CHARTER_HILL
No city truly slept in the 21st century anymore. There was always the electric churn of motion that produced a constant sea of background noise. Carnivals of lights from freeways. The hum of aerodynes as they sailed past the holographic advertisement towers like gnats drawn to a flame. Even for the metropolises that had been scarred by nuclear fallout in decades past, business continued as usual, as though the need for facemasks and eye protection was merely a quibble to contend with as long the city continued to remain vigilant.
Fiona was just starting to get used to that fact, to her chagrin.
She had been sleeping, or attempting to sleep, on Ramses' couch in the living area of his loft. He had bought a thin blanket and an unexceptional pillow for her to utilize, as the couch by itself would have been uncomfortable otherwise. And even though she was positioned away from the window, the glow of the city spread across the far wall through the tinted surfaces, reflecting that constant motion of a civilization alive through shadowshapes like an elaborate minstrel show.
Between that and the collective groan of CHOOH2 engines that infiltrated through even the soundproofed walls, Fiona had not gotten a lick of sleep tonight.
She had been tossing and turning, desperately trying every position possible if it meant she could fall asleep. No such luck. Now that she knew of what was past the glass, out there in Night City, she could not get it out of her mind, which was one of a thousand items that she could not stop thinking about, further preventing her from reaching a suitable REM stage.
Eventually, she gave up and kicked the blanket off of her body. She sat up from the couch and sleepily scratched her scalp. She was wearing a set of functional underwear, more articles of clothing that Ramses had bought for her, which was black and made out of an anti-puncture material. Considering the fact that the underwear left everything else practically exposed, Fiona was not particularly sure that she was going to willingly put herself in a situation where this would be the only garment protecting her from a knife.
Drawn to the noises at the window, Fiona padded over on bare feet and sat down, cross-legged, in front of the darkened observation area. [1]
The view had not gotten old for her just yet. The city sparkled in her optics as she sat there for an hour, just watching the ebb and flow of illumination, as though she were its only audience member in a wide auditorium. The sky was the color of dull poison, the low clouds lit from the subdued inferno below. Neon flames that would never die glimmered, an effulgence that grew stronger with the dark. Fiona read some of the holographic advertisements as they scrolled by on the three towers, but grew bored after a few minutes, returning to zooming in on lit windows in the individual skyscrapers, as though as it was her right to see everything that went on within her line of sight.
After a while, she brought her knees to her chest and sat there until downtown was a blur in her forefront. She wrapped her arms around her shins and leaned forward, the air conditioning cold across her nearly bare back. She scratched her abdomen idly, goosebumps prickling upon her blanched skin.
Slowly, she then turned her gaze back toward the armory door. As though a hidden signal crept from the locked threshold to reach her cyberdeck, calling her.
The netrunner stood, grunting a little from her stiffened joints, and headed into the armory. The sword that Ramses had purchased for her—Errata—was hanging upon three nearly invisible pegs embedded into the wall. She reached up and gently lifted it away. She ignored the other firearms—useful tools they might be, but the sword just… resonated with her.
The handgrip was warm to her touch, as if the weapon had been lying out in the sun for an hour. When she tightened her grip upon the handle, an electric jolt seemed to rush through her, the blade momentarily vibrating in her vision before it settled back down. The tempered steel glowed crimson, almost as if it were weeping blood.
With her weapon, Fiona walked back out into the large room, the lights still darkened, the lit city dancing a series of gray lights upon her body through the window, her muscles spare and lithe. The build of a diver.
Carefully, Fiona spun the blade in her hands, her fingers and wrists performing a ballet for which she already knew the moves to. A marriage of balance, weight, and precision. She just knew how to handle the blade—it was instinctive.
The sword pinwheeled, creating a thin red cone in the air. The whoosh-whoosh of the razormetal slicing so close to her head ruffled her hair, making it seem as if she was fighting with a tempest in the room.
She double-blinked after freezing in a ready pose, calling up her HUD. Quickly interfacing with the Net, she overlaid a tabbed folder of kendo techniques in the side of her vision. Attacks, counter-attacks, and defense: waza. She did not boot up the program that Ciphere had given her. She wanted to practice by herself, in the solitude of the night.
Each technique featured a flow-by-flow diagram of each move to make, where to place each foot and maneuver each muscle, along with varied improvisation options. They also indicated the set speeds at which each stance should be executed depending on one's level of expertise.
Fiona set her internal timers to the shortest possible speed.
Each breath a sliver, like frost in the lungs, Fiona narrowed her eyes and crept across the floor, circling a nonexistent opponent, while she held Errata at her hip. Her body was loose, flexible, and her toes clung to the floor with an almost spider-like grip.
Then, imagining an opening, Fiona lunged forward, executing a savage sweep of her arm. There was a sharp whistling noise as the air was rudely parted by the steel.
Fiona spun, slamming another blow towards the imaginary opponent's back, executing continuous strikes in quick succession. They were decisive and accurate—a normal enemy's posture would be shattered if subjected to such a barrage.
She noted her time. A few tenths of a second above the threshold for mastery. She frowned. Not good enough.
She kept at it until sweat stung her eyes. She was constantly moving, feet practically dancing across the ground as she kept herself light and quick, anticipating reprisals so that she could respond in kind.
Her mouth crooked into a smile, her arm muscles burning. She reset into a new phase, feeling more and more confident with the blade. She allowed herself a little stylistic flair as she spun the blade with her fingertips like a propeller, faster this time. A flat circle of magma red whipped in the air, portraying the swordsman in a searing strobe.
Within the emptiness in the room, Fiona lunged, spun, and slashed. There was only the whistling sound of the blade in the air and the ragged huffing of her breathing. She moved as if weightless, only dimly questioning how she was taking to this so quickly. Subconscious programming courtesy of NetWatch? Seemed unlikely—why would they give their captive netrunners such training in hand-to-hand combat? She could not fathom it, so she had to sadly table that line of thought.
At the very moment her concentration began to clear from its self-imposed fog, she whirled on the ball of her foot, both hands clenched upon Errata's handle in a brutal blow—
—and Fiona had to stop herself midstrike, the blade halting millimeters from Ramses' neck. Somehow, he had appeared from his room without her noticing.
Cold fear petrified her body, from both the notion that she might have lopped off her savior's head and also from the fact that he had that uncanny ability to appear anywhere as if he could turn invisible.
The masked mercenary looked down on the panting woman, his thin yellow optics cutting through the murk of the coming dawn. With an armored finger, he gently moved the frozen blade away from his cowl. "Practice?" he asked.
Fiona looked down, still breathing hard, now suddenly aware that she was trapezing around in her underwear in front of the man, feeling a pang of vulnerability. "Something like that." She held the sword close to her chest.
Ramses provided a single nod of approval after a beat or two. Not moving from his position, he gestured to where Fiona's clothes had been laid and folded upon a nearby ottoman. "Clean yourself up and get dressed. We're leaving in five."
