Chapter 22

Okay…ow. My nanites were obviously dulling the pain I was feeling considerably, but, as I watched a good foot’s worth of my large intestine slurp itself back into my side, I was realizing their limitations. I sucked down another AeroMed inhaler and felt the hole in my side closing up, if more slowly than I may have liked. I took a deep breath as I felt my innards rearranging themselves.

Alright, let’s just ignore that for now. Better to focus on the guy trying to kill me. I risked a quick peek around the pile of trash I’d taken cover behind. I got a very brief glimpse of the rifle wielding guy in the hallway across the food court. Even as I was pulling back I saw his gun panning towards me, and I dropped flat on my belly just as I heard shots ring out and found myself being showered with scraps of garbage as he punched holes through my cover.

I felt something wet and slimy land on the back of my neck and did my best to ignore it as I focused on the gunman’s last location. He hadn’t moved at all from the first place I'd seen him shooting from. He had his back to the wall in the hall, maybe five feet from the food court. I glanced over at the hallway we’d used to enter. I’d have moved up to the corner to cover as much of my body as possible. Why is he… My thoughts trailed off as I recalled what we’d found in our entrance. A mine. Is he unable to move any farther forward without getting blown up?

I’d been recording this entire gig thus far, so I pulled up the most recent chunk I’d recorded without stopping the recording. Pausing the vid I could see a guy with red enameled cyber arms sticking out of an obviously armored short sleeve jacket pointing a big fucking high tech rifle at me. I rewinded the vid back to where I’d first seen him. He was in the exact same position. I pulled out my Overseer. If I know where he is, I can shoot him. I hesitated when I recalled that olive green jacket he was wearing. I was pretty sure my Overseer wouldn’t be able to punch a hole in that. I slid it back into its holster, then reached into my coat and pulled out my Bulldog.

I had yet to even try shooting the thing. My new skeleton should be able to handle it, but…could my tendons and ligaments? With a thought my IA pulled up the bioware section of my cyberware tab.

Bioware:

Tier 1 Musculature (update in progress 1%)

Tier 1 Tendons/Ligaments (update in progress 3%)

Huh…it’s tier 1 now? Wait…how high is that going to end up? I flicked off the safety on the side of the Bulldog and heard a soft whine as it began powering up. Gary had explained the gun’s functions to me, it was supposed to be pretty easy but a bit unintuitive compared to most tech. You just needed to hold the trigger down for a couple of seconds to let the battery spool up and charge for the shot, and the moment you let go of the trigger…

I got to one knee and lined up my shot without exposing myself. Okay. Charge the shot. Grip the gun hard. Pop out for a split sec and let go of the trigger. Pull back. Simple. I took a deep breath. I gripped the gun as hard as I could…and held down the trigger. The soft whine of the Bulldog transformed into a high pitched growl as it charged. Two seconds later and it plateaued, making a noise I could only describe as angry.

I ducked out for a split second and almost took a bullet through my face as I released the trigger in the shooter’s general direction without really aiming. THOOM! I pulled back as wet wrappers sprayed into my face from the bullets impacting the garbage I hid behind. I curled up in a ball behind my heap of detritus, trying to make myself as small as possible as a round hit the duracrete floor a foot in front of my face and left a fist sized crater.

I was hearing yelling coming from the hallway now. I received a message from LIzzy, and opening it found myself looking at a vid she’d recorded. It seemed she’d found a broken piece of a mirror and was using it to look around the edge of the stack of tables she hid behind. I zoomed in on the reflection as I watched the shooter take a hit when I fired. It wasn’t fatal, but…

“That fucker shot off my foot!” I heard a man yelling from the hallway as I closed the vid with a mean smile. A large hand had reached out from father in the hall and pulled him out of sight. I heard unintelligible cursing emanating from farther in.

I cupped a hand to the side of my mouth as I yelled out, “Fuck your foot!”

