Strong Enough 1.1 (Patreon)

This is a chapter of this story that was not originally posted on patreon. I am backposting it and several others now so that the complete story can be viewed on this site. To read the complete story, check the collection link below!

Solo 1.1

“Dear god, I can’t believe you’re really hiding in this dump.”

A laugh. “At least she finally matches the décor!”

“And the smell.” Emma sneers down her flawless nose. From the top of the battered concrete stairs, sunlight reflecting off of her perfectly coiffed crimson hair, she stands just an inch taller than Taylor. “I almost can’t bear to breathe.”

One of the hangers-on laughs, pinching her nose. The boy on Emma’s right just smirks at their antics.

Taylor stands alone in the shadow of an elevated walkway, line of smart vending machines blaring aggressively kitschy jingles behind her. Meanwhile, Emma and her orbiters are framed by the carefully maintained highway leading back to Corporate Plaza.

The juxtaposition serves as a perfect summary of her life.

Taylor raises her chin. “Maybe daddy will buy you a new nose, Emma. I hear button is out of style.”

Emma frowned. “Talk to me about implants after you buy an upgrade for those hideous ‘ganic eyes.” She taps her temple. “Or are glasses still ‘in vogue’?”

Taylor’s hand tightens around the carry strap of her bag, but if there’s one thing her mother ever taught her, it was that you couldn’t show weakness to corpos. They’re like sharks.

“All that money and you still can’t afford any wit.” Taylor shakes her head. “Gonna outsource that to your ‘friends’ as well, like your grades?”

“Tch.” Emma starts counting off on her fingers. “No money, no figure, no influence. Of course you care about grades.”

But Taylor can see her barb stung, Emma has always been defensive of her intelligence. “I’m sure daddy dearest feels the same way about your figure.” It’s the biggest reason they still have those fights. As much as she hates, hates Emma now, the girl isn’t lying about what she has that Taylor doesn’t: looks, eddies, power.

All Taylor has is years’ worth of ammunition and a penchant for sharpening her tongue.

“At least one of us has a father.”

Of course, that’s a blade that cuts both ways.

“Oh?” Emma buffs her nails. “What’s the matter, Taylor? Are you going to cry yourself to sleep for a week?”

Taylor steps like she was hit by a physical blow. The words are out of her lips before she can stop it. “At least my mother didn’t elope with a ten eddie joytoy.”

Emma freezes, even as the girl on her left squeals in laughter. “A joytoy, really?”

Taylor knows that she’ll be paying for that one. There are lines, even after two years, that they skirt around, and two of them were just crossed.

Emma turns to the boy, laying a hand on his arm. “Akihito.” She flutters her eyelashes. “This street rat just impugned the honor of my family; can you believe it?”

“Criminal,” the boy says. “Rats should stay in the gutter.”

“Exactly what I was thinking.” She runs a hand down his arm, squeezing the sleek chrome of his wrist. “Since she’s so concerned about implants, why don’t you show her the new ones you just acquired? I know you’ve been dying to test them out.”

Taylor takes a step back, but Akihito, laughing, is already at the bottom of the stairs. She turns just as his fists start flying. For a second, she thinks she managed to dodge.

Then he takes a step forward, and she realizes that the first few blows were feints just in time for a chromed up hand to wing her across the temple.

Taylor crashes into the vending machines and then the ground in that order, glasses spinning away into the pile of trash. Through hazy eyes, she sees Akihito’s implants hiss once as he shakes them out.

“Impressive, don’t you think?” He flexes one hand. Like it’s so cool he can stand still and let a chip downloaded into his skull beat up a girl for him.

“Oh, definitely.” She can hear the mocking smirk in Emma’s voice even if she can’t see it, and she can tell the other girl’s mocking both of them. “I think we’re finished here. I would hate for this filth to rub off on you, little Aki.”

Taylor misses his stuttered response as her head swims. By the time she gathers enough strength to push herself upright, the trio is long gone. She makes it to her hands and knees only for the world to pitch sideways on its axis. Bile rushes up her throat as her arms slide out from under her, and Taylor spends the next several minutes just trying to breathe and not throw up.

It’s harder than it sounds.

Too long a time later, and she hears the sound of rushing towards her. Joke’s on them, she doesn’t have any money to picksocket or any implants to klepp.

“Taylor?” A woman sinks to her knees at the girl’s side. “Taylor!”

She coughs. “Hey…mom.”

The other woman shakes her head. “Easy now, let’s get you back on your feet. I came as soon as your medical implant went haywire.”

Taylor hangs her head as Annette Hebert slowly ushers her out from under the overpass and into a waiting car. Her head lolls as her mom clips the belt into place. “If your father could see us now, he’d be apoplectic.”

“Yeah, well he can’t.” The words are biting, courtesy of a concussion-perforated filter. Taylor winces at her mother’s flinch.

The woman sucks in a deep breath, before buckling her in. “Just means it falls to me. Who hurt you, Taylor?”

“…Emma.”

As the car pulls away and onto the freeway, the whole story spills out of her lips.

“That’s terrible, little owl.” Annette reaches over to squeeze her hand. “Here, I’ve just been promoted at work. I know you don’t like implants after…but I saw a nice pair of eyes on the that we can afford, recording incidents like this should give those little brats some pause.”

Taylor gives a jerky shrug. “Academy won’ care, anyway.”

Annette swallows. “I’m sorry for neglecting you.”

