“Ah, actually I got a note when I told Marchand about you being here. She says to have you sleep in recovery for a few more days. You got cleared yesterday but you’re mom requested you sleep here until Monday, which actually about lines up with when you’ll be let out of recovery if there’s no issues now with your surgery.” Wood said with a small frown.

“This feels a bit coordinated doctor. Why can’t I just sleep at home?” I asked, suspicious.

“Not my area, you would be better off asking your mother. Feel free to use any of the recovery beds and let me know if you need anything.” Wood said with a smirk as she turned and walked back into her office. She knew something. I watched her go with narrowed eyes.

I sat in one of the waiting room chairs and pulled up my interface to call mom. The call went thought after a few seconds without issue.

“Mal, hello! Did you have a good trip? I stayed up for when you got back. Don’t come home right away, okay?” Mom said brightly. She sounded fine but the situation was weird.

“Alright, I suppose. But why not? I’m in the clinic at the moment and Dr Wood told me to sleep in the recovery room for tonight, then I’ll have surgery tomorrow and sleep there again for another night at least. What’s going on, that I can’t come home?” I asked, concerned.

“Oh that works out great. I’d already spoken to Noe’s mother and she said you can sleep on her couch but this works out much better. I’ve been talking with Mrs Marchand the last little while since you were… promoted? Coerced, I’d call it. Anyway, I’ve been talking to her and trying to take away some problems from you, I considered taking some sort official role with Marchand to act as a buffer for you but it wouldn’t work well as it is right now and you’ve been too independent for too long to listen to me now, especially with work.” Mom said sadly. “Instead I’ve been trying to act in a sort of home assistant angle and make sure you’ve got everything you need sorted when you’re at home. I’ve spoke to Marchand and had her expand the apartment into the adjoining apartment that was used for storage, the one alongside Marchand’s apartment door, and I’ve had the apartment better decorated using some company budget assigned by Marchand for her staff who live on the street.”

“That’s… Actually really nice mom. I haven’t even looked into any of that at all. Marchand did say there were benefits and stuff and that I had a bit more than the average staff because of my implied duties but We haven’t really begun anything yet so I hadn’t thought to look into what I actually had access to. Thank you.” I said honestly. I wasn’t one for thinking about things like that, I was too tied up thinking about future plans and current fights than stuff like logistics and… home decoration, of all things.

“No problem baba, you just take it easy for a few days and let your cyberware settle in well. No doubt Marchand will have you running to her as soon as you’re able to stand but try to get some rest where you can okay?” Mom said with a more cheery sounding voice.

“I will, goodnight mom. See you tomorrow.” I said.

“Goodnight Mal.” Mom responded.

I hung up the call and looked over to the open recovery room door. Guess I was sleeping here some more. It was starting to feel too much like a normal thing.

-

Waking up the next day was a little rough, I woke up at my normal time but I’d been up late. I shook my head awake and tried to slap my cheeks before my brain started working and reminded me that I didn’t have hands to slap with yet. Damn it.

I spent the morning after cleaning myself up in the clinic restroom sending messages to Lla first, checking in and telling her that I was going to be good to go in a day or so. She responded that she was fine, just bored and lonely like normal along with a bit of cabin fever from being stuck in the same space too long. I gave her what sympathy I could but we both knew I couldn’t solve the issue until Marchand let me and that was pending. Not long now though.

After that I messaged Noe and checked in, she was fine although her part printer was broken down and she was struggling to fix it. Something had broken inside but still worked enough that it had led to a bunch of knock on failures with the mechanisms so it wasn’t a simple one part replacement.

I gave her my lists of cool stuff I was interested in from the night market and she liked seeing what I liked so she could make better tailored stuff for me in the future. She also told me her rail pistol design was done but with the printer dead the project was on hold as far as making the actual gun was concerned. Sad but not a major issue. I offered to source her a new printer but she said she was already in discussions with a broker, I wasn’t needed there. Ah well.

Then mom came down to visit and she hugged me while I was just sort of there, not able to hug. We chatted and I talked a little about Allie and how she was. Mom seemed to know her a lot more than I did because she didn’t seem shocked by what I said until I told her the reason that Allie and Marchand had actually fallen out. Mom just gasped and frowned at that. She’d known something had gone on and she knew that Allie was troubled and they’d spent enough time talking to know a rough history but she’d never approached the subject directly. Maybe I’d overstepped in asking? Mom said that if she’d told me then it was fine, if she’d rebuffed or dodged my question than mom herself would be angry with me, never mind Allie. Mom said that she must have wanted to tell me. I didn’t know really.

After that mom went back to the apartment to watch over it while apparently drones were working on taking out the walls and rebuilding the space into a better layout for a wider space. Mom assured me that our stuff was sell protected when it needed to be. At least our apartment door wasn’t moving.

I sat back on the bed and opened my interface to work on changes to my netrunning tools and weapons. The pickaxe was coming along with few changes I’d made, mostly making it work on more stuff. The chain was much more complicated but wasn’t ready for using yet, it only worked when it met the exact right situation and I needed to allow it to at least not totally fail against odd situations. There was also the truncheon to think about, the coordinate trick would work against basic entities on basic grids but even the slightest protections against it’s effects, even indirectly, would cause the effect to fail leaving it little more than a stick to batter things with in the hope of causing an error eventually. Not exactly the precise tools of a netrunner that Marchand would consider worthy.

