Gamma Protocol (035) (Patreon)

[035]

“Those cuts look nasty.” Isia commented. “You sure you don’t want Angus to give you a look-over?”

+Speed: 5+
. .∟Agility: [72%] -> [79%]

Charisma: 7 -> +8

I checked the bonus notifications as I sat down next to the van, shirtless and leaning on my shoulders, sun cooking down the world around me in an ever-present wave of heat and humidity. If my new biology didn’t make “boiling water” mostly comfortable, I’d probably be dying right about now.

With the “hunt” over, the stream had come to a close, and it was time to wrap everything up. “Do none of you know how to do basic field dressing?” I asked. “Disinfect, stitch, and bandage? Nothing’s broken, it’s just some cuts.”

“Choom, the most complex thing I can cook is a bowl of cereal, nevermind sewing wounds shut!” She wriggled, clearly trying to play it off as a joke, but nervous nonetheless. “How the hell would you learn that? Did you get some fancy-ass job as a nurse or some shit?”

“...the academy?” I asked, equally baffled. “At least… look, throw some water at it, rub some iodine, and slap a bandage on top?” It’d come very handy whenever someone got more seriously hurt over at the factory floor.

She let out a long and withering sigh. “I almost forgot you were a corpo, and then you go and open your mouth like that.”

“Definitely a corpo.” Vesper chipped in, rummaging inside the van before pulling out what looked like… a bottle of spirits. “Way we do it here is a bit more rough than your fancy-pants might tolerate.”

Eyeing the bottle, I was starting to reconsider that offer to go to visit the ripperdoc. “Fine.” I relented without making any further commentary, feeling the cool touch of alcohol against my back, followed by… nothing? There was no sting. “Washing it first?” I asked, glancing over my shoulder.

She’d emptied half of the bottle, and though her face was hidden inside the weather-gear, I could feel she was staring at me. “Nerves of steel, huh.” She muttered after a second, dabbing a cloth against my back, removing the blood outside the injuries. “At least you’re no longer bleeding.”

“...yeah.” I muttered, faking a cringing expression and making a mental note to flinch next time I get alcohol rubbed against an injury.

Carefully, Vesper washed off the injury, and after a handful of minutes, started dressing it with bandages. Reused bandages. I cringed for real this time, thinking back to the first-aid class and trying to push away the instinctual reaction to list the possible ways the wound could get infected. Instead, I did a little prayer that my new empowered physiology included an empowered immune system. If my recovery from Bear’s beating was anything to go by, then I’d be as good as rain after a day or two.

“You said something about celebration?” I asked, getting an excited jostle from Isia.

“Sure will! Your first stream got two thousand viewers!”

I stared at her and blinked slowly. “What.”

“Not bad for your cherry-popping rodeo, eh?” Vesper cackled.

“HEY!” Isia complained. “That was MY line! I was saving it for the party!”

Vesper laughed as she deftly dodged the pebble Isia had thrown at her. 

Meanwhile, I just sat there trying to grasp what she’d just said. Two thousand viewers in a stream. I’d never seen a live stream with anything more than a hundred or two people… “Is it a lot?” I couldn’t help but ask. “Two thousand, I mean.”

“People typically open up streams and leave them running in the background as they work,” Quinn said, focused on the repairs of their drone. “It’s why multi-district trending streams can get tens of millions of viewers.”

“Oh.”

Nodding a little, I just tried to grasp at the notion of just… how many people that was. Two thousand people had opened the stream and watched me kill monsters. Maybe it was barely a blip, but that was two thousand people. That had to be useful for something, right?

“Would it be possible to change the script for the next session? Just a bit, I mean.”

“Change it how?”

“I’m… not sure, yet.” I glanced down at the cloth Vesper had wrapped around my chest to keep the bandages in place. There was a faint idea there, but one I’d need to chew through. “Just wondering what the restrictions might be.”

“If it sticks to the theme, then it shouldn’t be a problem… mostly.” Quinn answered, pausing for a moment, their helmet twisting to glance my way. “I…” The word lingered for a moment, before they turned back to continue work on their drone. “Just make sure to give us a head’s up before the session starts.”

