Get your ass to Mars

June 2067

Tokyo, Japan

Arasaka Research Centre, Clinic

As I stared at Yuki floating peacefully in the nanomachine vat, I was struck with a thought. Was I fated to always augment my pets? I had added experimental respirocytes to Lord Butterbutt, too. Wait, Yuki wasn't my pet. Also, as an aside, I didn't think it was, strictly speaking, moral to keep human beings as pets, either. But that didn't matter, since he wasn't my pet!

Nodding, I continued. Besides, these weren't experimental anyway, so it couldn't be said that I was experimenting on him like the other pets. I discovered that Yuki had no ongoing biosculpt treatments, although I suspected he had his looks modified recently. He was a bit too pretty for it to be natural, but as far as augmentations were concerned, he only had a pair of fancy optics, a high-end Arasaka operating system and a special high-gain radio with included encryption module and emergency locator beacon.

That wasn't enough, especially if he was going to be around me. Just being in the crossfire of my security teams might cause him to be gibbed, so I insisted that he get at least nanosurgeons, an enhanced immune system and the ballistic skin weave. He flatly refused any type of cybernetics that affected his looks, which I found amusing. But Sakura Hasumi probably wouldn't have liked some pretty boy that had real obvious subdermal armour or cybernetic limbs, I supposed.

She was the type to appreciate the gap moe in a pretty boy being really strong, but only if it didn't affect his prettiness.

I had already performed the surgery to install the nanosurgeon and enhanced immune system organs, and now I was finishing up with the ballistic weave and muscle and bone lace. Yuki wasn't interested in being any stronger himself, but just having much more robust bones would be a huge survival advantage. Someone with muscle and bone lace could jump out of a third-story window and probably not break anything, whereas someone who didn't have it would probably break their everything.

The door behind me opened, and I narrowed my eyes because I had block scheduled this clinic for the next few hours. The door should have been locked. I glanced back to see who the intruder was.

"Those are nice eyes," an amused and familiar voice, apparently approving of my killer instinct. My eyes softened somewhat; at least I knew that this guy was authorised to be here. The voice belonged to my nominal boss, a man named Kimura Koichi, who walked into the room and waited until the door closed before glancing at the floating Yuki and asking, again amused, "Doing some upgrades?"

"Anyone who expects to be near me should be at least shrapnel-resistant, Kimura-san," I replied with a sigh. "If you disagreed, then why do I have to pay so much for security?"

He shrugged, "You're not wrong, probably. I'm in the building for another few hours, so I wanted to touch base with you, and this is as private a room as exists around here. Let's talk about your two ongoing projects. I liked your idea to look through old, abandoned projects, but couldn't you have picked a different one?"

I frowned, "I could have, but I'm fairly optimistic for success with the biometals one. What's wrong?"

"Nothing, I suppose. It's just that this project wasn't involved in our Kiji faction at all, and all the people who backed it are still around. I would have preferred you to pick one of the ones that would make us look better," he sighed.

I snorted. I knew that the factions that had built up around various Arasaka scions weren't that big a deal, but I did know that I was hired under the auspices of Hanako Arasaka's faction, but she was a recluse, so I didn't know what it really meant. I didn't think most people who worked for her did, either.

When he saw that I wouldn't comment further, he nodded, "Now, your next project. I can't say I see the purpose of making quasi-biological robots. They aren't really cyborgs like we'd think of them, and they don't do anything that traditional robotics cannot accomplish."

He didn't? I didn't believe him. This had to be a test. So, I nodded, "That's true, but in small autonomous robots, over thirty per cent of the BOM is the neural network chips and processors. Also, nobody is building new chip fabs right now, except small boutique outfits in space, so the capacity to produce these chips is an issue. That's why we don't normally see small autonomous or semi-autonomous robots for reasonable prices. The economies aren't there. I think we could not only reduce the cost dramatically, causing these robots to be economically viable but do so in a way that wouldn't compete with the limited supply chain for our other larger and more profitable robots." If I had wanted to build one of my spider bots the traditional way, it would have taken the same or at least a similar specialised neural network system-on-a-chip that was used in the Arasaka bipedal combat robots, and supplying these chips was the bottleneck when producing robots.

He grinned, "So you do see the big picture, too. Good. I want you to prioritise this project. I agree with everything you said. But these robots won't go crazy, will they?"

