The next day I was being walked around the room by Dr. Wood as she slapped my shoulder whenever I tried to take a step that was slightly too large. I was using a pair of crutches and trying to follow the instructions on flexing each muscle group in my legs and torso properly but the movements felt quite alien and painful as I moved around the room incredibly slowly.
“You need to keep yourself level and upright Mal, stop looking down at your legs and try to feel the movement instead. Smooth movements and make sure to tighten the ligaments fully as you stretch your leg to its full extension. You haven’t withered, you just need to get all your cells to respire Mal.” She said as she watched my legs while I wandered around in a vest and shorts.
Mostly we were verifying that all my tissues were alive and fully functional after basically going into a biological brown out during my near death incident. All the way down to the smallest tissues, by making them move around and do their job.
“I feel like they are working fine doc, I can feel my toes and so on. I can move my arms and feet, I can bend everything, I can think I’m fine today.” I said, trying to convince Wood that I was in getting better quickly.
“Not knowing exactly what spacer regeneration serum thing Marchand filled you with before we fitted you with the medical suite I feel the need to verify the actual restoration myself. I’ve never even seen a spacer grade medicine and Marchand has them laying around apparently for when her chosen operators get carved open? Or is it just the ones she carves open herself? I don’t like this whole situation and I don’t like not knowing exactly what my patients have been administered yet still having to continue treating them regardless.” She said as she adjusted my movements slightly as I took step after step, very slowly, in the little circle of space.
“I’m sorry about the situation Dr. Wood. I’m trying my best to work with you here though and all I can say is the thing seemed to work well. I don’t feel all that different to before outside of some weakness that the medical suite says is normalizing anyway as time passes.” I said as she grabbed my foot and moved it back an inch from where it was going to land.
It had been two days since mom had visited me and I hadn't seen her since then. I was a little sad but she needed space and that was very fair. Hopefully tomorrow I would out of the clinic and I could go home and see mom, maybe talk her into a new normal situation.
There was a knock at the door to the little recovery room I was walking around in. Wood turned and walked over to it and opened it to see who it was, I was thinking it was mom but it turned out it was Noe. She looked normal but then she locked onto me and frowned.
Could I escape this room through the air ventilation? Sanctum could I escape the room through the air ventilation?
[User could not fit into the air ventilation ducts without severe contortion that the User is currently too weak to perform. Nor could the User access the ceiling ventilation in your current condition.]
“I’m here to see Mal Dr. Wood, are visitors allowed?” She said with a stony look on her face.
“Uh, sure. We aren’t making a whole lot of discovery here with the current exercise so I don’t see the point in continuing anyway. Your mobility and clarity of thought point toward good recovery progress but I’m still unsure about possible underlying issues or side effects of the treatment.” Wood said to Noe before turning to me and explaining the rest. “I’ll leave you two to catch up while I go update Mal’s patient records.”
She quickly resettled all her little scanning tools on her medical apron rig thing she wore under her long white coat and bustled out of the room, shutting the door behind her. Noe stood there near the doorway and looked at me.
I was just stood there awkwardly on the crutches, they were the long kind that went under your armpits with handles half way down, although these were sized for kids.
“Mal we need to talk about what happened. All of it really, but mostly what happened with Marchand.” Noe said as she approached.
I backed away on the crutches, slowly at first but then I practically jumped back and sat on the edge of the bed as Noe got closer and lifted her arms.
“Noe don’t hit… Oh.” I said as I flinched away until Noe just pulled me into a hug with my head against her stomach as she stood next to the bed I was sitting on. She just held me against her as I untangled the crutches from under myself and set them aside.
“Marchand nearly killed you Mal, what the hell did you say to get her that angry? What did you do after that to get her to keep you alive? To use a spacer grade medical thing on you. Also you suck and I hate you and you’re a gonk.” She said as we just stayed there with me sitting and her standing.
“Is it okay if I keep some stuff from you Noe? Some stuff that’s dangerous to know. I wouldn’t tell my mom and I don’t want to tell you either. It made Marchand angry and I don’t want to spread it to people I care about, or spread it at all really. Every extra person who knows is just more risk, Marchand was going to find out so I tried to get ahead of it and I still got sliced for it. I don’t want to tell you about it.” I said, getting quiet by the end. Noe’s hold just got steadily tighter.
A few moments of silence passed, I could hear Noe’s heartbeat get a little quicker and then slow down.
“Fine, don’t tell me. If I don’t need to know then I don’t need to know. As long as I don’t actually need to know, if it turns out I need to know then you will be telling me even if I have to beat it out of you.” She said, taking a step back. “You owe your mom a lot of love for what you put her through as well. So get on that when you get out of here, lots of attention and care for her. You didn’t see her face when I had to leave her with Ears and told her it was important for your safety for her to go with him and listen to him. Turned out you got hurt even though she followed him, it messed her up.”
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“I will, I’ll look after her. I’ll make sure she’s okay going forward. I was under a real time pressure when I was trying to set up my meeting with Marchand, it didn’t leave me a lot of time to soften the impact for you guys, you and mom. And Ears I guess.” I said with a frown.
“As long as we’re clear here then I won’t need to beat you up. This whole thing has been a mess and I’m just glad you’re safe now and Marchand isn’t on some sort of warpath. I thought you were going in for a netrunning lesson in the afternoon and instead it becomes a fight to the death. You gonk.” Noe said. Waving her arms at me by the end.
