After a while, hours of just sitting there with Panacea next to him, occasionally moving as he sometimes ran his fingers through her hair, he decided to call it a night. Something like 3:30 or 4am, and the club was almost empty, only having a few employees cleaning up and one or two of the trustee regulars who seemed to prefer the peace and quiet compared to the dancing and crowds.
His club was never really closed, but the extended hours generally had slow service and generally only catered to some of the people who were frequent enough to have proved trustworthy to not need direct supervision. The sort of people who'd pay for their drinks even if nobody saw them do it, or had a weekly or monthly tab instead of a nightly one.
This wasn't the first time Amy had spent the night, falling asleep in the club. It wouldn't be the last either. She overworked herself, and the club was closer to the hospital than her house was.
He shot a text to Vicky, aka 'Glory Girl', Amy's sister, and gently picked up the sleeping healer.
He was more than strong enough to carry a teenager up the stairs to the private rooms, where he put her in the one he'd given her. His was more like an apartment, where the one she had fit the bill of a hotel room.
At first, she'd get Vicky to take her home. Then after she started staying long enough to fall asleep, he would text Vicky for her. Couple weeks ago, he gave her a key to the room, and told her when the cleaners came by, what drawers they'd leave alone and all that.
This was maybe the 5th time she'd be staying in her own room, though he'd also lent her it 2 or 3 times when Vicky wasn't able to take her. It was the first time he'd carried her to it himself though. Often she woke up and he'd lead her to it.
He'd have called them a little trusting if there hadn't been at least 4 separate investigations into him, 2 from New Wave, 1 from the Brockton Bay Police, and 1 from the PRT. What's more, Panacea herself was better than the average lie detector test, and she'd grilled him herself a few times in the beginning.
He could see why she wasn't too close to people. That sort of interrogation would scare away nearly any teenager, and most of the mildly friendly busybodies that everyone ended up meeting.
The girl's mother did the rest. It was more likely than not that the woman genuinely had no idea to deal with kids. Strict and overbearing with basically no father figure to counterbalance her.
Carefully, he lowered her into the bed. She hardly moved after he let her go, and he gently took her shoes and socks off for her before covering her up with a blanket.
Locking the door for her as he stepped out, he mused about the position he found himself in.
Johnny Silverhand, responsible adult? Yet here he was, one of the only people who seemed to have concern for a teenage girl's mental health.
It almost made him want to laugh. He'd been half a cyberpsycho for decades, and now he was acting like a pillar of mental strength for this girl.
It would be funny if it wasn't so sad. And it would be sad if it wasn't pissing him off.
Shaking his head, he took a private staircase down to a basement, which was floor to ceiling full of assorted spare parts to electronics, brackets, tools to work metal, soldering irons, and complex machinery and electrical supplies.
It was his workshop. His world in the past few years had consisted of starting up the bar, building connections, and Tinkering with technology based off of the cyberpunk devices he was familiar with. Bodymods, Fixers, and all the works, for whatever reason, he was now skilled and able to use it all.
The cybernetic hand had been a conscious decision this time, though created after a very careful period where he'd studied and modeled it to be better meshed with him than the Silverhand had ever been.
"Cutting-edge military technology", even in those times, was outdated and rough. It'd led him to develop one of the earlier known cases of cyberpsychosis, where he'd often been overly violent and antisocial, on a hair-trigger temper with wide mood swings, because they made a poor connection to his nerve endings, and, admittedly, he'd not had the fortitude to handle the weight of it on his mind.
His new hand, and not an arm like previously, was much better than that. Not only that, but it was akin to a surgeon's tool, with tiny manipulators created to make electronics assembly and creation much easier. It was what led him to creating the device he held now.
A smartphone. Considered hopelessly obsolete in his time, back here in the early 2000's, with a different tech base, this phone would be hopelessly advanced, yet still totally mass-produceable, unlike some of the famous 'Tinkers' he'd heard of.
If he had the mind, he could market it and raje in money for years until someone figured out the process and innovated, which might be impossible with all the monsters blowing up cities every quarter.
Pocketing his new phone, he left the workshop to finally catch a few hours of sleep.