An offer she can't refuse

November 2066

Los Angeles / Oxford, England

As I was getting loaded into the AV-4, with the two Med Techies working on me, I stood up from the chair I had briefly sat in inside the administration building outside the Dean's office back in Oxford.

Nobody, seemingly, had noticed my brief pause, which was good, although I couldn't quite count on that. I was sure that this area was under audio-visual surveillance, so it was possible that someone might have noticed it. I wasn't used to being credibly attacked, though, so I felt that I needed all of the brainpower I had in order to focus on getting out of my predicament back in LA.

Well, it was fine. I didn't like leaving datums that were obvious to correlate like the totally independent Dr Hasumi being attacked and the completely unrelated Taylor Hebert tripping and sitting down for a rest, but the only one that might put the two and two together was Gram or more likely, her AI. I didn't trust the Sídhe bitch, but she already knew my two clones were connected; I had just buffaloed her on the extent of the connection.

Although I considered my identity as Taylor Hebert, some observers, if they knew the truth, might consider me, instead, an unnamed, unknown entity that used to be Taylor Hebert, that controlled Taylor's body like a puppet. Since Gram had appeared to dote on Mom some, I didn't want to give her the idea that I wasn't actually her granddaughter, especially since I wasn't.

I had thought about this myself, too, in moments of philosophical whimsy and concluded that it was a pointless question. I was who I was. I thought I was Taylor Hebert, so I was Taylor Hebert. It wasn't like people were static in the first place, anyway, unless they were dead, of course. People changed and grew over their lives.

The Taylor Hebert that sat in Mr Gladly's Word Issues class wouldn't recognise the Taylor Hebert I had become even before I started cognitively expanding. That was partly because I had, for a long time, been using my own personal sleep inducer. This device, in addition to giving me a healthy night's sleep, also increased my brain's neural plasticity. That was, mostly, a good thing. It helped me learn new things, but it also had the effect of training my brain to be more like and to think more like a native of Night City.

That, I thought, was a bad thing, and I was always on guard to try to avoid slipping into bad habits—and not just habits, bad thought patterns, too. I was playing the role of a Corpo because otherwise, I might not have survived, but I didn't want to become one in truth. However, in many ways, it was difficult not to. You shouldn't practice what you didn't want to become, after all.

For example, while I was waxing philosophically to myself while walking to my car in Oxford, I was also planning to possibly murder whoever was behind attacking me in Los Angeles. The myself that existed back in Brockton Bay would have been aghast at the thought of murder, but she would have approved of the idea of thwarting someone attempting to bully me.

She just never had the power—no, I just never thought I had any power to stop it. The truth was, now that I could look back with the benefit of hindsight, I had many different ways to stop the Trio from bullying me. I had just been so lost in my own despair and self-loathing to realise it. I still couldn't believe Sophia Hess had been a fucking Ward, though. Talk about not trusting cops.

As for my new "bully",... Well, I had a suspect, but the only thing I had learned from him was a list of his fetishes and what type of joytoys he liked bringing home—all things that I could have gone my whole life without knowing. I had thought that he would be stupid enough to plan any extracurricular attacks on me at his home, but as far as I could tell, he had not. It really was a shame when enemies failed to be as stupid as you hoped, even if I never relied on those hopes.

That meant either he was smart enough to keep plans elsewhere if this was a personal vendetta, Dynacorp as a whole was after me, and he only discussed plans at work, or it was a third party. It appeared clear it was a kidnapping attempt rather than a straight hit, as fire wasn't directed at my vehicle until I started to escape.

I wondered how they had planned to run off with me because any party that could organise this would have known I had Platinum coverage at Trauma Team. Rather than secret, these things were public knowledge as a Platinum subscription tended to stop a lot of minor assaults and attacks before they even happened.

It wasn't impossible to kidnap someone who had a Trauma subscription, even if it was Platinum, but it was a lot harder than it sounded. The AV-4s were equipped with advanced electronic warfare equipment. You could jam the frequency range the transponder used, but the AV-4 would just home in on your jammer and fall from heaven on you like an ACME-brand anvil.

I thought that the normal way would be for a netrunner to hijack the victim's operating system and, through software, disable both the biomonitor and transponder, but anyone doing a little research on Dr Hasumi would find her fifteen minutes of fame, where I was recorded passively surviving a sophisticated virus attack and punching the netrunner in the face, so my cybersecurity wouldn't be underestimated.

A very heavily shielded van, perhaps? Where radio-frequencies would not penetrate? That would work and wouldn't be too difficult to set up.

The way I would do it would rapid surgery to physically disable the biom. I could do it in less than a minute, but while I had to admit this was possible, it seemed like the least plausible of all possibilities.

I sent a message to both my Militech point-of-contact regarding this contract; this was a different person than my sales rep, as well as Kiwi. I wanted an investigation into who was responsible. That was an upsell service, like adding a small apple pie with your value meal at an additional charge. But I wanted Kiwi to take part because I didn't entirely trust Militech to tell me everything they found out, even if I was paying them to.

After that, I just relaxed for a time and let them unload me from the AV-4 like a sack of potatoes and take me into the bright white of the fancy corporate trauma centre. I was paying almost half a million Eurodollars a year for this service and about the same again for the Militech bodyguards, and that wouldn't even include the entire fees for this visit, so I expected to at least get my money's worth.

