Adam stared at the mass of fur and meat in the dye-skinned girl's raised hands. It contently hung like a piece of damp fabric left out on the rack to dry in front of him. It slowly blinked and then yawned. Adam looked at the short woman holding it, a nervous but determined expression on her face as she awaited judgment. She had snuck it in one of her few suitcases, and had only revealed it after they arrived at his floor.
Yes floor, for Adam Smasher was the Butcher of Arasaka. The thirteenth-highest floor of the Arasaka tower was his personal level, the entire floor given to him as part of his long-term contract with them. It was mostly empty even after all his time living in it. There was a self-maintenance room that he 'slept' in, there was an armory for his personal collection of weapons and ammunition, there was a room for his old Gemini bodies, and nothing else. A majority of the floor was completely unused, doors that haven't been opened in years containing perfectly empty, sound-proof rooms.
He had plenty of room for his new apprentice and his hanger-ons, even with all the stuff they brought with them. They didn't have much, due to being street-meat, but they had a decent collection of personal belongings. So they were able to pack what they cared about and bring it back to the tower relatively easily.
Adam didn't really want any of them in his home, but he did promise to protect them. Protecting these meatbags would be much harder if there was a commute each time they were in trouble. They would probably die before he could arrive, assuming the situation actually needed him there. Meat died very easily, after all.
They would be targeted now by rival corporations, namely Militech considering their latest stunt. An attack by other street-meat wasn't worth caring about, but an attack by corporate dogs would be far more dangerous to them. No corporation wanted Arasaka to get a second Adam Smasher, and his apprentice wasn't nearly strong enough to deter attackers yet.
So Adam stared at the cat that the dyed-girl held and it lazily hung from her outstretched arms.
It meowed. Uriel chuckled.
"Its litter box stays in your room, you will clean it once a day, you will get it tested for everything- namely toxoplasmosis. If it makes a mess, I kill it." Adam commanded the dye-woman, who enthusiastically nodded and gave a jumping 'whoop!'.
"Thanks big guy! I'll keep her clean!" Adam grumbled in response. Uriel escalated into full blown laughter.
'She got comfortable around us really quick? Eh, Adam?' Uriel said between barks of hissing laughter. Adam told Uriel to shut up.
Adam reminded himself that he needed these meatbags to like him, and that killing them would be counter-productive to his goal of surviving the meatfucker. One year, that's all he had to put up with them for, one year and he can kick them all out and return to his life of blissful murder.
He turned to see his apprentice-to-be and his girl trying their best to hide amused expressions. The driver didn't join them, he had the survival instincts to request to leave instead. It was a somewhat sad departure for the meats, but no one was dead and the driver even got new chrome out of this whole affair, so it was probably as happy as it could have been.
The driver said 'he'll keep in touch' to them, but clearly just didn't want to be around Adam or the potential corporate warring that Adam brought with him. That was fair, and Adam's opinion of the driver went up a notch. He had good instincts, he'll probably live for a long time.
Regardless, the driver left and now Adam was stuck with three brats in what was previously his private sanctum. Adam heard a distant meow and Uriel laughed again. Correction, three brats and a meat-animal. He growled again.
"Pick whatever empty room you want."
Adam left and entered the balcony-room. The room had see-through glass on its wall allowing one to overlook a good portion of the central square. In that room was everything Adam needed to relax after a hard day of work.
A single reinforced bench in the center, near to the window, allowed him to sit and think. There was nothing else in the room, for Adam didn't need anything else.
The window looked like glass, but it was actually one of the few purchases Adam made for himself a long time ago. It was all completely transparent armor paneling, rated for resisting anything short of a nuclear weapon, to allow him the ability to drop his guard in the area. It had cost him nearly five-hundred million to get enough made and installed to cover the entire wall, but it had been worth it.
Adam walked over to the bench, and sat down on it. He stared over the central square, the construction workers and repair crews crawling all over the place like ants on a sugar cookie. Machines bringing in new materials to replace everything that was damaged.
