I’d love to say the journey back from the green viaducts involved a high speed moving train gunfight or something but it was just me starting to doze off while a baby cried nearby as I took the subway. Operator life could be super glamorous from what I’d heard, I looked forward to seeing some of that. So far I’d spent a lot of time in sewers, catching public transport and recovering from one injury or another.

Getting back to Marchand’s street I noticed someone I didn’t recognize walk in behind me once I got a few steps into the street. I turned my head to glance at them as I walked further in to see them step onto the first lifting platform. They clocked me looking their way and gave me a little salute and a smile that I could only tell from the eyes.

It was an androgynous person wearing a full body cold suit, combat boots, a storage rig and a backpack. They even had a pair of NV goggles around their neck. Sort of medium length black hair and a smooth normal white face that I couldn’t see much off because the cold suit came all the way up to the nose. Cold suits were for netrunning, so you didn’t burn yourself to death in actual combat or running a lot of programs at once or a combination of the two.

They came in right after me. Were they the tail that Marchand mentioned? The one keeping an eye on me for AI weirdness? Good luck with that choom, Sanctum only messes with my head, I don’t grow extra arms or turn into a truck or whatever crazy gonk stuff Marchand is expecting to see.

[If the User had an exotic pattern cyberware mount installed that allowed for additional cyberlimbs then it is possible that Sanctum could retroengineer the mount during integration and alter it to allow for biological limbs and grow a new limb for the User without needing additional cyberware.]

Sanctum, I don’t want more arms. Actually forget I said that, more arms would be nova. But I only just got the ability to heal slightly faster and more efficiently, let’s wait for me to finish puberty before we go turning my into a noodle monster or whatever you’re thinking of alright? I at least want to try and grow tall. Jamming it cyberware will ruin my natural growth or at least leave me with lots of problems and surgeries during my teenage years as they get resized all the time.

[User does not need to worry about such a problem anymore, as long as the medical suite is installed the User’s puberty can be managed from a chemical level along with your growth patterns. This would include subtle long term changes to cyberware size needs. If the User required Sanctum to make such changes quickly they would likely be too taxing on the User’s body even with specific dietary intake and supplements but over eight to ten years Sanctum can make the required incremental changes to installed cyberware as needed with no change in lifestyle.]

I nearly stumbled as I stepped onto the lifting platform.

What do you mean? You can make my cyberware fit me even as I grow older? And what’s this about managing my puberty? That sounds a bit messed up Sanctum.

[All of your cyberware goes through an integration process to become part of the nanite design of Sanctum, parts are replaced and others are optimized or added to for Sanctum to control them precisely. These changes are overall at a very small scale and with enough time Sanctum could alter whatever cyberware that has undergone full integration at this scale to fit the User effectively even if the User grows larger.]

So I can get chromed up right now and still grow to like seven foot four?

[Sanctum estimates that chances of User reaching such a height naturally is significantly low. The current estimates for User height at adulthood are available along with the methodology of the estimation process.]

I don’t even want to know. If I get tall then preem. If I don’t end up tall then I’ll just be grumpy. What’s this about you managing my puberty? That sounds sketchy as hell Sanctum.

[Sanctum has the ability to prevent the most negatively perceived health effects of puberty by it’s design of monitoring and managing the User’s health in real time with the aid of the medical suite cyberware. Acne, growth pains and mood imbalance are some of the simplest issues to eliminate that teenaged humans consider the worst aspects.]

So I could just not got the whole spots thing, that’s pretty nova actually. Maybe I should leave it all alone though, live the experience properly like everyone else. Wouldn’t want to miss out on some shared experience.

[It is estimated that sixty five percent of teenagers use some form of medical aid to alleviate puberty driven symptoms while twelve percent of those claim to use cyberware, bioware, surgical aid or spacer grade medical supplies to avoid the symptoms altogether.]

But that’s rich people Sanctum, I’m not trying to fit in with those guys anyway. I’m trying to fit in with the people around me, the poor people who go through puberty like normal. Can you imagine if Noe gets all sort of acne and I’m just sitting there fine? She’d shoot me. Several times probably.

I arrived at the gate to Noe’s place as I was finishing up the talk with Sanctum and buzzed it. It opened quickly and I walked down the corridor to Noe’s front door in silence as I thought about the whole dodging puberty thing, maybe I’d make my choice when I was actually going through it. At least give it a go kind of thing.

Pressing Noe’s doorbell it opened up right away to her smiling face.

“Hey Mal! You managed to do a simple job without getting into a life or death situation. Good job.” She said as she stood there holding the door and the door frame.

“Ha yeah. It mostly went fine. Got the lasers all set up no issues with that at all.” I said trying to make my smile smooth out.

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“Come on in anyway, I’ll check over your gear while we chat…” She said as I followed her into her living room. She suddenly froze mid sentence and I briefly wondered if I could get out the door and past the gate in time to avoid gunfire.

“What do you mean mostly fine? The lasers had no issues, but you did have issues? What issues? Are you hurt?” She asked with narrowed eyes.

“There was some hostiles at my first stop, some operators or whatever doing something with the computer in there. I needed it and was loaded for combat. I went in there prepared to talk it out but one of them drew on first sight so I took them both down. You’ll be proud to hear that I set up traps before hand that actually got the second guy near enough without a fight. But he did get a knife throw off before I could put him down. So I have a small cut on my shoulder.” I admitted, trying to throw off her anger by peppering in some listened to advice. It didn’t work.

“You damn gonk!” She said hitting my cut shoulder. Ow. “You were going to set up for a job, setting up some IR lasers in a maintenance corridor. You should have seen a dumb drone at worst! Only you could run into another operator at random on a job like that! You’re a gonk magnet pulling in the other gonks with how much of a gonk you are! Like a stupidity black hole! Infinite Denseness!”

