You mean I didn't even get paid for this?

It's the little things that you don't take into account when you're making plans. Like, for example, that you've never actually flown on an aeroplane before, to say nothing of a helicopter, and to say nothing of an AV. There weren't even any armrests for me to white knuckle grip; the spare seat was a fold-down jumpseat, so I just gripped the five-point harness that I was strapped into for dear life.

Hearing laughing over the intercom, I glanced over to assistant Med-Tech, a man named Alex Santos, but they called him Teddy Bear for some reason. I didn't like the cut of his gib, especially now that he was laughing at me, "Never actually flown before?"

I gritted my teeth but nodded the armoured helmet I was wearing. I had been looking through the heads-up display this armour system offered to try to distract me. "No, I haven't. But it should be fine." I told the clinician-only circuit on the intercom. I was just kind of nervous, but I wasn't actually scared.

I clicked over to listen to what the pilots were doing out of curiosity and to distract myself.

"Trauma Tower, Trauma 2, request clearance for departure, destination filed, but it's a 232 heading on the departure. We're going over to Pacifica..." one of the pilots said.

Very quickly, a bored-sounding woman's voice came back, "Trauma 2, Trauma Tower, departure from pad bravo at your own risk, IFF check okay, forwarding your squawk to Night City departure at this time, check in with Night City departure on channel 7, see ya."

The sound got loud as the ducted turbofans of the aerodyne spooled up, and then we gently lifted off into the air. The nose of the aircraft dropped a bit as we turned left and headed off into the distance. There were no windows to look out of, but I could switch the HUD on my helmet to show me an exterior view of wherever I looked. I think that was how the security people used the guns that were attached to the side of the aircraft, so I switched to the exterior view and looked down at the city below me.

I muted the pilot's net and asked over the clinician one, "So we don't know anything? You would think the client would have a recent biom that we could ping from here."

"Yeah... that is required for Platinum coverage, and most Gold-tier clients have that as well, but it isn't necessary for Silver, which is what we're responding to. We just have the complaint -- acute chest pain and shortness of breath. We can run an EKG when we get there like it was a hundred years ago, back in the pilgrim times," the man named Teddy Bear said.

I didn't think the pilgrims had paramedics or electrocardiograms, but I decided to remain quiet about that. Nobody likes a smart ass. I pulled up the client's information, which was listed as US2771212 Richard Gage, an employee of Fuji-Westinghouse, and a temporary three-month Silver-tier policy in Night City. Not a night city native, then. We were flying directly to the Playland at the Sea amusement park.

An employee on a contract with the park, perhaps? I always liked trying to figure out the happenstances of a patient before we got to them, I had pretty good accuracy, but it was fun when I got surprised, too.

Anno glanced over at me, "Do you mind carrying the gurney, Taylor?" I shook my head; I didn't mind. It was pretty lightweight.

The co-pilot pilot got on the shipwide net and said, "Landing in two mikes."

That caused the big security guy named Mercy to get on as well, "Two mikes. Cold LZ. Weapon checks." That triggered everyone but the pilots and me to briefly pull out their weapons. The security guys had two small bullpup carbines while Anno and Mr Bear just casually pulled out their pistols, checked to make sure a round was in the chamber and replaced them in their holsters. Considering they already checked them before they got in the aircraft, I was pretty sure they took having your weapon ready and good to go pretty important around here.

As we approached the landing zone, the display on my helmet switched automatically to an augmented reality guidance system, with the patient's beacon listed as being eighty metres to the north-northwest, inside a building. That was pretty cool, as even if he didn't have a biomonitor, he had to have something we were tracking. One of the Trauma Team cards, perhaps?

As soon as the skids touched the ground, my five-point harness automatically popped open and was reeled up and out of my way so I could just jump out of the aircraft, which I did so after Dr Anno and Mr Bear. I grabbed the fold-up-style gurney and followed them behind the two security guys. They didn't run, and Dr Anno described the pace they set as "prudent haste."

It was interesting to see everyone around us get way out of our way. I mean, I knew Trauma Team had a reputation, and I had even seen them shoot a number of people on ground calls, but it's a lot different perspective. It must be like walking down the street, walking side by side with a giant pitbull dog or something.