“Shut the fuck up,” came another man’s nasally voice, quietly enough that I assumed he was addressing the man I’d shot and not me. “I told you to wait til I disarmed this fucking thing. If you’d fallen over we’d all be chunky soup on the walls right now.” The cursing cut off with some apparent effort to remain silent.

I yelled again, “So you’re saying that you’d prefer I not throw grenades down that hallway huh?!”

There was a brief hesitation before a third voice rang out from the hall. “You kids don’t have grenades. Everybody knows you barely even have guns, there are zero reports of you guys ever using explosives.” Says the idiot looking at an explosive device on the wall in front of him. I pulled a flashbang out of my jacket, triggered it, and flung it in a high arcing toss to land in front of the hallway, where it popped with an ear damaging BANG accompanied by a bright flash.

As my ears stopped ringing I heard multiple men cursing in there now. Sounded like a half dozen or so. It took a minute for them to get it together and start to quiet down a bit. “Next one’s a frag, guys! You still wanna fight, or is talking seeming like a better idea to y’all?” I yelled.

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I could hear them muttering to each other more urgently now but couldn’t make out what was being said. A minute passed as I sat and listened to an intensifying argument before it suddenly cut off. “Let’s talk,” Came a deep voice I hadn’t heard yet. “We’re here on a gig to clear out this sub level. You leave the level and we won’t need to kill you. That’s my offer.”

“Wait a sec,” I heard Sara mumbling from her position by the wall. She raised her voice and called out, “Chris?! Is that you?!”

After a moment’s pause the deep voice responded. “Sara? What the fuck are you doing down here?”

“We’re here on a gig to clear out this sub level,” the sarcasm in Sara’s voice thick as she repeated his words back to him. “We already killed most of them, so you guys definitely aren’t getting paid for our gig. Bartender said you have to kill at least half of everyone squatting down here. And we already did that. So you guys are fucked. Thanks for the free help clearing the place out though!” She sounded more amused than anything now, and looking over at her I saw her relaxing and lowering the barrel of her gun a bit.

More muttering emanated from the hallway before cutting off. “Fine. Truce. Let’s sit down and have a nice calm chat without shooting each other, shall we?” came the deep voice. “Just give us a few minutes to get this damn mine disarmed.”

Sara was outright grinning now. “A few minutes? It took my little brother about 30 seconds to disarm the one on the hallway we came in from. You guys need some help?” Her amusement at their expense was palpable.

“No,” came the decidedly unamused response.

Peeking out, I didn’t see anyone in the hallway, so I waved Lizzy to move over behind Sara and followed suit. We waited for a few minutes, and then a few more. Eventually Sara seemed to get bored as she yelled out. “Sure you don’t need a hand over there? I’m getting old waiting!”

I couldn’t make out what was being said in the hallway but the deep voice seemed to be arguing with the nasally voice. “Fine, it seems we could use a hand,” said the deep voice eventually with no small amount of irritation,

Sara gave me a smile and waved me towards the hallway. I hesitated for a moment, what with one of them having just shot me and all. But as she raised an eyebrow at me I found myself walking along the wall towards the hallway.

As I neared it, I slowed. I knew for a fact that a lot of people in this city will kill literally anyone for minimal reasons. I also knew that I'd probably been overly trusting of people I’ve met in Noir CIty thus far. I’d gotten lucky with Lizzy, but even her little 13 year old sister was scamming me on guitar lessons. I really need to start being more careful…especially with strangers. MIght be better if I’m the crazy fucker people need to worry about, rather than vice versa. So I came to a stop just outside the corner leading into the hall, and I pulled out a frag grenade. Flipping the safety cover off the button that would arm it, I spoke, “I’m coming in, hold your fire.”

Turning in with my thumb poised over my grenade’s arming button, I found myself looking down the barrels of several large guns, to which I simply held up my grenade with a smile. “Careful gentlemen, I die, we all die.” I crouched down a couple feet away from a mine identical to the Konami brand mine I currently had sitting in my inventory. Crouched opposite me was a skinny pimply faced guy in his early 20s, with what I’d come to recognize as netrunner cyberware lining the back of his shaved head, running down his neck and around his IA plates.