Leaving? Fiona looked to the window. The horizon was charcoal gray. It would be another hour before the sun came up. It would be time for breakfast soon, at least.
"Where are we going?" she asked.
"A place that you'll soon be familiar with," Ramses said. "There are some people that you'll need to get introduced to."
LITTLE_CHINA
Ramses angled the Herrera sedan into the last empty parking spot within the cramped pavilion. The car's automated seats and doors arranged themselves so that the occupants could get out without having to hit any switches at all. Ramses swung from the blackness, a practiced move, a hand momentarily brushing the handle of his sidearm for reassurance. Fiona was right there with him, trying to mimic the soured expression of Ramses' helmet and hoped that her eyes could project a sinister gleam equal to his. Her own hands whispered across her holstered pistol and the sword at her back, just to make sure.
They headed towards the innocuous entrance to the multi-layered building. Drunks sat sleeping upon the curbs, fighting off that alcohol haze. Other armed and snappily-dressed people milled near the entrance, smoking and chatting as much as they could through their savage headaches, their eyes clenched shut from their hangovers.
Ramses led the way down the dirtied staircase, kicking aside bottles that had been left behind on the steps. They hooked a right and soon Fiona saw that glowing lime-green sign, "Afterlife", in its aggressively angular font. Based on the décor and the fact that music was pumping through the walls, the source located apparently in front of her, Fiona guessed that whatever Afterlife was, it was most likely a club or a bar.
She watched as Ramses approached the muscular bouncer that guarded the reinforced steel doors, who let him aside after sharing a nod between them. The bouncer eyed Fiona with suspicion until Ramses hung back and said, "Extend the same courtesies to her as you do to me, Bronson. She'll be a repeat customer."
The bouncer—Bronson—provided Ramses with a meaty salute and then gave Fiona a curt, but respectful, nod.
The inside of Afterlife was busier than Fiona had expected. Despite it nearly being the crack of dawn, there still remained a sizable contingent of patrons that seemed utterly oblivious to the time of day. [2] They were cracking jokes at the arcade, sinking into drink at the bar counter, or lounging in their booths within clouds of smoke, mirrored glasses reflecting liquids of silver and bronze. Time apparently was in a dead zone here, where the whims of the inhabitants would be unconcerned to its influence.
Quickly, she took stock of the place. Based on the number of weapons that she could see upon everyone within sight, Afterlife was a bar for professional mercenaries. The morgue-décor certainly hammered home that little factoid, though Fiona was not entirely sure what the fluid-suspended dancers in their tubes were supposed to signify and she recoiled away from them in disgust upon seeing them for the first time.
A sickly green hue washed across Ramses armor like a scanning laser—the embedded neon lights from the bar counter which bounced off of the polished steel floor. He slowed his gait, but kept everything purposeful, as he walked past the bar. Claire was tending to a particular group and could not talk—the two exchanged a nod instead.
Two other mercenaries were seated at the end of the bar counter, their hand movements animated as they either argued or agreed with each other very aggressively. One of them noticed Ramses and leaned partially out of his seat. He was wearing fluorescent yellow armor, a matching helmet set on the counter next to several emptied bottles of beer, and the dripping maw of a demonic dog had been emblazoned upon his flak jacket. Sandy hair done up in a fade, five o'clock shadow covering up a patchwork of thin scars.
The yellow-armored man tapped his cohort, who turned. Fiona blinked—the other man looked exactly like Ciphere, a Maelstrom. Skin pulled taut across a shaved head, where spiked metal was protruding across the curvature of his skull in the shape of a mohawk. A wispy goatee clung around his mouth, spun silver. But the area where his eyes would be looked to have been carved out like someone had taken a scoop to whatever was inside, leaving a hole for a morass of machinery and wires to embed itself there in true parasite fashion. Five bright orange diodes in his boneplate arranged themselves in the shape of an "X" with a circle in the middle. He was also wearing a segmented biker's jacket that was open down the middle, revealing a chest ragged and scarred by cyberware that looked as if the man was nothing but metal underneath where the flesh had split away.
Both of them raised friendly hands in greeting to Ramses, who stopped to address them. "Tobin, Kross," he addressed the yellow-armored man and the Maelstrom respectively. "Eventful night or no?"
"The latter," the one called Tobin said as he scratched his cheek. He then passed an arm briefly over the expanse of the bar. "At least, around here. Caught replays of the game, but aside from that, nothing of note. Smasher was tearing up things again on the west side of town—another Arasaka-sanctioned spat. Figured I should spend my shore leave somewhere I'm not liable to get my face stomped in."
"I was about to ask why you weren't in Dogtown," Ramses said. "Hansen still keeping the zone under control?"
Tobin gave an exaggerated shrug. "Same as it ever was. It was a hellhole when Hansen got there. It's still a hellhole now. But, hey, it's better than Vegas. And I see you're tagging along with someone now?"
Ramses gestured to Fiona, as though he had remembered she was here, who timidly took a few steps forward. "Fiona, meet Tobin. Commando and jack-of-all-trades for BARGHEST—they're the ones running the Combat Zone over in Dogtown. They're the law down there, a well-run militia. Tobin occasionally likes to come topside to take on a few extra assignments when he's granted shore leave."
"Got a retirement account to fill," Tobin said in a faint drawl that Fiona now recognized as American Southern. "BARGHEST pay is good, but not as good as old-fashioned merc work." To Fiona, he asked, "How'd he rope you into all this?" He twirled a finger in the air.
"At gunpoint," Fiona said, not quite sarcastically but neither was she completely serious. She had no idea why she had said it like that, it had just slipped out.
A few seconds passed before a smirk passed across Tobin's face. He took a sip of his beer. "Fair enough."
If Ramses had been amused by the quick exchange, he did not show it. Rather, he made a motion towards the Maelstrom merc, whose optics were fluttering and twinging like a butterfly's wings. "And this is Kross. Maelstrom alumnus. Left the group on friendly terms and takes jobs as an independent just to stave off boredom. A good heavy in a fight, has an admirable record."
Kross also lifted his glass as a salute to Fiona. "You're to be a regular amongst us faces, no?" he asked her, his voice creaky and colored with a Spanish accent. "You have a well-known as a sponsor, girl. Interested to see what you've got." He then seemed to be staring at something over Ramses' shoulder. "The Queen's got her eye on you. You're expected?"
Fiona turned and easily spotted the woman sitting by herself in the booth where a series of screens hovered above the middle of the table like a glowing chandelier. She was wearing a yellow jacket with Kevlar interwoven between the fibers, tactical pants, and combat boots. Two thin streaks of cyberware nicked at her cheeks and her long, dark gray hair hung down the right side of her head so that her piercing gaze could be unobstructed.
Ramses also turned and saw the woman. "No," he said. "But we need to speak, all the same."
