Retirement

Doctor Viktor Vektor tensed when he saw that the gate to his little cellar clinic was open. Granted, it was no great feat to break into it, but he’d only stepped out for a moment. And he’d left his gun inside, too.

Knowing that it was a dumb thing to do, Viktor cautiously peered in to see what was going on.

Instead of a bunch of stupid teenagers robbing his place like he’d half-expected, he saw a dark-haired woman in a suit that had gone out of style decades ago, and a fedora that had gone out of style even longer ago.

“Doctor Vektor.” The woman said, seemingly expecting him. “I am Contessa and I have a job for you.”

“What kind of job?” Viktor asked cautiously of the probable corpo agent. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d received a job offer from a corp, but they were usually not given through a personal visit.

Instead of answering, Contessa merely stepped sideways. Her body had been blocking the view of his chair, and upon that chair was a young girl in a bad way.

Viktor hissed reflexively as he took her in. A naked, skinny teenager, her right arm a cauterized stump and a hole in her head. She was also covered in what looked like a week’s worth of sweat and tears on top of the blood. Paying no further mind to the mysterious Contessa, he moved to help her, taking scans and applying drugs to stabilize her condition.

The scans told him that she was even worse off than she looked. Neural scarring? Burned out nervous system? The arm not cut, but torn off and then crudely cauterized by open flame? Metal fused to the bones of her shoulder somehow? Saw marks on the skull? Scars everywhere? Two rounds to the back of the head, execution style?

If this girl was even twenty then he’d eat his boxing gloves, but she had the accumulated injuries of a war veteran and clear signs of serious, and more importantly, sophisticated torture. The average gangoon didn’t have access to tech that could overload pain receptors like that. Even more bafflingly, she was completely organic. She was even nearsighted for Christ’s sake! And he couldn’t begin to guess how the metal was fused to the bone in her shoulder, or what the point was.

Everything below her belly button was another anomaly, being suspiciously pristine in comparison to the ravaged state of the rest of her body. Impossibly pristine in a way only freshly cloned biological material could be, but the grafting was too perfect. It looked like she just grew a new lower half instead of having it attached after losing the original.

Viktor hardly noticed that Contessa had been handing him things with the ease of an experienced assistant. “I’m going to need to operate on her brain, give her some cyberware to patch up the damage caused by the bullets.”

Some people didn’t want any chrome, so it had to be mentioned.

“Use it to connect the damaged tumor to her prefrontal cortex.” Contessa directed instead of protesting. “Do not attempt to remove the tumor. That will kill her.”

Viktor had noticed the strange tumor and knew that he had never seen anything like it, and his scans weren’t clearing anything up either. Given Contessa’s words, he was getting the feeling that it was some fucked up corpo research project and this girl had been their unlucky guinea pig.

“Got it.” He said curtly. As much as he wanted to demand answers, this was not the time.

Despite his worries, the surgery went rather smoothly. The two bullets had somehow missed everything critical except for that strange tumor. Everything that had been damaged could easily be fixed with the addition of cybernetics. After that it was just a matter of programming the nanotech to install the neuralware in the appropriate fashion.

“Alright, she’ll be out for a few days while the nanotech does its work.” Viktor said, turning to Contessa. “Now why don’t you tell me what this is about?”

The mysterious woman’s face didn’t so much as twitch, nor did she answer his question. Instead, she pulled a fat stack of cash out of her suit and placed it on the counter. “This should cover the surgery, the neuralware and any other of her immediate needs when she wakes up.”

“Will anyone be coming after her?” Viktor asked, realizing that he wasn’t going to be getting any answers.

“No.” Contessa replied with utter certainty. She reached into her suit again and placed an old-fashioned letter next to the money. “This letter is for her.”

And then she left, leaving one old ripperdoc with a whole lot of questions and very few answers. With a sigh, he shook his head and turned back to the unconscious girl. The nanobots would do for her brain, but her arm still needed work.

If it had been just the tearing, he could have probably saved the elbow, but the crude cauterization had done too much damage. She would lose the joint for sure, but Contessa had indeed left plenty of eddies for a replacement.

Once he did what he could there he called Misty. Taking care of the girl’s injuries was one thing, but that still left the problem of where to put her.

XXXXX

Taylor returned to consciousness laboriously and reluctantly. Her last thoughts were a fragmented mess of horror, the only point of clarity being right at the end, the absolute certainty that she had to die. A soul-deep exhaustion that made her want to die. The bang of a gun and the impact of a bullet against her skull had been a relief.