The security guys gave the bum rush to the few people that were in the room with the patient, including one park security guard, and then allowed us to enter. My gaze went to the patient, and I was pleased to notice that my Kiroshi's automatically used near-field communication to interface to the helmet I was wearing, as the vision I was seeing zoomed correctly to take in the man's face at very great detail. I was a little worried I would just get a zoomed-up sight of the interior of my helmet.

They briefly introduced themselves to the patient, and I thought about what the park employees had told the security guy before they rushed them out of the room. He was an employee for a subcontractor, known for troubleshooting things on every end of the park, walking everywhere. It was the little things you heard that could help you the most if you needed to make a differential diagnosis. Although my power often let me cheat, that meant I had to pay even more attention to the little things to give a plausible reason for my diagnosis.

They used a small device I had never seen before that automatically and rapidly started an IV on the patient. That was seriously cool, and my power wanted me to look at it some more, but I shifted to glance at the patient again.

The guy already had his shirt off for some reason. Although that wasn't too uncommon, a lot of patients with chest pain did that, and I scanned his chest and abdomen, frowning, as the two clinicians quickly connected wireless sensor probes to a number of places on his body, with Dr Anno saying, "Taylor, right here is fine."

I nodded and slid the gurney out right in front of the patient. The EKG was already in process, and I saw the waveform from all twelve leads in front of my face, which caused me to frown some more. Mr Bear said to the patient, "Mr Gage, please lay down on the gurney, and we can delta." Already they had administered a healthy dose of pain medication, as well as something to get his blood pressure down.

The man nodded, looking very relieved already, and carefully laid down on the gurney. Both Dr Anno and Mr Bear grabbed one end and started carrying the man out of the door; we hadn't been in the room for more than thirty seconds. Normally ground assessments lasted at least five or ten minutes in a case like this, but I supposed they weren't in the business of wasting time.

As we walked, Dr Anno asked, "So, what do you think, Teddy?"

"MI or PE, maybe?" the man said, which caused me to shake my head a little bit.

Anno noticed that, and his curious voice came over our private net, "Oh? Taylor? You have an idea?"

Shit. I had intended to keep my mouth shut here. I coughed, "The waveforms of his EKG are inconsistent with an active MI; a PE is possible but unlikely due to the background info we have on his lifestyle. The biobed in the AV has a sonic scanner; I'd recommend activating it on the flight back." My medical sense was telling me that he had an aortic aneurysm, but I couldn't quite say that I believed he did because I saw the way his abdomen almost imperceptibly distended when his heartbeat; now, could I?

Rather than be pissed, Mr Bear just glanced back at me and asked, "You think he has a dissecting triple A?" I nodded at him. He considered that and said, "That could be. Five eddies say it's a pulmonary embolism, though." I nodded, accepting the bet. That was easy money.

Even Anno nodded at him, "You're on. I think Taylor is right. This guy probably has had chronic hypertension for months dealing with his job and a preexisting aneurysm for the same reason. That or amphetamine toxicity or an anxiety attack. If it's one of those nobody wins, deal?"

"Wait, I was talking with the patient and wasn't listening when the park employee told us about him. I thought he was a guest, sedentary lifestyle, sitting here in an interactive roleplay BD for the past eight hours," Mr Bear said, trying to walk back his bet. That would have made his guess of a pulmonary embolism much more likely. Any time you sat still for a long time dramatically increased your risk for blood clots.

Dr Anno tsked, "Too late, sucker! I'll tell the pilot to be easy on the flight back. The last thing we want is a bunch of turbulence causing Mr Gage to pop." I nodded; that was possibly one of the few things that they couldn't fix. I was pretty sure they could maintain oxygen to his brain for the flight back, but it would turn a simple milk run into a train wreck. And it would also vastly increase the costs involved to Mr Gage here. Depending on how long his body and organs stayed without oxygen, he might have to have much of it replaced.

As it was, he was looking at a cheap and simple arterial replacement. Probably with synthetic polymer options, as that was indicated in patients with past aneurysms and hypertension. Possibly a new or replacement heart might be recommended, depending on the state of his, and finally, a biomonitor would definitely be recommended at the Trauma Centre. If he had one and had known about his predilection for hypertension, he would have been told to go to the doctor as soon as the aneurysm started to develop, probably many months or years ago.

