I made it to Vik's clinic without incident.

I was feeling excited and terrified. How would this change me?

Misty waved me through, and I flashed her a smile. I spent a brief moment to pet the cat on the way down. Needed to calm the nerves.

Vik greeted me with a smile. I halfheartedly returned it.

"You ready to get Chipped?" He took in my appearance and frowned.

"A bit of "biz" first. I just raided a Scav base, and I picked up a few things you might want. I'll bring it around to the back door."

His eyebrows crawled up his face, then understanding concern.

"Okay, let's see whatcha got."

A few minutes later he was looking through the crates. He whistled.

"Ryan, I can't afford all this. A few pieces sure, but that be half of one of these boxes." He was frowning, troubled. "Some of this is really high end."

"No!" I took a deep breath and plunged ahead. I shook my hands at him.

"Sorry Vik I can't take money for these, not after what I saw. These are yours, sell the best of it to some rich gonks, give big discounts to the people who need some help. I don't know what's best here, but yeah I can't take your money for this." I was shaking my head emphatically. My hands punctuating my words.

"I see. Yeah, I can do some good with these." Vik nodded, resolved. It appeared he got it.

He gripped my shoulder, "The Scav haunt really got to you, huh? They do that. Too many newly chipped kids think of them as easy marks, come out scarred in more ways than one."

"I don't understand how people can do that, become that twisted." I grunted, "No, I can see it, but I'd like to think I wouldn't sink that low." I snarled a bit there.

I looked at the Operating chair. Trying to refocus.

"I know it's part of life here. I know people think of chrome as normal. I'm not there yet. I might never be."

I punched my left hand with my right, "They treated peoples' flesh as less important than the chrome. As if that was the only part that mattered. That hit me hard." I ground my teeth. Pulling back the reins a bit. I sigh, attempting to expel all the fucked up baggage I'd picked up.

"It's a hard world out there. Chrome helps folks feel safe, lets them feel like they matter. It give them a chance to be more." He went through it slow. He gave my shoulder a pat.

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"More what?" I was actually curious how he'd respond.

"That's the question, isn't it?" He chuckled. After a second to process, I snort and gave a chuckle of my own.

"Maybe too heavy for a second meeting, huh?" Feeling a bit foolish.

"Sure, but you needed to vent and I got an ear." He grinned pointing to his left ear, "Chrome though."

That got a laugh out of me.

I shut the door and we walked over to the chair.

"So how's this work, Doc?"

"Normally it's a quick few minutes long procedure, you'd be awake and we do some tweaks as needed."

We waved his hand back and forth, "However, you being Ganic and all, I'm going to have to put you out. It will take and hour or so for the auto-surgeon to set up the neural interface. The chip ports and the optic sockets will go much quicker. We bring you back to test connections. I'll run you through the software setup and then you'll be good to go."

"Sounds dope." Still uncertain about all this.

"Huh?

"Oh, ah sounds... preem." I hopped up into the chair while handing the $20000 in bills over. "Let's do this." Before I change my mind.

His exo-surgeon arm made some really interesting noises. A few seconds after that, I felt a pinch as I heard him say, "Light's Out."

I came to. A beeping noise kept repeating next to me, so I glanced over to see a monitor. Couldn't make heads or tails out of what it was showing though.

My head was groggy. Like a night of too much whiskey. Without the headache though.

Laying there gathering my thoughts, I wondered if everything went okay. I didn't sense any differences, yet.

I reached up and gently rubbed my closed eyes. Ah, much firmer.

Around the side of my head, there were three rectangular holes behind my left ear. A set of three concentric metallic rings behind my right ear.

Soo, I'm "chipped" now. I hoped it was worth it.

I spent a few seconds tracing the chip ports and staring at my hand to see if I saw more detail now.

Yeah, a little bit. Nothing too amazing.

The curtain around the bed I was resting it was pulled back and the light stabbed into my eyes.

"Sorry, bet that stung." Vik rumbled.

"The surgery went well, though it took an extra hour to map your brain. It's an odd one. You have some dense clusters of nerves in your frontal cortex I've never seen before. A few other strange quirks as well. The implantation went great and everything seems to be smooth sailing. How are your optics doing? Blurriness, photosensitivity?"

"Nah, Doc. Everything looks great." I tried sitting up. I barely wobbled.

"Alright, let's go through the setup and settings for everything..."

It only took twenty minutes to get everything ready.

Now that they were off safe mode, my new eyes were a marvel. They could zoom in, both for distance and scale. They supposedly had other features like explosive detection, flare protection and more, but there wasn't a good way to test them here.

I could connect to the electronics around the room, which I fiddled with maybe a bit too much. Turning on and off the lights and the radio. It was extremely intuitive, I was shocked that it was so easy.

And my chip ports came with a new encrypted cred chip. Making it less likely some netrunner could just siphon my funds willy-nilly.

Best of all these systems all worked together to give me active readout data straight to my eyes. That was so cool.

Vik threw in a few bits of software as thanks, a NCPD Scanner to see ne'er do wells, a security suite with some currently up to date and potent ICE, and the advanced version of a targeting system, to aid in aiming. Most of it's features needed the chrome on the hand like a ballistics coprocessor to really shine, but the targeting reticule was already awesome.

He gave me a puffer, and I took a hit now, and he told me I'd need a few more hourly puffs over the next five hours. What it contained was a mass of antibiotics and antirejection drugs to help my body adapt.

I thanked him for everything. Then left making sure to say good-bye to Misty on the way to my van.