---xxxxxx---

November 2066

Night City

Taylor's Apartment

"Man, your pet bird is boxed, Doc T," said Hiro, the little boy, less little now. I had hired him to feed Mrs Pegpig daily while I was gone and clean her cage, which she rarely used anyway. He also sometimes worked shifts as a clerk in my front pharmacy-clinic area. The boy had shot up like a weed compared to the last time I had seen him years ago, and while he had dropped out of school ("School's for gonks, lady!"), which I didn't approve of; he at least wasn't falling into being a total delinquent.

Apparently, he had tested out of school, which was not very difficult. He still ran a number of side hustles, including the courier business that I had first met him doing. One of his other ventures was almost a direct competitor to me in that he would buy a lot of pharmaceuticals wholesale from me, and he sold them to his delivery customers, both to people who didn't want to bother coming to my store as well as marketing them to the people he did deliveries for. Kind of like, "You wanted a gun? How about some MaxDoc trauma medicine, too?"

He basically had a little store without a physical storefront. It was a good hustle, and I didn't mind that he was competing with me. I barely marked up the things I sold him and would eventually arrange for him to meet my suppliers once he could speak three sentences without using some sort of hood slang. He still didn't quite understand that the way he talked would filter him out of any real business that wasn't illegal or grey market. The boy seemed to think that I was a expert businesswoman though, as he had asked me to review all of his businesses, as he said he wasn't making as much money as he thought he should. I had agreed before I went to England.

I wasn't running my pharmacy to profit from it anyway; I was just running it so that I could have a plausible thing to do while I relaxed most of the time. I had already decided that if I left the Megabuilding that I would offer to sell him that part of my business, possibly financing it myself, in exchange for a percentage, like a venture capitalist in reverse.

As far as his schooling? It rubbed me the wrong way, but I couldn't really deny that most public schools were a waste of time, either. I thought it was intentional, as a less educated and less sophisticated populace was easier to control. The propaganda on TV and the net was not subtle here, but many people still lapped it up.

However, he kept using words that I am pretty sure he was making up. I wasn't that old not to know all of the slang, and I was pretty sure he just made up "boxed" on the fly. I eyed him and asked for clarification, glancing at Mrs Pegpig, who cooed at me, "What do you mean?"

"After you left, she just sat there, still, like a statue! She only moved to eat," Hiro said, with an amazed look on his face.

I rubbed her head as she cooed and closed her nictitating membranes in pleasure and said, "Awww... she missed me." Hiro looked at me like I was crazy, and he opened his mouth to say something, shaking his head, but I waved him off. I didn't have time to listen about how my bird was eccentric. I already knew that! Mrs Pegpig turned to glare at the boy.

He closed his mouth without saying anything and finally just shrugged, "You know, whatever... Did you look at what I sent you like you promised?"

I nodded slowly. "I did notice a few things. You're not really accounting for the true costs of your enterprise. Mainly your carrying costs are a lot higher than you think because you never sat down to consider how each much it costs to sell each item."

"Carrying costs?" he asked as I sat Mrs Pegpig on my shoulder.

I walked over to make us each a sandwich, "Yes. Carrying cost is the total cost to hold inventory. For example, you are not assigning any value or cost to the area you use as a storehouse, even though you said you paid for it. You aren't assigning any cost to the kids you hire part-time to organise it. You rightfully consider these costs, but you don't quantify them. Worse, you have a ton of dead inventory."

Before he could ask what that meant, I waved a hand, "You sell a lot of perishable goods, like candies and burritos and the like. You mistakenly believe that because you sell a lot of these things, you are making a profit. However, with the excess that you stock to keep a buffer for sudden demand, it means you lose a lot when the goods you keep on hand expire without being sold. I doubt you're even breaking even on this grocery stuff, especially since you don't have a wholesale supplier. It would be cheaper to just do as you used to and just pay your couriers a little more to swing by an Allfoods or a Mark 24 store." It would also prevent his child employees from pilfering burritos from the stock, I thought, which was another large outlay that I didn't even mention.

I hummed, "You should only actually stock and sell items that have a large margin and don't cost too much to store. The rest? Just buy it at the time and deliver it, like you used to. The pharmaceuticals I sell you are a good example."

He frowned, "I thought I was doing pretty well buying and then later selling guns, though, and everyone says the margin on guns is terrible."

I raised an eyebrow, "You aren't selling arms. Someone can go to any gun store on any block and buy a gun. You're selling an untraceable gun right now, delivered. That's a whole different product, really. It's less of a product and more of a service, really, which is your core competency. If you need a gun so bad right now that you have it delivered, then you're going to expect a mark-up. Plus, from what I can tell, you pay very little for the arms you buy."

That most of them were probably used in a crime was left unstated. Why throw a pistol in the Bay after you had to shoot some pimp when you could sell it for a few bucks to some kid who had a steel file and patience? Honestly, it was the most dangerous part of Hiro's little enterprise, and I would have preferred him not to be involved in it at all, but he wasn't one to appreciate anyone telling him what he could and couldn't do. Ever since he bought that first cheap revolver from me, he realised that there was a fair market for guns modified to not have either microstamping technology in the firing pin or even a serial number attached to them.

"Ahh," he said, grinning and nodding while he dug into the sandwich.

As he ate, I said, "You also need to judge better the prices you charge your clients. You charge clients an upfront fee based on their distance, but you pay your couriers based on how many minutes it takes them to make the delivery. They're not really screwing you, but you have no system in place for variable pricing during rush hour or identifying delivery areas that are particularly burdensome for one reason or another." I just shrugged, "You lose money on most deliveries to Kubiki, for example. By distance, it isn't that far, but you have to, on average, change trains two times for most addresses just due to the way the NCART is set up. So the delivery times add up. You need to switch from a pure distance-calculated price to a price based on the historical average delivery times both for that destination and also for that time of day. This means you need to keep many more records and use many more spreadsheets." Or maybe hire a computer nerd to write him some custom software.