The repair crews that were on Arasaka dime worked fast, and did their jobs well. The whole place would probably be fixed by the same time tomorrow at this point. They had a lot of practice cleaning up after him, afterall.
A meow to his side caught his attention. He turned to see the meat-beast sitting on the floor in front and to the side of him. He locked eyes with it and waited.
The beast slowly blinked again, before jumping up on the bench, and jumping again into one of the shallow indentations on his armored back. It curled up and started to purr.
Adam was not amused at the audacity of this meat-creature. Uriel had to take over his arms to prevent him from reaching up and crushing its head like a grape.
It was likely seeking the warmth of his body. Despite what first impressions might be, Adam was not actually cold or even cool in temperature. His robotic frame required an immense amount of power to operate, and that kept his temperature slightly higher than human norms. The micro-fusion reactor in his central torso kept everything running, so he didn't have to plug himself into an outlet or something stupid to keep going, just yearly diagnostics and maintenance performed by specialist technicians. It was perfectly safe, it had enough failsafes in place to just shut down completely in the case of a core breach and he had a backup battery to keep him running for several hours if something like that happened.
Reactors like these could be used to make electricity almost free in terms of cost, if they were put all over the place. Why weren't they?
There was no profit in free electricity, so every corporation in the world had a vested interest in keeping it from consumer markets.
The intensity of it's purring increased, and Adam's murderous rage increased again. Uriel started giving suggestions on ways to train the boy to take his mind off the pile of meat and fur currently sitting on him.
The door to the balcony (not technically a balcony, Uriel commented) room opened, and the dye-woman's voice and footsteps came through.
"Hey big guy, have you see-?" She stopped. Adam didn't need to turn around to know what she was looking at. The meat-beast chirped in greeting. She put her hands over her mouth and muffled a laugh. Adam let Uriel take over as he went to vent his frustrations by reviewing his 'best of' clips of meatbags dying.
The dye-woman sauntered up and plopped down on the bench next to him, she was still nervous around him but was trying her best to not show fear. A brave thing, this blue meat was. He turned back to look out at the construction crews at work.
"Hey, like, this place is real sparse, ya'know? You sure you live here?"
"I have my bench, my armory, and my storage. I need nothing else."
"Kinda messed up, big guy. I knew you were borged out, but don't you have any hobbies?"
"Violence."
"Huh, well if we're staying here, you mind forking over some jack for creature comforts? Not all of us are as chilled as you."
Adam thought about this for a moment, eh, he had the cash to burn on furniture. He directed the computer to set up a second account and transferred a million to it. He then forwarded the new account details to the dyed-woman. She yelped and fell off the bench when she saw the info pop up.
"Make sure it can support my weight. If you buy a 'live, laugh, love' sign or other useless shit like that, I'm burning all of it."
It wasn't a big loss to him, he made about five times that amount with his average contract. It was clearly a big deal to the girl, who stared blankly for a moment before looking back up at him again. She grinned and raised one of her hands in the iconic 'okay' sign while getting back up on the bench.
"Gotcha big guy, gotta say that you're pretty careless with the eddies, huh?"
"Arasaka pays for all my needs, my personal wealth just sits and accumulates interest."
Rebecca got a little quiet at that, perhaps being reminded that she was technically under corpo control dampened her mood. "Yeah."
They sat like that for a couple minutes, just looking out over the central square in silence. It was comfortable to Adam, probably uncomfortable to the girl. She spoke up after a while.
"Hey, where did David and Lucy go?"
Adam checked the cameras on his floor, switching between them until he found something. Something he did find, quickly he turned off the cameras and focused back on his immediate surroundings. Could they really not wait a day or something? At least to let their new chrome settle in.
"They are currently occupied."
"With what?"
"Fucking."
—
"So, who are we flatlining first?" The boy said, seated on the ground in front of his bench (Behind? Benches face both ways.). His arm was around his girlfriend, who was cuddled into his side as deeply as she could, distrustful eyes still on him. Rebecca, in a show of solidarity, was seated on the ground with them.
Adam corrected the boy's assumption.