He left Tobin and Kross without another word, headed towards the booth. Fiona managed a nod of goodbye to the both of them and they in turn managed slight hand signals to convey a respectable end to the conversation.
The light that seeped over at the booth was white and dead, a digital snowfall. The woman swept a hand towards the opposite end of the table, a request to join her. Ramses smoothly slid down upon the adjacent edge of the booth, Fiona slipping in awkwardly, her eye contact constantly wavering as she realized that the woman's mascara-glazed and hardedged glare was now affixed upon herself. If such a gaze had the ability to pierce flesh and bone, this woman was in possession of such a power.
"I'd say you look well, Ramses," Rogue began, crossing one leg over another. Hazmat pants, thick and rubbery. "But we both know it's hard to tell with that mask on."
Ramses would have admitted that it was just as hard to read Rogue's mood in turn. She had been entrenched in this kind of business for so long that she had learned long ago to conceal her emotions. An Ice Queen, through and through.
"Then it continues to serve its purpose," Ramses said. "Been a few weeks, Rogue. Wanted to check in. Let you in on some new developments."
"Oh?" Rogue's eyes flicked towards Fiona. "Am I looking at one of them right now?"
Fiona flushed, finding a source of indignation at being addressed so flippantly, as though she was not sitting within full view and earshot of the other woman.
She opened her mouth to speak, but Ramses placed a gentle hand upon her knee. She shut her mouth before she said something that got her into trouble.
"Wanted to make the introductions, yes," Ramses said. "This is Fiona. She's inexperienced to this type of work, but she catches on quickly. I'm showing her around, giving her the rundown. You two will be seeing more of each other, evidentially." He then spoke to Fiona, "There are about three fixers in this city worth knowing and Rogue Amendiares is at the top of the list. She hands out the best contracts, the lucrative ones. If she cold-calls you with a job in mind, that's when you'll know you've made it."
It occurred to Fiona that she'd better sit up straighter if she was in the presence of someone that had earned so much of Ramses' respect, even though her back was straining from the effort. She did not know if she should talk or not, so she continued to keep quiet.
The fixer smirked, decades of calm experience hardening that visage, tampered over the years by very good plastic surgery. Each motion of her body was preplanned and controlled, no twitch of a muscle a wasted effort.
"Full of surprises, Ramses. One week ago, you were storming through here all by yourself. The next, you've found someone to take under your wing. This is significant, isn't it?" Rogue then finally addressed Ramses. "So, what's your story, kid? Ramses wouldn't entice you with cash—he's too careful to trust people through just a monetary bond. Way I figure, you two must have met in a more… unusual circumstance."
Fiona chewed her cheek for a moment and glanced at Ramses, as if she was asking for permission to talk. He just made a sideways motion of his head, as if to say, she was talking to you, not me.
"Not much of a story," Fiona said, before coughing to clear her throat. She talked a little louder. "I… I used to be a 'runner for NetWatch. An unintentional one."
"Indentured servitude?" Rogue arched an eyebrow.
Fiona opened her mouth, but then closed it. She looked down at her hands, which were palms up, but the answer was not going to fall into them anytime soon.
"I don't know. I was with them for years. Ramses and I think that NetWatch flash-fried my memories to keep me docile. Obedient." She watched the fixer for a reaction. Nothing. As if she had heard such origin stories a thousand times already.
"That makes you one of the lucky ones," Rogue said, no trace of sympathy evident in her voice. "You got out. And," she flicked a finger in Ramses' direction, "I'm to assume that he's the one who pulled you free?"
Fiona nodded, her eyes opening wider.
Rogue raised her eyebrows and shrugged, as if she was saving this information to pore over at a later date. If she had any comments she wanted to make, she was keeping them held back. For now.
The fixer gestured to a carafe on the table, which was full of an amber liquid. Two crystal glasses sat beside it, both empty. "Will you imbibe?"
Fiona nearly considered reaching for one of the glasses, just to be polite, but again, Ramses spoke before her. "She'll have to pass. I also wanted her down here to get some chrome. Can you call Vik? He can use the secondary shop they've got set up here."
"Smart man," Rogue's eyes flashed with red fire. "Alcohol and surgery. Not good bedfellows. Just need to wait for… all right, he's coming over."
Fiona surmised that Rogue had been in the middle of texting whoever this "Vik" was while she had been talking to them. But she also nudged Ramses, his last several words having caught her off guard.
"Chrome? I didn't know I was coming here to be grafted."
"Nothing beyond what you don't have already," Ramses reassured her. "Your optics—NetWatch gave you very basic models. Safe to say that the 'ganic ones were probably biowaste and recycled at a processing plant years ago, as cruel as it may sound. You could stand for a few upgrades to your vision. Beyond that, entirely your choice, but I do have to stress that you get an update like this as soon as possible. May mean the difference between life and death."
Vik turned out to be a bull-faced man who looked like he had been carved from a single slab of hard muscle. He wore square sunglasses that doubled as bifocals, and a stethoscope hung around his neck. Old stains marred his medical-blue clothing and thin hapticware encrusted his left hand like a gauntlet of delicate silver.
"Ramses," Vik nodded to the merc, then to the fixer. "Rogue. Said you had some work for me?"
Rogue slid a vacant hand over to Ramses, a sign for Vik to divert his attention in that direction.
"Optical work, Vik," Ramses said and subtly nodded towards Fiona. "For her. Kiroshi or better. Trying to get her outfitted for regular work."
"You got it," the doc said dutifully, as though he was a waiter taking an order on the way to the kitchen. "Any other preference, or…?" He let the question hang.
"It's her choice," Ramses shrugged. "And you can give her the intro to a full chrome spec, if you like. It all comes out of my tab. If she wants it, she gets it, but don't go overboard. Last thing any of us wants is to court cyberpsychosis after that idiot in the plaza."
Vik huffed air past his teeth. "It was a wake-up call for all of us." To Fiona, he said, "If you're ready, we can start heading back. Get you all set up."
She got to her feet, but glanced longingly at Ramses for a bit, thinking that he would follow her. Instead, he sat where he was on the wide couch. Apparently, he and Rogue still had some things to talk to. For a moment, she considered refusing, wanting to stay and hear what it was they were going to discuss, but she seemed to sense the sort of glare that Ramses was shifting her way. A sign to go.
A Japanese woman in a pinstriped suit hopped off her stool at the bar counter as Vik approached her, with Fiona in tow. The sides of her head were shaved, the top rippling in thin waves. Iridescent black lip gloss that winked crimson in the light. A tattoo of a serpent knotted from around her ear and slithered down her neck. She eyed the netrunner with apprehension which quickly burned away to reveal the underlayer of interest. Adopting a bounce to her step, she followed the two.
Rogue watched Vik leave with the younger woman and the newest member of their little retinue. Now that they were alone, she uncrossed her legs, folded her hands across her stomach, and gave a surprised chuckle.