This caused the boy to groan in between bites and ask, possibly rhetorically, "Where do you learn this stuff?"

I aimed a gimlet stare at him and carefully enunciated each word, "In. School." Mrs Pegpig cooed at him in disapproval, too, from her perch on my shoulder. To reward her, I gave her a bit of ham that I was using to make my sandwich, which she scarfed down.

"Hah! I know that's a fucking lie!" he crowed, grinning.

His grin turned into a frown as I reached out at super speed and smacked him on top of his hand with the flat of the butter knife I had just wiped off, saying, "Language." I could see him try to yank his hand out of the way, but he moved so slow that it was easy to give him a good smack and watch as he shook his hand in feigned pain. Although I was quick, I didn't actually hit him at more than tap strength.

Still, he wasn't quite wrong. Public schools didn't teach that, but business schools definitely did. I sighed, "I'll send you a list of classes that you can take online. You can't get credit for them, but you can audit their lectures online for free if you're actually interested in learning things that will help you." That was one of the weirdest parts of this world. There really wasn't that much that was secret in terms of base and even specialty education. Even designs of medical nanomachines, granted that they would be two or three generations out of date, were available online in many University archives.

However, the culture and, I suspected, the public school system inoculated the pernicious idea that "You can't change anything, so don't bother bettering yourself or even trying" generation after generation. That was a self-fulfilling prophecy, though. The odds might always be stacked against them, but you definitely couldn't change anything if you were ignorant.

You just couldn't change this world as a shounen protagonist archetype; you had to have some intellectual heft. If you didn't believe that, just look at the fate of all of the actual rockerboys, like the legendary Johnny Silverhand. I didn't think he was dumb, precisely, but I did think it was dumb to expect to sing yourself into a revolution. Revolutions required careful planning and logistics.

And the odds of changing anything were stacked against everyone. Even me. It seemed unlikely that I could change anything in a lasting way, at least as far as the social dynamics were concerned, even with all my advantages. However, I had lived with the default modal programming of "giving up" and "keeping my head down" for as long as I could stand already back in Brockton Bay.

Hiro got a canny look on his face and then nodded.

---xxxxxx---

November 2066

Night City

Night City Health Science Centre

I sat across from the well-dressed man in a similarly well-cut black minidress. As opposed to all of the other dresses I had worn in the past, this had a v-cut and actually showed off some cleavage, as much as I had anyway, and the hem was only to the lower to mid-thigh.

It was something that I would have never agreed to wear prior to spending two years as Dr Hasumi. It was weird how obvious self-loathing was in retrospect, but when I had assumed her identity, it had been obvious to me that Dr Hasumi had been quite pretty. Since I knew she was pretty, it wasn't a weird decision to wear pretty clothes. It wasn't my body, after all.

Spending two years in her skin let me wear things that I would never have agreed to wear as Taylor Hebert, but doing it for long enough had made it a habit.

Once I was Taylor again, I had already broken the habit of assuming I would look horrible in anything I wore. That allowed me to easily identify the source of my original hesitancy to branch out to any outfit that showed off any of my body at all. The colourings, though, were still dark and subdued. I just didn't like vibrant and bright colours.

"Well, we'd love to have you, but you kind of missed the start of residency. It would be a bit disruptive to slide you in, but you could definitely start January," the residency program director told me, spreading his hands wide, "We haven't had a graduate from Oxford start their residency here, well, ever. Usually, they handle medical internships themselves."

At first, there was some question as to whether my degree was real, just because of how unusual my job application was, but after they verified it, I was quickly scheduled a meeting with one of the administrators who handles the residency program. And it was true; I had missed the best time to start a residency. Late July and early August was "baby doctor season" in most teaching hospitals because that was about the time med school would end if you started it at the normal time of the year.

However, there were a lot of exceptions, and residents in off-semester starts weren't entirely unusual, but I would have to wait until January to begin just so as not to disrupt their current resident/Attending dynamic. I was sure that it was because they thought I was of the same level of skill as a normal resident. It generally took months of careful supervision in order for them to get to the point where they were useful at all, and nobody would want to duplicate that with me.

It was fine. I wasn't in a hurry. I smiled and said, "Oh, that's not a problem at all. Let's talk about which residency program I'd like to pursue."

---xxxxxx---

November 2066

Los Angeles

Dr Hasumi's Clinic Conference Room

I did what could only be characterised as a princess stomp, stomping my right foot down in displeasure as I asked, aghast, "They were just going to throw me into a sack, as though I was some turnips?!" It had been almost two weeks since the attack, and the investigation by Militech with Kiwi providing assistance was complete and was, as far as I could tell, thorough.

I was in a conference room getting an overview briefing both from Kiwi and a Militech intelligence analyst. They had already delivered the full report, but Militech was used to giving a bullet-point executive summary since they assumed most people like me probably wouldn't have read all three hundred pages. They were right, but in my case, I probably would read it when I had some downtime.

Kiwi's mouth was twitching. I had already talked to her about how I thought they might have planned to escape Trauma Team, even going as far as suggesting highly complicated and highly technical scenarios involving drone decoys and the like. But it turned out that they just had a really large sack with a fine copper-mesh lining.

I think that my overlooking such an obvious and simple solution was bothering me more than the idea of being thrown into a Santa sack, actually. I waved a hand and sat down, letting both of them continue the briefing.

After it was over, I thanked the Militech guy and watched him leave before sighing and saying, "That was a lot of words for saying we don't know shit."