I paused and then gave a Gallic shrug, "They didn't with the prototypes I made in LA, but I mainly sourced the neural tissue from gangsters that tried to attack my clinic or factory, not cloned tissue." That was a lie, actually. I had cloned almost all of it, but I didn't want to admit that I had most of this project already on lock since it involved too much Tinkertech.

He seemed not exactly reassured, but just the possibility that robots might go crazy wasn't a reason that Arasaka would stop a project. He'd probably just donate the first several thousand bots programmed to dispose of trash in some country Arasaka needed a tax break in. Along with an iron-tight release of liability if the robots reclassified toddlers as trash and acted accordingly. But I was sure that wouldn't happen if I was careful with the neural-network training system.

"When did you become an expert in genetics, anyway?" he asked curiously.

Ah. I'd have to step carefully here. Dr Hasumi's PhD involved research to make taste and smell in VR simulations more realistic, so it wouldn't be incorrect to call her specialised in neuroscience, but that didn't explain my broad expertise across all life science.

As such, my development of the sleep inducer wasn't that unusual, as it depended on an advanced knowledge of neuroscience to work. I shrugged, glancing over at the floating Yuki, "I've always had an interest. I took a number of advanced genetics classes at University but decided on a different speciality in the end. But I've always been an autodidact, especially in the life sciences. It was spending almost a year as a prisoner that, surprisingly, gave me a number of unwitting experimental subjects and a new outlook on life. That's how I developed the sleep induction technology, actually. Random seizures were pretty normal, I suppose, for my captors, so they didn't even really notice. My goal was to put them all to sleep simultaneously and then murder them, but I was rescued before I could put the plan into action."

"It's interesting how that then leads you here," he mused, then chuckled, "It's funny you should mention seizures. Intel suggests that Militech has already tried building a prototype based on this technology, and it reportedly causes seizures, so they're not releasing it and staying mum about it. Analysis?"

I shrugged, "Not surprising if they are trying to reverse engineer the system based on how it affects one person's brain and then extrapolating it and expecting it to work the same on other subjects' brains. This would be the logical first step to trying to understand how it works. I bet they're trying this approach while simultaneously working on defeating the DRM as separate independent projects. Absent espionage, I would expect them to have success on the DRM attack surface much sooner. Still, it could be useful as a way of inducing various types of seizures, I suppose."

My boss gaped, "Why would you want a way to induce seizures?"

"For research purposes. Detailed analysis of brain activity while a seizure is happening and during the postictal state is kind of rare. You have to wait for it to happen with a subject known to experience seizures hooked up to all sorts of equipment. Very time-consuming, just waiting, like watching a tea kettle while it boils. A way to safely, or at least mostly safely, induce seizures would speed up research on all seizure-related illnesses," I said mildly, as I turned back to adjust a setting on the vat Yuki was asleep in briefly. He was due to come out in a couple of hours, so I was about done here.

He sighed, got a queer look on his face, and said, "Honestly, you brain doctors kind of scare me. I have a pure engineering background." I heard that a lot, and I didn't understand. The body was just a kind of wet machine, after all. It wasn't magical and operated under the same limitations of physics as other machines. Then he nodded, "Okay. These two projects are good, but after this, I'd appreciate it if you focused at least one project on your primary neuroscience focus. The other can be whatever you want. But that was the main reason you were hired, and I'll receive shit if you don't at least try to expand your expertise in this area."

I raised an eyebrow. That wasn't mentioned in my employment contract, and I specifically had the freedom to research whatever I wanted. I wondered who in our Kiji faction wanted a more specialised neuroscientist. I made a noncommittal noise, "I don't make any promises. But what area of neuroscience are our bosses interested in? It is as vast as any other specialty."

"Well, you've already got some expertise in the senses, and now sleep. Perhaps you could find something that would interest you in the realm of consciousness?" I snorted. This man obviously didn't know much about the brain. That was like suggesting a physicist might be interested in figuring out the unified field theory. He noticed my scepticism and corrected himself, "Or even memory. Or advancing the way skill chips work, perhaps making them less static. It's really up to you, just some ideas."

Memory, eh? I wasn't about to provide technology for Arasaka in the realm of parsing or extracting memory from a brain. I had that technology already privately. As someone with a lot of secrets that I didn't want anyone else to know, I would prefer if nobody else had this tech. Allegedly we had the Soulkiller, but I didn't have the clearance to know anything about it, and the second word was key to that hypothetical tech. It killed you, burning out critical parts of your brain while making a destructive copy. Allegedly. I'd have liked very much to do a pathological examination of someone who had allegedly been "soul killed."

