Unknown
He wasn't feeling hungry. He knew this because he didn't need to eat.
His meat was lying to him. He could just ignore it and keep walking.
He wasn't feeling thirsty. He knew this because he didn't need to drink.
His meat was lying to him. He ignored it and kept walking.
He wasn't suffocating. He knew this because he didn't need to breathe.
His meat was lying to him. He ignored them and kept walking.
He needed to find a bench. He was running out of arms.
It was the first true thing his meat had told him in a while.
He looked at his hand. Sometimes five fingers, sometimes three, sometimes none.
His hand was a roaring flame. He clenched it and kept walking.
He ignored the thing behind him.
—
David Martinez
Security jobs were boring, there wasn't any real way around it. He had taken a couple in the past, but they were almost always 'take this item to this location and hand it over to someone.' He hasn't had a job like this before, pondering his own boredom was little relief from the fact that he was very bored staring over the rails of the Ebunike. The radio, unsurprisingly, didn't help much in this vain attempt to avoid the little death.
'Bwuah bwuah bwuah, y-y-you're listening to the N-n-nightwave 98.5 with J-boy and the Trilbies, the hottest frequency for all the modern hits.The lines between man and metal are blurring, so be sure to chip in for the next hour-long block of modern pop. T-t-tune your sensors, you're NOT gonna wanna miss this!'
He had literally never heard of this station before in his life, and he was starting to understand why. A tremendous sigh escaped his lips as he stared at his surroundings blankly, letting his optics rove over the same landscape again.
The Ebunike was currently in a drydock, supported by some big steel beams over a concrete basin that had gone without water so long that there were weeds in the concrete cracks at the bottom. Weeds, garbage bags, garbage outside of bags, trash, rubbish, concrete…
There were a lot of garbage bags everywhere. He hadn't noticed how many there were all over Night City until that trip to Japan, and now it was kinda hard to miss. Neat scenery he supposed.
The drydock was being kept dry by a massive gate structure over next to the sea, which looked rusted and the paint looked chipped. All in all the basin that the Ebunike was in could maybe fit… uhh… two Ebunikes? He frowned as he tried to puzzle out what a good comparison would be, he wasn't good with abstract math like this. You could probably fit a homeless shelter in it, although how smart that would be with the sea right next to it was debatable. That and it would only be a matter of time before you got a homeless guy trying to blow up the gate just because, and…
Where was he going with this again?
Meh, he already lost interest.
More intriguing was the… fortifications? That was a good word for it, yeah. The fortifications that were immediately outside the stairs leading up to the Ebunike. There were walls of concrete maybe three or four meters high, with barbed wire wrapped around the top, connecting to neighboring buildings. Inside this space was a large number of random shipping crates, most of which looked full of unopened boxes. This led to another section entirely on the other side of a nearby building, with a sort of gatehouse at the end made from more concrete walls, shipping crates, barbed wire, and sheet metal.
It was kinda impressive, although he wasn't sure why it existed except to keep random people out, and a sufficiently determined guy could get in regardless. David himself could probably jump the walls, barbed wire included, in a single prepped leap. That and the wires wouldn't really hurt him, even if he didn't have this frame. That and a sufficiently determined guy could just blow up the walls with enough explosives or break through with good enough arms.
It would slow someone down, and that was about it. Or maybe he was thinking of this wrong, it's not like most people stuck their noses in business that didn't involve them in Night City. So being a pain to get into would deter most people, probably, maybe.
He hummed to himself and looked at the street down at the end of the drydock-basin-thing. Every now and then a car would drive by, and that was about it. Nothing else to look at except for advertisements for 'Watson Whore' and 'Wide Open : Gomorrah'...
He frowned. He could guess what Watson Whore was, it was a flatvid show. You could tell because it showed the channel and time it was airing on the ad, but what the fuck was 'Wide Open'? All it showed was a dark-skinned woman's ass, then a snake crawling on it, and that was it. There was no airing time or netpatch listed, or a call number, or anything else. Just the picture and the name.
He wasn't about to go out of his way to look up what that was just to sate his curiosity about a billboard ad.
…
Fuck he actually might. He nodded to himself, that was their strategy, huh? Alright ad, you won him over, that's a clever strategy. His eyes flashed as he interfaced with his internal agent…
…No… Lucy might find out. He didn't think 'he was just curious' was gonna pass. Probably a bad idea, and he didn't want to deal with her being snippy over something this small. Nodding to himself again, he put his internal agent back to sleep mode and looked over to the fortifications section again.
"Pardon me." An unfamiliar voice came out to his right. He activated his sandevistan and glanced over.
…False alarm, it was that one guy that worked for Smasher greeting him with a waved hand. He deactivated his speedware and stood up, taking a step over. The guy offered a hand, which David returned, engaging in a rather standard handshake. "Hey, you're… uh."
The guy gave a smile that felt a little off. "Grayson, Jeremiah Grayson. I do work for Mr. Smasher. Figured I should introduce myself to his protegee."