"So, who is she? I mean, I assume everyone is going to want to know about the woman that the very independent Ramses Vogel paired up with. I have to admit, I was in the camp who thought you would value your solitude all the way. Never crossed my mind that you'd take on a partner."
"Circumstances change," Ramses spread his hands, his thoughts returning to that basement, the smell of antiseptic and the curls of icechill wafting from the freezer as he had peered inside.
"She owes you," Rogue narrowed her eyes. "What else could it be? You free her from NetWatch and she has nowhere else to go. Aside from getting the hell out of the city and into a NUSA recruitment center or plugged back into the mainframe like all of the corpo wireboys, she chose to stay. Maybe you impressed upon her the glamor of your occupation. Maybe you didn't. But at some level, you didn't mind becoming her guardian, did you?"
Ramses had been staring at nothing while Rogue had been talking. The cascading images from the overhead screens replicated themselves upon the exposed surfaces of his helmet, as if he were drowning in static. It felt like he was lost in a long and pointless walk, a lap around downtown without any direction to speak of.
"She's an equal opportunity participant in all this," he said after a beat. "I've made it clear that she is free to leave at any point in time. I did not force her down this path. Perhaps I influenced it, yes, but what else could I advocate for?"
Rogue clucked her tongue. "Always the realist. But therein lies your pragmatic edge. You would have pushed her out the door if she wasn't of some use to you. So tell me, what is she to you?"
He watched the fixer with a cold intent. Ramses always liked to believe that he was the one secure behind his armor. Rogue had a way of equaling him in that regard. Though he could spin the air with tales and she would take them as his word, Ramses had never been compelled to lie to the fixer before. There was no advantage in doing so.
"You've heard of how the corpos enlist kids, jack them up to the Net to be used as 'runners?"
Rogue nodded.
"Came across her at a black site operated by NetWatch. An off-the-books type locale. Had an opportunity to flatline her. Hell, I came down there specifically to flatline her. I didn't."
Rogue reached for the carafe and poured herself a few fingers. "I'd ask why, but I have a feeling you don't know the answer yourself." She swirled her drink and took a sip. "Does that bother you?"
Ramses thought for a few seconds.
"Yes," he said.
The fixer cradled her glass, her face turning sympathetic. There was no snide malice present. In that moment, she was nothing but a confidante, a willing ear.
"Night City. Stay here long enough and it changes you without you even knowing it. So, you saved some girl who was being abused by the system. By NetWatch. Why feel guilty about that? God knows how many people you've put in the ground. What's one person cheating judgment every now and then?"
"We've all been abused by the system," Ramses emphasized. Then, he set a hand upon his knee and looked out distantly towards the bar, where the smell of beer and the tang of ozone ripened the air. "But she had it worse than any of us. Suppose I felt… it's hard to describe. I could just tell that she deserved better. An opportunity—one that most of us would never get."
Rogue's mouth curled in a small smile. The Ice Queen herself. Smiling. Ramses had only seen it happen twice in his life.
She sat up so that she could set her glass down upon the table. "One unprompted good deed and you're nearly in conniptions. That's not an insult, make no mistake. Just… wry observation. Because you don't know what she means to you… and yet it's obvious."
"Is it?" Ramses tried to keep his voice level, the annoyance waiting to strike.
"Very much so. You're so close to understanding it, yet it's slipping from your grasp."
"Care to enlighten me?"
Rogue filled a second glass, a carbon glint simmering in her eyes as her smile widened.
"I've known you for years, Ramses. Years of doing good merc-work together. You've been in this business… how long? Seven… eight years? Most don't even pass six months. But you—you've come back from job after job after job. A lot of money we've made together. A lot of people you've had to flatline. When people get to your level of experience, they tend to fall into two camps. You know which ones I'm talking about?"
Ramses nodded. He had a feeling about one of them. "Psychos. The ones that can't help but entrench themselves in mayhem, bringing chaos to as many people as they come across. They don't care who they hurt." When Rogue provided him with an affirmative motion, he then asked, "The second?"
"The ones who suddenly start to care," Rogue said before she took a long draught of whisky. "The ones who feel that their work needs to amount to something in the long run. For there to be something other than a memory defining them. To be remembered as someone other than a merc."
"You're saying…" Ramses whispered, the vocabulator in his helmet turning his voice light and scratchy, "…Fiona is like a project to me? Something to work on to make up for a lifetime of violence?"
But Rogue just shook her head, all amusement burned away like the morning chemical residue on granite walls. "That is very much up to you. She's your penance, merc. An investment for the long haul. Like it or not, you're stuck with her until you finish what you've started. But once those dividends start to pay off…" she took a sip and grimaced at the alcohol bite, "…you'll be relishing your choice and wondering why the hell you doubted yourself in the first place."
Ramses slowly craned his head, hands clenched into fists, and he watched the empty doorway where Fiona had vanished into past the screen of passerby, eternally glaring, wondering if the fixer was speaking directly from experience or just telling him what he wanted to hear.
The annex that led to the secondary clinic took them down the hall where the bathrooms were, the smell of cleaner here pungent, and through a door marked "Medical." A hospital style chair sat in a room that was wall to wall with tile the color of greened scum. The floor was stained with old fluids and black residue had collected in the corners.
Vik kicked over a cracked leather stool and brought over a shining metallic stand. He unfurled a cloth that had been laid atop the stand, exposing a rib-like array of fine tools, sparkling like lodestars wedged in their mineral chambers.
"Have a seat," Vik gruffly said to Fiona, who was still standing in the doorway, taking in the small room. When she had moved in far enough, the ripperdoc craned his head to look past her. "You here to help out, Ryo?"
"Just here to watch," the smartly dressed Japanese woman said as she grabbed a swivel chair, turned it towards her and sat with the backrest at her stomach. She pushed herself closer to Fiona, who was on the bench by now, just getting settled in, and extended her hand. "Hi. I'm Ryo."
Fiona took the offered hand. The grip was light and she could see that a warbling animation of a dragon sparkled upon Ryo's fingernails. "Fiona."
"Saw you came in with Ramses. You a merc, Fiona?"
The netrunner took a second to take stock of her surroundings, from the harsh medical lights contrasting against the rather dim pallor of the room, to the sunglass-toting doctor meticulously arranging his tools next to her, and to the dim thump-thump-thump of the pulsating bass snaking in from Afterlife's main hall.
"Trying to be," she mustered a shaky grin. "I mean, I'm just starting."
"Then welcome to the club, Fiona. If you could even call this a club. Mr. Talkative over there dissuades me from doing so."
"I heard that," Vik grumbled, not looking up from where he was sterilizing his equipment.
"Word of advice for someone who's just starting out," Ryo lightly tapped her knuckles against Fiona's arm. "Take it as it comes. No sense in telling you what to expect, because it's never the same for everyone. But you'll be able to handle it. Ramses seems to think so—you're with him, after all."