However, if they had some way to copy a brain without it killing someone, then they'd likely immediately use it on all of their important people, including me. And I didn't want any copy of my memories being interrogated or investigated in software. The fact that I wasn't really Sakura Hasumi was the least of my secrets.

The boss didn't stay too long after that. I wasn't too concerned about his attempt to steer my research, either. Really, he was barely a boss. He was closer to the type of managers that idols had, whose main purpose was to handle my needs and keep me out of trouble. I got the impression that he was a talent manager rather than some great businessman. He already mentioned he had three similar people to me under his supervision, although I didn't know what kind of focus these other prodigies had. Still, I would play nice, if I could.

I glanced around and then left too. Yuki still had a while longer to cook. Perhaps I would offer free biosculpt to all my workers, too. It'd be a nice little bennie.

---xxxxxx---

June 2067

Japantown, Night City

Taylor's Clinic

At the same time that my boss was interrupting me in Tokyo, one of the Tyger Claw security managers called me back in Night City.

"Thank you for telling me," I finished in Japanese and disconnected the call. It was the middle of the night, but the Tyger Claws called me as soon as they saw a Borg walk into the building. I was sure that they had identified him as my patient and were calling to confirm that I did expect him to show up in the middle of the night.

It wasn't just the Clouds that made the Tyger Claws money, the entire Megabuilding was a golden goose, but it only continued to be so when it was kept a safe place to live, work and shop. I had the suspicion that the Tyger Claws might even own part of the building as they certainly ran all of the building management, but even if they didn't, you could only provide "protection" services if the extorted party was actually at least somewhat protected. Anytime they saw an obviously dangerous entity come in, they followed them to make sure they didn't go cyberpsycho or something. In this case, they had recognised him but wanted confirmation.

I was breaking the law by treating Gloria's "acquaintances", but I didn't really care these days. I already did the same for a number of Tyger Claws, and they weren't really that great of people—even if I only allowed the less objectionable members in my clinic. Plus, weird secret society members knew to keep their mouths shut.

I put on a white lab coat. I mainly wore them to give people what they expected to see, as expectations were powerful. They saw what they thought should look like a doctor, so they immediately put me in that category mentally. It helped a lot when you ran a quasi-legal clinic. Amusingly enough, I hardly ever wore such things in my day job as an actual doctor. Instead, I just wore scrubs when I was performing surgeries or business casual when I was doing consults. Residents had scrubs of a specific colour in order to be easily identified, though.

I would skip the stethoscope around my neck this time, there were no biological sounds I would need to listen to on this patient, and very few full-body replacement users were stupid. The door gong sounded, and a screen with cameras popped up in my visual field. A generic-looking Alpha-class Borg was standing outside. Nodding, I tested the security systems I had installed and then let him in.

"Dr Hebert... I was very excited when you said my body was done. I can't wait to get back in there," the man said as he came in. I nodded. I had already met this man, which was the only reason I was agreeing to meet him alone. I ended up buying two gently used Alpha-class bodies to use as "loaners" when I discovered how much work needed to be done on both the IEC Wingman and the Militech Eclipse. It was an expense of about a hundred thousand Eurodollars, but I figured I would customise them and then sell them later. I expected to make a profit on the purchase, and in the meantime, the opportunity to study in-depth, with no time pressures, how the IEC Wingman and the Militech Eclipse was constructed was priceless.

The latter was still in bits in my back area, which I had converted into a workroom. There just wasn't enough space to run a small pharmacy and clinic in here, as well as have a lot of room to work on electronics and my own personal experiments. I followed Gloria's example and rented a nice one-bedroom apartment on the fortieth floor, although I often slept in a comfortable chair in the back when I didn't want to go back upstairs.

I motioned for him to take a seat and forwarded diagnostic wireless requests, and handed him a small interface cord, saying in mild disapproval, "There were years of accumulated squawks to go through on the maintenance punch list. And your Kerenzikov was starting to break down. Your biopod itself had a number of faults, and I think maybe you would have gone crazy or died soon. Or gone crazy and died."

He chuckled uneasily, approved the diagnostic request and connected the proferred cord to the interface socket on his body's head, "Yeah... I kind of thought something was seriously wrong. My head feels a lot better, too; I'm not snapping at everyone, and I'm not seeing things that aren't there anymore, either... I think. But living this slow is really starting to grate on me..." His optics shifted and zoomed in, staring at the back of my neck where my own Kerenzikov was partially visible on the back of my neck, "You must know what I'm talking about."

