“Here you are. This was a gift from a friend of mine about ten years ago and do you know there only been a single new model of this line since then? It’s hard to improve on perfection after all. Perfect for a new chrome head.” Allie said as she waved about a pair hard, oddly shaped cup things.
“Are those… I don’t even know, hard boob implants? I don’t want those really.” I said, a bit weirded out.
Allie very nearly popped her eyes out of her head before cackling wildly as she held onto the safe in the cabinet with her free hand. Then she was laughing with her head back and the hard plastic cup things to her stomach. After a few moments she calmed down and wiped the new tears from her eyes, still laughing a little.
“You should visit more often, haven’t laughed so much in months. No Mal, they are not plastic boobs. I distinctly prefer silicon, don’t come near me with those bioware implants. Fake flesh boobs are gross, silicon or naturals only, no lab grown trash in my bed thank you very much.” She said with her arms crossed defiantly.
Now I remembered why I didn’t talk to Allie all too much. How did I forget?
“So what are they then? Shoulders?” I asked sheepishly.
“It’s two halves of a very good milspec braincase. They carve off your bone cage from your face bone structure and fix this around your brain meat. With a few more biological tweaks and surgery magic you’re left with a bulletproof and highly impact resistant cranium. Seriously preem, this model, I once took a forty five caliber slug to the dome from a few inches away and only a slight angle and it literally only left a tiny rut in the cyberware. Of course it carved the synthskin of my head open like a ruptured beanbag but I could at least keep fighting instead of repainting the scenery with my thoughts. I’ve had it repaired since then and just kept it as a bit of memorabilia.” She said, presenting it proudly to me with both halves pressed together.
No head shot instant death sounded nice. Firefights were chaotic and people died of random fire and ricochets blowing open their brain pans all the time. Hostiles, friendlies, non-combatants. No one was safe from spontaneous unintended brain explosion.
“If it’s memorabilia then don’t you want to keep hold of it, if it’s got sentimental value?”
“I’d rather see it go to someone worth it than it just sit there, it comes down to what’s worth more to me right now. Would I rather your head pop like a cherry to some random bullet or fall or would I rather look at this whenever I check my cyberware collection and think sentimental thoughts for a moment or two. You manage to win that by a smidge. So you get to take this home if you want it.”
“Yeah I’ll take it from you if you’re offering it. No way I’d find a milspec braincase at the stores around here and even a ripper doc would be lucky to find one for me at a high price if I waited years.”
“Good, there’s something else for you too. Give me a sec.” She said, turning back to the safe and rummaging some more. She knelt down to check the lowest sections which had little drawers are the back apparently. Eventually she pulled back to show a pair of eyeballs in a little square tub of mostly clear fluid with a slight green tint.
“Those are eyeballs, I’m guessing they aren’t medical grade if you’re holding onto them?” I asked tentatively.
“These are a relic piece if you’d believe me. There used to be an Greenland national corporation called Kybersinnattoq that were really pushing the limits of Earth cyberware both in performance and miniaturization where they managed to get more bells and whistles into their designs than any other corp in the inner solar system while still making their power draw light enough not to need a battery implant. They were the cutting edge for civilian grade cybernetics for a number of years. This was one of their crowning models.”
“I’ve never heard of them, do they not trade to the continent or something?”
“They were brutally destroyed by a Euroadmin military industrial conglomerate when they started looking into military grade designs for a new wave generation of their cyberware. Apparently Kybersinnattoq stole some of their secured patent designs for research and a brief national corp war led to Greenland backing off after a week and Kybersinnattoq HQ and their industrial yards and research centers were bombarded into dust shortly after. A real shame. Outnumbered as they were, apparently they did manage to get a lot of their staff off world before they lost everything which is a little bit of a good ending.”
“The stolen designs were likely a lie, I can see it being more likely they just felt threatened by someone nearby having better tech getting their national military contracts.”
“At least you’re not totally naive for your age. Yeah, literally everyone who was watching it happen knew that was the case, it wasn’t even held up as an excuse for very long, they just wanted the whole company off the market.”