Fiona almost raised an eyebrow at that. It should have been obvious to her that Ramses had a reputation in whatever circles he chose to participate in, but she had never considered it until now. Though he had shown that he had the ability to commiserate with his fellow mercenaries, he never fully integrated with any of them. Not to a meaningful degree that she could otherwise detect.
"Well, I probably just had the most unusual week that anyone could possibly live through," Fiona shakily tried to inject some levity. "If anything, today has been boring, all things considered."
Ryo smiled, showing perfect teeth. She patted Fiona's shoulder roughly. "You're going to do just fine."
There was the rolling of plastic wheels upon cracked tile. Vik was rummaging through a nearby freezer, cursing to himself. White curls of frozen CO seeped around him, the freezer's generator uttering a whine that indicated it was on its last legs.
"They never stock this place with what you need. Everything is just thrown in, never alphabetized. Just gotta sift until you—aha!"
Vik rose up from the freezer, slammed the rusting door shut, and slapped a plastic bag with a barcode stamped on it upon the medical stand. [3] Within the bag were an elongated pieces of electronics that were partially encased in translucent sheaths. They looked like tiny squid, almost.
"Now," Vik rolled his chair next to where Fiona was laying down, "Ramses told me to keep things minimally invasive for this go-around. Unless you had a particular preference in mind? Bear with me, for this place doesn't have the typical stock of my usual shop. I just perform favors here certain weekdays as a favor to Rogue, so if you want the preem items, we'll set up an appointment at the hub."
Fiona didn't have the slightest clue where to start. How does one truly prepare to chrome themselves up, anyway? Even her eyes, which were bright blue and 100% synthetic, had been forced onto her so long ago that she could not even remember a moment when she had not been implanted. She momentarily had a vision of herself, not as she knew her visage, but as an amalgamation of metal, hulking and dripping fluid, so full of angles that she was razor sharp on every side, an organism whose humanity had been left long behind. She suppressed a shudder.
"How… invasive can you get?" she asked tentatively.
Vik shrugged. "As invasive as you want. Until there's very little of your meat left."
Fiona clenched her jaw. Her vivid imagination threatened to creep up on her again. "I'll stick to just the eyes, then."
"I figured."
As Vik set to work unwrapping the plastic bag he had taken from the freezer, Fiona spotted that the words "Kiroshi Optics" had been printed onto the bag. Vik set out the two pieces of cyberware, which were bulbs of white at one end, and trailing wide wires and glass components like a brainstem at the other.
"Clairvoyants," Vik said. "Ten-power zoom. Multi-effect scan. And a slight buff to your weapon handling. These Kiroshis are top of the line. And the best part, very little cyberware impact. Less chance of going psycho off of these babies than your usual Russian roulette run at Buck-A-Slice. Now, next question. Got a color in mind?"
Vik had opened a battered aluminum case as he had been talking, revealing a series of discs in various colors laid upon a thin bed of felt. Irises and pupils in shining ceramic, nano-laced with wiring. Had Fiona not been situated like this, the sight of about a dozen lifelike eyeballs staring up at her would have been disconcerting.
Leaning over, Fiona hovered a finger over the optic inlays. Her hand automatically gravitated to the ones that were colored a deep ocean blue, much like the ones she was using right now.
But then she spotted, on the rightmost side of the case, two inlays that were colored an inorganic shade of silver, which glistened in the dull light. The entirety of the optic was that singular reflective shade, iris and sclera both. Only small inlets, chiseled with a nanoscopic knife, traced out the natural shape of the iris within the eyeball.
She plucked up one of the inlays and turned it over in her hand, watching the overhead lamp slowly scrape across the reflective surface like a film of oil. Nodding to Vik, she returned the item to where she had taken it.
"Nice," Vik murmured in approval. "I'll just get those situated with the Clairvoyants."
While the ripperdoc worked to prepare the optics, Ryo crossed a leg as she made herself comfortable on the chair.
"How bad is this going to be?" Fiona asked her.
"You mean, does it hurt?"
The netrunner nodded.
The snappily-dressed merc just smirked. "If anything, it feels weird. Don't hurt a bit, though. You'll see."
Now Vik was toggling the chair controls, forcing Fiona to sit upright. He clenched a fist and the surgical apparatus wreathed around his hand slowly retracted. Opening his fingers up again, the delicate forceps extended.
"Pain's not something you're going to worry about," he said. From a nearby box that looked like a featureless black printer, he pulled on an extendable cable that looped from the port. "Slot in and I'll take limited control."
Fiona took the cable end and slotted into the port just behind her ear. There was a series of metallic clicking that seemed to dwell deep in her brain, but otherwise nothing happened.
"What is this supposed to—"
But Vik just made a small motion with his hand in the air and a soft grin nearly split his rocky features. "Forgot you had a neural cutout, did you? Got a hotwire directly into your pain receptors. I just turned the ones off in your head, so the rest of your body will be able to feel, though that shouldn't be a problem unless something goes horribly wrong today."
Indeed, for Fiona prodded her own cheek and felt no feedback. It was like she was touching a piece of spongey meat, something that did not belong to her.
"Huh," was all she could say while Ryo laughed in the background.
Vik now gently pressed the back of Fiona's head against the headrest. He brought out a thick headband that was bolted to the chair, old and matted with the sweat of former patients, and placed it across the netrunner's forehead so that she could not move her neck around. "I would advise keeping motions to a minimum. I'd have to do repair work and I get billed by the minute."
"Wait—" Fiona grasped Vik's wrist, feeling the rough hair and wiry muscle. "Do I have to see?"
The ripperdoc turned fatherly for a scant moment as two sterilization lamps swung into view just past his head, glowing with radiant UV. He shook his head. "No."
Then his fingers were at her neck and everything suddenly became black.
It was as if someone had shut out the lights, for she could still hear everything and feel the vibrations in the air from the music. She imagined this would be what being thrown into a dank cell would feel like. She could hear Ryo humming in the background, as if this was just another Tuesday for her. Fiona took a tentative swallow, unable to keep her fingers from drumming on the armrests of the chair in anticipation. The metallic clinking sounds of instruments to her left. Vik getting ready to make the swap.
"All right," she heard him say, "I'll try and go fast."
There was the cold touch of forceps at her eyelids, prying them apart. The forceps parted wider and wider, farther than she had ever opened her eyes before… until they suddenly slipped past her lids, light clinking sounds resounding as they tapped against the optics. The metal chill slipped down as poles of ice into her eye sockets.
Ryo had been right, though. There was no pain. It was just weird.
She was very thankful that Vik had deactivated her optics, for she did not know how she could otherwise take bearing witness to someone literally pulling her eyes out. Vik's forceps made an eighth of a turn, causing her to grip the armrests in anticipation of a blinding bolt of agony, but it never came.
There was a tension in that deep recess where her fiber optic met her skull. Fiona never knew she could feel so far deep into her own head. A gentle tug as Vik disconnected each wire from their porting. Sharp ticking sounds in those blackened pools, so close to her brain.