I did. I had, a few times, disabled my Kerenzikov in order to perform maintenance in the past. Now, though, I was just using a commercial off-the-shelf QianT version since I felt that I might be unable to perform the weekly maintenance I was forced to do to boost my old Kang Tao system. When you got acclimatised to using a Kerenzikov, especially a higher factor one, you tended to get used to using a lot of the free time when interacting with norms to do other things, so when you found yourself bereft of the boost, you seemed flighty and ditzy, almost as though you had extreme ADHD. I said with some sympathy, "Yes, I know exactly what you're talking about. Sorry, I couldn't get a Kerenzikov unit designed for a traditional biopod to loan you on short notice. They're somewhat more controlled than even the regular kind. Despite that, you seem quite a bit more... grounded today. That is good. Any dysmorphia? Hallucinations?"

It wasn't that surprising that an augmentation that would, more than any single other, make Borgs even more dangerous was more controlled. It didn't mean that I couldn't get them, though, but it needed a bit of a lead time, and I had to use my black market connections. I was fortunate that my Kerenzikov worked with my system, as I was, from a legal and technical perspective, classified as a biopodder as well. I had made sure that compatibility existed before I bought them, though. Although a cyberbrain user still had a regular organic body, so it needed a full, normal Kerenzikov, it also had the connections to the brain that had to interface correctly with my "biopod."

I glanced at the readouts of the internal brain monitor that was included on his biopod, which I had repaired during the last session. His brain activity seemed a lot better, but still not what I would call healthy. Judging from the rapid activity shifts based on his sensory cortex input, he still suffered a bit from hypervigilance, even here. But he was a lot better than the borderline psychotic I had treated the last time. With a properly functioning biopod, all of the brain inflammation was gone too. That was probably what had been causing his hallucinations.

He nodded his robot head and said, "No more than I expected, and as for hallucinations... I don't think so. The medication you gave me seemed to have helped a lot, too. Are you sure there are no side effects I should be worried about?"

I shook my head. I had started all of the Borgs I had seen on the same medication I used myself. I called it my antidepressant, but in reality, the method of action was closer to a mood stabiliser. It didn't really prevent you from being depressed; it just stopped your depression from feeding on your depression in an uncontrollable spiral. It worked the same way if you were really paranoid or manic, too. It wasn't a silver bullet, but it had worked so well that I felt really bad at myself for keeping it a secret for years, so I decided to release it into the public domain as soon as I could do so without being tracked down.

Although it wouldn't really attract much attention if I just released it to the world and claimed it was really nice, so I was writing a legitimate scientific paper about its efficacy, along with step-by-step directions to synthesise it. I was pretty sure someone would try to replicate the findings if, just out of boredom, eventually, and discover it wasn't just bullshit. At that point, it would be manufactured for sure, and I hoped the fact that everyone had the details and it would be unpatentable would keep the price reasonable.

It should be unpatentable since I was releasing it into the public domain, but I suspected a number of companies would lie and claim that they had developed it and the release was by a disgruntled employee. But they'd have no proof, and that would just cause other companies to do the same thing, so it wouldn't really matter and should stay relatively cheap.

Patents were an interesting facet of "international law" here, basically because there was no international law. The United Nations didn't survive the DataKrash. Although it didn't survive, some of its tendrils, like NetWatch, which was founded under a UN charter, did. The World Trade Organisation did, theoretically, exist, and they were the ones who were supposed to adjudicate patent disagreements, for example, the one that was occurring between Japan and the NUSA involving my own tech. But in reality, the WTO was almost as toothless as the defunct UN.

In practice, however, it was more a case of détente. Arasaka had taken over legal responsibility to protest the invalidation of my NUSA patents, but that was somewhat hampered by the fact that Arasaka was banned from the continent in the first place. From what I could tell, though, there would eventually be some sort of accommodation. There had to be some sort of settlement in the end because NUSA corporations had too many patents of their own that other nations were already looking at with avarice. You ignored the patent rights of this foreign company, so why shouldn't we do the same for you? This was especially the case of the Europen Community, who had the most patents and therefore the most to gain for keeping the present status quo.

