“I’ve usually been down to the wire when I’ve had to fight, or at least in a situation I can’t back out easily. I’ve been an operator for a few years, mostly small stuff.” I said.
“Kids working as operators, I’ve heard of a few locally but I didn’t know any. I don’t like it really but I’ve seen a bunch of kids pushed to stuff like that or gangs or corps. Not much else but to pick up a weapon and get what you need with whatever method you have, at least you picked a career instead of murdering and looting. Seen a few bandit types in my past.” Ed said.
Lilah had grabbed some water from the pile of water cans from the pile near the ring and rolled one to me and then one to Ed, drinking one herself.
“It’s okay Ed, Mal’s just an operator. He’s not even been a kid for a while. I knew a girl growing up who got into that stuff as a teen, she got really good at shooting and talking through a situation without even realizing what was going on. She was just thirteen but she’d have to run jobs pretending to be different people and do crazy stuff, she even made it off world. Last I heard she died on Luna during some firefight which was sad to hear. But treating Mal like a random corpo residential tower kid who’s never seen a gun is real mean.” Lilah said after drinking her water.
“I’ve only been working for two years, and only small jobs. But it still has fights and dangers, I need to be able to look after myself.” I said, a bit defensively.
“Aw Mal. I didn’t mean nothing by what I said. You’re a fighter, age doesn’t matter. It just changes how hard you hit, not whether you try to hit. That’s all you need to make it.” Ed said, opening his water can.
We just sat there drinking and chilling out after our bit of training. The gym was empty apart from us but if the gang was scaring off most customers and paying for the lost business so the gang would have a place to train and hold fights then there likely wouldn’t be many casual customers.
After talking a bit more about exercise in general and what would be best to focus on with footwork winning out and balance a close second I headed out of the gym and headed across the street to a big food stall with some built in bar stools on it’s little rolling counter. I sat on the bar stool and ordered a bowl of noodles. Apparently they weren’t real noodle made out of wheat but were made out of corn or something but they tasted fine to me with some vegetable flavored shapes and spices mixed into the broth.
Ordering a few bowls to go I was given a couple of containers in a big bag full of different noodle soups and I paid for a couple of cannisters of different spices and flavorings because mom was a seasoning goblin. I then headed off towards home.
It was shifting to later afternoon and starting to fade into night time but the streets were still busy with crowds shifting to party goers and gangers. Whatever party was going on in the morning had either moved to a club or had simply ended because the street where it was just filled with moving flows of crowds.
Heading away from the busier wide streets I headed across to the smaller streets and further until I got to Marchand’s street, the stark silence sticking out compared to the busier streets further away. Marchand’s influence was long since ingrained into the area and even passers by generally kept their travel away from the nearby streets. This kept Marchand’s street itself clear of strangers apart from the odd lost person or tweaking wanderer. They were either sent away by residents or quietly removed, one way or another.
Getting through the front door of my apartment was tough with the bag in tow and my body deciding it had reached it’s limit for the day since the sparring practice. It was likely the post workout noodles because the exhaustion was getting to me.
Mom noticed me coming in from her room and wandered out to take the bag off me, she put the containers in the kitchen storage and grabbed one for herself along with a bunch of different spices to use on it.
“How was your morning Mal? You were gone all midday. You look worn out too.” She said as she sat down on the sofa with her container of noodles and a fork, quickly tucking into the meal.
I settled into the sofa and let out a big sigh.
“I went to the gym hoping to get some practice punching and dodging around. Just some combat workout stuff to get better at fighting so I didn’t feel so outmatched when I ran into some hostile in close range. There were two gym regulars, or one and an owner family member anyway, they wanted to spar once they saw me punching the bot in there.” I said, relaxing into the sofa.
“At least you don’t look hurt. Now I look though you do have some bumps. Make sure to get some cold packs on those or take some painkillers. At least sparring at a gym isn’t too dangerous.” Mom said between slurps of her dinner.
“Yeah it was fun. I managed to actually land some hits, I think they were taking it real easy on me. Apparently I’m pretty good at staying close and moving faster than an adult can cope with because I’m small, so I should try to use that more.”
“Kids are hard to keep up with. I remember when you went running off when I was taking you to the city childcare center when you were barely one, you pulled right away from me and were half way across the street before I could even turn to see you. I ran after you but you still managed to get across the crowded street and into a side street before I caught you, just because there was a stall selling animal toys.” Mom said, even the memory of that panic seemed to exhaust her.
“Hopefully I won’t need a lot of this training. I’ll be doing a netrunning job the day after tomorrow and likely netrunning from then on so my actual exposure to combat should be really low.” I said from among the cushions.
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“I’d rather you not needing to fight at all, but netrunning is mostly safe unless you get really caught or break into somewhere obviously dangerous. You’re not going to do stuff like that right?”
“I don’t think I’ll be breaking into anything major for quite a while. I’ll have some actual tools by then, a full kit for that kind of stuff. I’ve already learned how to get out and clear my traces in a normal emergency, I won’t run into something that’s more risky than a bad day long headache or maybe some cyberware damage for some time.”
“As long as you’re keeping yourself safe. You’ve always been good at staying safe for the most part.”
We sort of just settled into watching the news on silent as mom ate her dinner and I sank deeper and deeper into the sofa.
After a little while, maybe an hour or two, mom had gone back into her room to return to her incarna to see her friends and I was nearly asleep on the sofa watching an action film where a resurrected ninja from ancient Japan, that was cryofrozen in a frozen cave river, was fighting a zombie outbreak on a space station on mute when I had a call request from the clinic downstairs. I quickly answered as I pulled myself up upright.
