PROLOGUE

"Vik! Vik!" a voice shouted into the ripperdoc's clinic. "There's an emergency!"

Viktor snapped out his reverie of watching old boxing fights. Reaching into his drawer, he pulled out his trusty iron and stood up from his chair. "Misty! What is it?" he asked as the woman rushed into the clinic. She had messy bobbed hair, black makeup, a spiked choker, one necklace with a pentacle on it around her neck, and another with a skull.

"It's a girl," Misty said. "Shot in the head and dumped from a balcony above, I think. Right outside my shop!"

"Show me," the doc said. He put the gun back in the drawer and closed it.

Viktor rushed up the stairs out of his clinic as fast as he could. He wasn't an old man, but he wasn't exactly in his prime either. They rushed through the garbage-ridden alleyway and into Misty's shop, self-named Misty's Esoterica. Crystal balls, tea sets, statues of mythical creatures, plenty of tarot symbology, hundreds of candles and incense in every flavor, everything a practicing diviner could want. They rushed out into the street outside.

In front was a strip club, and not a high end one, named Gamorrah. Lots of pink neon, men and women dancing in the windows, and a big burly bouncer outside the entrance. Once, Watson had been a thriving district, full of high-end businesses, bleeding edge medical facilities and dozens of corporate headquarters. Now, the exact opposite was true. Thousands of homeless and businesses struggling to survive, all thanks to Arasaka who had taken over the district by force to claim the desirable port.

"Just over there," Misty said, pointing off towards the right where a girl was sprawled out on the ground, in a puddle of her own slowly expanding blood. There were a few people standing around and pointing at the body, but an equal number of people just ignoring it and walking by as if it was a normal occurrence. Viktor rushed forward and got onto his knees for a closer look. and Misty was right behind him.

"What a mess," Viktor muttered. He felt for a pulse, and surprisingly found one. There was blood everywhere, and her brains had literally been blown out the front of her face. Quite a gruesome scene. "She's alive. Help me carry her."

"Do you see?" a voice suddenly shouted. "DO YOU SEE! THE PROOF IS RIGHT HERE, IN FRONT OF ALL OF US! CAST OUT FROM ALPHA CENTAURI BY HER OWN KIND! BETRAYED BY HER OWN PEOPLE! THE LIZARDFOLK ARE HERE!"

Viktor ignored the nutjob as he carefully lifted the girl. There was no easy way to do it, so he sort of hooked her under the arms, doing the best to support her damaged head, while Misty got her feet. The blood quickly soaked into his shirt. Strangely enough, she already seemed to be missing half her right arm, recently too, though it seemed to be crudely cauterized.

It seemed excessively cruel.

The girl was somehow still alive when she was carefully set down on one of his operating beds. He pressed a button press and the bed changed shape into more of a chair, elevating her head.

He quickly set the scanners into action while he did his own inspection. "Female, no more than twenty years old," he said. "No ID. Mismatched and damaged clothing. Hm, and isn't this interesting?"

"What's interesting?" Misty asked.

"No chrome," Viktor said. He started hooking her up to fluids. She'd lost a ton of blood.

"That's not that interesting," she said.

"It's 2077," he said. "No chrome. No personal jack. Nothing medical at all. Not a single piece of kit."

"Still, not unheard of," she said. "Chrome ain't free, as you well know."

"You're right," he said as he worked furiously. "If you judge her by her clothes, that does explain a lot. Doesn't explain why she got shot and dumped. Certainly wasn't to steal her chrome."

"Probably for a normal, human reason," Misty replied. "Plenty of gangs around here."

"I suspect whoever did this expected this person to die," Vik said. "What will happen when they find out she's alive, that I worked on her?"

"Nothing?" Misty suggested. "Is she going to live though?"

"If she hasn't died yet, there's a chance she'll live," Viktor said. "One thing's certain, is that while she has no chrome now, she'll have more chrome than what she'll know what to do with when I'm done. No other choice."

Viktor was already covered in blood from just a few minutes of work. It wouldn't be quick. Brains were tricky and delicate. Even a small mistake could be catastrophic. He did have a lot of experience, had installed dozens, maybe even hundreds of implants in and around the brain, though nothing quite like this.

There was brain activity. That meant that something in there was alive, that he wasn't just operating on a vegetable. The body was still reacting to stimuli, still feeling pain.

Actually saving the girl though, that was no guarantee. And if he did, what would her quality of life be? Would she be able to talk? What of her memory? She'd lost half her brain, no doubt about that. He might be able to compensate with the proper cybernetics. Maybe.

Then, there was her arm. She'd need a complete prosthetic. If she was lucky, she'd keep her elbow, but there were more pressing concerns.

The operation would last all day. And probably through the night. He'd repair the damage, stop the bleeding, reinforce the skull, compensate for half a missing brain. Her arm would be another story. A body with no chrome was difficult to work on, as it could easily reject it. And she'd be getting so much, that was almost likely.

There was a slight hiccup. The nameless girl… had an anomaly in her head. Viktor hadn't seen anything like it. An extra part of the brain. There was the cerebral cortex, medulla, thalamus and many others… but this was none of those. He'd never seen anything like it, and couldn't even begin to fathom its function. It didn't appear cancerous either, but whatever it was, it was damaged.

Viktor was curious. He was curious as to why this girl had no chrome. He was curious as to why she'd gotten shot. And he was curious as to what that was in her brain. And it was 'ganic brain matter, that much he was sure of.

It was out of curiosity that he bridged all those strange synapses with a chip. The girl would be getting a lot of chips, and a controller. Wasn't a way around it. She'd need a bunch of chips to have normal motor functions, and that was assuming that she could actually recover from that. He'd do what he could, but the rest would depend on her tenacity.

So he got to work.