Now she was waking up and her first impression was of a truly massive amount of bugs in her range. Taylor could instantly tell that she was in a big city just from the kind of sounds, smells and general activity she was picking up from them. And it had to be a very filthy city, too, because there were something like a hundred times the bugs she was used to controlling in an urban setting currently in her range.

But the important part was that she had bug control again, not the absolute mastery over all life that she’d had after Panacea jailbroke her powers. The relief of it made a shuddering breath escape her body. She wasn’t a monster anymore. Not a literal one, at least.

“Oh, you’re awake.”

The soft, gentle voice made her immediately tense up, cursing herself for not checking the area.

“Who’s there?!” She rasped sharply, throat burning with thirst. She tried to get up, only to receive a harsh reminder that she no longer had her right arm.

“My name’s Misty.” A blur approached and helped her sit. Tiny bugs tagged her to get an impression that her bad eyes could not. Poofy hair, a thick spiked choker around her throat and carrying a glass of water. “Here, you must be thirsty.”

Taylor was very thirsty, and hungry too. When was the last time she’d eaten or drank anything? Accepting food or water from strangers would normally be dumb, but they could have already harmed her if they wanted to. Plus, Contessa must have left her with them, which made it even more pointless to worry.

So she nodded and accepted the water, drinking greedily. It tasted a bit off, but she didn’t think it was because of poison.

“Thank you.” She said once she was finished.

“No problem.” Misty said, sitting down next to her on the bed. “What’s your name?”

“Taylor.” No point in hiding her name now.

“Nice to meet you, Taylor.” Misty said sincerely. “You were in a bad way when your friend brought you to Vik.”

Friend? She must have meant Contessa. Why Cauldron’s bogeyman hadn’t killed her was a mystery to Taylor, but one she could ponder later. “Vik?”

“Viktor Vektor, he’s a ripperdoc, one of the best in Night City.”

What the hell was a ripperdoc? It sounded like something they’d call Bonesaw. And Night City? Judging by the impressions she was getting from her bugs, it had to be a high population density metropolis, the kind of city that she should have heard of. And there was more… a lot of the people outside didn’t feel quite right, didn’t look right even to the crappy vision of bugs. Some of them had sophisticated metal prosthetics. And the conversations she was overhearing… there were a bunch of languages being used and the slang was all wrong.

Taylor was getting the impression that she wasn’t in Kansas anymore.

“What did he do to me?”

“He had to do a little brain surgery to keep you alive and fit you with neuralware. Sorry if you had any religious or philosophical objections to getting chrome, but he couldn’t ask so he took Contessa’s word for it.”

“It’s fine.” Taylor said, pushing her reactions into the swarm. Getting operated on by a ‘ripperdoc’ and having what sounded like cybernetics implanted into her brain reminded her far too much of being strapped to a table with Bonesaw about to open up her skull. “Anything else?”

“Nope, that’s it.” Misty chirped. “Contessa left a lot of eddies for you if you want more chrome chipped in, though. More than enough to get a new arm and eyes.”

The arm she could understand, but… new eyes? “What’s wrong with my eyes?”

“Um, nothing?” Misty suddenly sounded very awkward and Taylor realized that she might have come off as a bit too aggressive. “They’re just… you can’t see well, right? If you’re attached to your ‘ganic eyes then it’s easy enough to get them fixed, but most people opt to replace their ‘ganic eyes with cyberoptics in their early teens.”

The casual way Misty was talking about replacing her eyes with cybernetics gave Taylor the distinct impression that this was a very common thing in whatever world Contessa had dumped her in. To say nothing of how many of the people outside seemed to have metal limbs, far too many to be for pure medical reasons.

“I see.” Taylor replied neutrally. “I think I’ll keep my eyes as they are for now.”

Then her stomach let out a pitiful whine.

“Hungry, huh?” Misty said humorously. “Let me get you something. How does a burrito sound?”

“Sounds great.” Right now, she could probably have eaten stale bread and think it was delicious.

XXXXX

After she was done eating, Misty suggested they go see this Viktor, the ripperdoc. Taylor had to wrestle down her instinctive reaction and kept telling herself that they’d been nothing but helpful so far, and that if Contessa wanted to screw her over somehow, then it was already too late to do anything about it.

Misty led her down from her apartment, which was apparently above a new age spiritualism shop that she ran. The girl was open, chatty and so blatantly civilian that it even eased some of Taylor’s suspicions about this ripperdoc. Nobody this relatively innocent could be associated with some kind of Bonesaw-esque butcher without being twisted by it.