“Woah, hey. I don’t go looking for trouble you know. It’s just there on the path waiting for me. Or just ends up happening to me at random. If I was the type of guy that went looking for trouble I would hope I’d have got more for my trouble by now at least.”

“You don’t think you’ve got enough so far do you? You’re lucky to even be alive with the trouble you’ve drawn to yourself so far. Times a hundred. Million.”

“I got the job setup done Noe, I had to zero some gonks who were in the way but it got done and all I got was a little cut that’ll be fine in a day or two. No real issues. Netrunning was preem as well. I think you’d like it, it’s very technical and dreamy at the same time.”

“Nah, I like my metals, powders and fire and on occasion lightning. You keep your digital dream stuff to yourself. Let me clean your cut while you here, mom’s got all sorts of medical gear and I’m sure she’s got some stuff in there to treat a cut. Saves you bothering the docs.”

We headed into the storage slash workshop room and I sat in one of the spare office chairs. Noe dug out a first aid kit and motioned for me to take off my rig and coat so I obliged. Seeing the quite deep slice to my shoulder was a bit weird while not feeling the pain.

“Mal! This isn’t a cut! This is a straight up laceration! Gonk brain. You need stitches and bandages and time. It’s… It’s not bleeding though? That’s super weird. Maybe it missed the veins and clotted the surface?” She said, looking closely at the wound from over me.

“No idea. I think it’ll be fine eventually. Like you said, it’s not bleeding and I don’t feel much pain from it, I think it’s just a flesh wound really.” I said, sounding nonchalant.

Noe just grabbed my arm and moved it up and down as she watched the wound stretch about. She gave me a side eye, clearly filled with suspicion. I wasn’t opening up though, she could just side eye me all day if she wanted.

“Alright then Mal. If you say it’ll be fine then whatever. As long as you don’t lose the arm or the ability to fire my guns properly then it’ll be fine.” She said, dropping my arm and stepping away a little.

The distance wasn’t far but it felt more than it was.

I pulled my coat back on and picked up my smg from the ground.

“I was thinking about naming the gun while I was out working. Figured something like the Noe model five, or whatever number of gun you’re up to now?” I said, showing her the iron.

“Hm. Nah, I’d prefer the guns be named by their series rather than a maker and model. For your gun it’s a heavy lightweight submachine gun. A bit more flair to it than that but that’s it’s basic build.

Heavy lightweight… Heavy down, light up, weight down. How about something like waveform? Or doppler?… Maybe shockwave? Nah, that’d be for a bigger iron.” She said, holding her chin in her hand.

“What about something about it being hard hitting and fast? Maybe something like stormer or torrent?” I said, floating some ideas out.

“Not bad, theres already a current gen model called the torrent though. One of Zenikai Industries electronic volley guns. Actually not a bad iron apart from it being too heavy for it’s role. What about making it about you? It’s a gun made for you after all. We could call it solver, or resort. Because it solves problems or it’s your last resort. Hah, we could just call it gonk if you’re going to turn every job you pick up into a combat mission.”

“Come on Noe, I’m not that bad. I only ran into them by chance and I even set up properly before engaging. Even confirmed the kills so there’s no follow up. There’s not much more I can do when they pull iron.”

“Let’s call it the prowler series, because you’re always sneaking about.”

“I don’t sneak… Alright, I do a little. That's a good name I guess.”

“It’s a preem name for a preem gun. Give it here and I’ll give it a once over after it’s first trip out. See if any of the parts show stress.”

I handed her the gun and turned away to work on my new designs for a replacement to the IR tripods.

I’d go with a four leg design with deployable claw grips, something simple where I can just unscrew the claws to make them come out and then screw them in to make them close and lock. I combined the prism into the emitter receiver array and then made the whole thing smaller, less leg length and less protective casing to cut down on noticeability and weight.

With that done I tried to move the internals around to get a slightly better processor into the thing, the delay in operation didn’t mean much earlier but it could be a real problem in a combat situation. Rotating the circuitry upside down and then bringing the wires up to the top gave me a little void among the wires to get a side mounted CPU into the tiny internal space so that was a problem solved.

Sanctum, now things are back to calm again how’s my profile looking after that setup run?

[User profile updated.]

[Improved Attribute: Reflexes. User Value: 1]

[Improved Skill: Cybercombat. User Rating: Novice.]

[Improved Skill: Engineering, Optical. User Rating: Novice.]

[Improved Skill: Programming. User Rating: Novice.]

[Improved Skill: Tracing. User Rating: Novice.]

[Acquired Skill: Combat, Automatics. User Rating: Untrained.]

[Acquired Skill: Daemonology. User Rating: Untrained.]

[Ability Integration Completed.]

The integration tingle was quite deep this time and caused a little tremor to run through my hand making me drop a screw which Noe noticed, fortunately she didn’t comment on it and went back to cleaning the prowler.

Maybe it was the reflex integration? Either way I didn’t feel particularly different but a few new concept cleared up for me as I thought about the skills. Different prism designs for the optical skill, better debugging methods for the programming skill and so on.

The most interesting thing was the ability integration completing, I could finally select a new ability and check out some of that sweet, sweet synergy. It really was the most interesting part of the abilities for me.

So Sanctum, what kind of ability options am I looking at for the next one?

[User should be advised that the more abilities that are chosen, the longer it will take for the User pattern to stabilize into full integration due to compounding synergistic complexity.]

So the more abilities I get the longer it’ll take to get another, that’s fine. What’s my selection looking like this time?