“I still need to talk to Marchand, I think she’s waiting for me to get out of the clinic before she summons me, or messages or calls or whatever she decides. No doubt we’ll have a good bit of talking to do about moving forward after this.” I said, losing confidence by the end.
“I’ve been working on your gun with all my angry energy and it’s nearly finished, I thought it would take longer but mom had a lot more schematics for useful parts than I thought and I didn’t have to design so much from scratch. So when you’re up and about I expect you to come pick it up, and your signet. That poor pistol needed it’s receiver reforged because you don’t know guns aren’t for hammering nails, but it’s done now as well.” She said with her arms crossed.
“Thanks a lot Noe, you really go the distance for me you know? I don’t even do anything for you in return really. Just a bit of money. Makes me feel bad. If you need me to do anything soon you let me know okay?” I asked.
“Well, you already didn’t keep yourself safe and didn’t plan forwards enough so I don’t know how reliable you are really. I could ask you to turn on a light switch and you’d find a way to break your wrist on the nearby wall. How about you focus on you for a little while and I’ll let you know if something comes to mind.” She said before giving me a big sigh and turning around to leave. She paused at the door though.
“I’m really glad you didn’t die Mal. Now stop being a gonk. Get your head on straight or get out of the operator lifestyle. If I have to be put through something like this again because you didn’t prepare properly I’ll be very upset with you. In a physical punching to the head sort of way.” She said and then opened the door and left, letting it swing closed behind her.
Well I couldn’t argue with that. I pulled up a empty document on my interface and sat back to think.
Step one was usually assets, what I had that I could rely on without any strings attached. I had myself, mom, a knife, a signet pistol, a custom unnamed smg and Sanctum. Note to self, get mom a defensive weapon. Not a great list but I’m sure people have had less to work with.
Step two would be conditionals, stuff that I could use but would come with some or lots of strings. Noe, Noe’s mom, Marchand, Ears, Noe’s workshop, Noe’s mom’s stockpile, Marchand’s clinic, Marchand’s information, Marchand’s connections, Ear’s connections, home apartment.
Step three is resources. Wealth, valuables, information, secrets, data. I don’t have a lot of this lot. Just over two thousand aura and that’s about it. No big corp weaknesses to exploit.
Alright then. I needed to get out from under Marchand’s feet. It was fine living around Marchand for the most part but I needed my own place unconnected to her to use as a safehouse and primary armory. Something I could keep under wraps and under the radar. Somewhere I could put mom and know she’d be fine for a good while.
I also needed to improve my own connections, I needed something concrete with Ears, some sort of arrangement between us so I could lean on him for his gang connections while he could lean on me to make him look better to the Rust Hearts. I also needed to square away with Marchand and know where I stood, was I knocked down to arms length working relationship or was I pulled in to trusted agent. How much could I pull from her without her demanding a big return? She kept me alive which was a good sign but it wasn’t exactly a clear sign for going forward.
Lastly I needed personal strength. I needed more cyberware, more training, more skills, more abilities. Right now I was a weak link to a lot of my own plans. Nothing can be done quickly with this part though, it’s just a long term thing even with Sanctum’s help.
I suppose I could boost my resources, get more cash under me and maybe pull some secrets from the net to start working my way into the local information brokers good graces. They do like juicy information, especially when it’s fresh. A bit of give and take with their little network could land me something workable for longer term goals.
First things first I checked the time. Thirteen hundred, alright it’s too early to call Ears and even if he answered I don’t even have a solid plan yet without talking to Marchand. Also it would be good to be back on my feet properly first before I promise to work with him to boost his reputation.
I got up from the bed and reached for the crutches but I paused when my hand touched them.
Sanctum. My legs are mostly fine but they’re weak. You can manage the hormones or whatever to make me keep moving through pain and so on, can you do anything to push through the weakness and get me to walk to Marchand’s without flopping about? Maybe flood my legs with something to get them working?
[It’s possible, there are a variable number of ways to force the human body to react that can have different degrees of backlash. What you are asking for will likely leave you in bed for the rest of the day once you have finished a discussion with Anna Marchand though.]
That’s fine, just manage the flow of whatever it is that gets them working and I’ll just lay down later. I need to start getting my business sorted and laying around here right now isn’t helping.
With a bit more confidence I got to my feet from off the bed and walked to the door of the recovery room. Dr. Nguyen looked up surprised from the computer he was typing at on the other side of the waiting room I’d walked into. But after a wave off he seemed to take the hint that I was fine and just went back to typing up something, interface was nice for quick stuff or coding where a lot of stuff could be automatically finished for you but for longer stuff it still felt better to sit down at a keyboard.
I headed out the front door of the clinic and over to the lifting platform, it took a moment for the next one to come along as I was just a little too slow to catch the one going up before I approached but soon I was being raised up a floor to my home and Marchand’s floor. Stepping off and across the balcony to the gate I punched in the four digit code and stepped in.
Visiting Marchand’s first was the better choice, mom needed some comfort but I didn’t know how much I had to offer her until I’d spoken with Marchand. I just had to hope she wasn’t in a meeting or something. I walked through the corridor and reached her door, I pressed the buzzer and waited.
After a few seconds her little buzzer speaker sounded.
“Just a second Mal, I’m in a call. Come in and take a seat on the sofa, I’ll call you through soon.” Marchand said, her voice crackly through the old speaker. The door releasing the next moment.