Due to the possibility of Mutually Assured Destruction, intellectual property version, I was advised that some settlement would undoubtedly be made, but perhaps not for a year or two. Arasaka and I would likely get a fair bit of money from it, as the two damaged parties, because if it didn't happen, I'm sure Arasaka would love to start infringing on some NUSA patents, and since that would cause a similar response, the entire patent "system", which operated mainly on the level of gentleman's agreements, would implode.

I elaborated, "There should be no negative side effects. It's a very safe medication. I've included it in the personal pharmacopoeia in your Wingman, taking out most of the harmful drugs, although I refilled the stimulants and depressants as a courtesy; just remember to use them in moderation." Not surprisingly, a body designed for a fighter pilot had a complicated pharmacopoeia that could administer any of about three dozen drugs, but most of them were bad news. Stuff that would heighten aggression, dampen empathy, and others that made one more likely to follow orders and the like.

I suppose that might be necessary if you ordered someone to nuke a city or something, but it wasn't really a good idea if your goal was the mental stability of the individual. The nice thing about existing as mostly only a brain was that psychoactive drugs were very economical! There was no the rest of your body that metabolised them. He would have years and years' worth of my mood stabiliser before he would need to return to get some more, and perhaps he wouldn't need it anymore at that point.

I probably didn't need it anymore, myself, but I kept taking it once a week anyway, just in case, because it had so few side effects.

He grinned, "Did you make the other change to my body we talked about?"

I gave him a side-eye and nodded, "Yes. Although, that, you will have to pay full price for, as we agreed. However, the Mr Studd unit was installed successfully."

He snorted, "Heh-heh... unit..." Ah, yes, the maturity of most males shines through even when you're a Borg. Still, that request was a good sign. The fact that he was interested in sexual activity was good from a psychological perspective. He turned to me and said, "You know... this isn't a hallucination, really... but sometimes I wonder if maybe I'm not and never have been a human, and if all of my memories were just fabrications... or if everything is just some sort of sick simulation."

I raised an eyebrow. That wasn't really a healthy thought, at least the first bit, although I sometimes wondered about the latter myself, whether the world was just some weird simulation. I had gotten more in touch with my power to the point that I could, if I focused all three brains on the matter, even ask it questions. It answered in single words that were much more than words, and I had already made a query about this subject in the past.

It's reply wasn't that comforting, namely:

[SIMULATION]

[POSSIBLE]

It had given me a slight headache as there were tens of thousands of impressions attached to each of those words, and taken in aggregate, it seemed to think that it was possible, but it was also metaphysical and that it was pointless to dwell on so long as we didn't notice obvious inconsistencies in reality—in other words, not that helpful and precisely what I thought about the subject, too. So it didn't know anything more than I did.

"Well, I can assure you that you have a real human brain in there," I told him, tapping the Alpha's body, but made a shrugging gesture at the rest, "The rest is metaphysics, though. It is possible we live in a vast simulation, but if so, so what? From our perspective, there is no distinction between such an existence and so-called true reality." I hummed and said, "If you like, I can scroll a virtu of this surgery; it will include me physically inspecting your grey matter before installing you back in your old body."

He blinked his optics at the offer and then nodded, "You know, that would be kind of interesting. I'd like that if you don't mind."

I shrugged again. I'd have to make sure I didn't have this body look at anything confidential while I did the surgery, but it was no big deal, "Sure. Please shut down all systems in preparation for body transfer."

The surgery could barely be called that, as biopods were mostly plug-and-play, but everything went fine. My patient was very much happy to be back in his original body, although I never pressed him for his story as to why he was in it in the first place. My best guess was he was a fighter pilot for some Corp that went belly-up, but I didn't really know.

I charged him up front for the Mr Studd, but I was allowing him to pay for the repairs and maintenance of his body in instalments. Really, I didn't care for the money, but like a lot of people in his situation, he had a lot of pride.

But now, I was starting to have some ideas about how I could be compensated for all this mostly unpaid work I was doing, and it involved my soon-to-be building in Pacifica. The bank had gotten back to me, and they were keen to unload the building before any more damage could be done. I'd end up paying about five per cent of its nominal value before everything went to shit, or about two and a half million Eurodollars. The fact that I paid cash on the barrelhead sealed the deal quickly.

After that was finalised, I would have to both dispose of or evict the squatters and keep the building somewhat protected from similar people in the future. I wasn't naive enough to think that I could save the entire Pacifica sector, but I thought that I could maybe do similar things that I did in Chinatown in LA. But to do so, I would need a lot of firepower.

