Chapter 8

I was jogging back south on the opposite side of the street from the three mile wide megabuilding B9. I’d moved to this side of the street after realizing there were no alleys on the megabuilding, just an endless series of hologram ads on its red stone-like exterior. And all the best crime seemed to happen in alleys. I’d been out for hours now, it was almost 7PM.

After my very productive brunch, I’d done a search on my map for someplace that could sharpen my knife and ended up at a decent shop called WeaponsWeaponsWeapons. The gal working behind a bulletproof glass counter had agreed, with no small amount of disgust, to clean my knife and sheath as well as sharpening the former. They now sat on my belt over my left hip. That had run me 25 creds, 20 for the sharpening and 5 to clean the nastiness off.

A quick stop at an AeroTech Drug, just a few shops down from The Carlton, had netted me two AeroTech brand AeroMed inhalers. If the mechanics from the game held true in real life then they would each restore 40% of my health. A robot working behind the counter at the drug store had helpfully informed me that it detected my lungs were AeroTech brand as well, and, since the inhaler was specifically designed for AeroTech lungs, it would be 20% more effective than on someone without them. I wasn’t sure if that meant it would restore 48% of my health or 60%...but more health is better either way. They’d run me 30c each so I was down to a measly 16 creds in my account. I felt a lot better with a sharp knife on my belt and an inhaler in my pocket though. Credits are nice and all, but dead men can’t spend them.

I’d put the second inhaler into my inventory just to get an idea how it worked. Like most things in Noir it was pretty damn intuitive. I’d just stuck my hand in my pocket that held the inhalers, placed my hand on one, and just kind of pushed while willing it into my inventory. And it felt like it just disappeared out of my hand. When I pulled up my inventory it showed up in the first grid slot. Pulling it out again was just as intuitive. It was like fucking magic.

Since then I’d gotten bored of not finding any criminal types to kill and had moved on to exercising. I’d jog until I just couldn’t anymore, then I’d take a breather near an alley. When I finally caught my breath I’d start jogging again. I’d scored two Body notices the first hour, one the second hour, and over the next 7 hours had managed three more. With the addition of the Rested XP Bonus I’d scored on the three notices I’d received before noon, I was now up to 1400/2000XP towards Body 2.

+100 Body XP

Make that 1500/2000XP. I smiled as I stopped by an alley, breathing hard with my hands on my knees. After the second notice I’d even gained a new skill: Athletics. It hadn’t been leveling up very fast though for some reason and was only up to 300/1000XP.

A few minutes of panting found me leaning back against the wall of a business I hadn’t bothered to identify. Man am I thirsty, I thought as I absently noticed a young girl that looked about 16 turn into the alley. She’d seemed pretty unremarkable other than the obviously high end chrome covering the back of her neck and the base of her skull in metallic gold, visibly sweeping forward to surround her IA behind her ears under her neon blue bob cut.

“So are you two the guys that are robbing and killing people in this alley?” I heard a girl’s voice that I assumed belonged to the gal I’d just seen enter the alley.

“See, Bill? This is what I love about this city. Get a bit of a rep and people start coming to you to get murdered. Saves you the trouble of going out looking.” The words came from a man’s voice inside the alley, accompanied by another man laughing like the braying of a donkey.

“I’m going to take that as a yes,” said the girl. A yell from two men echoed out simultaneously from the alley before cutting off. I peeked back into the alley and saw the two men writhing on the ground at her feet. Damn! Girl’s a netrunner! Quickhacks for the win! “See, if you kill the wrong people, their family and friends hire a fixer to take care of you. And now you-” she cut off and fell to the ground, writhing in a manner similar to the two men she’d apparently dropped herself. I noticed what looked like a little crossbow bolt or something sticking out of her right shoulder.

“Shit! Fucking mercs. Never know when to mind their damn biz,” said a heavily tattooed muscular man in a black vest who was making his way out from behind a dumpster a little ways farther into the alley. He- oh, gross. His dick was hanging out of his open fly, though he quickly tucked himself away and zipped up his pants. Another, much skinnier, if equally tattooed, shorter man was making his way out from behind the same dumpster, wiping at his mouth.