The netrunner scoffed, “No way you can crack this, kid. It’s military surplus from the last corpo war.”

“Think so?” I asked quizzically. Having already disarmed an identical mine earlier it was like my IA knew exactly how to accomplish what I wanted. I felt some pressure behind my eyes as my IA opened the temp app, with a mere glance at the device from me. I blurred into the app and just leaned on the software. A moment later I felt the pressure release and I was in. My IA disabled the mine and released the mechanism holding it on the wall. I held out my hand and caught it neatly as it popped off the wall. “MIght wanna upgrade your chrome there, man.” I said with amusement obvious in my voice as I stood. I was pretty happy with my IA’s performance just now, I’d hacked the mine so fast my skin wasn’t even sizzling this time. “Now, if you gentlemen will follow me, we can have a quick chat.” I turned on my heel and walked back into the food court, slipping the mine into my pocket and pushing it into my inventory. If I ended up in another firefight I really didn’t want high explosives on me. That thought cued me to flip the safety cover closed on my grenade.

I found the girls had arranged themselves behind one of the few remaining undamaged tables and saw their attention was fully focused on the mercs I heard cautiously following me. Reaching the table, I took a seat on the far side, sitting on a backless stainless steel stool that seemed to be bolted to the floor. The twins flanked me on either side with their thermal katanas turned off, but sitting ready on their shoulders. Sara stood imposingly behind me holding her oversized shotgun with a wide grin on her face, and Lizzy seemed to be all but hiding behind Sara, peeking out with only her face exposed.

The group of five mercs reached the table and a large black man wearing a plastic visor over his eyes took the seat opposite me, adjusting his thick purple leather jacket that looked to be at least tier 1. His crew mimicked my own as a large overly muscular man in black tank top took up position behind their apparent leader. The man who had shot me, whom I had shot back, was leaning heavily on the large man’s shoulder, and I had to admit to myself that it did my heart good watching him hop his way over. Their skinny netrunner was to their leader’s left. And to his right, what I could only describe as a street samurai with his topknot, menpo mask, and katana held at the ready on his shoulder, glaring at the twins.

“Now let me tell you why you’re going to drop this gig and let us take it.” Said their leader in his deep gravelly voice.

“Let me just stop you right there. Chris, was it?” I didn’t wait for a response. “We’re not going to drop this gig for several reasons. Reason one: I told the bartender I was going to do it, and I do try to be a man of my word. Reason two: I already dropped more than 50 grand on this gig, and I’m absolutely going to recoup my investment. Which brings us to reason number three,” My quickdraw perk all but teleported my Bulldog into position, about six inches in front of Chris’ left eye, as the gun began whining due to its pressed trigger held down beneath my finger. “Reason three is that I hate getting shot. This has put me in a poor mood. This discussion isn’t about us giving up the gig. This discussion is about us not killing you all.”

My Bulldog was fully growling now. Chris had gone still upon finding my charging gun in his face, but his compatriots had immediately sprung into action. The street samurai had crouched a bit and was holding his katana at the ready in both hands. The muscle bound dude in the tank top was pointing a large pistol right back at my own face, right alongside the guy missing a foot who had hopped to the side and was pointing that large caliber rifle right at my left eye, which I could tell due to it having a laser assisted aiming feature that was illuminating whatever my cyberware eye used in place of a retina. Their netrunner seemed to be unarmed and was looking decidedly nervous.

“Now, if you want to fight it out, Chris, I’m okay with that. Maybe I’ll die, maybe some of my crew will die. But you, Chris, you will definitely die. I’ll make sure of that myself, even if it’s the last thing I do. So what do you think? How’s that for reasons why you’re going to drop this gig?” I asked as I felt a mad grin bare my teeth.

Fuck…I really hope I I didn’t overplay this.