"That's what I said!" Kiwi said, smacking her fist into her open palm, "But that guy said what bosses really want was a lot of words to say the same thing."

I snorted. That was probably right, most of the time, in most Corps. About half of the attackers were killed in the fight, but they were nobodies. The ones that managed to escape turned up dead a couple of days later, apparently having been zeroed not long after they escaped, so the entire attack was from a disposable cut-out, despite the standardised, if common, equipment.

Militech went as far as to investigate each dead mercenary individually to see if they could find a thread that could be pulled to unravel the obfuscation and identify the ultimate party responsible, but there was, seemingly, nothing. They all had military experience, but it was at least a decade ago, even for the most recent and since then, they were regular criminals, not even having the figleaf of calling themselves mercenaries, really.

They weren't connected through a shared gang or even a shared geographic area, either. While they all had served time, they didn't all serve time together or in the same lock-ups. The only common denominators were they were all from various parts of Southern California, and they were all convicted criminals with a history of being grunts once upon a time.

Now, that the entire team was composed of disposable cut-outs that were ruthlessly then cut out didn't necessarily mean that a Corp was responsible, but it did tend to suggest it. It wasn't like that random gangs weren't ruthless enough to do so, but they lacked the competence and capital to build such a team.

I shook my head, "Review our take from that asshole again; see if he's speaking in any kind of generalities or code with anyone."

Kiwi made a disgusted face, "I really, really doubt that he is passing any kind of information to any of his joytoys. Besides, he's gagged most of—"

As she began complaining, I rolled my eyes, but she made a good point, so I waved her off, interrupting her before she reminded me of some things I couldn't quite forget. "Just read the transcriptions." She seemed more disgusted than I did, and it was probably because I had a huge database of paraphilias in my head next to my general psychology data, so it was challenging to shock me with anything still legal.

I didn't even find the man's preferences surprising, as it wasn't that unusual, psychologically speaking, for people with very demanding leadership positions and the personality to seek those positions to have more... passive interests in bed.

It didn't bother me at all, but I certainly didn't want to think about it, either. I sighed and said, "I'm likely not going to go out too much. You should be cautious, too. For the time being, I want to stop seeing everyone for dinner, and if we have to talk, let's keep it virtual, under proxies." If I was really the target of a coordinated kidnapping attempt, it would be standard procedure to grab my "family", too. I didn't think I was close enough to Gloria or David for them to actually be coded as my family in any dossiers of me, but they would definitely be listed as friends or associates, along with Kiwi.

Kiwi was sort of playing the head of my security, along with one of her team members, which was a bit of a precarious position, as I didn't want her to risk her. I was putting myself out, like dangling ham in front of Mrs Pegpig. I knew something would happen, eventually.

There was a fair chance that any acquisition attempts would begin with a sort of decapitation attack on the management of my "Corporation." Although I had over a hundred employees now, I only had a few that were really critical. Despite not working for me, full-time Kiwi could be considered on that list.

Kiwi frowned at me. I hadn't exactly told her my plans, but she wasn't stupid. She didn't precisely understand the connection between Dr Hasumi and Taylor Hebert, and I believed she thought I was a clone with all of Taylor's memories, although we had never talked about it. That would make her find it odd that I was putting myself out on a limb, as it were, which she didn't feel that Taylor would do.

Still, she nodded, "Right, boss. We'll start taking a few more gigs from the elf-girl. She almost has people trusting that she is something like a fixer now."

Sarah, the elf-girl with the vulpine grin, always rubbed me just slightly off, like petting a cat in the wrong direction. I didn't dislike her; there was just something disquieting about her. Still, we had a fairly good relationship now, with me performing surgery on her entire small mercenary band. Kiwi had agreed to provide some training to them as well, so they were at least superior to the average booster gang in terms of threat level now.

I nodded. I didn't control who Kiwi did gigs for, but she was telling me that she wouldn't be as available if we were going to distance ourselves for the moment publicly. I said, "That sounds good."

As I watched Kiwi leave, I opened a file for contingency planning in the event the worst happened.

---xxxxxx---

January 2067

Los Angeles

Dr Hasumi's Office

My engineer Phillippé had asked me for a meeting first thing this morning, which I didn't think was a good sign. We rarely needed official face-to-face time. Our offices were across from each other, and we left both of our doors open. If he wanted something, all he had to do was holler.

In the past months, our products had gone close to mainstream, and I had half a dozen acquisition offers similar to the Dynacorp one. I had been expecting him to be poached for weeks now, despite the fact that he didn't actually understand the underpinnings of the sleep-inducer technology.

I smirked a little as he walked in. He was wearing a suit and tie today, too. We mostly dressed business casual. I sighed, and asked, "Are you quitting?"

He grinned and said, "Possibly. I've received a compelling offer, but I'm willing to allow you to match it." He said a number that caused both of my eyebrows to rise.

I slowly shook my head, "I'm afraid I can't match that salary." I could, but he had already reached his goals for deliverables, so it wasn't like his leaving would leave me in a lurch. It would make it almost a certainty that anyone I hired to replace him would be some kind of plant, though. But I expected him to be a plant now, too, for the right amount of baksheesh.

He chuckled and sat down and grinned, "That's kind of what I expected. It includes a title raise from Senior Engineer to Technical Project Lead, too. So I might not have accepted your counteroffer in the first place, but I wanted to see if you'd go for it, anyway."