“So what’s the big thing with those eyes?”
“They are capable of different vision modes, typical digital NV but also thermal and sonic. Which are rare to find without a supporting unit, these eyes have them as standard. But the big thing about these eyes really is the high computation speed and the very rare optical mount that is nearly invisible. I slotted in a pair of single shot needle micro-darts tipped with a tiny bit of nasty necrotoxin, only downside if the effective range is inside ten feet, but it’s a perfect weapon for a surprise hit when your enemies think you’re unarmed. Does hurt a tiny bit to fire as the cartridge pop makes the eyes wobble.”
“Eye darts? Really? Next you’ll be telling me you fitted lasers into your teeth.”
“No, just normal acid injection fangs. Quite standard in borgs actually, don’t let chrome heads bite you.”
“The last borg I fought close up nearly crushed me, I took him down through what I’m beginning to suspect was largely luck.”
“There you are then. All the chrome in the world won’t save you if you’re a gonk or unlucky. So try to keep yourself alive Mal. Stay lucky and stay on your toes, I don’t want to hunt down your corpse to get my memorabilia back.”
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
“Seeing in the dark will be useful no matter what, I’ve done a job recently in total darkness and I spent more time checking a NV scope than I did walking. The eye darts are certainly fun but I don’t see myself needing them particularly.”
“Nothing like that is useful until it’s what saves your life, most little upgrades are like that. I knew a girl that had a single shot shotgun mounted in her chest. I always said it was a waste of money and ruined the pristine smoothness of her chest above her breasts with a synthskin line to fit the gun and keep it hidden. Then she got kidnapped and used it to blow the head off her captor as he had her tied up and putting her in the back of a car, saved herself before I even knew what had happened.”
“Nova, I didn’t even know you could get heavy rounds into a torso. I’d heard of a guy with a twenty two gun put into his arm without a foldout, just shot straight through the bottom of his palm and repaired it later.”
“You get heads like that, they like all their stuff internal and don’t worry about looks. They just like the feeling of a machines power in their body kind of thing, it’s not about their power or looks, just the feeling.”
“Weird.”
“You’ll figure it out at some point kid. Anyway take these two wares with you. They’ll keep you alive better than some netrunning wires and a cheap medkit. Come back when I send for you and I’ll take you along to the night market up in the orbital district. I’ll leave a message on the grid for you. No doubt Marchand will spot the message and tell you hurry along if you don’t check for it. She’ll be keeping an eye on you if you managed to get one over on her.”
“I really didn’t Allie, she totally overpowered and outsped me in every single way. I just got a few blind shots in a panic and a free hack when she thought I was done for. Which I really was without her fixing me.”
“Oh Mal. You really don’t get it. I’ve watched corpo assassins try to get a finger on her after months of setup and get zeroed half a mile away without even seeing her hideout. She’s either totally given up on life, got caught out in a big way, or has a real soft spot for you to the point she left herself wide open in such a way I haven’t seen for almost a century.”
“It’s really not as much as you’re making it Allie, when you talk to her you’ll see it was just me getting stabbed and lashing wildly before basically dying. She was back to normal the next day I imagine. I was in a coma.”
“I’d walk back with you but that’d lay a lot of curious eyes on you for a bit longer so just you head off for now, I’ll visit Mrs. Marchand later myself. Never even been married, she’s an old crone down to the bone she doesn’t even have anymore.”
I got up off the sofa to my feet and took the box of eyes from Allie, slipping them into my rig bag opposite the bag with the skull cup plate things awkwardly wedged into it near the back.
“Thanks a lot Allie, you’ve helped me a lot more than I thought you would. I’ll take those messages out to the spot as soon as I’m able, is the deadline soon?”
“Not really, the nomad convoy is about two months out but with the weather this time of year it could be four months if they need to bunker down at a few points. I’ll leave the shard with you now, just look after it until you’re ready to drop it.” She said as she handed a shard with a clear plastic case over it and a little IR receiver on a black plastic part attached. Likely a secure shard that would kill switch if the IR circuit wasn’t tripped before you tried to mess with the shard.