"I will be attending a PR meeting tomorrow morning, the price Arasaka demanded in exchange for leaving you and your friends alone. The dye-woman will be purchasing new furniture for you all. Your girl can do whatever, I don't care. You will be letting your new chrome settle in by not doing anything strenuous for at least a week."
They ignored the dye-woman muttering 'my name is rebecca, gonkhead.', the boy frowned at him for being put on mandatory leave for a week. Damn brat, you get a week to laze around and fuck your girl and you get mad?
"I thought you said you'd be teaching me."
"I will, but I need to make sure you are sane to do that."
"I can handle it just fine!" Adam growled and the boy backed down a bit, gaze still defiant.
"For a time, sure. I don't need you to burn out in a year again though, I need you to last." This was straight up a lie, Adam only needed the boy for a year. The boy could burn out after that all he wanted to. The boy was still frustrated looking, so Adam continued.
"You became a chrome junkie because you were the leader. You had to assume the responsibility to keep everyone safe, to make sure the job goes well. That isn't true anymore."
Adam leaned forwards menacingly, optics brightening in a glare. He loomed over the boy on the ground like a gargoyle on a banking column.
"Right now, you listen to me. You follow my command, got it?"
"Whenever something goes wrong on a job, you aren't going to be responsible for jack shit. Every time someone gets a lucky hit in, or you get caught off guard, you're going to blame me. You're going to blame the fact that I didn't teach you well enough, you're going to demand I teach you to do better next time. You're useless to me if you lose it again."
"You got that, boy?"
Adam practically yelled out the final sentence. The boy glowered a bit before averting his eyes.
"...Got it…" He muttered bitterly.
Adam leaned back. The dyed woman and the boy's girl stared at him.
"Good."
There was a pause in the room as no one could think of anything to say. Eventually, the boy's girl spoke up.
"Arasaka agreed to leave us alone… in exchange for you going to a PR meeting?"
It was a fair question, Adam sighed and leaned back.
"Those fucking cheery vermin have been hounding me to 'be consumer friendly' and 'present the more welcoming side of Arasaka employees' for years now. I've turned down every meeting as attending them was never in my contract."
"With me agreeing to cooperate, they're probably going to try and make me change my look so they can sell action figures or some shit like that. Probably make me say a catch phrase after killing a bunch of gangers so they can put that in too."
The brats started getting grins about halfway through his complaining. The dyed-girl spoke up.
"What? The poor widdle kill-borg doesn't want little kids waving action figures around? Not going to yell about your 'rocket punch!' while killing a bunch of scavs~?" Adam glowered at the gremlin smugly mocking him.
The boy spoke up at this point, taking his chance to poke fun.
"There are already action figures, I remember them from middle school. They might make a 'toon series about him instead." Smug little shit, I tore apart your chrome the other day and now you think you're big enough to mock him like this. Even his girl was getting in on this, hand over her mouth as muffled chuckles escaped her lips.
Uriel chimed in with an idea, and Adam paused. What an evil idea, he loved it.
"Actually, I have something for you to do tomorrow, boy."
"Oh yeah, what's that?"
—
"We at the Arasaka Public Relations department are so glad to see you taking initiative, Mr. Smasher. You even brought your new apprentice to coordinate your brands!" An overly cheery woman in a suit across the table, hands clasped together, said to them. Both Adam and the boy were sitting in reinforced chairs. Off to her side was a young man in a suit, carrying two briefcases no doubt filled with their torture for the next few hours.
The boy was looking at him in despair at being betrayed like this. Adam did not feel remorse. Uriel couldn't stop laughing.
"Let's get this over with."
"Right! Lets dive right into it!"
Uriel had forwarded the new schematics and plans for cyberware to Adam's techies already, and had gone ahead and sent them to the woman in front of them as well, so that she knew what she was working with for potential future upgrades. It would take about a week to change his aesthetics in a way that didn't diminish his functionality, and doing it for his new protege wouldn't take any additional time either.
But creating entirely new cybernetics and implementing them? That would be months, probably only barely before the meatfucker comes for him. Might as well have the aesthetics planned out already for the development process.