He hadn't told me who hired him, and I hadn't expected him to. But I was curious. I tilted my head to the side and asked, "Are you staying the full month?" His contract specified he had to give me at least thirty days' notice of acquiring a position elsewhere. Otherwise, he would have to reimburse me four times his salary for the whole month. That was a pretty standard clause, and it was designed to allow me to hire a short-term troubleshooter consultant on contract if he did leave me in the lurch, and their fees were at least four times a regular engineer's.

He shook his head, "No. Today will be my last day. Can you take an irrevocable business Visa for the penalty fee?" Visa was a large financial services company, but they didn't have the same payment processor business as I remembered in Brockton Bay. It was kind of hard to make a business as a payment middleman with a digital currency that you could send back and forth for free. Still, they did a brisk business in a similar vein, providing credit and payment obfuscation services mostly for corporations.

An "irrevocable business Visa" was shorthand for a type of credit transaction that was impossible for Visa's client to reverse. Payments on this basis usually involve very high security, sometimes using DNA verification systems due to their high risk for hacking. If a hacker got your unlocked business Visa, they could charge a lot, and you'd never get the money back and or be obligated to pay if it was a credit arrangement.

In films and BDs, you'd see the hyper-rich buy a yacht or a private suborbital spaceplane with one all the time. It was the equivalent of the "black card" that I remembered vaguely from my last life. There was no way that Phillippé had one, which made me all the more curious. I nodded and said, "I'm willing to waive the penalty if you tell me whose offer you accepted."

It was mostly curiosity, but not entirely. I wanted to know if it was any of the guys that I was dealing with. This caused him to grin, "Don't waive it, but give it to me as a bonus in cash, along with two small favours, and it's a deal."

"Favours? Those I am not so sure about," I waffled. In my experience, it was almost always cheaper to pay for things in cash, not favours.

He waved a hand, "Small ones. First, I want some surgeries today. I'm going to be handing you back all the money and more, anyway. Second, can you drag your feet on processing the term? If I have an active Corp employment on file, it will make travel a lot easier." That said something in itself and narrowed down the possibilities of his new employer significantly. Not someone domestic, then. Los Angeles had been under Martial Law for some time, and it really was difficult to leave the city unless you were travelling for business.

Also, I found it amusing that it was clearly his new employer that was paying the penalty fee. He was, probably correctly, concerned if I waived the fee, they would not give him the money. That was probably correct. I chuckled and nodded, "Sure. You don't have much PTO accrued, but I'll say you're on personal leave if anyone asks and process your term in a month. I'll cut you vague travel orders for this duration, too, with the company chop. I'm sure there is some conference or something... somewhere. You figure it out."

He looked relieved, which told me that whatever foreign Corp gave him an offer didn't include exfiltration. He glanced around and said quietly, "Arasaka."

Well, that wasn't too surprising. They were the only one of the half dozen that actually seemed open to licensing my technology and paying the minimum amount that wouldn't trigger the Veritas contract execution. There had been a full five-page article about our sleep inducers in the January issue of Solo of Fortune magazine. It was very favourable, and the author realised the tactical advantage that it would bring to larger military forces, too. Apparently, one of the mercenary captain's men was, in addition to being a mercenary, a journalist of sorts. That had caused us to sell out and a lot of people to beat down my door recently. I was a little nervous, actually. I would have preferred the article never to be written, but I did end up giving a few quotes when I realised that was a lost cause.

I was actually a little surprised that Arasaka gave him an offer, actually. It explained why he was a bit cagey and needed his employment to travel somewhere where they could pick him up, too. Strictly speaking, accepting a job offer from them might break a number of laws, but that wouldn't stop any Corpo worth their salt. I asked, amused, "Are they aware that you don't actually know how the tech works?"

He shrugged, "I think so, but I didn't really advertise that. They know what work I did for you anyway, in general terms. I didn't violate the NDA." I didn't believe him but also didn't really care, either. NDAs weren't worth the paper they were printed on, which was why I made sure his actual access was limited.

I nodded. Their snapping him up meant that they didn't mind paying him a premium just for his experience developing the military features and user interface. That told me that Arasaka expected to acquire my technology and wanted to shorten any development time at all. That could be good news or bad news.

"Fair enough. Let's go downstairs to the clinic. What kind of cybernetics do you want?" I asked, curious. He listed off a number of neurological and cognitive boosters that I just happened to have in stock, the latter being Arasaka models in fact. I raised an eyebrow, "I'm sure your new boss would give you a hefty discount on a lot of this."

He snorted, "My dad said never go for the free or cheap company chrome. What if I make an ass out of myself in front of Hanako Arasaka on accident and get fired? They'd turn it all off when they termed me."

"They would shoot you, depending on what you said to Hanako-sama, and the police would write suicide on your death certificate," I said mildly. That caused him to chuckle nervously. Still, he had a good point.

"Ahahaha... about that. Do you happen to have a really high-end Japanese language chip in stock? The kind that won't make me seem like a stupid gaijin?" he asked hopefully.

I nodded slowly. I had used mine for so long that I was natively fluent in both Japanese and Mandarin now, and it was sitting in my desk drawer. I still didn't have a lot of the cultural referents that someone actually growing up in Japan would have, though. Still, I fished it out for him and slid it across the desk, "We'll call it your going away present in lieu of a cake, okay?" It was only worth about a grand, anyway.

---xxxxxx---

January 2067

Los Angeles

Cherry Limited Factory Floor

I practised the philosophy of "Management by Walking Around" both on regular schedules and also randomly. This was one of the former, as I walked around and talked with all of my workers every Monday. Everything was going well, except that we couldn't keep up with production.

