Strong Enough 1.2 (Patreon)

Solo 1.2

“Goood morning, Night City! Yesterday’s body count lotto rounded out to a solid ‘n sturdy thiiirty! Ten outta Heywood, thanks to unabated gang wars. One officer down, so I guess you’re all screwed, because—”

“Hey, girl.”

Taylor’s hands snap down over the briefcase in her lap and her head jerks away from the TV. The Receptionist rolls his eyes at her.

“Relax, kid, this ain’t a scav shop.” He jerked a thumb to the left. “You’re up.”

Taylor feels her cheeks turn red as she pushes her chair forwards. An aluminum can spurts garish purple NiCola as it’s crushed beneath her wheels. The door to the next room can’t close fast enough.

‘Solid and Sturdy Thirty’ plays on repeat in her head.

Within the operating theater sits a woman with olive skin. Her one long-cut eye contrasts a telescoping lens replacing her right. The woman looks up from cleaning her metal fingers, tossing the rag into a bucket of cleaning alcohol. The scent burns at Taylor’s nose.

This is not what she expected a friend of her Mother to look like.

“Into the chair.” The ripper rises. “I believe I know why you’re here.”

Taylor feels like curling into herself. There are only so many reasons a paraplegic would show up at a clinic, but it still comes as a surprise to her, just like this morning, when she made to rise from bed only to remember her legs could not move. “I, uh…”

The woman stops, the red lens of her implant whirring as it focuses on Taylor’s face. “Yes?”

The words catch in Taylor’s throat.

Sturdy Thirty.

Suddenly, talking about her mom feels like an impossibility, but the woman’s eyes, half normal and half gleaming red and silver chrome, are expectant. Taylor sucks in a breath, and says the first thing that comes to mind.

“What’s with all the guns?” The walls are covered with them. Pistols, power rifles, shot guns, all locked in gleaming cages. “Are…are they for sale as well?” She focuses on them; she’ll need guns as well, and more spine than the metal one sitting on her lap besides.

The woman tilts her head. “Once, a man in this chair attacked me, with the implants I’d put into his body. I had only a scalpel, practically defenseless. I fended him off until he ran, but it cost me three fingers, an eye, and a kidney.” She places a hand on the small of her back. “So, I promised myself I would never be defenseless again.”

Taylor’s stomach clenches in a cold, hard pit. Her fingers tighten around her mother’s briefcase. “A cyberpsycho…” she whispers.

“Cyberpsychosis.” The ripper clicks her tongue. “I do not use that word.”

Taylor hunches. “Seems like a good enough one to me.”

“It is good enough,” comes the reply, “for describing bad people who do bad things we want to forget. The guns are not for sale.” She reaches out a hand, three chromed fingers flashing in the lights, Taylor’s eyes lock onto the sight. “Your own implant?”

Taylor nods once, rolling her shoulders back. She does her best to look unconcerned as she unlatches the briefcase. It doesn’t matter; the ripperdoc’s eyes widen the moment she sees the cybernetic spine.

Her hand reaches out and pushes the case closed.

Taylor blinks. “Huh?”

“A child like you should not have something like that,” the woman says. “Better if you leave.”

Taylor bristles, rage running down her spine and pooling at her shattered vertebrae. “I want you to put it in my back, not tell me where it’s from.”

The ripper frowns, a deep furrow appearing on her brow. “And who shall take it out of your back when it drives you insane?”

Taylor glares, ignoring the way the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. “That’s what the guns are for, aren’t they?”

The woman sighs, hand still pressed against the case. Taylor wants to push those metal fingers away, far away from her as possible. Instead, she’s asking for the women to open her up with them.

When the woman goes to open her mouth again, Taylor speaks. “My mom said you were a friend.” She doesn’t know where the words are coming from, but they pour out of her. “If that’s a lie, then just say so, and I’m gone. I don’t need you to put this in my back.”

The woman turns her gaze back to Taylor. The girl stares directly into that shifting red lens, daring the ripper to say something. At long last, she does.

“Annette is dead?”

The words are still a knife to Taylor’s chest. Like her legs, it’s a wound she can almost forget, until it bleeds over and stains everything in red.

“A drive-by,” Taylor replies. “Yesterday.”

“And here you come with an unknown implant—"

“It will let me walk again.” Taylor pulls the case out of the woman’s grip. “I’ll figure out the rest.”

The ripper pinches her nose between metal fingers. “You have your mother’s fire.”

“So…you did know her.” Taylor doesn’t know what she wants the answer to be, only that she desperately needs the answer, before her throat closes up completely.

“A samurai to the core. Deeper even than her bones.” The woman shook her head. “If you survive, you may call me Kikiyo.”

“How…” Did you know my mom. Fear swallows those words unspoken, and instead Taylor asks, “If I survive?”

“I knew her before she joined a corp to pay for an infant child,” the woman says anyway. “And I knew her when she plied her little acts of espionage.”

Like klepping refurbished chrome from Arasaka.

What had her mom said? Even if you have to tear it from their lips…

They’ll acknowledge you.