It would be difficult to source as many autonomous combat robots as I had in LA, although Kiwi had managed to take nine of them from my warehouse when she fled the city. I bought them back from her at almost full price, which she tried to argue against until I told her that I had already claimed all of them on my insurance and was just paying her the money that my insurance policy paid out to me. The rest of the robots were seized by the city and Militech, and I was sure they were now working for them in some manner.

When she realised that, she stopped trying to talk me out of paying her. That payout divided between all of her men amounted to a nice bonus, I suspected.

I had already tried to purchase some drones from Militech here in Night City, but they didn't have a lot in stock, even for a former member of the Militech family like myself. The sales rep had told me that Militech was not shipping any further stock into either Night City or the Free States "until the current unpleasantness was over."

I had managed to find some similar hardware from Kang Tao, who would ship, but the lead time with the quasi-blockades and worldwide demand for military products was almost six months, so I had purchased them, but it still wouldn't be enough if Pacifica deteriorated as much as I thought it would.

As such, the more I thought about it, the more I was considering starting a venture for subsidised apartments for Borgs, specifically the Borgs I had treated. They would socialise with each other and probably start something equivalent to a gang just out of self-defence and this would also protect my building. I wouldn't need to go to the building too often, either, but would probably do so enough to provide house calls to ensure that my "boys" weren't going off the deep end.

It would be ideal if nobody ever went inside the building, but I didn't think I could exactly achieve that level of deterrence with the force levels I had. Making it a no-go zone for different reasons might work, though.

I just needed someone to act as the leader of the gang. Someone that other Borgs would be kind of afraid of and respect, who could keep some of them in line so that I didn't just reinvent Maelstrom.

I blinked as I had a sudden idea. Perhaps I could repair it after all?

---xxxxxx---

July 2067

Pacifica, Night City

I was already annoyed when I had to fill up the tank on my Type-66. Fuel from my algae was starting to trickle into the market, yet the price of CHOOH2 was higher than ever. I knew why, of course. It was because traditional wheat farms were in the process of shifting crops to grow something other than wheat, but in the interim, it meant that there was a shortage before the algae harvesting could take over the slack.

Grains and cereal prices were dropping, though, worldwide. I wondered how many farms that had hyper-specialised in the cultivation of these crops would remain. It would be nice to have cheaper bread, after all and it was without doubt that something would be used in the arable parts of the world.

I had wanted to smack my forehead when I heard that some farms were shifting to produce a type of special, genetically engineered latex-producing flower which was similar in appearance to poppies instead of actual food, but it wasn't really realistic that all excess capacity would shift to food.

I wanted to population to boom. I felt that two billion people were much too small, but I recognised myself as a bit of a radical in my opinion there. I felt that we could easily house one hundred billion people on the planet in luxury if only we had the will to do so. But, no... I wouldn't go down those thoughts of AI-assisted quasi-centrally planned economies again.

I parked in a different spot this time, and I had installed a "vehicle theft deterrent system" that basically shocked someone half to death if they tried to force my car's door open. The vehicle garage that I had bought it from had winked when he called it a "less-lethal deterrent." That caused me to test it myself just in case it ever malfunctioned using a multimeter and voltmeter, and I came to the conclusion that it... probably wouldn't kill anyone. If their heart rate was already in the tachycardia range from chronic stimulant abuse, then that was a different set of circumstances.

The building I had finally closed on was on the northern side of Pacifica, fairly close to bridges into Wellsprings and Heywood, and that was intentional. The building I bought wasn't the only option; there were at least five other places with semi-secret subbasements, too. But most of them were further into the district that I thought would become lawless soon.

Kiwi was back, but her team was down for rest and medical recuperation. She had two fatalities on the last gig and was a bit shaken by the whole affair. Thankfully, she didn't get wounded, and her core team weren't among the dead. She had been attempting to expand her team into something platoon-sized, into a real PMC, but I thought this setback might cause her to re-evaluate her priorities, namely staying as safe as possible. I would support her either way, but you started getting a lot more attention when you moved past the squad level for mercenary teams.

Still, she was handling overwatch for me even if I didn't have any physical backup, and a few of her team would be available afterwards for cleanup. As I unpacked all of what I would need, I checked in with her. She replied back, "I'm here. Are you sure you don't want to wait a week or so while my team recovers? Going solo on these things is a way to get killed."