Arasaka had agreed to the minimum terms necessary to license my technology, and we were just waiting to sign the papers. It was actually a different Corporation that was licensing the tech, but Arasaka owned it through a half dozen shell companies in various nations. I didn't care. I hoped this made Militech decide to reciprocate instead of standing firm in their desire to acquire my entire company.

They'd have to significantly up their offer if they wanted the whole company, as it was going to have significantly more revenue coming forward, and thusly it should be valued much higher than they had.

As I stepped into the security office, I smiled at the security manager I had hired. He mainly did local security, stuff like keeping the employees themselves from wild pilfering, whereas Kiwi or other mercenaries I hired did what an actual Corporate Security Team would generally accomplish. In that sense, I acted as the Security Manager myself, but still, the factory security manager had five employees under him.

"Ah, right on time, Boss," he said, with a grin, motioning for me to sit down in front of his desk, which I did so.

I chuckled, "I must be getting a little too predict—" I froze as an internal alert caused me to shift my attention to my HUD. The klaxon was an impossible-to-ignore tone that I had cribbed from Star Trek: The Next Generation's Red Alert tone. That show had been a family favourite, even imported from Earth Aleph as it was. A second Star Trek series existed in this universe, too, but it was wildly different. The Federation of Planets was a lot less socialist, and the Ferengi were portrayed as wise good guys, always helping the poor stupid humans.

The alert was coming from my surveillance system. It had optically tracked at least four AV-4s and an AV-8 that were converging on our location. The helpful non-sentient AI had already queried air traffic control, and they were on no approved flight plan, and in fact, ATC didn't have them on their scopes at all. The feed from the security system should have then cut out, as I noticed a huge amount of white noise in the radio spectrum. The point sources of the jammers were all inside the factory; one of them was inside this very room.

"Shit," I started to say, but before I could get anything else out I glanced down at several darts sticking out of my chest, with my head of security holding an autoloading dart gun in his hand.

"It's treason, then," I growled. I was resistant to most sedatives but definitely not immune, and my biom had told me that he had given me enough to make a normal person stop breathing. I'd still have enough time to kill this asshole, though.

Or so I thought. I stiffened as muscular-destabilising electrical currents raced through my body. He didn't have a Taser on him, and this was stronger than that. I localised the current to a device that had been installed in the chair I was sitting at. I was getting shocked through my ass.

The current was designed to incapacitate me non-lethally until the sedatives took effect, I guessed. Perhaps in the future, I would be less predictable in my meetings and a little bit less trustworthy.

After that, that body fell unconscious.

---xxxxxx---

January 2067

Lagrange point 3, Earth-Moon System

EVA

I closed my eyes briefly after finishing welding a bead on the spindle we were slowly building. Far from the interior electrical work I had been expecting, I had been doing actual zero-g construction for a month, and I had just watched my other body be rendered unconscious by someone I would have described as a mook.

It was embarrassing, and it was just as disconcerting when part of me was unconscious, but it was a little bit better than last time because you didn't generally dream when you were as drugged as I had just been.

Still, floating in space in a construction hardsuit with dangerous tools everywhere was not the place to have an issue like this. I keyed my push-to-talk and said on the workgroup comm to my supervisor, "Ayodele, I need to take five. I think I'm getting a little vertigo."

Most of the managers on the Galileo station were of Nigerian phenotypes, specifically from the Yoruba people that had called Lagos home, mainly. Most of the O'Neill workers had been Africans that the European Space Agency had convinced to come into space for a new life. Lagos was a lot like Night City, an amazing city, but there were plenty of people who would leave it for a chance like that, especially if someone else was going to pay your lift ticket.

However, the truth had been eighteen-hour work days, pay in company scrip and zero safety margins. Eventually, all of the crew revolted. Successfully. I was pretty sure that they had some mass drivers that could imperil both the Earth's surface and, more importantly, the Crystal Palace, so the ESA and Corps involved had, surprisingly, let them go. They even stopped oppressing the workers in O'Neill three and four so badly, so those two stations were still Corporate owned. Ayodele hadn't even been born when that happened, though, but her parents had been. She came back on the radio, surprise in her voice, "Ya? Okay. Police all your gear and get in the scooter. You're about done with your shift anyway."

She was surprised because she had expected this reaction from me a month ago, not now. Still, spacers had learned one thing really well from living in a completely artificial environment. If someone said they weren't one hundred per cent on an EVA, the EVA stopped.

I grabbed my tools, making sure I didn't leave anything. There were stiff fines if you let go of a tool in space. They would have to charter a scooter to run it down, lest it become a hazard to navigation. Nobody wanted it to come back around someday to cause a pressure emergency or hole a ship. I had since learned that the crew members in the freighter that had brought me to the station had been exaggerating a lot when they told me how long it would take for a hole in the cabin to evacuate all the air. You really did have a fair bit of time unless the hole was massive. Counter-intuitively, air would escape in an airliner faster due to the pressurised cabin causing a huge pressure differential compared to the one atmosphere and vacuum.

Still, I imagine teasing groundsiders was something of a national sport up here. Soon, I would be able to join in. After I hopped into the scooter and buckled in, I shifted my mind back to Los Angeles. I was still unconscious, but my entangled pairs still worked. My body hadn't been moved yet, and the AVs had started to land. I considered having the Arasaka drones attempt to fight off the intruders but if they had gone to the extent of suborning my security guy, then they would know what assets I had available. I ordered the bots to swarm the factory floor and guard my workers instead, ordering my employees to seek cover. Perhaps if I had all of the combat bots in the factory, they could fight off this incoming force, but they were spread around my factory, clinic and warehouse.