“Don’t let the look of the place fool you, Vik runs a clean operation.” Misty said as she led the way down to a dark cellar. Taylor had of course already known it was here, along with the fact that it was some kind of weird mix between a mechanic’s garage, a boxing gym and a surgery suite. “Vik, I brought her!”

“Good to see you up and about.” The ripperdoc said, his tone far more friendly than his title. “Name’s Doctor Viktor Vektor, at your service. Call me Viktor, or Vik.”

Doctor Vektor was a reasonably tall man with dark hair, which was about all she could see with her blurry vision. But her bugs told her that he was well built, especially in the arms. That punching bag wasn’t just for show.

“I’m Taylor Hebert. Thanks for helping me out.” She said politely, relaxing a little bit more. He didn’t seem so bad.

“Don’t mention it, I’m just glad I was able to fix you up.” He waved off. “Besides, your mysterious friend paid well. Even left quite a bit of eddies behind for you. A letter, too, but I don’t think you’ll be able to read it with your eyes in the shape they are. I would have fixed them for you or chipped in some cyberoptics, but I prefer to do as little as possible without the patient’s consent.”

He was nothing at all like Bonesaw. At least on the surface.

“You can fix my eyes?” Taylor asked.

“Sure can. It’s a basic procedure, just a couple of eyedrops with medical nanites in them and they’ll fix you right up.” The doctor paused, then continued pointedly. “Everyone knows that.”

Fuck!

“I’ve been out of the loop.” She said calmly while her swarm buzzed with agitation.

”Yeah, I figured.” Doctor Vektor nodded. “I don’t know what happened to you or why, but you obviously weren’t well treated. Contessa said that nobody would be coming after you, so I’m going to assume the people involved are all dead as they deserve and won’t pry any further.”

“Thank you, Doctor Vektor.” She said, relieved and in no hurry to correct any of his misconceptions.

“I asked you to call me Vik.” He scolded jokingly.

“Vik.” She repeated obligingly.

“That’s better.” He grinned. “Now, what’ll it be? Glasses, the treatment, or a set of cyberoptics?

Taylor immediately dismissed cybernetics from consideration. She didn’t know nearly enough about them to risk it. The treatment, though… trusting Doctor Vektor to play it straight with her was still a little bit risky, but the glasses had been a nuisance since the start of her cape career. The deciding factor was that Contessa wouldn’t have spared her just to screw her over. The woman was certainly capable of it, but not without reason.

“I’ll take the eye treatment, if you don’t mind.” She decided.

“Alright, hop on the chair.” He said, patting the chair in question. It looked ominously like a dentist’s chair mixed with something else, but she cautiously climbed into it anyway.

“Well, you two seem to be getting along well.” Misty said, audibly smiling. “Unless you need me for moral support, I should get back to my store.”

“Don’t blink.” Viktor said after Misty left and he hovered over her with some kind of high tech eye-dropper. It felt no worse than a regular eyedropper, although her eyes did start to tingle a bit shortly afterwards.

“Alright, that’ll take a few minutes.” The ripperdoc said and sat down next to her. “Now let’s talk about your arm. My little clinic can’t do it, but you could get a new arm cloned and attached if you don’t like cybernetics.”

But she would have to go to someone else. Viktor Vektor had so far made a very good first impression and she was not eager to test her luck by going somewhere else, not with how lacking her information was.

“What are my options for prosthetics?”

“Lots of options for arms.” Viktor began. “Civilian models can be outwardly almost indistinguishable from ‘ganic arms, or they can be a fashion statements. But… you strike me as the type of girl that prefers combat-rated chrome.”

That surprised her. “You can give me an arm that’s also a weapon?”

“Sure can.” The confirmation made her wonder exactly how fucked up this world was, that combat cybernetics were so easy to get. “The simplest are just extra durable versions of civilian arms, after that come the ones with added functionality. Gorilla arms give your punches more oomph, as well as generally being very strong. Mantis blades if you like to have some hidden cutting power. A projectile launch system if you think you need a mini rocket laucher. Built in machine guns, dart launchers, flamethrowers,… all kinds of things. I can also chip in a spool of monowire, but I wouldn’t recommend it unless you got a lot of practice first. We get dozens of idiots every year cutting their own damn heads off with that one. These arms usually come in pairs, but I can install just the one if you prefer to keep your left ‘ganic.”

How many times would have something like that come in handy? Taylor blinked rapidly as her vision started clearing up. The nanobots really did work fast. “Are there any side effects?”