The helmets and armour we wore were designed for NBC protection, supposedly, but they definitely were soundproof. People outside could only hear us talk if we engaged the speakers, they couldn't hear us speak over our internal com net, which was good, probably if it was common practice to bet on the health status of the patients.

Returning back to the AV, they settled the gurney, patient and all, into the biobed, and we hopped back aboard. After making sure my seatbelt was secure, I fumbled for a few seconds looking through the drop-down options on the HUD before I found the biobed, pulling up its display.

As we lifted off, Anno said, "Alright, I'll start the ultrasound." The sonic scanner in the biobed popped out, and he directed it to the patient's abdomen. Although Anno called it an ultrasound, it actually used ultrasound, infrasound, and even audible noise to create images, so it was actually called a sonic scanner. I had a small hand-held version, about three generations out of date, back at my apartment.

"Fuck!" Mr Bear yelled privately, and immediately I noticed a transfer to my digital wallet of five eurodollars. He paid promptly, at least.

Anno chuckled and explained, "He doesn't like losing bets. He's gone to some extreme lengths to win some in the past." I nodded, but I wasn't as quick with this user interface as they were, so it took me a moment to pull up the images. Yeah, he definitely had an aneurysm, over seven centimetres wide and up pretty high in his chest too.

The armour and helmet I was wearing were pretty interesting. It connected to your interface socket and functioned almost like it was an implant. If it had a powered exoskeleton component, it would be considered a rudimentary ACPA, but as it was, it was just an interesting tool. My ZetaTech SelfICE didn't trust it, though, and was running a completely emulated virtual operating system and piping everything to and from it after sanitising everything. When the armour disconnected, that entire virtual OS would be wiped in real-time.

Personally, I liked the way it thought. Hopefully, I would be working for this corp, but I didn't really trust them.

I had four of six of the customisable ICE slots utilised in the Zeta-Tech now, and my power managed to help me transfer some of the electronic warfare components from the Dragoon into Zetatech-compatiable ICE boards. One of them, the last resort, was exactly the kind of fatal black ICE that I built netrunner suits to protect against. Generally speaking, if someone was trying to use a quickhack against me, this ICE wouldn't have enough of a connection to retaliate, but it could if someone ever plugged their personal link, firewall or not, into one of my interface sockets or if they tried a deep personal hack while we were both deep diving.

I couldn't examine all of the code as a lot of it was black-boxed with integrated electronics, and a lot of it I didn't really understand yet anyway, but I was optimistic that the netrunner suits I had been making would offer protection.

It made me realise that I shouldn't highly publicise such inventions, though. I was sure that I wasn't the first to build such a thing. And if it became something everyone had, then people would just stop using that type of ICE and spend a little bit more money on the type that could broil a person's brain, which I couldn't protect against. A lot of people would be pissed off at me in that case, both a lot of serious netrunners and possibly even a bunch of companies that had to spend a lot of money updating their security systems. I'd have both the black and the white hats after me, then!

So long as I only made a few and was discreet to the people I sold them to, though, I should be fine.

I held back as we landed on top of the hospital roof, watching how they delivered the patient to a waiting trauma bay. Since they had radioed in the patient's likely diagnosis, his acuity had been upgraded, and they had a whole team of people ready to work on him by the time we got there.

After our flight back downtown, we went briefly out of service, both to restock and also as the six-hour period where we were going to have to be sitting in the AV continuously was approaching, so they gave you an opportunity to take a quick shower. These six hours were going to be annoying. I didn't trust them well enough to use the braindance wreath installed in the helmet, so I would just be working on my cyberdeck or watching videos the whole time, although I was really interested in that superhero game now that I thought about it. If I got hired and got assigned a permanent uniform, I would be able to discreetly make a couple of modifications to it to ensure the BD playbacks weren't subtly brainwashing me.

It had found it pretty common for commercially available BD streams, even some you paid for like films, to do that, mainly just to make you slightly want any of the products that they were advertising, though. But I was pretty sure it would be possible to make a BD that induced a psychotic break or possibly even cardiac arrest, too.

"Alright, we're up for our six-hour ready-five period. Does anyone need to use the head now, before we start?" the pilot asked everyone, probably to be polite, but he was specifically looking at me. I shook my head rapidly.

