I felt my body grow warm from head to toe and the previously barely functional movement was improved to the point of normalcy. I could feel the strength in my legs and back again instead of an odd static grainy feel.

Lifting my legs up and bending my knees I quickly rolled myself up into a sitting position on the bed which startled Dr Nguyen causing him to stumble back a little.

“Mal! What are you doing? You’re going to damage your core muscles! We’ve already had to excise several patches of necrosis from different parts of your torso and even remove several shoulder muscles entirely.” He shouted as he placed his arm on my bandaged right shoulder carefully.

“I’m fine for now doc. I’m going to go talk to Marchand and then come back.” I said as I shuffled to the edge of the bed despite Nguyen attempting to steer me carefully back to the recovery bed. He gave up as I reached the edge of the bed.

“I can’t keep you here when your vitals are stable. But I can tell you to stay laying down for you own good and that you’re being dumb by hurting yourself to go talk to Mrs Marchand right now.”

“It’s… She needs to see me.” I said lamely as I stood up unsteadily.

Dr Nguyen stood on the other side of the bed and crossed his arms and frowned.

“She’s asked for you already? To come right away? She knows the state you’re in right now.” Nguyen said with an annoyed expression.

“No. No, she just needs to see what she… Her way of handling this whole thing has cost me. You know? She had more than enough time, money and power to handle this differently. I won’t go into it here. I’m going to see her.” I said while slumping in place next to the bed. Getting out of the bed was more tiring than I thought it’d be. I’d have slumped my shoulders but I mostly didn’t have any.

“Alright Mal, just make sure you come right back here and don’t be too long. I’m amazed you even have the strength to move around right now. I’d expect some leg movement but standing should be beyond you right now let alone walking, but you’ve got your business to handle so I’ll let you carry on. Don’t make me come find you though or I’ll be forced to glue you to the ceiling until you’re fully healed to keep you out of trouble.” Dr Nguyen said as he backed over to the door to let me out, he patted my better shoulder as I passed lightly.

“Thanks doc.” I said with a smile, not visible on my face unfortunately.

I staggered through the waiting room and Nguyen followed me from the door, likely ready to scoop me up and return me to the recovery room if I fell over. I flicked the door to the clinic open with my interface and stepped out into the hall. As I stepped out of the gate, opening it with a kick when I pinged it with my interface to release, I called mom for a video call but didn’t elect to show video on my end.

“Hey mom.” I said casually as I slowed to a stop outside the clinic and leaned against the railing.

“Mal! You’re awake. I’ll come down right away!” Mom said quickly and I heard clattering as she likely started grabbing things around her to hurry to the clinic.

“No, no. mom, I’m visiting Marchand real quick and I just wanted to make sure I wouldn’t run into you on the way. I’m fine enough but my face isn’t fixed yet and you don’t need to see your son wandering around without his nose glued on. I don’t want to trouble you more than I have.” I said with a bit of a smile.

“What? Why are you visiting her so quickly? You were so hurt Mal! She can wait to have her time with you.” Mom said angrily. “I don’t care what my baba looks like, you’re my son and I want to see you. I’ve seen you naked, I’ve cleaned you up and dressed you. I can see you without your cyberware on properly.”

“It’s not the same mom, I just don’t want you to see me so unfinished. I don’t want to be the one to give you nightmares if I can avoid it. Just come and see me soon when they’ve fitted me out properly and we’ll have a good time. I just want to talk to Marchand about her choices and my… Well, what those choices cost me, in a way. She could have made different choices but she wanted to test me, so now I’m collecting what I think it was worth.” I said, no point keeping mom totally in the dark on the work politics. She lived right next door after all.

“If… Urgh. If you think you’ll feel better if I see you when you’re more fixed then I’ll wait for the doctors to get more done. It was horrible watching them operating on you before, watching my poor baba’s arms being cut away, watching… It was horrible.” Mom said with a sob caught in her voice. It hurt to hear her so upset.

“Well. I’m fine now, just need to talk to Marchand and then I’ll be back to the clinic for a day or two more and then they’ll fit me a new face and some arms I’m sure. You can come see me then. I’ll ask if they can fit my new faceplate quicker and then you can pop in right away.” I responded, trying to reassure her.

“I’ll talk to you again later then Mal. If you’re asleep I’ll leave you some messages on the grid for you.” Mom said.

“Bye mom.” I said before closing the connection.

Time for my first meeting with my new boss.

I staggered over to the lifting platform and waited for the platform to rise up from underneath and get just in line to step on smoothly without wobbling too much and falling over as I stepped onto it unsteadily.

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Telling Dr Nguyen that I was good to go was a bit of a stretch, Sanctum was keeping me going but I could feel the limits of it’s ability to let me power through with every movement. It was a bit like being dizzy where the movements kept continuing past the point of wanting to stop while also sapping my strength every time it did. I managed to bring myself back but if I pushed myself past the slowest, softest effort then I’d likely fall over.

Walking over and standing at the gate it buzzed open and I kicked it inwards softly and walked down the hallway past my apartment. I didn’t hear any noises from the inside of the apartment. Hopefully mom was alright in there. As much as I didn’t want her to see me, that didn’t mean I didn’t want to see her.