Isia butted in. “What they mean to say is that they’re sorry for fucking up and putting your life at risk by not spotting that last monster.” Ignoring the loud snort from the techie, she wrapped an arm around my shoulder, she shook me a little. “Feel ready to party yet?”

I just shrugged. “I guess? I’d rather clean up first.”

“Back to the motel it is!” She pointed at the cars. “Sewer Saints! Roll out!”

“I will be going in whichever vehicle Vesper is driving.” I hurried to add.

“Unfortunately, good ol Vesp is going back to base.” Isia’s voice came out with an evil laugh. “I’ll be dropping you off at the motel! Muahahahaha!”

Fuck.

---

I’d barely stumbled inside, hearing the screeching tires as Isia sped off to go through her own prep-work for the party. She promised she’d be back to pick me up in two hours, leaving me ample time to go through my own preparations.

“Good day, Axel Garcia. Your room remains booked in your name.” Grills greeted with a full body twitch as she jolted up.

Her voice made me jolt a little. “Hello, Grills.” I relaxed once I confirmed the android wasn’t holding her shotgun. “Any news on contacting your owner?”

“The Motel owner is currently not present,” she said in a hurry. “If you have any complaints, I will make sure to deliver them to the Motel owner, who is not present currently.”

Another glitch, huh. “Oh, I don’t have much to complain about, you do a good job.” I paused a second. “I guess the only thing I’d point out is that my room door doesn’t lock?”

Grills did a full body twitch, head jolting to lock on to me in a far more concerning way. “If you were to rate your stay in this motel, with one star signifying an unpleasant stay, and five stars signifying a pleasant stay, which would you provide?” The digital crackling voice carried with it an odd steely inflection to her words.

“Uh… five stars?”

Grills went completely still, the fans within her chassis starting to rev up to maximum, lights blinking on and off violently. I watched, trying to wait for her to finish processing whatever it was that had just pushed her processors to their limit. After a full minute of nothing, I very carefully started making my way towards the stairs, keeping an eye on the android just in case she pulled out the shotgun again.

A thorough shower and some food later, I’d collapsed on the bed, taking my time to gather up my thoughts. First, I tried to contact Moreau again through the device, to no avail, which left my gaze lingering on the red “emergency” button and considering my options.

Shadow of a Doubt (1):
 Survive 7 days.
 Progress: 2 / 7.

My quest said to survive five more days.

The system had been in a panic when it showed it to me.

Why did it think it necessary? The notion of it felt intuitively wrong, somehow, as if the system shouldn’t have had the means to… to what? Learn about it? I scratched my cheek. The system had made mistakes, it had learned things and adapted, changed, meaning it… was limited in what it knew. And though I was fairly certain it knew things I didn’t, I also got the impression that those things it knew were less related to current events.

“How to survive the Shadow…” I muttered under my breath, carefully trying to go through what I could do. Without the doctor to contact, I’d need to find out more about the shadow meguca, and hopefully convince her not to kill me…

Failing that, my newest skill could prove useful in providing protection to some degree.

“What if I ask Kali?”

The question lingered in the air, unanswered. The meguca had asked me to contact her through a friend of hers to verify I wasn’t faking things. Perhaps it was a bit too presumptuous to assume, but what if she knew about the Shadow? That was certainly a venue to pursue aside from loading up on AP and skills.

“Definitely need to set some time aside to experiment more carefully…” Maybe tomorrow? A day between streams would be best. There were a lot of unanswered questions about my abilities, and learning about them a bit more carefully was a higher  priority now.

Laying down on the bed, I closed my eyes to get some rest, fully expecting this “party” to be an extenuating endeavor.

---

Two hours on the dot, there was a knock at my door.

“Time to party!” Isia shouted, banging on the door. “C’mon!”

“I’m coming, I’m-”

My words came to a stop once I saw her… or more exactly, they came to a stop when I saw what she was wearing. Isia had put on what I could only describe as every available piece of graffiti in the district. It was an overly large plastic jacket covered in mosaics of cartoon rats with halos so tightly packed together it lost all cohesiveness. The thing was so oversized, the only other part of her that was visible were her shins, shoes, and head.