"Yo, Taylor. If you get hired, you should play World of Heroes like the rest of us. We have a Trauma Team guild, and we'll help power-level you," the very attractive blonde-haired security guy told me as we got into the AV. That was the game I was planning on playing, too.

I looked interested, "Oh? Are you a heroic guild?" I asked.

That caused both of the security guys to laugh, "Yeah, fuck that! We're the in the top 20 global villain guilds. The guild name is Total Terror; get it, TT? We're a PK guild. All the security guys and most of the medics play. Pilots are hit-and-miss."

I coughed, surprised. Well, maybe not. If you were involved in EMS for longer than a week, you tended to get both a macabre sense of humour and very jaded about humanity as a whole. That was the main reason I didn't have more of an emotional reaction when I had to kill those four Voodoo Boys. "Okay, I'll think about it," I told him, although unsure. I intended to play a hero, of course.

It made sense that if Trauma Team had an unofficial guild, they would be pretty effective. The game was touted to be very realistic, and with a virtual area larger than North America, complete with millions of interactive NPCs, they called it a virtual world. The physics were somewhat realistic, with superpowers grafted on. As such, there weren't really hardcoded stats and a lot of numbers like a lot of games. As such, a lot of real-life skills did translate into the game, especially if it involved, say, small unit tactics and marksmanship. Superpowers changed a lot of the game, but really a bullet to the face was still a bullet to the face.

I settled into a long wait, pulling up the current stream for the local propagandists.

An attractive woman said on the video, "Welcome to N54; it's time for your local news. Unexpected political drama today at city hall as council member Lucius Rhyne fired back on proposed legislation suggesting that birds in the city be culled. The freshman councilman had ammunition to back up his opposition in the form of a peer-reviewed white paper on the likely outcome of such a law that was published six months ago, written by one of our own in Night City. Phil, what's your read on these developments?"

She turned to her co-host, a studious-looking fellow, who shook his head, "Sara, I've read the paper written by Professor Hidalgo of Night City University that was cited by Councilman Rhynes, and it's exactly as the councilman says. Deaths by avian flu may be reduced, but only at the cost of trebling the number of deaths from Malaria, West Nile and other mosquito-born pathogens! To say nothing of the quality of life issues. The historical examination bares out too. China, last century, tried this same policy, and millions died!"

I was watching with interest and a little trepidation. Hidalgo had sent me a copy of the published article. They hadn't widely circulated it, hoping to catch their political opponents just like this. A few months later, he sent me an update stating that their opponents had learned something and had delayed their plans, but it looked like they had restarted them now. Professor Hidalgo's political friend must be this Lucius Rhynes. I pulled up data on him. He just got elected for the first time in 2060 and was a member of the Devolutionist Party, which was a political party that was highly antipathic towards the centralised North American government. Interesting.

Really, such politics were all the same to me. I figured they were all crooks. From my perspective as someone who wasn't born here, it was like watching a sporting event where I neither knew either of the teams playing nor any of the rules of the game.

I ended up being the fourth author on that paper, which suited me just fine. Honestly, I would have preferred to not be credited at all, as it was less of an academic paper and more of a political grenade. Still, anyone reviewing the paper would assume I was some dogsbody if they investigated me. Although Night City was a dystopia, it wasn't quite to the point where someone would deign to shoot their political enemy's taxi driver for giving them a ride.

I sat back and continued to watch videos, occasionally transitioning to reading a novel for a while.

---xxxxxx---

Something woke me with a start, a loud klaxon with the digitised voice saying, "SCRAMBLE. SCRAMBLE. SCRAMBLE. PLATINUM." I glanced around, seeing everyone else emerging from whatever BD they were experiencing. Already the pilots were flipping switches to spool up the internal turbofans, using the shore power connection and starter motors to quickly bring them up to speed.

Before I even had a chance to figure out how to pull up the patient information out of curiosity, we were pushed into our seats as the pilots didn't so much take off as throw us off our perch on the roof, all of the engines roaring to full power in the descent.

"Shit, multiple GSWs, multiple organs perfed, severe haemorrhaging..." Mr Bear said gloomily.