That wasn't wrong, but I had already done this a few times. If one of these guys shot me, it would be luck, not their skill. Besides, a girl liked to get out a little and have a little fun.

It would be easiest if I just killed everybody in the building, but these guys didn't actually reach the level where I thought that they should be done away with. They did drugs, and they broke things. That was basically it. I would be evicting them instead.

In addition to my normal weapons, I had a semi-automatic pneumatic dart gun and a lot of darts. It would be something akin to that "paintball" game back in Brockton Bay, so I was expecting an entertaining day out of it. I sent on the net, "I do have my Trauma Team Gold subscription, just in case. Their response times to Pacifica are still pretty good." Besides, I had to do this in the next few hours because I had to be home when David came home from school. Gloria had entrusted me with his safety while she was in indoc and basic training up in Seattle.

That got her to sigh and say, "Alright. I'm ready. This might be the only time I've done this when I actually had all of the legitimate login credentials and permission to invade a subnet."

I snorted. Some of the security systems were still functional on the site, and some of the exterior cameras. They'd trashed or disabled most of the interior cameras, but there were many other things that could be useful. For example, most rooms had a passive infrared sensor that was attached to the lighting system. There was also the data rate coming from any devices in a room, which Kiwi could see. Taking these datums, as well as others, in aggregate, she would be able to tell me if any room I was approaching had people in it and possibly if they were involved deeply in their sims or BDs. It would be enough.

"Alright, your AV is streaming, good. Proceed," Kiwi said after I started streaming my audio-visual and GPS location data to her. I jogged a few blocks to get into position and noticed that, like the last few times that there was a gang member in the little security box that used to control access into and out of the building and its parking garage. I started to just approach him but paused. In the past, I had just scaled the wall and bypassed him. My first thought was to just approach him and pop him with a dart as soon as he challenged me, but that was needlessly risky. He could shoot at me, or worse, he could alert the others. Instead, I crouched and took aim with the carbine-sized dart gun from across the street.

The weapon was pneumatic, so it only had a reasonable effectiveness to about fifty metres, and there was a significant projectile drop due to the low-velocity darts. Fortunately, the optic had a built-in laser rangefinder and helpfully automatically added a circular lead indicator to correctly aim for distant or moving targets, factoring both movement and projectile drop.

The guy looked unaugmented, like most of the gang, so I just lined up and aimed for the lead indicator hanging slightly above his head and squeezed the trigger. With a soft puff, the dart shot out in a visible arc and struck him in the chest. He made a kind of yelp and glanced down at it quizzically before slumping off his chair, his body hiding itself inside the guard shack. Nice, no need to find some closet to hide his body on this sneak mission.

Whistling, I jogged over and hopped over the little movable arm that would in no way actually stop a determined vehicle from driving through the checkpoint. "One down, I guess," Kiwi said amusedly, "There are no x-rays on the exterior cameras, but we don't know if they still have access to them either, so it is best to avoid them. Accept this overlay request."

I did so, and my Augmented Reality system changed slightly, a new layer overlaying my vision. Ah, it was the cameras, which had both been highlighted, as well as a cone of their field of view drawn in low opacity in my vision. This was cool; it was like that game Metallic Gears that Greg Veder kept talking about. I darted around the view of each camera, not activating my stealth system yet until I found the entrance I had used each time I snuck into the building.

This time, I would be clearing the building. By myself, if I was dealing with a real threat, that would be kind of stupid. In fact, the Drill Sergeant at basic training said the safest way to clear a building involved calling in an artillery strike. We trained for it anyway because, well... Trauma Team couldn't blow up their own clients with artillery too many times before people stopped paying for service.

"Hallway's clear," Kiwi said, and I entered the building, and now my overlay included a minimap of the building itself. Nice. I paused by the first door that I knew led to a large room with a dozen or so braindance recliners, and Kiwi said, "Definitely people in here. At least three in this room are in an MMOBD, unknown how many are conscious."

I nodded and activated my stealth system and opened the door as quietly as I could, and slipped inside. Two people were talking to each other, and I darted them immediately, then shifted and put a dart into each of the guys in the recliners. I started to move on, but Kiwi said, "Wait. They were on an RPG; maybe they party together? If so, you drugging three might just trigger a team wipe. Wait for the angry guildmates to come and bitch them out."