I arrived in front of Marchand’s door and it unlocked and released before I even connected to the little IR receiver on the door. It sometimes left my mind that I was never really out of Marchand’s sight when I was in the street. I didn’t think she could see into my apartment but honestly it wouldn’t be the biggest surprise if I found out she had a hidden camera or two, she was all about her control.

Stepping through into Marchand’s apartments, using my foot to slide the door open like I had previously, I walked through tiredly. It wasn‘t even an act, the journey from the clinic to her apartment had really tired out my weak body despite it being a very short walk. I really wasn’t ready to be up and about yet but I needed to talk to her.

The door to the parlor was open wide so I just turned and entered without issue. Marchand was in her usual chair, though instead of her usual old lady act she was sitting there with her arms crossed, one arm off to the side holding her cig as smoke drifted from it.

“I’m surprised to see you up and about so quickly Mal. Most of you anyway. You should be resting, instead of causing yourself further injury to check in with me.” Marchand said calmly before taking a puff of her cig.

I sat down in the visitor chair, a little more heavily than I’d have liked to but I’d lost a bit of control at the end of the action. Marchand noted it and tweaked her eyebrow for a moment before returning to a neutral expression.

“I wanted you to see me like this, I wanted to show you what your face is going to cost me.” I said quietly. I tried to keep any anger out of my voice but it still crept in at the end.

“Is this a stunt then? You stagger up here and show you can get yourself torn apart for the mission? Are you hoping for a commendation? A reward?” She asked coldly.

“This isn’t a corp court case, or some office backstabbing Anna. This is street level politics, simple stuff, even I know that you set me up from start to finish for no other reason than to show that you have the control and I don’t. You wanted to humble me and I let that happen. Accepting being your hand should have bought me Lla’s safety but you didn’t think that was enough, you wanted to see me prove myself and my commitment and I did. But that proof costs you now, you owe me. I went beyond what I owed you, so now you owe me.” I said.

Marchand was quiet for a moment. She knew I was right but she was likely thinking about what spin things could take. What I would demand, what I could demand and maybe what she could get from giving it to me.

“Nobody owes the dead Mal. What’s to stop me from just killing you now? Other operators have come and gone who’ve made such aggressive demands of me without the backing they’d need.” She said calmly.

“Killing your own hand would nuke your reputation, killing your own operator is already a big set back for you. Then there’s Sam to think about. That’s a big dose of unknown. Nobody likes unknown. I may have walked in here with no arms, but one way or another I’ll be walking out of here safely if for no other reason than it’d make you look bad if I didn’t.” I said with a little smile. My face couldn’t show it but I think Marchand could tell it from my eyes and what was left of the surrounding parts.

“Good. Your brain is still sharp enough. Although your inexperience really did show during the exchange with those corp grunts. I’ll have to put you through a lot of diplomacy training before I let you represent me to actual city players, that whole confrontation shouldn’t have even come to a fight. You had all the cards and still flipped the table because you thought playing them would show your hand and cost you more than you’d get back, sometimes you need to use what you’ve got Mal.” She said after finishing a long pull from her cig. The air in the room was quickly filling with blue trails.

“I had no cards Anna, you had cards. Playing those cards would just set me back to owing you. Instead I fought for my boss and earned my own reputation while preserving yours properly. I did a good enough job. That warrants payment.” I said, settling into the chair as tiredness forced me to relax.

Marchand seemed to relax as well, settling into the chair and folding her leg over the other. I’d not seen her move her legs often, which was weird to think about.

“Fine then. We can discuss renumeration I suppose. Though a half done task against a middle management’s borg soldier is hardly the result of the century.” Marchand said with a frown.

“So harsh. Where is the nice teacher looking to amaze me with fact about netrunning gone? And what was wrong with the way I handled it? Outside of not using your resources I think I did alright with what I had.” I said with a smile again.

“The nice teacher is still there, ready for the next lesson. Whenever that ends up being. Now you get the boss. As it is you provoked a corpo soldier borg into one on one combat when you had a knife and he had enough close range power to open up an armored car. It was a move built on risk and only worked because of Sam from what I saw from the netrunning interface. You could have simply set a price outside their budget but still within reason and let them turn away annoyed but accepting of the situation, that wouldn’t have put you in debt to me just because they didn’t want to annoy me by kicking my doors in while I was watching them. You could also have simply offered something else that they’d accept, you could have offered to talk to Rivaan directly and tell him that you are protecting his sister from assassins but that if he doesn’t give up immediately then you’ll drop her. You turn too quickly to violence or running away, perhaps your street side upbringing. This time you couldn’t run, so you fought instead. I even had to get the others to back off after you were spent.”

“They wouldn’t take on the job with a man down, that was formality.” I said defensively.

“Mal. I’m going to reward you for your efforts. I’ll get you back in working order and give you your earned prize for a job well done. But I need to be able to give you advice, recommendations and warnings without you fearing or hating me if we’re going to be working together closely. The only time I’ll take a stance against you as my hand is when you act against my interests directly, or when I want you to think about the situation from a different angle. Even with this conversation, I’ve only picked at your weaker points to get you to think of them from an enemy’s perspective and you’ve offered credible defense instantly but this line of work doesn’t always allow excuses even if they are good ones. Sometimes you need to not have to make excuses at all.” Marchand said as she placed her cig on it’s stand and leaned forward in her chair. I hadn’t noticed but her eyes were brown today instead of rheumy, she’d completely dropped the act.