David gave a smile back, Grayson was a bit shorter than him, and a bit less muscular. Seemed friendly enough though, which was probably a warning sign in Night City. "Nice to meet you, Grayson. Names David Martinez, although I guess that's probably already something you know."
"It is, but I appreciate the gesture. Already spoke with your mother, Smasher's taking a power nap right now, huh?"
He was very careful to not narrow his eyes at this guy. He didn't have a measure of him yet. "Yeah, we're all on guard duty while he's out. Why do you ask?"
Grayson blinked once, before raising his hands placatingly. "Oh, I just figured I should share the deets on this place's defenses with you. You're the one organizing this right now and all." He jerked a head over at the fortifications that David was looking at on and off throughout his self-imposed shift.
He raised a brow. "The walls, choom?"
Grayson nodded proudly, turning to them and placing his hands on his hips. "Smasher put me in charge of keeping his collection safe about a decade back, and I've been working on it since. It's taken some time, but everything's mostly put together by now."
"How'd you get the walls in, no offense but you're not exactly chromed up."
"Oh, this was all in collaboration with Maelstrom back when they were still around. They got to use the buildings 'round here as bases for whatever they do, and in return they'd help me move the heavier stuff into place. They had a little Smasher fanclub that took care of this place."
"What's his name… Brick? Leader of Maelstrom agreed to that? I don't know much about the guy other than that…"
Grayson waved a hand in a 'sorta' gesture. "Brick was in charge because the strommers liked him and he could keep them in line. Day-to-day stuff was handled by his right and left hands, mean ol' fuckers named Royce and Dum-dum."
David snorted in amusement. "Dum-dum?"
Grayson grinned. "Apparently the name was to throw people off, probably the second-smartest guy in the whole gang, and the best with the tech stuff."
"So Royce was the…?"
Grayson stopped grinning, and looked quite a bit more serious. "Royce… I'm glad I never have to talk to the guy again. He was probably the worst psycho to work with I've ever met."
David raised a brow. "Most people'd say that about Smasher, you know?"
Grayson waved a hand dismissively. "Smasher's reliable once you figure him out. Do your job as best you can, and he doesn't care what else you do. Help him out unprompted, and he might give you a tip in return. He doesn't like useless talking, and he doesn't like socializing. Stay out of his way and he'll leave you alone."
"Royce was different." He raised a finger. "Royce was a goddamn psycho, and worse he was a psycho who was smart. He knew how gang-talk worked better than anyone I've ever met. Nobody in Maelstrom liked him, but every one of them would back him immediately whenever he started shit, they knew better than to do anything else."
"Only Brick could get them to disobey Royce, and that's because Royce took orders from him. Wouldn't surprise me if Royce was planning on taking Brick out of the picture for better control."
"So he's the one you made this deal with?" He asked, not really surprised to learn that a guy in Maelstrom was a prick.
"Second-scariest meeting I've ever had."
David chuckled. "Heh, first was meeting Smasher for the first time then?"
Grayson gave a solemn nod. David gave a bark of laughter and trailed off on his own time.
To be honest, the first time he met Smasher…
There wasn't any fear at all.
Just Fire.
—
Spares
Priority Alpha-2 was asleep. Master was asleep. The concept was strange to her.
She knew what sleep was, it was a required period of rest and psychological reformatting that humans naturally performed on a biologically set schedule. It was a period of mental reconstruction. A period of software self-repair.
She hadn't predicted that the Master would need such a thing. The idea that his software was currently in need of maintenance wasn't unbelievable, she knew the specifications of the circadian half-cycler and what long-term effects it had. She just…
She was experiencing an unfamiliar emotion. She logged it for later analysis.
Her bodycomp alerted her to the completion of another self-scan. It was still damaged, the nanomachines slowly working on their repair. She would need to ingest more high-calorie and metal-rich nutrition soon. The EMP cannon did significant damage to her internals, most of which was already compensated for and repaired, but not all.
Her ceretronic core was thankfully mostly undamaged, its shielding sufficient enough that she only experienced minor thermal damage to that region instead of more significant electro-magnetic damage to her self-repair systems.
She was glad that her core systems were Master's property, else she would have had to give them up upon his decision to leave the employ of Arasaka. She may not have been able to be repaired had that been the case. Then she would be useless…
Master was falling. She couldn't move. An unfamiliar emotion.
She had not been as useful as her internal calculations said she could be. Being even less useful than that would be an unfortunate situation. She would strive to avoid such a situation in the future.
A message came through her Internal Agent from Priority Beta-1, the young master.
[Your shift is up again. You sure you still want a double-shift?]
She checked her internal clock. It was one minute and forty seconds before her scheduled shift. She experienced [Elation-Satisfaction]. She was being useful. Quickly, she messaged Young Master back as to not seem ungrateful.
[Yes.]
She paused, unsure of the next step in this dialogue. She returned to her Internal Agent, and relayed the situation. Her Internal Agent dutifully returned an appropriate reply a few moments later, which she then sent through back to the Young Master.