Mercy got onto on net and said, "It's an active scene, a hot LZ. NCPD reporting as a possible charlie papa inside the Biotechnica Hotel. Intruder, maybe? MaxTac may respond if there are any more casualties, but we'll get there first for sure. Hopefully, it'll be an in-and-out sort of thing. We'll be landing on the roof; our client is on the twenty-ninth floor."

Dr Anno glanced at me, "Stay behind Mercy and Bandbox, Taylor." I nodded, wishing I had a gun, and my left wrist suddenly felt itchy around that damn bracelet. They said not to remove it in the Trauma Tower, well... I wasn't in that building now, was I? Still, I didn't do anything for the moment.

The AV sat down on the rooftop pad, and all five of us hopped out, and I made sure to walk closely behind the giant wall of a man that was Mercy. Everyone had their guns out, and I was carrying most of their medical equipment. At least I was being useful, I supposed.

We went downstairs two and three at a time before reaching the twenty-ninth floor and popping out of the stairwell. There were clearly gunshots actively occurring on this floor, which didn't put my mind at ease at all. Mercy's voice over the net, "Client in sight. Hostiles in sight. Negative on the charlie papa; this is a Maelstrom death squad."

I wondered what Biotechnica did to piss off Maelstrom. It could be anything, really. Maybe they hired the gang for some terrible deed and stiffed them, or who knows what. Six red chevrons appeared on the screen in my helmet. Whatever the reason, it looked like the gang of cyberpsychos was getting some revenge.

I was also curious how they had snuck up to the twenty-ninth floor. They weren't exactly known for their subtlety, but they were known for their electronic warfare capabilities, though.

The group paused, but only for a moment. Mercy continued speaking. He must be in command of the ground team, "Verify AP ammunition is loaded, SmartLink connection active, break, flight two lift off and prepare to provide fire support. Floor two niner, east side. The cafe. We are going to be approaching from the south to the north." Everyone glanced at their weapons briefly.

"Roger, lifting now. Twenty seconds" came the voice from the pilot.

The twenty-ninth floor was only half apartments. What we were approaching was a combined indoor restaurant with large glass windows to appreciate the Night City skyline for the patrons dining inside.

"Targets selected in priority based on proximity to the client. They're strom, so go for headshots. Go, go, go." Mercy said, and the team as a whole turned the corner, everyone but me firing. I felt pretty out of place, but I felt one of the safest places to be was probably behind the mostly bullet-resistant giant man.

Mercy and Bandbox killed the two Maelstrom guys next to the client, who was down on the ground and looking unresponsive. They were then using lots of automatic fire to keep the rest of the Maelstrom suppressed. A red flashing indicator in my helmet indicated the client had just flatlined, which wasn't good. Anno said over the radio, "Taylor, hold up. We're going to grab the guy and pull him around the corner so the AV can open up on them, stay there with the equipment and wait for us.

Ah, that made sense. I was wondering why the AV that I could see already descending and beginning to hover outside the large glass windows hadn't done anything. If the client became collateral damage, it kind of ruined the point of even coming out here. I worriedly looked at a few of the other people lying on the floor, but everyone I saw looked pretty dead already. In fact, the client, even after Mr Bear grabbed him and pulled him back behind the two security guys who kept firing at Maelstrom, looked pretty dead. Mercy's voice on the radio said, "Package secured; light them up."

Immediately there was a cacophony of noise as the AV began firing its 7.62mm rotary chaingun on a small cluster of the Maelstrom guys, then sweeping it left to right to get the rest. I had dropped all the equipment I was carrying for Mr Bear and Dr Anno, who started working on the man.

I had pulled up my electronic warfare menu on my deck and was in the middle of establishing a connection to the biggest, most borged-out-looking of the Maelstrom guys, but he was turned into chunky salsa just like that. It was gross.

Anno reported, only briefly glancing at the state of the cafe, "Massive internal haemorrhage, death state one. Hey, Mercy. The boys pretty much wrecked this cafe; the windows are all shot out. See if they can hover outside, and we can transfer the patient directly onto the AV on this floor."

Mercy nodded, his weapon still ready for any of the Maelstrom, but they all appeared to be dead. "Roger. You hear that, guys?"

"Affirmative. We can," the pilots reported.