“Mom—!”

Annette turns back to the road. “I’ve been focused on my career, telling myself it was for you. Clearly, I’ve been letting other things slip. Honestly”—she shakes her head—“sixteen, and you only have the academy-mandated chrome? Let’s go shopping this weekend, I know a good ripper in Japantown.”

Taylor’s heart clenches at the thought of chipping in anything.

—nOt mymymymy d-daUgHTer—!

“‘Implants won’t help with corpos.”

“I know, dear,” her mom says. “But hopefully, they’ll help you get away next time some corpo brat tries to lay a hand on you.” She turns back towards Taylor. “You’re worth more than all of them, little owl, never forget that.”

Taylor huffs.

Annette combs her fingers through her daughter’s hair. “One day, they’ll see you, even if you have to tear the acknowledgement from their lips with your own two hands.”

Despite herself, Taylor gives a watery laugh. “Thanks, Mom.” She sometimes wonders what life would be like, if she still had her dad, but moments like this make her think she didn’t come out so bad. “You always know just what to—”

Gunfire erupts right next to her ear. She screams.

Annette yells.

The car swerves.

And then there with a sickening crunch that she can feel all through her back—

Darkness.

~*~

Night City has a way of taking things from people.

“Here is a list of our burial options.”

Taylor stares numbly down at the holo-pad. After a moment, the ripper attaches it to the arm of her wheelchair—compliments of her healthcare plan. Her concussion is gone too.

But the plan doesn’t cover new legs.

At the moment, it feels like the most useless thing in the entire city. Taylor stares at the pad as the ripper wanders off, telling her they’ll freeze the ‘corpse’ for a day before disposal.

Like her mother is just another bit of trash that needs to be thrown away.

Somehow, she wheels her way home, Annette’s effects in a bag on her lap.

Her mother was wearing her technical uniform, and the pristine white lab coat is all Taylor can see. The world fades away, blotted out in an endless expanse of white. Chemical and stab resistant, it came through the crash in better shape than either of the car’s occupants. Blunt force trauma didn’t care.

The door to her apartment slides shut behind her, and Taylor is alone.

The tears still don’t come. A year ago, she thought she had run out of tears. Apparently, she had been right.

Gingerly, she lays out what remains. The lab coat and access badge. A data shard. Her own shattered glasses. A briefcase.

Her fingers move on their own as she puts in her mom’s standard password on the lock. It pops open, revealing technical papers that Taylor can barely begin to make sense of. She starts to gather them when her fingers hit something hard and cold.

Something that shouldn’t be in the case.

The papers are tossed to the side and a moment later, and she gingerly lifts the implant from the case. It’s heavier than she expected, smooth and polished. Even without her glasses, she can tell what it is.

It’s a spine.

Taylor’s breath catches. With this, she can walk again. She will get out of this being only irreparably broken within, and not also without. And then she can, she can…

She can what?

Taylor lowers the device onto her lap.

They’re not poor. Annette makes enough money to pay for the Academy, even if it sucks up every spare enny. Surely there’s enough money in her account to pay for a simple spine implant. Something less ostentatious, something that her mother hadn’t klepped from her job, using Taylor’s situation as an excuse.

What would she even do with a refurbished Arasaka implant?

The blare of the smart TV punctures her thoughts.

“Hold on, hold on, you say the streets are safe, but what about the highways?”

Taylor’s head snaps up just in time to see an NCPD spokeswoman wince as the talk show host Ziggy hits her with the question.

“I—I’m sorry?”

Ziggy leans back, spreading the arms of his gold sequined suit wide. “Surely you’ve heard about the fatal shooting on route E-104 today. Two cars full of Maelstrom gangoons mowing down civilian traffic and even taking out a MiliTech hauler. Ring any bells?”

Suddenly Taylor finds herself very interested indeed.

“The…the NCPD responds to any threats to the safety of Night City and Night—Night Citizens very seriously, and—”

“So that’s why trauma team was on the site first? That’s why the meat wagons beat the squad cars to the scene and the criminals responsible for this attack got away without a single bullet fired in reprisal?”

“I—that’s.” The woman shakes her head. “I cannot comment on an ongoing police investigation, Ziggy. Sure you—”

“Ongoing investigation? That’s funny, because a little birdy commed me just a few minutes ago, telling me the case file is closed.”

Taylor’s eyes turn back toward the clearly high-grade piece of chrome sitting in her lap, and shivers.

She’ll probably go crazy just from putting it in. If not, someone will flatline her before she even gets close to the people responsible. She has no weapons, no training, no applicable knowledge.

All Taylor has is a military piece of gear, and a burning void in her chest aching to be filled with anything at all. She decides that’s enough.

What else does she have to live for?

Taylor slots her mother’s datashard into her neck and pulls up the contacts. There’s a good ripperdoc in Japantown.

Then she pauses.

A quick check of her mother’s accounts shows that she has far more eddies than Taylor expected; no points for guessing where they came from, with a stolen piece of cyberware on her lap. At least Taylor knows how her mother was able to afford the Academy.

She takes the time to transfer funds to the ‘hospital’ in order to ensure her mother is interred at the Columbarium. The words for her tombstone write themselves.

She taught something precious to each of us.

Taylor marks the address of the ripper and puts the chrome back in its briefcase.

She pauses when droplets of water hit the back of her hands.

“Oh.” The sound is rough and raw.

She has tears left after all.