“A question far too few people ask.” Viktor smiled wrily. “If you chip in too much chrome in too little time, have it done by a sloppy ripper that messes up the nerve connections, use too many different manufacturers whose products don’t play well with each other, or just plain don’t have a good tolerance for it, you can start having problems. Some people lose touch with their humanity, others have pre-existing conditions exacerbated. The umbrella term for it is cyberpsychosis.”

“But I’m not in danger of that, right?” Taylor asked, slightly alarmed.

“Not at all.” Viktor denied, to her relief. “You didn’t have any chrome before today and you’ve adapted extremely well to the neuralware. Unusually so, in fact. Most people that stay fully ‘ganic past puberty have trouble integrating chrome later on, but I’m guessing it has something to do with that tumor that Contessa said I need to connect with your pre-frontal cortex with the neuralware.”

The corona pollentia and gemma, which Contessa had ‘operated’ on with her gun, was now linked to her brain cybernetically. And her passenger was apparently using it to continue giving her access to her powers. Contessa had arranged to have her powers returned.

As for her apparently unusually high cyberware compatibility… she had a feeling that was her Passenger’s doing.

“Tell me about the neuralware.” If she had cybernetics in her brain, then she wanted to know everything about it.

“Pretty standard stuff, almost everyone in Night City has it, the only difference is that you needed it installed for medical reasons instead of convenience.” The ripperdoc shrugged. “When I first saw you I thought I’d be saving what was left of your personality, but the bullets only damaged the parts of your brain that deal with motor functions and short term memory recall, stuff that neuralware can easily compensate for. You were either extremely lucky, or whoever shot you was a surgeon with a gun.”

Definitely the latter.

“Is it dangerous to me?” Taylor asked warily.

“Not as long as you don’t let anyone jack into your neural port.” Vik assured.

“My what?”

“Feel the back of your head.” He instructed.

Taylor used her remaining arm to do so, quickly finding what felt eerily like a computer socket just behind and behind her right ear.

“That’s your neural socket, that’s where I’d hook you up to my system here if you need a software update or a virus purge.” Viktor began explaining.

“Viruses?” She interrupted, alarmed.

“Not a danger right now.” He assured again. “Right now, your neuralware is extremely basic, just acting as a patch for the damaged parts of your brain. You have no agent or internet connectivity, so as long as you don’t jack into any suspicious ports you’re not going to get infected.”

She relaxed fractionally. “Okay, that’s good. Let’s keep it that way.”

She had no idea what an ‘agent’ was, but the way he said it implied it was common knowledge and should be easy to look up.

“Not a fan of being hooked up to the net, huh?” He smiled wrily. “I figured as much. Still, you should let me jack you in soon so I can walk you through the neuralware’s functions. Without a set of cyberoptics to give you a built in user interface, we’ll need to use a pad or a computer.”

The thought of having a computer hooked directly into her brain was still more than a little off-putting, but she put it aside for now. She’d deal. Speaking of which...

“You mentioned a letter?” She said, her vision now clearer than it had ever been.

“Right, here you go.” Viktor picked it up from a nearby table and handed it to her.

Murmuring a thanks, she started reading.

Taylor,

I know you expected me to kill you. Perhaps that would have been the sensible thing to do, but I wanted to try being human for a change now that Cauldron’s mission is complete and death seemed like a poor reward for the savior of all Earths.

The Earth you find yourself on had an accelerated technological development and is also decades ahead of Earth Bet chronologically. Doctor Vektor was able to save you by using nanotechnology to repair the damaged portions of your brain. Your power is once again functional because your corona pollentia is connected to your brain with a cybernetic neural interface.

Politically, the world is controlled by powerful megacorporations. Doctor Vektor is under the impression that you were a victim of human experimentation by one such megacorportation. You are currently in Night City, on the northern coast of California. It is a free city, meaning that it is independent of the national government. It is also the most violent city on the planet. The most common cause of death is homicide, shootouts on the streets are a daily occurrence, vigilante justice is encouraged and the city has a discretionary fund set up to pay out bounties on dead criminals.

I could have sent you to a more peaceful world, but we both know that peace would not suit you. This world will give you plenty of opportunities to indulge your need for conflict. And if you wish to try for peace anyway, then someone with your abilities would find it easy enough to manage.

This is the best I could do for you.

Contessa.

Taylor wasn’t sure what she was supposed to feel about that, so she turned her thoughts elsewhere.

“You okay, kid?” Doctor Vektor asked in concern. “I don’t know what exactly happened to you, but judging by the state of your body when you were brought here, it was rough.”