Ahh... That was a good point. I hid behind one of the recliners and deactivated the stealth. Sure enough, about a minute later, two guys came running into the room, kicking the door open angrily, yelling with a very surfer-boy accent, "Bruh! You just got us all killed! I lost my Fleet Carrier! What the fu—"

I popped my head up, and these two each got a dart. I smiled and carefully reloaded the dart magazine for my weapon; I said, pleased with myself, "That's already eight if we count the guy in the guard shack."

Although I was waiting for something to go wrong the whole time, this was how the rest of the building was cleared as well. There were thirty-five people here between the gang members and their whores, and I disabled all of them. The only one that got anything more than a dart was their leader, who had a subdermal armour system that was semi-decent.

My first reaction was to drop the dart gun, pull out my Omaha and pop him in the face, but since he didn't even see who shot him, so instead I connected to him and used a Reboot Optics quickhack to disable his vision. While he was fumbling for a gun on the desk, I ran up to him and concussed him with a fancy police baton that I had found in the security room of the building. Just for good measure, I triggered its secondary taser function on him as well.

Once he was disabled, I injected the sedative directly into his IV access port, and he was down like all the rest. "This was a bit anti-climatic," Kiwi said drily.

"This is a small gang of like twenty-five people, not Maelstrom, Kiwi. The only reason these guys are still alive and haven't been pushed out of this building is that there are currently way too many targets of opportunity here in Pacifica. Honestly, you guys should consider some looting missions yourself. There's gotta be a lot of places like this that have significant computing hardware that nobody would miss," I told her.

Kiwi sighed and nodded, "You're right. I've already heard that the Voodoo Boys are starting to move into the area south of where you are."

I blinked, remembering the two factions. "Which Voodoo Boys?"

She snorted, "There's only the one, now. The Haitians wiped out the other guys at least two years ago. Honestly, these guys don't call themselves that. It's just what everybody calls them because they co-opted all of the old Voodoo Boy's territory and scams."

I sat my backpack down on the guy's desk and dug out a few tools in time for Kiwi to ask, "How are you going to keep this band of rejects from just coming back? We only have a few auto-turrets and those nine robots right now."

"I'm pretty sure that would be enough to deter these idiots, but I'm going to try something else. I'm going to implant a small explosive in them, which will be set off if they come within twenty metres of the building," I said reasonably. Then paused, saying, "I will, of course, tell them this after they wake up. Maybe you can help me do that, you know... hack their OS to display a message?"

"Taylor!" she said disapprovingly, then paused, and I could see her little shoulders shrug in the vidcall, and her tone was a lot more reasonable, "Actually, yeah... that would probably work."

I nodded, "Get the vans moving; they'll have to make a few trips to dump these guys somewhere relatively safe. Deliver the robots and auto-turrets at the same time."

I was a little concerned that my defences were a bit on the light side, especially when Kiwi said that the Voodoo Boys were moving somewhat close to me. They were expert hackers and net runners, and bypassing or suborning automated security systems was kind of their thing. I'd have to make sure none of it was connected directly to the net and guard the building's subnet access points especially well.

I nodded, "Until the security is up to snuff, you can consider your team on permanent retainer. I want you guys here in Pacifica, inside this building while it is being renovated."

"That's pretty expensive, paying for all of us for an indefinite period of time," Kiwi warned.

Maybe, but it would be cheaper than having the building professionally ransacked by the Voodoo Boys. There were a lot of servers and network infrastructure here that the previous owners had completely written off, thanks to the helpful photographs and videos I had taken in my last missions.

Plus, it would keep Kiwi out of the war that was only heating up. I was pretty sure her last client had been the Free States themselves, and I thought working for either side was a sucker's bet.

Oh. There was that, too. I nodded, "Also, Kiwi, I'm going to need you to help me move something out of a storage locker. It weighs about a ton, so we'll need some kind of small crane."

I pulled a tool out of my bag, and Kiwi asked frightfully, "Where is that long speculum-looking tool going to go, Taylor?"

I chortled with amusement. "Where it needs to go!"

She quickly disconnected the call, which caused me to laugh outright. If I had just said their sinuses, then that wouldn't be as interesting. I loaded the tiny shaped charge into the device and said to the unconscious man, "You're going to feel a little bit of a pinch."

Well, he wasn't. But it was a good idea to practice this in case I ever had to do it to someone that was conscious. For some reason, I was reminded of an old film with a famous Austrian actor.

"Get your ass to Mars," I told each subsequent patient, trying unsuccessfully to perfect the accent.