"Uh," the sound slipped from her mouth.
"Problem?" Vik said.
She wanted to shake her head, but the strap across her forehead prevented her from doing so. "N-No. Keep going."
"Okay. I'm almost done with this one."
Then there was a great pressure that stressed itself upon the back of her eyelid. Feeling like her eye was the ejecta that her body was in the midst of expelling. The pressure built and built, her eye bulging from her socket, until there was a soft pop and the tickle of wiring scraping out the hollowed cavity. She blinked on instinct, but her eyelids closed on emptiness. Very strange, to blink with no convex shape pushing outward.
She heard Vik fiddling with one of her new optics and he was soon back, a Clairvoyant ostensibly in hand. "Round two," he said within that deep blackness, and the forceps were back to pry that socket open again.
Installing the optic was faster than taking it out. In less than ten seconds, Vik had connected the wiring to the front of her skull and, without much in the way of finesse, pushed the optic in until suction took hold and it fit snugly in the socket. Fiona made another small sound of surprise and blinked her eye rapidly once again, the sensation feeling normal again. She let out a long breath that she realized she had been keeping in for quite a while, as she had been hyperventilating the whole time Vik had been performing his work.
There was still one optic left to go.
Fortunately, the second installation would be less uneventful than the first. When Vik finally turned Fiona's optics on and switched off the pain inhibitor, the Kiroshi Optics logo emblazoned in the lower right corner of her vision for a few seconds, only to dissolve for a highly tactical HUD to replace it.
Her vision cleared, like stepping from a long tunnel to find the night had turned to day.
Immediately, Fiona pored her vision over everything in sight. She zoomed in to read the labeling on the fridge at the far end of the room. She switched to her scanning mode and found that she could read Vik's body temperature and composure, and a cross-reference was linked in a hovering textbox that linked a publicly available site on the Net that collated a rudimentary dossier of sorts, made up of public information about the individuals she had on active scan. There was even a crosshair mode and she found that she could sync with her sidearm and it could tell her the amount of ammunition left in the magazine.
"Seems like you're getting the hang of it already," Vik observed as he gently undid the strap from around Fiona's forehead. "Vitals are reading no signs of rejection. Better to be safe than sorry."
Fiona blinked again and grabbed for a mirror. Her new eyes looked like veins of silver trapped in the fractures of her head. The color of liquid mercury—they would reflect the world upon everyone.
"They're… incredible," Fiona breathed.
"Yeah," Vik said as he pushed his chair over to a stained sink, where he began to wash his hands. "Modern technology. And that's the most common type of implant—the optic. Everyone wants to be able to see the world through new eyes. And these even have the proprietary Dodgeball software installed for you to use—uses machine learning to predict human movements so that you can have an edge in a fistfight. But we haven't even begun to talk about a complete internal organ swap, flesh for chrome. Or the entire process that comes with installing Mantis Blades. Or what needs to be done to your spine in order to wire up a Sandevistan. Gotta watch you don't develop an addiction to the stuff. Mistake that many people make these days."
"Was that what Ramses meant when he said something about cyberpsychosis?" Fiona asked, rubbing her wrists tentatively after Vik released her from her binds.
Vik and Ryo shared a look. One derived from experience.
"Yeah," Vik grimaced. "He just wants to be careful. All of us do, I suppose. Going cyberpsycho ain't a pretty thing. Nor is it something that is entirely reversible. Treatable, maybe. But permanent in some fashion."
"How does one get it?"
"The only way," Vik shrugged, "is to load up on more chrome. It's a mental illness, one that is exacerbated if you already have some psychopathic tendencies inherent. Now throw cyberware in the mix. You replace a hand, that's easily done. Common surgery. Common prosthesis. Now, imagine you swap out all four limbs. Imagine going even further. Swap out your torso, your organs, your head. Is that still your body, or is your brain a stranger in what's become your very own Ship of Theseus? You start to self-identify less as human and more of something else. A machine."
Fiona brought a hand to her eyes unconsciously. She then felt the dermal lines of cybernetics through her shirt. "Is this something that can happen to everyone?"
"Who's to say? Eggheads still don't know shit about the science behind cyberpsychosis. There are some who can resist the effects, though you'd be better off aiming for a straight flush at the poker table than coming across one so fortunate. It's best to assume that everyone has a limit, though we can't tell where that limit is until it's usually too late. Cyberpsychos typically become… violent. Lacking empathy. Their memories become shot and they enter dissociative states. It's what happened to that kid back in Corpo Plaza about a couple weeks back. Got himself a Sandevistan and developed a taste for chrome, but it was that first major upgrade that fired the cyberpsychosis bullet that ended up practically devouring his mind, so I've been told."
That scribbling in her mind turning a frustrated electric blue. Fiona frowned, suddenly cognizant of how the implants felt in her eye sockets. Had her bullet already been fired?
Vik seemed to sense her trepidation and patted the back of her hand. "Don't worry. The one constant among cyberpsychos is that their chrome to flesh ratio is always more than half, or it has to hijack quite a bit of the nervous system load. You're well within tolerance levels, so there's no need to agonize over this." He then stood from his stool, brushing his hands upon his pants. "I'll go and tell Ramses that there were no issues. Stay here for a few minutes, though. Just in case. Ryo, think you can help with the calibration?"
"Can do, Mr. Talkative," Ryo wheedled, earning a withering sigh from Vik as he left the room.
Fiona blinked and looked at Ryo. "What calibration is left to do? I feel fine."
Ryo reached behind her and took out something that looked like a metallic bundle of dead branches. Tape-wrapped wires spooled from the thing and a few stickers had been slapped onto the device. With a flick of the wrist, the thing splayed out and now gave the appearance of a black and angular halo. Fiona could now see that there were four suction trodes that looked like could be applied to the forehead. Tiny diode screens jutted out like DV microphones—windows to peer into.
The merc offered the thing to Fiona. "You ever see one of these before?"
Fiona grabbed at the section of the device that was marked Pull. "What is it?"
"Hell, girl, you really are fresh off the boat, aren't you? It's a BD wreath. Braindance. Allows you to experience recorded moments as if you were there. Depending how it's edited, a BD scroll can enable you to feel every single sensation and emotion by the person who recorded it. And the right editor can amplify those emotions and cut out the more intrusive thoughts that crop up in our day-to-day lives. It's a booming industry, perhaps even more addictive than chrome."
Without being prompted, Fiona carefully set the wreath atop her head, making sure that the reflective square screens were in front of her eyes like a pair of glasses. She pressed at the suction trodes, making sure that they were firmly clasped to her forehead.
"And how is this supposed to help with calibration?"
"Your optics are able to become integrated with the contents of the scroll. You can pause, zoom in and out, scan the background, and that's not counting what you can do if you have editing mode unlocked." Ryo rummaged in her pocket and withdrew a small cheap plastic case the color of lime. "Slot this in." She tossed the case to Fiona.
