I kind of regretted saying that though because it moved the conversation to her brother.

“He’s a good brother and a good man. He’s just fixated on certain things. He’s easily led along too, even if it’s by himself. I just wish I had more power, enough to pull him away from whatever plan he has in his head.” Lla said.

“Don’t lose hope yet Lla. He might still pull through even if the operation fails. Even if he’s locked up for a few years in corp prison it’s still better than the worse alternative. He’s got more options than just win or lose, he can escape or surrender or quit before it starts. Most of those options are him surviving and that means he can come back eventually. Don’t give up hope yet.” I said, trying to placate her worries.

“My brother isn’t that type of person. But I appreciate the effort Mal.” She said sadly.

Yeah, I understood. His chances from what I’d put together from the little I knew weren’t good.

Lla took this chance to go help mom sort out the living room and take the finished soup mugs away.

Sanctum it’s been a bit of a time but how are my skill updates looking? Anything new since getting beaten a bunch? Maybe a skill to do with taking a machete to the head? Or a super useful broken bone skill?

[User profile updated.]

[Improved Attribute: Endurance. User Value: 2]

[Improved Attribute: Presence. User Value: 1]

[Improved Skill: Combat, Blades. User Rating: Competent.]

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

[Improved Skill: Negotiation. User Rating: Competent.]

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

[Improved Skill: Daemonology. User Rating: Beginner.]

[Acquired Skill: Combat, Blunt. User Rating: Competent.]

A cold shiver down the spine and a bit of tenseness in my bad shoulder that seemed to quickly fade like a micro-convulsion.

That’s actually not bad at all. I take back my sarcasm. The blunt skill went straight to as good as my knife skills, makes sense I suppose. Been using them a lot longer. Better attributes too which I still don’t really understand the effect of Sanctum. They do let me get wider abilities but that’s all I understand.

[Attributes track the User’s effective understanding, application and capability of the different aspects of their physical and mental ability. They are collated from a wide range of factors and measurements alongside the User’s recorded actions and choices.]

Still not really getting it, whatever though. As long as you’re having fun there Sanctum it’s all preem.

I noticed a little pop up on my interface and brought it into view, it was a message from Marchand. I hoped it was a great big smiley face and an aura packet. I doubted it though, just an instinct. I opened the message.

[Well done on your actual job Mal, I got a good report on your performance from the leader of the operations team involved and a negative report from the guide. A quick cross reference showed the guide to be unreliable and has since been detached from the fixed who requested support from my operators. Consider the situation handled, find your payment attached.]

A little prompt at the bottom of the message sent a request to my account to send me two thousand aura. Very nice. There was a second message though.

[I’ve learned about your scuffle in the streets on the way home from your assigned tail. They observed you disabling six hostiles. I’d like to congratulate you for your work but you let yourself be ambushed, outmaneuvered several times and took severe harm. An operator cannot allow such errors, improve quickly or I will be force to place you on the back burner for a few years.]

I didn’t even know what that meant. What was a back burner? Is that like a torture machine? Sanctum, do you know what that means?

[Sanctum believes that it is a figure of speech meaning to be placed on a hold or lower priority.]

Oh. So if I get myself messed up again she’ll drop me from her good books, maybe the whole right hand thing. Bit harsh for one rough encounter. Whatever though. I haven’t even made my mind up on that. What’s my status on healing anyway?

[All major lacerations are healed to the point that they are secure against exterior harm such that they won’t bleed easily but there is widespread surface damage still to be repaired and a large amount of scar tissue to be reabsorbed.]

What about my ear? Working again?

[Interior structures are restored but a large amount of the exterior ear was carved away from the User’s skin, this leaves the missing flesh replaced with scar tissue and may be visibly disfiguring when fully healed in addition to some functional loss. Total reconstruction is possible but is considered lower priority compared to other wounds.]

