run I was a bit impressed with myself. I still had Body at level 1 but my stamina had definitely improved with all the constant exercise I’d been doing lately. Even if it’s been less than a week I’m definitely seeing some quick returns. It made me wonder if I’d actually managed to push it up to Body 2 and just hadn’t been able to see the alert letting me know. I tried to visually inspect my muscles to see if they seemed larger, and I was fairly certain they did. I didn’t have an ounce of fat on me and was still a bit on the thin side, but with no shirt on and glistening with sweat I definitely looked pretty athletic, if I did say so myself.

I kept running and distracted myself from my aching muscles and burning lungs as I continued to think about my future plans. I needed to get myself something to help me up my Tech, Net, and Cool stats in the same way I was upping my Body with exercise. So what am I going to need for those? Tools for Tech? Maybe some mechanical or electronic stuff I can disassemble and put back together? Manuals? I’d need to look into prices on that kind of stuff, but it seemed like it could get expensive in a hurry. For Net I really had no idea, I’d have to ask Lizzy, she’d probably be able to point me in the right direction. But what about Cool? In the game, the Cool stat would score XP with stealth kills, so that was one idea. And then it hit me. Music! I remembered that Rockerboy skill I saw in the list of available skills. Could I learn that skill naturally instead of wasting a skill point on it if I just take up an instrument and practice the shit out of it? My mind whirled with thoughts of shredding an axe on stage in front of beautiful screaming women, cheering me on. Ok, yeah, that could be pretty fun. I’d definitely need to look into getting a guitar.

I started to find it difficult to keep thinking as I passed the three quarters mark on my run and eventually got to the point where the only thing on my mind was my next step. I let myself fall into the zone and stopped thinking entirely in short order. I was pouring sweat and my lungs worked like bellows as I finally found myself back at the apartment. I walked up to the door, expecting it to automatically open for me like our old apartment did, but found it didn’t open and I nearly walked face first into it when it remained closed. What? I double checked the apartment number. Yep, B91500134. What the…

I noticed a small pad next to the door. The only thing on the pad was a symbol I’d come to recognize as an invitation to use a temporary app. Which of course required an IA. I leaned forward and let my forehead hit the door. I stood there panting for breath with the cool metal door feeling remarkably nice as I leaned against it. I just locked myself out of my own fucking apartment, something that was nearly impossible to do when you literally keep your apartment keys in your own head. “FUCK!” I shouted, to the startlement of some rando in a nice looking suit walking past.

Turning around and putting my back to the door, I slid down it to sit on the floor. So here I was, shirtless, covered in sweat, panting like a dog. I was definitely getting some looks from the odd passerby. I considered knocking on the door, but, remembering the muted drone of loud music that barely managed to make it through the wall from the next apartment, I had to figure this shit was pretty soundproof. And I didn’t even know if Sara was in her room, much less if she’d hear a knock at the door from in there with the door to her room closed. I sighed to myself as I slowly managed to catch my breath. Looks like I’m going to be here for a while. Shitty TV is starting to look better and better.

==

An hour later I was still sitting there, absently banging the back of my head against the door. “What’s your damage, weird guy?” Came a high pitched voice to my right. I glanced over to see a young girl around twelve years of age with blue hair holding a futuristic electric guitar, which immediately reminded me to go buy one once I could actually buy things again.

“Locked myself out of my apartment,” I informed her.

Her face screwed up in confusion. “That’s impossible!” She declared after a moment’s consideration. “If you are a tenant, you can’t get locked out. It’s not even an option in the app. You can revoke a guest’s access, but you can’t revoke your own access. Are you just too fucked up to remember your apartment number maybe?” She sat down next to the next apartment door down and began strumming her guitar, which seemed to have some sort of built-in amp since I could hear it just fine as she whipped off a somewhat complicated riff without breaking eye contact with me.

“It’s absolutely possible, if you don’t have a working IA. My old apartment just opened automatically. This one seems to need me to access the app to open the door, as far as I can tell. I don’t know the details, since I was unconscious when my sister brought me here earlier today…yesterday?” I sighed. “I don’t even know what day it is, much less what time it is. I can’t call my sister to let me in, and I can’t even go get some food or something while I wait. Not having a working IA sucks the big one.” I looked away from her and went back to bouncing the back of my head lightly off the door.

“Huh?” She sounded confused. “Did you get shot in the head or something and damage it? She asked.

“Well yes actually, I did get shot in the head, but that’s unrelated, didn’t damage my IA. My IA is a new piece of chrome I just got installed, and it just says it’s ‘initializing’, whatever that means, and it’s…” I checked my display. “71% complete. So yeah, I’ll have to either wait for my sister to let me in, even though I don’t know if she’s home or not, since her bedroom door was locked. Or I’ll have to wait like 9 hours for my stupid IA to finish whatever the fuck ‘initializing’ is.” I sighed despondently and let my head stop bouncing and just leaned against the door, looking up unhappily at the glowing ceiling.

She laughed at me with a chipper high pitched giggle, and I felt my cheeks burn with a blush. She left me to my brooding as she focused on playing her guitar. She was remarkably good.