I watched both of them work on the guy, and they had managed to restart his heart already, but he hardly had any blood to pump through it. They were rapidly pinching off lacerated blood vessels and arteries while simultaneously introducing high-oxygenating synthetic blood replacement and trauma-based nanomeds, "Alright, we need to get him into stasis, stat." They were really quite good.

They picked the gurney up and started walking to the AV hovering on the exterior of the building, with the two security guys covering the rear. As they carefully loaded the guy in, I thought things were pretty much done and glanced back to see Mercy and Bandbox turning around to come to join us. However, just after they turned around, I saw one of the Maelstrom guys, who was not much more than a torso, start to move; he must have been playing dead.

"Behind you!" I said quickly, and both security guys started to turn, but it wasn't in time. The torso extended a hand, carrying an absolutely massive-looking revolver and had time to pull the trigger once before having its skull blown apart by a three-round burst from Mercy's small carbine.

Unfortunately, the slightly more diminutive security guy took a hit directly on the chest, the round so large it entered, penetrated completely, exited Bandbox's back and still pinged off the armour of the AV-4 next to us, with Bandbox falling over like a sack of potatoes and a number of medical alerts about a downed teammate.

"Fuck!" just about everyone yelled. Anno and Mr Bear glanced down at their own patient, then at Bandbox before Mercy growled, "You know SOPs. Fuck!"

They had already mentioned if one of their team was injured, then if it was a choice between the client and the teammate, they had to choose the client. I glanced around and said, "Go on without me. Maybe I can stabilise him for the follow-on team." Although they would leave a team member, they would treat them as a Platinum patient themselves for the follow-on team.

Mercy looked both sceptical and hopeful, which wasn't surprising as he saw the damage that single bullet had done. But he nodded, "Okay. They're scrambling the follow-on team now. But we were so quick here, it might take them five to ten mikes." That was true; it had barely been four minutes since we received the initial call. They were still probably getting dressed to take their turn as the ready-five bird.

I nodded, suddenly glad that all of the pockets on my borrowed uniform still had all of the equipment, even if I wasn't intended to use any of it. Mercy jumped in the side of the AV, and it didn't waste any time and started flying off to the north.

Running over to Bandbox, I flipped him over so that he was on his back and looked at the damage. Well, shit. He didn't have a heart anymore. That one-armed, no-legged torso of a Maelstrom was a good shot.

How could I stabilise... no fucking heart?!

I took stock of the equipment I had, which wasn't much, and I let out my breath in a slow relaxing pattern for a second, drawing deep on whatever superpower I had and the tools I had available to me.

Then nodding, I grabbed a small multitool of Bandbox's waist, flipped it to a cutting tool and carefully cut the uniform away, suddenly careful as I realised that if that knife on that tool wasn't monomolecular, then it was at least really close.

Then I grabbed some IV tubing I had in my pockets, lifting Bandbox up slightly to disconnect an electronic box on the back of his uniform and grabbing it, and flipping the multitool to a universal fastener removal tool. I only had a little time before he was well and truly dead.

I stirred from a light fugue. I called it a fugue, but I realised what I had done, even if not quite how. All of the Trauma Team armours had a built-in cooling system. They would just be too hot to wear otherwise. I had ripped out the coolant pump on his suit and then kludged together what was, in effect, a replacement heart with the coolant pump and a bunch of IV tubing.

The IV tubing was, besides being IV tubing, much too small in diameter to actually support sufficient blood flow without it being way too fast, so it wasn't really a solution. Still, after bypassing a lot of his arteries, it was enough to keep his brain and his core organs oxygenated. His internal biomonitor reported he was "alive" again, with acceptable levels of blood oxygenation, at least for now.

A second Trauma Team AV hovered exactly where the first one departed, and four people hopped out. One of the clinicians asked, "What's his status? His biom is reporting acceptable SPO2 now."

Uh. How was I going to explain this? I said, "The GSW totally obliterated his heart. I figured he was dead, but it was worth a try, so I pulled the coolant pump out of his MCU and kind of kludged together a bypass-heart pump." I checked the time; his brain had only been without oxygen for about two and a half minutes.

"What the fuck?" the other guy said as he looked down at the crime against nature and his armour's warranty that I had wrought.

"That's... one of the craziest things I've ever heard. Not the most, but maybe the fourth," the first guy said as both clinicians bent down to start working on him. I spent a moment pointing out which arteries I had bypassed, which I had just clamped shut, and how fragile the pump was.