“I’ll keep it safe and I’ll get it out there as soon as I can. I’ll keep an eye on the grid as well Allie, it’ll be my first time to a night market, I’m sure it’ll be fun.” I said, pocketing the shard carefully.
“You’ll be fine, night markets don’t always turn into a big scene. More often it’s just a bit of music, a bit of shopping some auctions and then it all packs up and it’s back to a blank alley junction or empty lot before dawn.” She said, going back over to the kitchen counter to make another coffee.
“I’ll see you later then Allie, I want to get back before late. You notice there’s a bit more gangers about?” I asked as I walked over to the door.
“There was some sort of attack on a local drug house from a small gang alliance from nearby, there’s been some shooting back and forth but it’s blowing over already. Likely someone stepped on someone territory and it kicked a whole thing into motion. Gangers these days see every tiny slight as a huge hit to the reputation, gangs in my day wouldn’t give an insult the time of day unless they thought you were worth listening to. You’d just be shot dead there and then or a few days later when you were asleep and your gang would say fair enough because the streets were meant to be kept clear and busy so people could make their money quietly. Nowadays gangs don’t care what happens out in the open, just as long as they are seen as strong. For the three seconds they get to be in charge of some street corner anyway before they get their braincase opened up.” Allie spieled off as she methodically put her coffee together using a machine and a press of some sort. Obviously a sore subject to her.
“Well I’m going to try and avoid running into some turf war breakout and get home now, see you soon Allie.”
“Bye Mal. Tell your mom I said to take care.” She said, waving over her shoulder as I left.
I headed out and walked along the balcony soaking in the familiarity of the street on the way down. It felt weird walking away from my old home gate to go home, like I was walking the wrong way deliberately.
On the way back there was a fight between two gangers with the friends backing them up on the other side of the street that had me tense up, if one of them pulled iron then the whole street would likely light up. Fortunately the fight was quickly broken up as I passed on the opposite side by the street by a borged out ganger that seemed to be a higher up of one of the gangs judging from the colors he was wearing, although he had to take off a business suit jacket to display them which was interesting.
Getting back to Marchand’s street was quick and quiet after that and soon enough I was at my front door and walking into the apartment to see mom eating a late dinner meat sandwich with a load of spices all over it. She’d made a sandwich for me too which I thanked her for and sat down to eat with her.
“What you got there Mal?” She asked after she’d swallowed down her big bits of spiced sandwich.
“You remember Allie from the old apartment? She says hi by the way and to look after yourself. I went to see her to talk about some chrome as I heard her and Marchand went way back, which would explain a bunch of stuff. Anyway I went to talk to her and we went back and fore when she offered me these two pieces of chrome after I told her about my scuffle with Marchand, said they’d keep me alive better.” I said while trying to clear my mouth to get the words out.
“She gave you chrome? What did you give her in exchange? It can’t have been cheap for two different parts. That’s eyes and… skull? Is that a braincase? Neither of those are cheap Mal, did you spend all your money on these?” Mom said while taking the braincase that was hanging out of my rig and turning it over in her hands.
“She gave them to me for free, said she liked my story about Marchand getting hacked. I said I’d do a favor in exchange because I felt like it was a bit much and she gave me a courier job to the edge of the city. Didn’t mention any danger so it should just be a day job of a walk over there.” I said, enjoying my sandwich.
“That’s not too bad if it’s just to the gun line, I don’t want you wandering about in the firing zone. As for the chrome it’ll be sad to see my baba’s eyes go, make sure you get them set up the same as your real eyes. I gave you those eyes and ever if you aren’t going to keep them you should make sure they look the same.”
“I’m not a baba mom. I’m a trained operator. And sure, I’ll make sure they look the same.”
“You’re ten Mal. And you’ll always be my baba. No matter how much chrome you wear.”