“What the hell, Ted?! Bill and Jiro are all fucked up!” exclaimed the apparently excitable little dude.

“Chill, Zeke, they just got quickhacked by this bitch!” Ted punctuated the word with a swift kick to the girl’s stomach. “Looks like it’s just a short circuit. They’ll be fine in a bit. Guess this cunt’s a netrunner. And you know what that means right?” Ted asked Zeke with a smile. Ted snorted at the obvious look of incomprehension on Zeke’s face. “It means she’s got creds. Get a cred shard in one of her sockets and I’ll finish her off. We’re drinking the good stuff tonight.” A smile blossomed on Zeke’s face as he crouched down next to the girl.

Yeah that’s gone about far enough. I stepped into the alley and drew my Overseer. I still wasn’t quite used to the way it just suddenly went from my side to pointing at an enemy with no apparent transition from one state to the next. The way it blew a bloody hole in the side of Ted’s head was supremely satisfying though. A split second later a second shot echoed through the alley and Zeke’s head grew a matching hole into his brain. I strode confidently through the alley to the pile of dead and disabled people.

While the three living folks twitched awkwardly in pain, as they were obviously being shocked pretty much continuously, I noticed their eyes were still following me. I looked at the girl and held up a finger. “Justa sec, miss. I’ll be with ya in a moment, but first things first.” I stepped over to one of the remaining would-be murderers. I pulled my knife from my belt and unceremoniously jammed it into the side of his neck with the edge of the blade facing back towards me. I just pulled hard and yanked it through the front of his throat. Blood spurted and he began gurgling as he continued to twitch and spasm. I moved to the last guy and repeated the action. As the pools of blood next to the last two guys grew I checked my GEMA notifications.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

+500 XP

+500 XP

+500 XP

Level up!

+1 Perk point

+1 Skill point

+500 XP

Sweet! And that put me to 500/3000XP towards Level 3 with a brand spanking new perk and skill point. But before I get to those… I stepped over to the girl and crouched down. “Now, miss, I’m going to yank that bolt out of your shoulder. But I’d like to ask that you do me the favor of not attacking or hacking me when I do so. It’d be a mite embarrassing to save a damsel in distress only to find myself murdered by said damsel. I’m sure you understand.” I waited for a moment and then nodded as if she’d agreed with me. I grabbed the bolt and pulled it out of her shoulder in a sharp jerk, and then immediately dropped it with a yelp as it shocked me.

The girl gasped and leapt to her feet. She was facing me, crouched in what my Kung-fu skill was telling me was some sort of martial arts pose. I slowly rose up with my hands held open and empty in front of me. “You alright?” I asked gently.

The girl seemed to realize what she was doing and slowly rose to a more natural standing position as she reached over and rubbed vigorously at her shoulder. “I’m fine! Fucking fixer said there were only two. Almost killed me with bad info,” she said angrily.

“Well I’m glad I could help,” I said as I moved over to the muscular guy I’d killed first. I crouched down and started patting down his pockets. I pulled an inhaler out of a pocket, but it didn’t have any kind of labeling and I wasn’t about to test it out. I chucked it to land at the corpse’ feet. Checking his sockets yielded a cred shard that I chipped into one of my sockets and found I was rich! Well ok, not rich rich. But 1228 creds was 1228 creds. Lastly I pulled off some sort of thick plastic wristband that stretched from his wrist to more than halfway down his forearm. Judging from the forward facing hole at the top, this was the weapon that had shot that bolt at the girl. I moved over to the skinny little guy and noticed the girl was looting the last two guys. I mean, that’s a little rude right? I was the one who got the kill…meh, I guess she helped. And with my cred bonanza I wasn’t really going to complain. I pulled two cred shards off the little dude. One was empty and the other had 253c on it. I smiled. Killing people is remarkably lucrative. I also found a two shot derringer type gun on the guy. By the diameter of the barrels it looked to be a .45 just like my Overseer, so hopefully it used the same ammo. I surreptitiously pushed it into my inventory when I didn’t think the girl was looking.

When I stood back up I found the girl unclipping what looked like a semiautomatic pistol in a holster off the side of Bill’s belt…or was that Jiro? Meh, who cares? “Say, trade for the electrobolt bracelet thing?” I said, pointing said wristband at the gun as she removed it.