So I can hear but it’s a bit off and the ear itself is a mess. Fine. I’ve got some cash now, I’ll get a cyberear set, it’ll help my eyes pick up footsteps a bit earlier next time. I basically got no warning for that ambush before.

Don’t worry too much by the scars on the surface if they don’t stop my moving about. Every operator likes to show off their scars, I’ve seen operators that have kept their synthskin damaged just for the memory. They’re like little medals.

[Sanctum will attempt to preserve visible surface scarring when it does not impede function in the future. User is advised that full repair of all damage is more efficient.]

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

It’s fine Sanctum, it’s part of the operator culture to look all roughed up.

Maybe I should go and talk to Marchand about being all over the top about the mugging thing. I’m ten years old, I can’t take six guys with pipes and stuff and not get beaten down. She’s still expecting Sanctum to just turn me into a machine or something and slaughter my way through a problem when it’s just about holding me together during a fight. That’s with cyberware as well, if I didn’t have a braincase that fight would have been over in a few seconds.

Marchand could cool herself off for now. I needed to get some post job stuff done. I needed new IR emitters, I needed to train more, I needed to buy some stab proof plates for my coat, I needed a netrunning suit tailored. A bunch of other stuff. I could understand why big time operators had whole structures of personnel under them.

First of all was Allie’s courier job though. I wanted to get that done as soon as I’d done this netrunning job but now I needed a few days for Sanctum to glue me back together. I’d use the recovery to make some new emitter quadripods and try to get some training done. At least where I can sit down to do the training, programming or tracing, maybe some attribute stuff.

I moved my interface out of sight and looked over to see mom and Lla talking quietly over by the kitchen counter between themselves. I was about to call over and join in whatever they were talking about instead of just zoning out looking at my interface on my own among company like a gonk when there was a buzz from gate.

While I still had my interface open I pinged the gate open from where I was sitting, I didn’t want to get up on my crutches and walk over to the front door to press the gate button on the door interface. I was pretty sure that Marchand’s staff had overrides for our particular gate but so far they hadn’t used it, I was just suspecting.

It wasn’t long though before the apartment front door buzzed as well.

A cold sense of dread filled my spine. Maybe Sanctum was giving me precognition?

Mom walked over to the door while still chatting with Lla who was leaning against the kitchen counter and opened the door casually.

It wasn’t a corpo hit squad here to open fire with automatic weapons. It was worse.

It was Noe.

“Mal you gonk! Only you could get into a fight during a netrunning job!” Noe said loudly as she walked into the apartment. “Hello Miss. Beckett. Hello… Sorry, I don’t think I know you?”

“Hello, my name is Lla. I’m staying here for a little while while something blows over.” Lla said politely.

“Oh. Nice to meet you. So you’re an operator then? Like the gonk there with the crutches and bandages.” Noe said as she pointed at me.

“I’m right here. I defended myself from muggers after a flawless mission, could have happened to anyone.” I said, trying to defend myself.

“I’m not an operator, no. My brother is and he’s kicking up some trouble and Mal offered for me to stay here in his home until the trouble passes. Miss Beckett has been looking after me as well, they’re very kind.” Lla said. She smiled at mom who had sat down during the exchange.

“That’s really rough. At least you’ll be safe here on Marchand’s street. Have you known Mal long? Me and him grew up together but then had a few years apart when my mom moved here.” Noes said, sitting on the arm of chair. She tapped my head for emphasis.

“No, I only met Mal yesterday. I was leaving Marchand’s apartment and was quite emotional after the business there. Mal offered me a seat in his apartment to calm down and when I explained a bit of my situation he offered to put me up for a little while. He’s very kind.” Lla said.

“It’s not any big favor, not like it’s costing me anything or taking up time. It’s just a bed the spare room.” I said.

“I do appreciate it though Mal.” Lla said in response.

“So you saw a stranger outside your door and just kidnapped them?” Noe asked bemused.

“No. I’d met her brother before, a little. That combined with her situation gave me enough to work with in my head to offer her a spare bed for a while. Just to keep her away from corpo hunters.” I said, trying not to sound insane.