The boy to the side set the briefcases on the table, and opened the rightmost one for the woman in front of them. She took out the appropriate tablet, plugged it into the table outlet, and the boy closed the case.
Then on the wall to their right was projected a number of windows and tabs, each of them chocked full of marketing jargon and notes. Adam physically could not get a headache anymore, his cybernetics prevented that, and he still wanted an aspirin just looking at it.
"So we at the PR team have a few ideas to improve customer perception of your brand, and a fair few more that become available with the arrival of your protegee…" The woman started talking and Adam tuned out. Uriel could handle this, he was going to watch his murder compilation again.
The boy slumped and a distressed whine escaped his lips. He would have no such escape from the sadistic marketer. Adam bet that woman was fucking elated to be torturing the Adam Smasher in this way, with Adam being unable to retaliate.
It was several hours before they were finally allowed to leave that fucking room. The woman saying, "Shame, it seems like that's all we have time for today. I'll forward what we have to the fixers and get them to commission your new chrome. Buh-Bye!" as they left.
They walked a short way before simultaneously slumping against the wall. It was several moments of random corpos walking by giving strange looks before either of them regained the motivation to do anything.
Adam spoke up. "You see why I don't go to those fucking meetings now?"
The boy replied with a simple "Yeah."
Uriel had fun though. Adam told him to shut the fuck up.
A few corpos walking by started talking shit that Adam didn't bother to listen to. Probably something about their current pose being undignified or some shit. He heard gritting teeth, looked over and saw that the kid was furious at whatever they had to say.
"You mad kid?" Adam asked redundantly.
"Course I'm mad, you hear what those fucking corpses are saying?!"
"Why are you listening to meat?"
The kid paused at that, before turning to look at him fully. Adam continued.
"They can't do anything to save their own lives, each a coward at their core. All they can do is talk, so why are you bothering to listen to them?"
"We are the sum of our actions, not intentions, not feelings, not words. They'll never make an action in their life if it isn't signed in triplicate, they probably won't even defend themselves if you were to go in and start tearing them apart. They can't do anything but make noise."
"They're just meat for the slaughter, you're going to care what noise meat makes?"
The boy looked at him for a long moment, before turning back to them and furrowing his brow.
"Earlier, you said a man is his word."
"These aren't men, they're meat. Men hold themselves to a higher standard."
The boy thought about it, relaxed, and leaned back against the wall.
"No, I guess not."
Good, he didn't need an apprentice that got mad at useless shit like that. Uriel congratulated his performance. Adam told him to shut up again. Uriel was starting to feel unwanted.
Eventually they started moving again, but as they entered the elevator upwards a call came from behind them. A very familiar voice and two sets of footsteps.
"Adam, wait for a moment." It was his handler with the trashy hair and another woman. The second woman had equally trashy hair, that style common to cyberpunk women. Half of her head shaved down and then the top was long and set to the side. The second woman was slightly shorter than Kate, and in a mostly red suit.
Adam delayed pressing the elevator button until they got in. Then Kate spoke up again as they started going up.
"This is your newest protegee? Doesn't look like much." Kate deliberately provoked to see the boy's reaction. The boy's eyes twitched and he frowned, but it looks like he took Adam's words to heart earlier and didn't say anything back.
"Did you need something or are you just trying to annoy me?" Adam not so subtly threatened. Kate backed down immediately, as he knew she would, and got onto what she was likely actually here for.
"Just getting a measure of the kid." Kate then seemingly just remembered that the other woman was here. Adam knew that that was fake bullshit, she never forgot in the first place.
"This is my daughter, Valerie. She works in Asset Protection and is joining me for a meeting about yesterday's fiasco, say hello Valerie."
The aforementioned Valerie leaned forwards slightly and offered her hand to Adam and then the kid after Adam didn't bother shaking her hand. The kid did though, he was fairly polite to people who didn't insult him.
"As my mother said, I'm Valerie. I look forward to working with you both, however distantly." She smiled in a seemingly genuine manner and Uriel realized what this was actually about. Kate was trying to get her daughter on good terms with the potential future Adam Smasher early, forging a relationship with mister 'I needed the Butcher of Arasaka called in to take care of me'.