“Afternoon Mal, I’m just calling you to let you know we’re set up to get you on the table for your installations whenever you’re ready this afternoon. We haven’t had any bookings so if there no emergencies then you’re free to walk right in.” Said Dr Nguyen over the IR connection.
“I’ll head right down, not really up to much up here. Was about to have a nap honestly, did some training this morning and it took more out of me than I thought.” I said, getting up from the sofa and brushing myself down of lint and dust.
“We’ll be waiting, you can have a nap during the surgery.” The doctor said happily before hanging up.
I left mom a note on the vid screen through my interface, leaving a yellow pop up on the screen for mom to find saying I was heading to the clinic to get the cyberware installed. Grabbing the two cyberware pieces and then I headed out the apartment door, outside and down the platform and then over to the clinic gate and inside to the clinic door.
Dr. Wood quickly answered the door when I knocked and led me in with a smile.
“Welcome back Mal, come on in. We’ve got the tools ready to install your pieces, you did bring them right? Ah I see them, yeah you did, good. It should be a quick surgery with the tools we have available, we’ve got better stuff than you’re average cutter doc and even most ripper docs. Taking off your old skull should be the longest part due to the care needed obviously but after that you’ll be awake soon enough.” Dr. Wood said as we walked through the waiting room filled with a few sofas and into the operating room.
“Still feels weird to think I’ll be getting my first big piece of cyberware. I’ll be walking around without my skull, well most of it anyway.” I said.
“Normal to feel like that, I also thought you’d wait until you’d grown up but we work with operators no matter the age, it’s just about being better able to survive the work. If you need a braincase right now to do that then we’ll get it fitted.”
“I thought I would for a long time, but I’ve changed my mind recently. If I don’t get chipped in now I might not make it to adulthood and then it’s just wasted caution. Hopefully I’ll pull in enough cash to get the treatments and new cyberware I need to keep my growth healthy. If not I can always address it all later with bigger surgeries when I get the cash.”
I got into the big metal chair bed, sitting on the layers of plastic, fabric and metal circuit stuff. Dr. Nguyen came in as I sat down and gave me a little wave as he wandered through and over to a bunch of machines on the wall holding a pad. He then started changing the setting on the machine there.
“You just make sure you look after your general health. Remember it’s not about being tall at the end of the day, it’s about living and surviving the work. You won’t find many partners that prefer their partner dead to short.” Dr. Wood said.
“I’d rather not be short just because I’ve always been the smaller kid, I want to grow up already. But I need chrome right now to get my work done, so it’s just how it is.” I said from the chair.
Dr. Wood led me into laying down on the transforming chair as it switched to bed mode as she chuckled at my response.
Dr. Nguyen came over with the mask and Wood took the cyberware from where I’d popped them onto the bed as I sat down.
“Same as before Mal, count down from ten and all that. You’ll wake up in recovery with your eyes covered, we don’t need them to actually see to run the tests so you’ll have bandages on. Your head will also feel a bit numb because of the healing agents and painkillers settling down your pain and immune response.” Dr. Nguyen said, placing the mask over my face.
I lay there for a while as the doctors bustled around with their tools and rolling tables getting ready to perform. They both turned lights out and little spotlights were brought over to light up my head.
“See you soon Mal, enjoy your nap. Count down from ten.” Dr. Nguyen said as he leaned into my view and checked the mask was secure. Then the mask was filled with that spicy air again and hissing sound, I tired to get further down the count but only got to eight by the time my mind fled.
-
Hoping it was a good thing I was getting used to waking up from anesthesia I woke up cleanly. Still didn’t see anything which left me with a brief flash of panic until I remembered that my eyes were going to be covered with bandages.
I reached up and touched the wide bandage wrapped around my head and it felt sturdy and dry which was reassuring. I wouldn’t want to wake up to a big hole in my head pumping blood all over the place. Although I was pretty sure Sanctum wouldn’t let the blood run like that, it had mentioned managing clots and stuff itself now.
As I sat up in the bed my weight shifted and I heard a little beeping alarm from beside the bed. I turned to it blindly but my aimless grasping didn’t find an off button so I just left it beeping.
A few seconds of beeping passed as I felt lightly at my bandages when I heard the recovery door open and judging from the clicking of what I guessed was Dr. Wood’s heeled shoes it was the doctor coming to check up on me.
“Good job not panicking Mal, a lot of my patients freak out when they wake up unable to see. I’ll take the bandages off now, you don’t have any open wounds left. It was just there to absorb any of the healing agents excreted by your skin as it healed and neutralize them before they started playing with the surface skin as it sat there.” Dr. Wood said from somewhere in front of me as she moved around to the side.
She started carefully unrolling the bandage around my eyes and then unfixed and unwound my head bandage. I opened my eyes when I felt the majority of my bandage let go of me but I was still blind, that wasn’t good.
“Hey doc, I still can’t see. Should I be worried?” I said uncertainly.
“No, that’s fine. We ran the installation tests after they went in and then left them turned off while you were asleep. We want to manage the turn on process with some monitoring equipment active to make sure your brain handles the digital input properly, there’s always a rare group of patients that need a lot of live tailoring so they don’t fry their visual cortex with cybereyes. Especially with higher spec eyes or ones with a lot of features like these ones.” Doctor Wood said calmly.
I didn’t think Sanctum would allow that kind of damage, but I rolled with it.