The netrunner caught it and opened it up. Inside was a shard with a lightning-bolt icon, the same color as the case, which was stylized to look like a R and an E that looked like a backwards B stacked atop one another. The icon was joined by an image of crossed shotguns underneath and a stylized headset capping off the image.
Fiona held up the shard skeptically. "Just slot this in?"
"Just slot it in."
"What's on it?"
Ryo splayed out her fingers and lazily examined her nails. "Some of the most preem shit you'll ever see. The author of the scroll isn't around anymore, but she used to write the most raw BDs. Did her own editing, too, and it's nothing like the curated stuff you get from the studios. Nah, her stuff's filled with portions of her life that were scrolled in the moment, when the emotions were at her highest. Just moves from scene to scene, keeping up the pace, the momentum. Can't buy this at the market—her shards are underground only, but I recommend looking out for them if you're in the right place that sells them. Well, start it up, see what you think!"
For a moment, it seemed like inquiring for further information was the continued goal in Fiona's mind, but she soon recognized that this was probably as much as she was going to get.
There was only one way to find out for herself.
She reached up and pushed the shard into the wreath's slot. The power button was right next to it. She assumed all she needed to do was press it, so she did.
The viewing windows of the wreath glittered and glistened, a spasmodic series of winking bright lights in alternating patterns. Like an audience in an arena, thousands of flashbulbs going off all at once. The air boiling with the light.
Something in Fiona's mind seemed to flow towards that light, as if she was being sucked towards the blinking lenses. It felt like she was in freefall down towards a stage with no end. The very beginning of hypnagogic pictures began to flash by, transparency up by a lot. Abstract and meaningless, a film spun up on random, skipping from scene to scene. Fast forwarding and rewinding all at once.
The light suddenly filled her mind.
And it swallowed itself down to a pinprick in the next second.
Then a flat gray disk. Spinning in the nonspace of her eyes. Whirling and whirling. So fast it was generating heat. Faster… faster. Approaching nova—
And suddenly sensation smashed into Fiona like a semi-truck. A wave of nausea, which was temporary.[4]
She was somehow underneath a sky the color of a forest fire, crouched next to a door outside a featureless concrete slab of a building. Data and proprietary scanning feeds scrolled by on the sides—heavily modified optics. She looked down at her hands—they were oversized cyberhands with an exposed hydraulic action. They held a massive shotgun that was colored a pale green and a whitish pink, customized to the nth degree. The sleeves of an oversized black Kitsch jacket had been bunched up where the cyberware ended and the rest of the person began.
Green hair passed across "Fiona's" eyes. The massive hands pushed it aside and when the person scrolling the BD—the director, cinematographer, and scriptwriter all at once—looked down at the ground for a brief moment, Fiona got a glimpse of flesh the color of snow, a pink tattoo wrapped around her right thigh.
"Hey," a voice, male and young, said. "Eyes up. We're going loud, Becca. You good, choom?"
Fiona felt herself look up—a muscular man with a yellow EMT jacket was hefting an assault rifle. His hair was in a pompadour and his physique was loaded with muscle that Fiona suspected was mostly synthetic. But from the rate her heart suddenly started to pump, she had the feeling that her rider carried some feelings for this man.
"Fuck yeah," her mouth moved and a light voice, raw-edged, came out as a snarl. Her hands pumped her shotgun's slide. Shell racked. "Let's tear this fuckin' place up. Break it down, David, or I will!"
Someone kicked the door and Fiona found herself rushing in. Headstrong, whoever this "Becca" was. Very sure of themselves, of their abilities.
The next room was a warehouse filled with construction materials. Pallets of wooden beams, concrete piping, empty steel shelves. And gunfire was everywhere. Orange flashes from the ground floor, from the catwalks above. The air rippling like the surface of a drum. Hard to tell who or what was shooting at Fiona—no, her scroller—but she felt the soothing pulse of her own bloodbeat sear throughout her body. This… this was almost comfortable for this person. Talking to that young man, whose name was David, had produced more of a reaction than a full-blown firefight. How strange.
Her arms lifted the massive shotgun. When it fired, it sounded like a cannon had gone off and a volcano seemed to blast from the oversized muzzle. Fiona had just enough time to see a man's head get blown apart behind a nearby forklift—she watched the skull fly apart, the brains blended into so fine a paste that they became obscured by the cauldron of blood that spewed into the air. The recoil of the shotgun slammed into her shoulder and would have bowled her over had her oversized gauntlets not taken the strain, the hydraulics working wonders to keep her firing stance stable.
"Rebecca!" someone shouted. "They're flanking! Bolster our three!"
Supporting fire razed in from the sides, but Fiona was unable to see who was bringing up the rear. Instead, her perspective was continually in motion as Rebecca ran from cover to cover, slam-firing their weapon so that the blaze of buckshot sounded almost like automatic fire, her vision soon obscured with the muzzleflashes and toxic smoke.
The walls where her enemies were standing soon became soaked in that dark red acrylic, their bodies vaporizing or being turned into mush. The ground turned slippery with gore; barely recognizable body parts had been strewn about the cold floor. In the background, a squad of heavily-chromed out gonks began jerking and spasming as electric bolts arced from their bodies—someone had primed a quickhack on one of them. A grenade went off somewhere, the muffled boom creating a series of screams followed by a tortured groan of steel as a nearby series of shelving collapsed, sending out a thin cloud of dust.
And… above it all… Rebecca was laughing. Maniacally.
Who am I watching?
Then, Fiona's perspective abruptly shifted, and now she was half-hanging out of the side door of a van that was hurtling down a highway at night. Wrecked cars lay in their wake, the engine bays smoking. Fiona's stomach churned again, the whipping of the cool night wind not helping her constitution much. This was what Ryo must have meant when she had said that the editing was "raw."
About a dozen NCPD pursuit vehicles were trailing on their six, the sides of the highway awash with the violent conflagration of red and blue hues. The shrill sirens echoed wetly from the tall buildings around them, an ominous chorus.
Whoever was at the wheel of the truck had to be a maniac, for it was swerving all over the place, refusing to stay in a lane. But Rebecca didn't seem to care a whit, for she was holding onto the van from an interior rail on the ceiling, while she leaned out into open air, a SMG the same color as her massive shotgun clenched in a massive paw, the trigger held down on full auto. Smoking brass sprayed from the ejection port, which almost eradicated her wild laughing. The hoods of the police cars sparked, crumpled, and ignited. Some of them pitched and flipped as the bullets punctured their tires, sending them spinning in the air, spraying metal and glass in a deadly hurricane.
The truck skidded and raced for a nearby exit. The maneuver was so violent that "Fiona" was nearly sucked out of the cabin, but she dropped her SMG, leaving it bouncing on the highway, so that she could hold onto an external railing with both hands.