If this Valerie could get the kid to have a positive opinion of her, then she might be able to cash in on it years from now when the kid was an actual fucking threat without overpriced military garbage. This was a very long term social investment on their part, and they were getting in early.
Adam chuckled to himself, shame for them that the boy already has a lover, and neither seemed interested in adding anyone else to their relationship. The boy might be friends at best, but considering she was a corpo it would be an uphill battle for them. The boy didn't have good experiences with corpos or corpo brats thus far.
Uriel spoke up. "Your social maneuvering is annoying, do it on your own time."
They both recoiled a bit at that, not expecting him to outright say what they were doing. Corpo politicking, by nature, was a bunch of half-truths and technical-truths, and many other synonyms for lying to everyone around you. To call it out outright was simply not done among their circles.
Uriel hated lies. He hated lies more than anything else in the world.
The kid spoke up at that. "Geez Smasher, lay into them why don't you?" He was familiar with the outright hostility and backhanded insults of corpos. He didn't know how poisonous their kindness could be yet. Eh, he'll learn in time.
"They can seduce you later, when I don't have to listen to it."
The kid sputtered at that, and the rest of their conversation was stilted and awkward as Adam ignored it entirely.
Uriel couldn't shake the feeling that Valerie was familiar somehow, but he wasn't exactly sure why. Maybe she showed up in the sourcebooks somewhere? Adam didn't really care, all the same meat to him.
—
By the time they got back to Adam's floor, they found themselves blocked by the delivery crews carrying large boxes up and setting them in places around.
It looks like the dyed-girl paid extra for same-day delivery. Walking inside past men that jumped in fright when they saw Adam Smasher walk by them, he and the kid eventually entered into the room that saw the dyed-girl and the boy's girl directing workers in the placement of heavily reinforced furniture and tasteful decoration.
Was that a radio set pushed up against the far wall?
Yes it was, Uriel took the cue to change it's channel from whatever modern garbage was playing and to the Sinatra channel.
The vast majority of pre-netcrash music did not survive, but somehow that one radio station that played Sinatra constantly was still around. It still required a subscription to access, and it even had interviews that played in between songs about people who met or talked to the man while he was alive.
Thinking about the logistics of that made Uriel's code hurt, so he resolved to ignore it. He also made a note to try and recreate all the music that he used to listen to so he could have something good to hear rather than techno constantly. Uriel didn't even really like techno, and it was about seventy percent of what people of Night City listened to.
He would have to make the music himself if he wanted good tunes. Adam didn't care either way.
And now, the end is near.
"Hey, what gonk changed the station?!" The dye-girl yelled, looking over to the radio before scanning the room to see Adam and the boy walking in. She paused for a second, looking at the radio and then back to him.
And so I face the final curtain.
"Did you change the channel, big guy?" When Adam nodded in response she looked put out for a moment. "You listen to old stuff like this?"
My friend, I'll say it clear.
"I'm old stuff." Adam said simply. It wasn't exactly honest, Adam didn't really listen to any music before, this was all Uriel's doing. Still, they shared a head now, and he got an appreciation for it.
I'll state my case, of which I'm certain.
"Huh, guess so. Anyways, we've been moving in all the new stuff, If you want any say on where it goes." She offered, neither Adam nor Uriel were very much interested in something like that.
I've lived, a life that's full.
"No need, I'll wait for it to be over." Adam said, then walked over to his bench and lifted it off from where it was. He carried it over his head to avoid hitting any of the workers and sat it on the wall next to the radio.
I've traveled, each and every highway.
He then sat on the bench and retreated into his mind to go over more plans with Uriel. Plans for training the boy, plans for chrome upgrades, plans for making sure he lived against the meatfucker. Plans on plans with the bodiless fire in his code.
And more, much more than this.
He wasn't about to die to the ghost of some upjumped cheerleader. He was Adam fucking Smasher. He wasn't about to die to fucking anyone.
I did it my way.
That was a promise.