She paused, “Why? That bolt caster has to be worth at least twice as much.” She sounded suspicious.

I shrugged. “Sure, I could sell this thing and use the creds to buy a gun. But half my weapons are taken from people I’ve killed…Actually, I have no idea how I got my Overseer…so it might be all of them? Regardless, I’d rather have a spare gun right now. Plus…Wrist bands really aren’t my style. I just don’t want to wear the thing to a gun shop and have people think I’m a wristband guy.”

The girl snorted in amusement and held up the holstered pistol towards me. I tossed her the wristband, bolt caster? She tossed me the gun, and I gave her a happy nod. “Much obliged, miss,” I clipped the holster to the back of my belt and practiced drawing it left handed a couple of times, aiming at the alley wall.

When I looked back at the girl she was watching me with wide eyes. “That’s one fast draw you got there, guy,” she said when she saw she had my attention.

I shrugged with a smile, “You know what they say, practice makes perfect and all that.”

She snorted in disbelief and started strapping the bolt caster to her own forearm. It looked loose and reached almost to the crook of her elbow, but when she pushed a button somewhere under the back of the cuff it shrank down to fit her much slimmer arm just fine. “Well obviously you’re crazy, because this looks great on me.” I laughed and nodded to concede her point. The black band went pretty well with her black sleeveless T with its glowing blue Samsung logo and skin tight black leather pants. Ok probably not real leather, but it looked pretty real. Add in her black combat boots with tasteful glowing blue lights and it really did match her aesthetic. The only other weapon I saw on her was a smallish pistol on the right side of her belt so she could probably use the backup piece.

A thought occurred to me, “So you said you were here working a job for a fixer?” I asked, to which she nodded. “How well does that pay?”

She shrugged, “Varies. I’ll get 750 for this job.” She paused and looked at the four stiffs on the ground. “Might get a bonus since there were twice as many as there were supposed to be. Why? Planning to get into the merc trade?”

I smiled, “As a matter of fact, I am. But I was actually asking because I’m trying to put together a crew for a job for myself. See, I know of this apartment in B9. It’s supposedly abandoned and there’s supposed to be a cred shard in there with thousands on it. Think a netrunner like yourself could get past a megabuilding apartment door?” I asked curiously.

She raised an eyebrow, but I could tell she was interested. “Probably. It’d depend what floor it’s on. I’m not about to try to hack a door on one of the MilSec patrolled floors.”

“Sub basement apartment, no MilSec.” I stated confidently. If I remember right MilSec only patrols from floor 100 up, and only on the multiples of ten, so 100, 110, 120, etc.

She nodded, “Yeah I could get into a sub basement apartment in under 5 minutes tops. That’s all you need? Just to get in?”

I shook my head, “No. From what my info says, it might very well be buried a bit in the duracrete floor, so we’d need someone that could break duracrete to be sure of, or at least more sure of, a payday. Mind you, this isn’t a guaranteed score. I’d put odds around 80% based on my intel, but it’s not a sure thing. So if it is something you’d want in on, we’d still need to find someone or something that could get through up to a foot of duracrete. Figure I’d pay a guaranteed 200 creds even if it falls through, and 2000 if I find what I’m after…Interested?”

She seemed to give me a once over, looking me up and down. “Guaranteed 200? And it’s in B9’s sub basement? I mean it’s not exactly out of my way, so… sure. Treasure hunt, why not. Think I know where we might be able to find someone who can break through duracrete too.” She paused and then nodded decisively. “My name’s Lizzy by the way. Nice to meet you Malcolm.”

“Uh…I don’t think I told you my name?” Ok now she’s making me a little nervous.

She snorted, “I’m a netrunner, Malcolm, skimming low level ID info from a basic IA is literal child’s play. Now come on, let’s go see if we can find a merc that can break duracrete that’ll take a job for pocket change.” She turned and started walking out of the alley as I hurried to follow in her wake. Ok, shit, we’re doing this right now, today. If I remember right, the shard on that corpse has over 20k on it. I could have Sara out of the BurgerDepot by day’s end!