“What?” She cooed, doing a twirl. “Took your breath away?”

“Isn’t that a bit suffocating?” It was the second thing that came to mind. The first response I’d imagined was to ask whether she’d draped on a bag and rolled on second-hand stickers. But that would’ve been, perhaps, a bit too mean.

“It’s got its own retro-RGB cooling system. Look!” She flapped the jacket, revealing the interior was covered in glowing tubes that hummed with every color of the rainbow. “Neat, isn’t it?” She twisted the jacket this way and that, before closing it back up. “So, you ready?”

“I think I’m a bit underdressed.” I sheepishly scratched my cheek. I’d gone full casual, and here was Isia looking like she was about to go into some sort of rat-themed rave.

“Nonsense, I just like to fancy it up.” Zipping up her jacket, she reached over, hooking her arm with mine and janking me forward. “Now let’s get going!”

“So… where to?”

“Well, for normal celebrations we’d just spend the time shooting shit up over at the base, but today’s important! Double celebration!” She was approaching the reception area when she froze.

Grills had the shotgun out and aimed directly at Isia.

“I’m here for a room!” The young woman shouted, raising both her hands right as I’d moved to stand between the two.

The android twitched once, then raised the firearm to point it at the ceiling. “Those that steal Motel property will be cleaned.” Grills declared, and though her voice was still full of static and practically a monotone, there was an underlying growl to it.

“Not stealing anything, I swear.”

Grills’ hollow camera-eyes focused on me, then back to Isia. “Welcome to Motel 18! How may I be of help? You wish to spend the night? Would you prefer a room or a blowjob?”

Isia shook her head quickly. “I changed my mind, but thanks for the offer!” Without missing a second, she reached out to hurriedly pull me towards the door.

The android reacted instantly, taking aim again.

“Down!” I lunged, pushing myself to knock over Isia.

But there was no shot.

Just Isia and I tumbling to the floor in a heap of limbs.

The android just stared at us, putting the shotgun underneath the desk. “Welcome to Motel 18! How may I be of help? You wish to spend the night? Would you prefer a room or a blowjob?” She asked as if nothing had happened.

“We will be leaving now.” Isia spoke very slowly as we both stood up cautiously.

“Have a good afternoon, Axel Garcia!” Grills waved.

We… waved back, rushing to close the door behind us as soon as we’d made it out of the lobby and on to the afternoon heat.

Isia let out a nervous chuckle, wiping her brow. “Man, she gets crazier every year.”

“Grills clearly needs maintenance,” I said warily. “Who knows how long it’ll be before she actually hurts someone?”

“Ha!” Isia let out a bark of laughter before quickly devolving into a fit of giggles.

“What?”

“Nothing, nothing, just… might hurt someone… heh.” She shook her head. “Look, ol-Grills might need maintenance, but the last person that tried regretted it pretty fast. Girl doesn’t show it, but she’s very shy about that sort of stuff.”

Pointing out how odd it sounded to talk about Grills in such a way would definitely come across as very rude. I instead chose an age-old diversionary tactic of moving the conversation back on track. “You’d mentioned something about double celebration?”

Isia immediately perked up, snatching my arm again. “Yes! First, it’s an official welcome to the gang! No tacksies backsies.”

There was a definite skip to her step, her enthusiasm certainly contagious. I wasn’t about to argue the “join the gang” part. Our introduction might not have been the smoothest of interactions, but after today (and after Vesper stepping in to help in the fight), I was kind of looking forward to learning more about the gang.

I definitely wouldn’t mind being called as “part of the team”… though I was not going to buy their merch if they had any. Call it a matter of principles. “And the second?”

“Well, it was the whole streaming thing. You got two thousand viewers on your first day!” She patted my shoulder heartily, leading me to the truck. “Bear even saw your stream! THE Bear!”

My smile turned stiff as I tried to ignore the clenching inside my chest. “You don’t say?”

“I bet she’s so jealous! Her very first dozen streams didn’t make it past two hundred viewers. And here you are, showing her up on the very first day!”

I tried to laugh, but it came out as a nervous chuckle.