Then I triggered a few contingencies, sending a message to both Trauma Team and Militech. I didn't think that I would be rescued this time, though. I had a feeling. So, I triggered a self-destruct command on the factory hardware that flashed each of my sleep inducers with their operating system. Each sleep inducer had heavily encrypted firmware code that would run on only that particular microcontroller. They could take a copy of the encrypted software from a purchased inducer, but it wouldn't run on any other hardware.

They could still perform a full cryptologic reverse-engineering attack or attempt to de-encapsulate the microcontroller in an attempt to acquire the private key to decrypt the software package, but that took quite a while, even for Megacorps. In this day and age, physical DRM has vastly exceeded the state-of-art of reverse engineers. It wasn't impossible, but at the moment, the pendulum had shifted to favour copy protection. In the past, the opposite had been true, and I was sure the pendulum would shift again in the future.

On the custom-built industrial device that encrypted the software and flashed it onto each wreath, a small thermite charge was set off. There wasn't a bang but a loud hiss that turned the memory into slag. Forget getting data out of it; you wouldn't be able to separate its constituent molecules anymore.

I'd probably have to do the same to the factory system and private subnet too, but I had already transferred all of my private data to my system in Night City. Still, I didn't want anyone to get a chance to examine my Haywire pairs, a few of which were connected to the subnet computing cluster. Those had similar thermite charges connected to them, but I held off for about five minutes until I noticed at least two netrunners attempting to breach the system. At that point, I trashed everything and completely lost any further connection to Los Angeles, except for the several pairs inside Dr Hasumi's body.

---xxxxxx---

January 2067

Unknown Location

I "woke up" and found myself tied to a chair very securely. The room I was in was large, like a warehouse. If Petrochem and Militech hadn't systematically levelled all of the abandoned buildings in the port, I would have suspected I was there.

It wasn't a good chair, but it was well-constructed out of steel. I tested the bindings out of habit and found that I wasn't going anywhere. It wasn't bolted into the ground, though, so that was an option. There was still a jammer preventing me from connecting wirelessly to the net, so I couldn't figure out where I was located. The jammer was attached directly to my neck, though, so it was probably a low-strength one. Maybe low strength enough not to be detected by Trauma Team?

They had extracted me before Trauma Team had arrived and then even damaged Trauma's AV-4 with a surface-to-air missile launch, causing a forced landing. Generally speaking, this was like hitting a hornet's nest, but it did give them enough time to go to the ground, I guess. Trauma would be looking for them, though, for sure. For Revenge, if nothing else.

"Ah, Dr Hasumi... those restraints were designed for combat borgs. I don't think you'll be going anywhere," a woman said, which caused me to look up and find her in the low light of the large room.

I raised an eyebrow, "Straight to the hard sell, really? This doesn't bode that well if you want to 'recruit' me."

That caused the woman to chuckle, seemingly genuinely, "Ah... we don't. All we want you to do is sign this form, and you can go. After you transfer all the source code and design files, that is. We'll sell it along, as we're just middlemen, you see. That was a nasty trick with the thermite." She held out a physical sheet of paper, close enough that I got a look at it.

I blinked. It was a simple document, and my signing it would turn it into a license for all of my technology, not to anyone in particular but to anyone who had that physical document. Basically, a license as a bearer instrument. How perverse. Was this group really not affiliated with one of the large Corporations that had been trying to acquire my company recently? This license would definitely cause the Veritas contract to execute, but if they were selling it, that would mean they wouldn't be able to ask for as large a price. It would still be very valuable.

How did they get all of the military hardware into Los Angeles, including half a squadron of armed AVs, though? It didn't add up that they were, precisely speaking, independent as they were claiming. If they were, it wasn't actually good news for me because they'd have no real incentive to actually let me go and a lot of incentives to put me in the ground. Anyone looking at me as only a single, one-time payout might not have the foresight to consider how I might make even more in the future.

"No, I don't think so," I said simply. The longer I could drag this out, the better my chances were.

The woman clucked her tongue and said, "I'm afraid I wasn't clear. Refusal is not an option." Suddenly a holographic display on the floor activated and projected an image in between us. I had to stop myself from trying to break my bounds again. It was a video that seemed to show Gloria, David and Kiwi all tied against a wall. They all looked a little worse for wear, clearly having been knocked around a bit.

I offloaded all the fury I was feeling into my two other bodies so that I still seemed unperturbed and stared at the woman levelly, silent.

"Oh? Maybe this dossier we have on you is wrong, then?" the woman asked curiously. And suddenly, someone started beating the shit out of Kiwi on the video, but something I saw as she was knocked to the ground caused me to freeze.

Her deck. Just two days ago, Kiwi had finally finished completely jailbreaking the NetWatch NetDriver and snuck to my clinic to have me put it in. I had built a custom plate for it to disguise it, too. But the cyberdeck on Kiwi in the video was her old Fuyutsuki Tinkerer. This was a fake.

I was being stupid. Computers could generate fakes of anyone, and this woman was counting on me not being able to contact anyone. But I was connected to all of my bodies simultaneously. I had Taylor call Kiwi, who answered after the first ring, "Where's David and Gloria?" I asked her, not waiting for a hello.

"We're all at a safe house, along with my boys. I grabbed them when I saw what happened at your place. Uhhh... is uhh.. Dr Hasumi..." she used air quotes, "...okay?"

I had Taylor roll her eyes, "Probably. They kidnapped her, obviously. Do you know anything about who it could be?"

Kiwi shook her head, and I sighed, "Alright. I think David and Gloria need to get back to Night City. It's weird, thinking Night City is safer for anyone."