Then an arm as thick as a python wrapped around her waist, pulling her back inside. Her heart began hammering again—the sensation now definitely noticeable to Fiona—as the muscular man in the EMT jacket set her down on the bench and took her place at the side of the truck, firing a grenade launcher out the open door and demolishing an unmarked cruiser that had been unfortunate enough to follow them deeper into the city.
The woman filming gave a frustrated huff, got up from the bench, and moved over towards the driver's area, where a clear plastic partition had been erected to separate the two compartments. All of the other noise was just static to her now—the gunfire, the sirens, the sound of a chopper—and she reached out a hand to steady herself against the thick plastic.
A jolt shuddered through the truck and Rebecca snarled something at the driver. In that moment, a quick reflective flash in the plastic revealed red and yellow ringed eyes, almost insectoid, pink Mox tattoo wrapped around her neck, but a young face. Just as young as she was.
Then her gaze shifted over to the muscular young man firing his weapon out the nearby window, his face just as carefree and alive. The invincibility of youth.
A cybernetic hand started to reach out to touch the man—
But darkness closed over everything.
Then reality snapped back, everything around her wobbling and jolting into place like the entire environment was made of rubber.
She was back in the clinic, breathing stale air from rusting circulators. Shakily, she reached up to pry the wreath from her head. She had broken out into a thin sweat and her hands felt cold and clammy.
Ryo was still sitting in the same position on her stool, legs crossed, a finger just underneath her lower lip, a knowing smile plastered on her face. "That was a trip, wasn't it?"
Fiona wiped her forehead, her hand still trembling. "My head. That was… I don't know what that was."
"The image feedback takes a bit to get adjusted to. Your eyes just aren't used to the rapid-image inhabitation effect. It'll go away in one or two more jumps. Did you like it?"
Fiona looked to the ceiling, then to the floor, struggling to come up with the words. The aftereffects of those alien sensations in a body that wasn't hers kept ghosting over her, as though an infectious presence still lingered. Goosebumps had risen upon her body and there was a dull ache in her teeth.
But she gave a breathy laugh and a grin, both of which spoke volumes. Ryo's own smile widened in response to the reaction.
The netrunner folded the wreath in her hands, struggling a bit to replicate the same quick-snap action that she had seen Ryo make. She then held it out to the suited merc.
"Thank you."
But Ryo waved a hand. "Keep it. I've got another where I live."
"Are you sure?"
"Definitely. Besides, you're a convert now. And if you come across any more of shards by that author, I'm expecting you to share them with me."
Ramses emerged from the corridor, cutting a dark figure in the poorly lit subclinic. Ryo hopped off her stool, flipped an impish salute to the man, and walked off after providing Fiona with a wink. Ramses watched her go before he turned back to his charge. "Vik says that everything went off without a hitch. How do you feel?"
Fiona slowly extricated herself from the chair. She clipped Ryo's BD wreath to her belt, next to her sidearm. Her silver eyes took in the armored merc, their light-enhancing abilities able to discern each and every angle of the man as though he was standing out in a bright and sunny day. "Better than ever."
Ramses took a slow turn, carefully absorbing the sight of the clinic. He then made a motion with his head towards the way he had come. "Time we were headed on our way, then."
"Where to next?"
"Work. Actual work. One more person that you need to meet."
They walked back through the series of corridors. Rogue was meeting with another merc in her booth—she gave the pair a tiny lift of her fingers as she watched them go. Ramses provided a curt nod in return while Fiona lingered for a bit, wanting to spare a longer look at the legendary fixer.
Sickly neon flooded past the doorway as they headed out of Afterlife. They ascended the stairs together, the air becoming staler as they got back to ground level.
Once out in the parking lot, they were in lockstep. Fiona was looking up at Ramses, trying to hide a grin, as though she was concealing a sudden revelation.
Ramses noticed. "What?"
"It's funny. You say that everyone is an enemy, yet you have a network of people you count on."
The merc gave a stiff grunt. "You thought I harbored some misanthropic tendences?"
"Maybe that mask isn't the only one you wear," Fiona offered.
He grunted again, saying nothing else.
They got to the car and Ramses unlocked it. Before they entered, Fiona placed an arm atop the roof of the sedan and rested her chin upon her arm. "Can I ask you something?"
Ramses had placed a hand upon the top of the door in preparation to manage his way inside the vehicle. "What did you want to ask?"
"You never told me why you became a merc, or what brought you to Night City. I know I don't have that kind of story, but you must have one, right?"
The resulting motion of Ramses looking towards the rectangle of sky, throttled by concrete and piped infrastructure, indicated that he would rather answer anything but that question.
Glancing back down, the armored man raised his shoulders with a slight huff. He then looked at Fiona. "Not everyone has a story they think is worth telling."
With that, he got in the car and shut the door. Fiona could do nothing but follow suit, though the hollowness in her chest refused to leave for a good while afterward.
A/N: 1/3rd of the way through the story so far. How are you liking it so far? Are there some things that could be done better? Things that are going well? Would certainly love to know what you guys are thinking!
Playlist:
[1] Skyline Waza (Errata Suite)
"Sympathy for Red"
Lorn
Killzone: Shadowfall (Original Video Game Soundtrack)
[2] The After in Afterlife [Source Music]
"Dystopia"
ALEX
Magnatron 2.0
[3] Optics [Source Music – Profile: Muted]
"99¢ Rental"
woob
Ad4ption
[4] BD (Hidden Dimension)
"Trailer"
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross
The Killer (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
THE CAST (so far):
MAIN_CAST:
Ramses: Night City merc. Solo. Unknown age. Unknown origin. Adept in: precision weapons, infiltration, assassination.
Fiona (JP422-7C): Netrunner, formerly in the employ of NetWatch. Early twenties. Unconfirmed origin.
SUPPORTING_CAST:
Michiko Arasaka: Corpo. Head of Hato faction of Arasaka and member of the corporation's board of directors. 68 years old.
Rzhevsky: Unknown age. Estonian origin. Housed in DaiOni cybernetic conversion. Personal bodyguard of Michiko Arasaka.
Wakako Okada: Fixer in Japantown. A former mercenary. Known for her brusque manner and high (sometimes unreasonable) expectations with the contracts she holds.
The Extremaduran: Assassin. Hails from Europe. Under NetWatch employ. No Night City identification.
Rogue Amendiares: The so-called Queen of the Afterlife and former partner of Johnny Silverhand. Night City's best fixer, highly sought after by mercs due to her lucrative payouts and all-biz attitude.
Ryo: Merc. Former Tyger Claw. An avid collector of BDs from the Edgerunner crew and a friend to Fiona.
Tobin: BARGHEST commando. Based in Dogtown under the command of Kurt Hansen. Moonlights as a merc during rare opportunities of shore leave.
Kross: Ex-Malestrom turned merc. Retired from the gang but quickly got bored of life without the action. Went independent for the juice, not the cash.