Taylor swallows. Annette had meant it literally, then. She hadn’t grasped the full scope of the chrome sitting on her lap, thinking it was an impulsive act, but if her mother had been dealing in klepped implants since Taylor was a baby, then…

Then if anyone finds out, the sins of the mother will be Taylor’s burden to deal with. There’ss no choice after all; she couldn't risk selling the implant, and even if she reported it to Arasaka, the fines would kill her just as surely as a bullet.

Taylor turns toward Kikiyo with desperate eyes. “Will you’ll help me?”

The woman pushes Taylor’s chair to the center of the room silently. “This? It is not help but harm I will visit upon you, girl.” The words carry weight, but Taylor is already crushed beneath so much she doesn’t notice, doesn’t care. All that matters is she will be able to walk again.

The rest will come, or it won’t. There’s no one left to care anymore.

That doesn’t stop the jolt of surprise as Kikiyo locks a restraint around her arm, followed by the other. Suddenly, Taylor realizes she’s face down on the operating chair, looking down at the floor through the hole in the headrest.

“Normally, I would fully sedate a patient before replacing the spine, but I do not know this implant,” the woman says. “I will have to test its connections to your nerves manually. I will give you what I can to ease the pain.”

A needle sinks into Taylor’s flesh. A sting, then a rush of cool fills her back. Despite that, she can still feel. “Do it.”

Kikiyo pauses but a moment to give Taylor a knotted cloth to bite down on, then the cutting begins.

Even through the anesthetic, it hurts more than Taylor expected. She doesn’t even remember the pain of her cochlear or data port implants. This, on the other hand, is something she will never forget. The only relief comes when her spine is removed, leaving nothing to transmit the sensations as the ripper setup takes over maintaining her vital functions.

Then Kikiyo begins connecting the metal spine, and the agony returns again.

Taylor does not know when she falls unconscious, only that she was begging for it long before.

The next thing she is aware of is the ringing of her phone, and the sudden lack of pain. She finds herself blinking, groaning as the sound pierces the fog surrounding her thoughts. She doesn’t accept the call, too bleary and confused, but the ID overrides her control and plays the message anyway.

She jolts fully awake when an image appears in her eyes. ‘Ganic eyeballs didn’t do that, couldn’t do that.

“Greetings Ms. Taylor Hebert.”

The obsequious form of Arasaka Academy’s dean appears in her vision, words outlined in clean orange letters beneath the picture.

“It is with deepest condolences that Arasaka Academy extends our sympathy regarding the passing of your—mother, Annette Hebert. Please accept my personal regrets for your loss, and my hope that this personal tragedy will not impact your scholastic performance.

“You will be excused from classes for a mandated week of personal grief and reflection, after which you will be expected to return to the duties of a student of Arasaka Academy. Please use this time fruitfully to honor the memory of the departed. If you have any questions, forward them to the Academy’s human resources office.”

The message clicks off, a replay button blinking in the corner of Taylor’s vision. With another blink, that too vanishes.

Taylor pushes herself upright. It is only when one foot presses gingerly against the sterile laminate floor that she realizes. Her breath catches in her throat, and she wiggles her toes against the fabric of her shoe. It doesn’t sit right on her foot, digging uncomfortably into her heel in a way that brings tears of relief to her eyes.

She feels like she could climb a building, like she could jump a building.

Like she can spin and fix Kikiyo with a sharp glare.

The woman sits at her desk, once again cleaning her metallic hand. Taylor sees flecks of blood—her blood—speckling the fabric.

“You swapped my eyes.”

“You will need them,” is Kikiyo’s response. She sets Taylor’s hastily-repaired glass on her desk. “Or do you mean to hunt down your mother’s killers wearing these?”

Taylor draws herself upright. “Think you can change my mind?”

“I couldn’t change your mother’s,” the woman says. “Why would you be any different? The same bolts inside, riveted to unyielding metal.”

“What does that have to do with my eyes?” She has more chrome inside her now than she’s ever had, and it doesn’t make her feel different. She barely even notices. “My mom sold out to a corp. It wasn’t her ideals that killed her.”

Kikiyo sets the cleaning cloth on the table. “You came to me for an eye upgrade. And I will bill you for one. Only the eyes.”

That, at least, Taylor understands. Cover, plausible deniability, false leads, they’re all things she has more than enough experience with in her coursework alone. It doesn’t excuse chipping in a new set of eyes that she didn’t ask for.

“Annette finished refurbishing that pair for me last week. Arasaka NEYEADs. Good tech; old, but better than much of the thoughtless chrome they release now,” the woman says. “I did not ask where she got them.”

Rebukes die on Taylor’s lips. Her fingers rise, instead to trace along the corner of her eye. “What?”

“She did much for you. It would sadden me, to see it thrown away too quickly.” She tosses Taylor a datashard.

Before she can think, a line of fire races down her spine to fill every part of her. The shard spins slower and slower through the air before coming to a complete stop. Her arm reaches out, through the still time, leaving blurred lines that even her new eyes struggle to parse. Eyes that stretch wider and wider with each non-second that passes in the space between heartbeats.