“I am alone thinking just letting a stranger stay in your house is weird? Just at random, because they were nearby. Miss Beckett?” Noes asked, increasingly confused.

“I thought it was a little odd, but we have good security here and Mal knows her brother so I’ve just assumed it was a normal operator thing for acquaintances to stay with each other during dangerous situations.” Mom said.

“It was a very odd choice for Mal to make, it’s not a normal thing to happen among operators as far as I know. I did say all this earlier to him.” Lla said neutrally.

“Mal, you gonk. You’ve got brain damage or something. You can’t just take in strangers because they are passing by.” Noes said, flicking my head.

“I only let her stay because it’s not a problem, it’s not demanding anything of me or mom other than a little lost privacy. Mom’s asleep a lot and I’m usually busy anyway so Lla’s not imposing much at all. If it was more of an issue I’d have pushed the safe house idea more.” I said as I tried to defend my logic.

“Lla has been good company so far. I don’t mind her staying personally.” Mom said. Lla smiled at her in thanks.

“Well, I suppose it’s not in my hands anyway. It’s just weird Mal. Stop being weird.” Noe said, once mom had spoken she’d lost the issue basically. She’d argue with me but not my mom.

“I’ll try I guess. Can you help take off this head bandage?” I asked while patting her arm in an attempt to mollify her in her defeat.

Noe turned to me and touched the bandage at the tape pads that were holding it together and checked around the areas it was tighter to my head with her finger.

“Are you sure it’s ready to come off? There’s still a bit of blood under here.” Noe said.

“It’ll be fine, probably.” I said. Tapping my head with a finger.

She pulled off the sticky pads and then started unwrapping my head cautiously like she was expecting to see exposed braincase or something but instead just got my head and my hair. There were likely some new scars on my scalp under the hair but they were easy to hide.

“Mal! Your ear is all torn up!” Noe said as she took my head in her hands and rotated it around to see the ear better.

“What? Is it bleeding still?” I asked concerned, Sanctum had said it was scarred but healed enough not to bleed.

“It’s not bleeding, it looks a bit fresh but it’s all shredded and scarred. What hit you? A car?” Noe asked while shaking my head. Mom came over to frown closely at my ear.

“Dr. Wood said the ear would be mangled but would likely keep it’s shape but it’s almost in two parts. It might have kept the right position and overall shape but I doubt that’ll work as well as a full ear. If I knew it was so bad I’d have asked the doctors to put a new ear on you while you were under.” Mom said, a bit liberally. She normally didn’t like to discuss cyberware too much. “The teeth implants the doctors put in at least look okay.”

“Teeth implants too?” Noe asked.

“Yeah. Took a pipe to the mouth, lost two teeth and cracked a few more. Nothing major, thought I’d lost some more.” I said. It really wasn't with Sanctum handling the pain for me, teeth were very replaceable.

“You should have been made to do without as punishment. I gave you two guns that work great and you used neither of them to save yourself.” Noe said, scowling a bit at me.

“I couldn’t use them Noe, the streets are on edge at the moment. I’d have started an all out firefight in the surroundings and brought the Drowners down on me as well. Plus they had a kid with a junk smg thing, if I’d opened fire he would have too. I’d have been lucky to even live then.” I said resolutely. I wasn’t smart and made impulsive decisions sometimes but I knew strategy enough when it came to surviving the street.

“You were lucky to live anyway. Next time you need to take something to handle a crowd quietly. Your flash bangs would have caused the same thing as gunfire but mom has a couple of laser grenades. I’ll give you two. They’ll burn people a bit around you and cause temporary blindness but they’ll remove you out of their zone of damage, part of the smart design. Practically silent too.”

“They sound expensive.”

“They are. But I’d rather you use a laser grenade than die in a random street.”

“Aw.” Lla said from the side. This made mom smile.

“Shut up!” Noe said before she got up and left the apartment.