That caused Kiwi to snort and chuckle with amusement, but she nodded, "Yeah. I don't think anyone came after them or us, but perhaps it's time for our Los Angeles adventure to come to an end. What about you? You're going to lose a shitload if you abandon everything there. Trauma Team is swarming the south side of Los Angeles, but as far as I can tell, they haven't found Dr Hasumi yet."

I waved off the question and transferred a quarter million Eurodollars, "This is to get everybody out of the city. Consider it a gig." Then I hung up.

I didn't really feel that more charitable to the woman that she was only threatening to kill computer versions of my friends and not the real ones. I didn't know if they didn't care or just didn't have the time and resources to actually grab us both simultaneously. Still, I sighed and said, lying, "Occasional employees and acquaintances are, unfortunately, not sufficient for me to sign this agreement, and it is a little bit weird that you would think threatening them would work on me."

She raised an eyebrow, and someone shot the computerised Kiwi in the head on the display. I sighed and shook my head, "A waste, but that doesn't change anything."

This caused the woman to frown again and then scowl, waving a hand and causing the display to deactivate. Then she grinned, "I guess we'll have to do things the hard way."

Killing my friends wasn't the hard way? Well, for a dyed-in-the-wool Corpo, it probably wouldn't be. This would likely be some sort of torture, then. That was both good and bad. Bad, because torture bad, duh. But good because it might take a while.

I had a tentative plan to use the Haywire pairs in my body to track my location; the only problem was that they weren't designed to serve as a tracking system inside a dimension. They were designed to serve as an inter-dimensional tracking system. Professor Haywire had never anticipated being held incommunicado; he had been laser-focused on building tracking systems to find his way back home if he had made a mistake and found himself marooned on some random Earth.

I had an idea that would introduce a little bit of latency based on distance in the Haywire pairs. Less than a picosecond per kilometre, but enough that I could possibly triangulate my present location using all of my connected pairs. It was something I should have definitely thought of before, but I hadn't. I didn't know how long it would take, and my body in Night City was working on it right now.

Alternately, if that didn't work, I would attempt to knock this jammer device off my neck before they murdered me, but it seemed stuck on there pretty good, like a choker necklace.

It hurt me that I didn't have an "ace in the hole" plan here. I needed some additional integrated weapon that was hard to detect. Maybe I could hollow out my distal phalanx and add a dart gun to my index finger. I could have custom load-outs from sedatives to nerve agents, too. That was a good idea, but not one that would help me too much.

I was about to make a snide comment about how she wasn't scary, as the woman had made a whole display about producing some torture implements, but then I realised that would just make it proceed quicker. She could waste as much time as she liked.

Before I could wonder what that particular instrument was for, there was a loud crash, and an armoured vehicle drove straight through the wall like the Kool-Aid man. It made a pretty large hole in the side of the wall, which now I was focused on as I could run out of that hole since the chair wasn't bolted to the ground. It would be awkward, but possible. However, before I made the decision, the turret on the vehicle shifted, and an electromagnetic heavy-machine gun riddled the woman threatening me with flechettes, turning her into chunky salsa right in front of me.

Men dressed in all black ran out of the hatch of the vehicle, and over to me and quickly cut me free with a vibroknife and tossed me over their shoulders with a polite, "Pardon me, Hasumi-sensei."

They were speaking Japanese, which surprised me. In less than twenty seconds, we were all back inside the infantry compartment in the back of the wheeled APC, and I could feel us driving away. One of the ninja-looking men sat me on a chair and said, "Excuse us for the familiarity, but time was of the essence."

I just blinked and asked, "Who are you guys?" Although, I liked these new kidnappers better than my last kidnappers.

The one that had spoken said, "Ah... before we get into that, did you happen to have your solar sprocket with you?" I blinked at him several times until the word clicked. It was one of the signs that Dr Hasumi had been told before she left Japan. This particular one was for Arasaka Intelligence.

I fumbled with the countersign, no doubt sounding super lame, "Uhhh... No... but I'm sure I could dig another one up if I had a golden shovel."

This caused the ninja to nod, satisfied, "Hasumi-sensei; we're pleased to rescue you. You have two options. You can accept employment with Arasaka Corporation, or we can let you out here. In my opinion, you will be immediately renditioned by Militech if you choose to leave our custody. In either case, we will abide by the tentative licensing agreement we agreed to, but if you want to leave, we'll need you to formalise it before you go. We have a terminal to upload it to Veritas Corporation right here."

That's about what I expected, although I was a little surprised that they said that they would abide by the terms of the license anyway. Arasaka had a reputation for playing hardball when they could get away with it. I agreed with their assessment of Militech, though.

Would Arasaka really let me go, though, if I wanted? I frowned, "Would you be willing to add a clause to invalidate the contract if I disappeared?" I was a little concerned that they'd just shoot me too, rather than let Militech rendition me if that is what they really thought was going to happen. They were basically enemies, after all. It would be denying an enemy an asset.

He looked uneasy at that and shook his head, "I don't think so because we expect you to promptly disappear, at least for a long time, if you don't take our offer. Plus, if we filed a contract with such a clause, you might never reappear. At least not until we lost the patent case in court. I assure you that we will not harm you whatever you choose, however."

I sighed. Well. My choice was clear. It wasn't like I wasn't expecting something like this, though. Arasaka was a bit suboptimal, but they had been playing less hardball than Militech had been lately. I said, "I'll take the job, but I want to see the signed license agreement filed first. I don't want you to try to claim that now I am an employee that it is actually Arasaka's work product."

That caused the ninja to smile and chuckle, "Of course. That won't be a problem at all. Let's do that right now. It will take some doing to get you out of LA."