If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

The first thing I wanted to fix was the truncheon really, it was my primary attack style. I closed all my notes and research and opened up it’s script. It was all there same as ever but I’d added some comments as time had gone by to different parts with my thoughts on what to change or what to add. I archived a few of the older ones as they were dumb. Looking over the code that was there I took the part focused on the positional exploit and just took it out, that was a good trick against weak security but I wanted something with more bite as a netrunner.

I considered hitting the physical constraints of the target, they were usually pretty accessible for users to navigate more complex nodes without walking around. Most cheap nodes just used walking to cut down on vertical bandwidth usage but more expensive nodes sometimes focused on ease of use and that meant using all the space nearby, including vertical space too. If I could disturb the physical constraints on the target I could slow them down by putting their momentum through a buffer that lowered their acceleration by a set amount. I could even zero their gravity and make them float. None of it would be for long before they reset their shell’s connection… Maybe even shorter if they had some sort of logic checking subroutine to keep their control inside nodes.

The other options were trying to cause direct harm to the enemy netrunner, something to attack their actual cyberware, or something to break their connection to node. Both were viable in different ways. Less universal as they’d be strongest against target users and have little to no effect on programs. More effective though if they worked.

The only other option I could think of for something lightweight and direct as an weapon script would be something that did something to the node through the target like my current positional error attack, but instead of stopping there it did something to the target from the node’s response. Like hitting a target, causing a response from the node but instead of it being typical it’s forced to respond in a way that causes an effect on the target outside of moving them a little. Like punching a chair in real life and instead of it just rocking a bit, it rocks a bit and melts into a puddle because the world decided that’s what it’s structural makeup was. You can set all the code for the rules of your shell and how the avatar is presented but when it comes down to how it works, the node is the one in power ultimately even if it gave the user a lot of control.

I started writing all the effects as separate scripts that would call based on what trigger was successful for the target. So if it hit an operator it would try to disconnect them, if it hit a program it would try to zero the gravity for a few moments. Using scripts in calls like this was expensive, heat wise, but it would make the truncheon a more effective weapon overall and meant it had distinct improvement options in the future. Writing the actual checks and calls for the different scripts took the longest as I had to write a lot of it from scratch while the other effects were listed in Marchand’s notes to varying degrees and I could fill in the blanks with what I had learned and the scripting environment app’s suggestions.

As I started working on the zero gravity effect Dr Wood came into the recovery room.

“Hey Mal, good morning. Afternoon? Noon? Anyway, come along then. It’s time to get you prepped on the table. You ready to go?” Wood asked as she kept the door open and gestured out into the waiting room.

“Yep. Good to go. Looking forward to having arms again. It’s not been real rough not being able to just grab stuff.” I said as I shimmied into a sitting position and stood up from the recovery bed. I’d gotten good at moving around without arms to support me but I was finally getting them back.

“Alright then, Dr Nguyen is about ready to start so let’s get you in here and settled. This is going to be a big one with all the internal work. The largest job is going to be the plumbing when it comes down to it, you’re not switching over to total cyberware so you’ll still have a lot of fleshy circulation to preserve and then there’s a whole host of pressure issues that are likely to happen so we’ll need to manage those as we allow the blood to flow through again. We’ve got all the equipment we need that you’ll be safe enough for our needs but it does mean we’ll be here a while. If you wake up feeling stiff as well as sore it’ll be because you’ve laid down most of today while me and Nguyen are checking valves and running tests, the actual cyberware likely won’t take more than two hours.” Wood continued as we walked through the waiting room into the surgery and as I sat on the chair bed thing.

“That’s fine, do whatever you need to do.” I said with a smile at Dr Nguyen who was giving me a little wave from among the mess of tubes around the machine that handled gases near the wall.

“Alright then.” Dr Wood said as she turned around and raised her freshly gloved hands. “Let’s get started.”

-

I wasn’t sure of the time when I woke up but my body felt like a lead weight, even opening my eyes was a chore. Flicking my interface on I saw the time was just past eight pm, not bad for a days work. Now I had to check nothing was wrong. I pulled my arms up to see and saw I had a pair of arms with hands on the end, perfect. I could move my fingers well enough and it all looked normal apart from some synthskin seams in places, likely for repair access.

Well that’s all well and good, I can grab things again but what about the whole “replacing the majority of my organs” situation?

Hey Sanctum. How’s am I looking? You doing okay after the whole thing?

[Extraction of nanite presence from removed organs went without issue, nanite mass loss was avoided. Installation of cyberware was completed successfully and without causing damage to remaining biological components. Blood pressure through the body was tailored to User specifications to within safe value with Sanctum adjusting it further to precisely required values with ongoing changes as needed.]

That’s great Sanctum, thanks for looking out for me with that. Have you managed to integrate the new cyberware already?

[Sanctum has successfully integrated all new cyberware while the User was unconscious.]

Great. Okay, so I just need to wait out this anesthesia and I’ll be good to go right?

[Correct. Sanctum detects no additional factors that prevent User function outside of remaining surgical incision recovery. All healing was handled manually and scarring kept to a near zero amount, remaining recovery time until total recovery is four hours.]

That’s really fast Sanctum. Is this healing speed part of the integration deepening?

[It is a side effect of the more optimal and tailored logistical system of travel and operation within the nanomachine swarm behavior that is made available by the higher degree of integration.]

That sounds complicated. Are you ready to get hold of the metals?

[Sanctum is prepared to process the materials as they are made available.]

Preem, let’s sort that out when I can move properly then.