"Alright. This probably is only going to buy him another ten or fifteen minutes. Already his brain SPO2 is inching down into the low 80s. Let's get him to Watson," the Senior Med-Tech said, and then glanced down at me, "Uhh... we don't have our jumpseat installed."

I had expected that as I had watched the pilot put in the extra seat this morning. I waved a hand, "I'll just call a Delamain and get a ride back to the Tower."

One of the security guys nodded and said, "The police probably won't hassle you, but try not to say too much to them. You might not, technically, work here yet, but they'll assume you do. MaxTac isn't responding, but both the NCPD and BioTechnica are. The latter shouldn't hassle you..." he trailed off, paused, and glanced around at the total devastation of the cafe, which was caused by a minigun attached to a Trauma Team AV, and then said, "...but uhh... maybe leave, now, before they get here. They don't have ready teams like us in town, so they won't be here for fifteen or thirty mikes. Just in case."

I nodded and watched them leave. I looked around and grabbed one of the pistols from one of the downed Maelstromers, slid it into the empty holster on my armour after checking it, and then grabbed one of the submachine guns and slung it carefully around my body. Then I briefly went around to each person that was down, looking for survivors. That and I wanted to know if the minigun was responsible for any of the deaths. Surprisingly, it wasn't. I wasn't sure if it was luck or the pilots actually being good shots, though.

As for survivors, I found three, one of which was unconscious and bleeding from a severed leg below the knee. I quickly wrapped a tourniquet around the wound and carried the woman to the front of the cafe so that she could be seen by the responding medtechs more easily.

The other two were acting dead, which I thought was a really good strategy under the circumstances, but when they realised I wasn't Maelstrom, they started sobbing and thanking me. One was seriously injured; in fact, he was slowly bleeding to death from a gunshot wound to his shoulder that had nicked his thoracodorsal artery.

I patted myself down and found a bleeding control kit in one of the pockets, and told him, "You aren't a subscriber, but I'm stuck here for the moment, and you're bleeding to death. Do you want me to help?"

"John! I told you we should have bought the subscription!" replied the woman, who must be his wife or girlfriend. Rather lucky that they both managed to survive the incident, they were in one of the corner booths.

He nodded very fast, "Uhh yes... am I? It doesn't feel that bad." Then he glanced at the woman, "Okay, you were right!"

I pulled open the bleeding kit and told him as I carefully cauterised the artery with a semi-disposable electronic ultrasonic wand, getting a wince from him as I did so, "Yes, the artery in your shoulder was nicked. It wasn't gushing out, but you still would have probably lost consciousness before the 911 EMTs could get here."

At about that time, the SWAT team threw a flashbang around the corner and rushed in. The grenade went off, but my helmet automatically corrected for it, and I didn't even hardly notice. If they had just exploded that lady who I had saved, I was going to be pissed. Still, I raised my hands in the air and quietly recommended these two conscious survivors do the same, and they did so.

"Trauma Team... what the fuck... only one of you?" asked the man in similar, although matte-black tactical armour after clearing the room, waving my hands down with a gesture. I wasn't supposed to say much, but I had thought of how to explain this, "Our AV took a hit from a giant fucking gun, and it couldn't take both the patient and me back, so I stayed around." That was true, too, after a fashion.

He nodded, the cops lowering their weapons, "You know what happened?"

I shook my head, "We responded to a platinum client, it was a suspected cyberpsycho, but when we got here, it was six Maelstromers. Everyone in the cafe, except these three, was already dead. We put down the Maelstrom and evaced our client; that's all I know. Corporate told me not to say much more than that or provide any speculation or inferences."

The head of the swat team sighed. That meant he had to intentionally make a sighing noise while indicating her wanted to transmit, which I thought was funny. "Yeah, alright. Thanks for flatlining these psychos. You gonna head out downstairs, or is another AV coming for you?"

"Send another AV for me? I'll be lucky if I can get them to pay for the cab fare," I told them, honestly, which caused three of them, including the leader, to snicker. I nodded at the man I had helped, stood up, and walked over to the guy who shot Bandbox and grabbed his giant fucking gun. My scanner activated and identified it as a Techtronika RT-46 Burya, a relatively new electromagnetic pistol out of the Russian Soviet Republic.