[Be there soon.]
Another conversation completed successfully. She exited low power mode and blinked her primary sensors online once more. She was in the captain's command chamber. Nodding to herself, she unplugged her auxiliary charger from the wall-outlet connected to the ship's fusion reactor and stood up, letting the cable retract into her lower-spine..
She turned her gaze over to the sleeping form of Master, currently undergoing his own software repair. She stared for a long moment. His form was diminished without the backing of Arasaka, reduced in overall scale due to using a stock frame at the moment. That was being corrected already, with a frame ordered to his specifications and soon to be finished. If it was finished before he awoke, he would surely experience a desirable emotion.
She looked down at the arms she was currently using, the stock limbs of a stock alpha frame. They were smaller, gray instead of black, and fit her frame better. They were still Master's arms.
Indulgently, she wrapped them around herself and squeezed, holding the position. This action made her experience an unknown but desirable emotion. She recorded it for later analysis.
She should not be wasting time.
…
She loosened the arms from around herself and left the captain's command chamber.
Walking along the edge of the ship and down the stairs, she proceeded for the Young Master's current position. He was talking to Tentative-Ally 'Jeremiah Grayson', an apparent employee of Master. She did not have sufficient information to predict this one yet, loosening her guard around it would be dangerous.
Young Master turned towards her, pausing his conversation with Jeremiah Grayson. He grinned looking at her. She experienced an unknown emotion. She logged it for later analysis.
"Spares, you met Grayson yet?" He pointed a thumb in Jeremiah Grayson's direction. She turned her face to evaluate the subject. He held out a hand for her to shake, a common human ritual, she stared at it for a moment, before raising Master's right arm to grab it in return.
She shook exactly three times before letting go, comparing the grip. His lower arms were entirely artificial, but didn't have any of the obvious seams that would indicate forearm weapon implants. That was not uncommon, statistically, but she hadn't met someone like that yet. She logged that information for later, and brought her stare back to his face.
There was a long moment of silence. She was unsure why. She relayed this information to her Internal Agent…
"Right. Well it's your turn to keep watch Spares, I'm gonna go check out the wider fortifications and then get some Zs." Young Master spoke before she could get an answer back from her agent. She experienced an undesirable emotion and watched as he and Jeremiah Grayson walked away. She turned her gaze to nothing for a moment, making sure to remove the emotion from her internal memory. She did not wish to analyze that one anymore than she had to.
She walked over to the post and sat down. The bench was still warm.
She turned her gaze to the wider city, and began her observation duty, making sure to scan and log each unfamiliar thing she saw to ensure it wasn't a threat. In periods of no new things appearing, she would ask her Internal Agent to search for information about that thing in the citynet.
That was an advertisement for 'Real Water', a product of canned and carbonated dihydrogen oxide heavily filtered from localized sewer water and similar distilleries. It was sold by the gallon for 98 eurodollars, although recent media suggested that they were going to raise that price soon.
That was an ARCH Nazare, a 170 'horse power' motorcycle that had a market value of 70,000 eurodollars new. A horse was a breed of land mammal currently critically endangered, used for transportation in the past.
That was Aoi Tsuki, a member of the 'Us Cracks' pop-music group, currently in streetwear. Her stage name was 'Blue Moon', and Us Cracks had recently signed a sponsorship deal with Kiroshi Optics to advertise their non-standard optics.
That was five men in identity concealing garb carrying a large package towards the left of the Ebunike.
She narrowed her optics and watched them turn slightly, walking towards the water. As they progressed, she asked her Internal Agent what an appropriate course of action might be. It redirected her to the NCPD hotline for suspicious activity. She nodded to herself and began the call.
Waiting for a moment to connect, eventually she was answered by a woman's voice. The woman sounded distracted. "You've reached the NCPD tip-off hotline. Please be aware that non-emergency tips will be fined. What is the nature of your emergency."
"I believe I am witnessing an act of domestic terrorism. There are five individuals with identity concealing clothing carrying a large package towards the Ebunike drydock water gate."
"...Is that it?"
"Yes."
The woman on the other side of the line snorted and replied. "Very serious stuff kid. Your account has been fined. Good day."
Before she could respond, the woman on the line hung up. Spares stared blankly as her Internal Agent informed her of the 500 eurodollar fee taken out of her account.
She turned her gaze towards the individuals carrying the package and started recording, watching blankly as they set it down near the gate but outside of her defined parameters to defend.
They then quickly walked away as a spider-like shape emerged from the package and crawled into the water.
A few moments later, a massive explosion bloomed to life in the water, causing a brief rain over the whole ship, getting her wet from the ocean water. The gates burst inwards, almost tearing off their hinges as water began to rush into the trash-filled drydock.
She snipped the video, and sent it to the NCPD tip-off hotline. She was experiencing an unknown emotion. She logged it for later.
The others burst onto the deck of the Ebunike and began to run over to her.
Before they reached her, she received a call.
From the NCPD.
She was experiencing a desirable emotion.