She plucks the datashard from the air as easily as turning over her hand.

Color slams back into the world, back into her like a hammer blow. She is standing, a step forward, arm stretched out. The datashard rests between two fingers.

“Powerful,” the ripper says.

Taylor stands up straight, looking at her arms as if she’s never seen them before in her life. Now the chrome in her skull and down her back are all she can notice. She reaches back, fingers tracing the metal arch that sits at the top of her spine, right where her shoulders meet the too-smooth skin of her neck.

It is part of her now, riveted in, hooked into her nerves. She thinks she should hate the feeling, but she can still feel her legs, pressing against the floor as cool air licks against the back of her calves.

She slots the shard into her neck. A download icon flashes in her sight, lines of scrawling code compiling and executing.

“Configuration settings.” Kikiyo turns away. “The location of a trusted weapon supplier, and your bill. Settle it with Satoru, and take the inhaler he gives you.”

Taylor blinks away the config menu for a moment. “Why are you helping me?”

“Because I cannot help your mother,” Kikiyo replies.

Taylor has no words to say to that, so she turns to leave. At the door, she pauses, fingers pressed against the cool metal. She never knew that her mother was friends with this woman; not that Annette mentioned ripperdocs or implants much at home, after…

“She’s in the Columbarium,” Taylor says. “Pillar E-1, column 2, row…row 9.” She’s out the door before Kikiyo has a chance to reply. With a blink, she sends the receptionist the eddies she owes, and takes the medicine from him without a word.

She tries not to think about the taste of stale inhalants, or how she used to manually load each purchase on a shard before handing it over.

She tries not to think about how scared she is.

She walks away from the clinic and configures her new eyes instead. She squeezes them shut, but she can still see the lights scrawled across her vision. Something she’d avoided for years, gone, just like that. Stolen, even.

Then she opens her eyes.

Why does it feel better, then? She walks, and lets the streets of Japantown swallow her up. If she went missing, no one would care.

When she gets home, she can almost see her mother, sitting at the old workbench in the corner, testing the receptors in the eyes Taylor now wears. She would sit up, turn, and smile. Pushing her work away for the moment. Out of sight.

The workbench is empty.

Taylor sets a factory-new handgun on it. Two spare magazines. A case of ammunition. She doesn’t know what the gun is called. Only that it fits well enough in her palm.

Even she can’t miss if she presses it up against the back of someone’s neck, or to the soft underside of their jaw. It’s difficult to integrate cybernetics into the soft palate without replacing the tongue and jaw outright. Something else Taylor has learned at Arasaka academy.

She has a week before she has to go back.

And she does have to go back.

They’ll acknowledge you.

She picks up a magazine, and with coltish, uncertain motions, begins filling it with cartridges, pristine brass cold beneath her fingers.

She did much for you.

Her mother got her into Arasaka academy. At first, she thought it was just so that Taylor could join the company after she graduated. Maybe that was the goal, to have a partner in crime as they klepped corpo chrome in a private act of rebellion. Where better to hide from Arasaka than inside Arasaka?

It is a lesson she will have to take to heart.

Taylor moves to the second magazine. With her other hand, she turns on her computer, pulling up the files she saved from her mom’s shard. Three faces, caught a breath before the one behind that gun pulled the trigger. Plus the driver, half-hidden by the other man’s hulking shoulder.

She analyzes the faces. Maelstrom. Even if it wasn’t on the newsnet, it would be obvious from the mass of red lenses, the oversized and mismatched arms. They’re all custom jobs. Misappropriated implants are a useful tool in identifying supply lines. A half-remembered line from her course shards floats to the surface of Taylor’s thoughts. Loss Elimination should then proceed to neutralize actors involved.

After a moment of staring at the faces, Taylor reaches out again and transfers the files to her new optics.

She only has a week before she’s missed, after all.

~~*

“That covers the normal agenda items, Chairman Tanaka.”

The thickset man grunts, turning towards the city beyond floor to ceiling windows. “Good. Give me the most recent updates on the Sandevistan project.”

The man on the other side of the call clears his throat. “It appears that the latest model did not reach our testing facilities. It was assigned to a drone courier as per standard practice, but no receipt of arrival is attached to the order.”

“The drone. Compromised?”

“The site dweller is investigating that now, sir. It is unlikely.”

Tanaka grunts again, drumming his fingers against his desk. “Then why hasn’t the project lead been taken into custody yet?”

“Timestamps show that she was out of office at the time of delivery, a…family emergency according to records. She used her sick day.”

“Family is not an excuse to shirk duty to the company.”

“Naturally, sir,” the other man replied. “She would be in custody, but she was killed in a drive-by while returning to the office. Counterintel has marked the incident as unrelated.”

“I will be disappointed if that is all you have to show for my missing prototype.”

“Of—of course not!” The man gathers himself. “All avenues are being explored. In other news, several project members have issued formal statements questioning the suitability of subject James Norris for the Sandevistan project.”

“Their concern is not necessary. Arasaka’s future waits for no one.”