"Hey, that's evidence..." one of the non-SWAT uniform cops said.

The SWAT team leader yelled, "Fucking let her take it; that's probably what shot their AV."

It was, but the reason I was grabbing it was I figured Bandbox could use a souvenir. "Thanks. See if you can get the Med-Techs in here before that lady bleeds to death, okay?" She was in a pretty nice dress. An expensive one if the tag from Jinguji was to be believed. Yet she didn't have a Trauma Team membership. That probably meant she was either someone like me who tried to save a lot of money or possibly a call-out type escort whose clothes were a business expense. Either way, she didn't deserve to bleed to death.

He nodded, "They're on their way up from the elevator now."

I waited at the elevator; on the off-chance, it was Gloria, but it wasn't. Shame. I told them briefly the injuries and then got in the elevator going back down, walked past a group of uniformed police and hopped into a waiting Delamain.

"Why, if this isn't unusual... It is a pleasure to see you again, Miss Hebert. However, I will have to make a notation that we will charge a cleaning fee to Trauma Team if you get blood all over the back seat," said the genial voice of the AI driver.

"Hi, Del. Trauma Team tower, please," I said to him, a little tired. Not sleepy, but I was coming down from an adrenaline spike.

His animated head tilted, "Del? A diminutive of Delamain? That isn't actually my name, ma'am, but as I don't actually have a proper name, I think I approve of your appellation. Thank you."

Although we weren't actually that far away, traffic was a bitch today. About midway through the drive, I got a call from the Trauma Team hiring manager that had interviewed me; I picked up, "Hello?"

"Hey, Taylor. How are you? I heard what happened," he said, in a sort of feigned sense of empathy. It was polite, though, so I didn't hold it against him.

I replied, "Oh. I'm fine. Headed back to the tower now. I assume we're on a safety stand down for the rest of the shift?" There were only like seven hours left, and they had told me a base would go on safety stand-down for at least a half shift if a teammate was seriously injured.

"Yeah, probably. Are you still interested in the job?" he asked.

I nodded, "Yeah. I mean, shit happens wherever you work. A ground ambulance isn't that safer; at least you have a giant minigun on your side."

He smiled, looking a little relieved, "That's good! It's a little unusual, but after we heard about how well you did on your base visit today, we'd like to extend you a tentative job offer."

I blinked; this was a little unusual. I drew deep on my memories of Alt-Taylor and tried to phrase my responses as would be expected for a third-generation Corpo, "Well, I guess I tentatively accept then, with the caveat that I don't find anything objectionable in the contract after I have my attorneys review it." Although I didn't actually have any attorneys, I hadn't paid that online firm a retainer in order to call them that I was sure that they'd accept my repeat business. It may cost a couple thousand dollars or a little more, but it would be worth it.

"Excellent! I will forward you the job offer and contract now. Do you think you could have it reviewed and signed by Friday?" he asked.

I nodded, "Sure. But I'll have to give NC Med Ambulance two weeks' notice. Beyond the fact that it is the proper thing to do, much more importantly, it's in my contract with them, and I'm not interested in being held liable for a breach."

He chuckled, "We really like that you're willing to do the proper thing with your current employer. However, I've already reviewed your contract with them, and we will execute the buy-out clause. That only costs us five times your salary for two weeks. It will let them pay someone overtime to work your shifts, still have some money left-over and let us start you in the new class starting Monday. A win-win-win, I'd say."

That was unusual. But I nodded, "Okay. That's fine. Let's plan on that; I am calling the firm I use now. I may have it approved and signed by tomorrow."

"Excellent. As soon as you do, I'll send travel arrangements for your indoc class in Seattle on Monday. That's one week long, and then you'll start Basic the following week," he said, smiling.

Wait, what? "Basic what?"

"Well, basic training. All medics without military experience take an abbreviated eight-week course," he said mildly.

Fuck. I hadn't realised that. But I should have. But it kind of made sense. Certainly, both Mr Bear and Dr Anno were a lot more tactical than, say, Gloria was.

I sighed and nodded, "Alright. I'll call you tomorrow." Then I briefly reviewed the contract and arranged for the online law firm to review it as well.

Just what was I getting myself into?