“Yeah.” Was all Taylor could manage, letting her head fall back and staring at the ceiling. What was she supposed to do with herself now, in this strange new world? Did any of her friends survive Gold Morning? Did her father?

“Listen, you don’t have to decide on anything right now.” Viktor said reassuringly. “Misty’s agreed to put you up until you get your feet under you, so why not just take it easy for a few days?”

“Yeah, that sounds good.” Taylor nodded, tiredly. She’d just woken up, but she was already tired.

XXXXX

Taylor tried to take Doctor Vektor’s advice and relax. It took a while to sink in that it was really over, that Scion was defeated and dead.

Once it did, she really had no idea what to do with herself. For the past two years, practically every moment of her life had been spent preparing for the end of the world.

Taylor realized that she had not expected to survive it and was now stumped. She’d long since forgotten how to have fun or do things just because she wanted to do them. Even before giving herself up to the PRT, her cape career had consisted of jumping from one crisis into another. And before that it had been trying to endure the bullying.

The last time she’d really had fun was in summer camp just before Emma’s betrayal, which had itself come after a long period of grief after losing her mother.

Misty was a gracious host and never showed the slightest sign of being annoyed at having her just sitting there, staring at the walls, but Taylor grew increasingly uncomfortable relying on her hospitality.

But it was when she was woken up by a car chase/mobile shootout that Taylor gave up and conceded that Contessa was right. Her first reaction wasn’t to tense up or duck for cover. No, her heart started pumping with adrenaline and she was disappointed when the excitement passed by. The truth was undeniable at that point.

I can’t live in peace anymore.

Too much had happened, too many traumas stacked on top of each other. She wasn’t the chatterbox preteen anymore, nor was she the depressed high schooler that just wanted to be left alone. She was a veteran cape that had faced the worst horrors of Earth Bet and come out the other side. Fading into the dull monotony of civilian life sounded like Hell. If she was going to do that, then she might as well have died.

Contessa had said that she thought Taylor could come back from it all… but she obviously hadn’t thought she could go all the way back. Not when she’d been left in a city that had more than seven thousand murders per year. A city infested with gangs and ruled by corrupt megacorporations and equally corrupt politicians. A city where justice and fairness had been trampled into unrecognizable lumps.

A city full of filth and bugs, where a parahuman with a thirst for conflict and a desire to do good could make a life out of hurting and terrorizing all the evil bastards in it. She could be her own kind of hero in this city, one that didn’t have to restrain the violent impulses that had become ingrained in her. Instead of trying to help her become a better, kinder person, Contessa had apparently decided to put her in a world where she would be better by comparison.

In the end, Taylor wasn’t able to seriously contemplate the idea of quietly retiring and living a life of peace. On the third day since her arrival, she left Misty’s apartment and went down to Viktor’s clinic.

XXXXX

“A mantis blade, huh?” Viktor said. “You thinking of becoming a solo?”

Taylor had, while researching Night City and this dystopian future she found herself in, come across the term. A mercenary that took on various jobs offered by a middle man called a fixer, ranging from espionage, rescue, scouting, kidnapping all the way to assassination and extermination. In a functional society, that shit would absolutely not fly. In Night City, it was simply part of the culture. Not always legal, but often shrugged off. A solo could even get registered as a subcontractor with the police and the dispatcher would send them to crimes in progress, usually gang violence. Those tended to be almost exclusively extermination missions, according to the internet.

It was insane. The rise of parahumans had done a lot of damage to the concept of law and order on Earth Bet, but this was barely a step above the anarchy of Africa’s warlord states. Still, being a mercenary and being paid to act as a vigilante was better than trying her hand at villainy again. She’d never been a merc before, but Faultline and her crew had made it work.

“A girl has to make a living somehow.” Taylor said. “Can’t keep relying on Misty’s hospitality forever.”

The new age spiritualist had already gone out to buy her some clothes in addition to sharing her apartment, thankfully nothing as outrageous as seemed to be far too common in Night City. Just a few pairs of dark jeans and T-shirts.

“Well, I can’t say I’m surprised. You’ve got the look about you.” Viktor sighed. “I can get you into contact with a friend of mine who’s a solo. He can help you get started, show you the ropes.”

Taylor nodded, feeling grateful. Viktor was definitely a rare bright spot in Night City. Probably the reason that Contessa had picked him, if her intention really was to give the slayer of Scion a reward. “Thanks, Vik, I appreciate it.”

“Don’t mention it, kid.” He waved off. “You’re going to need a few other things, too. I’m going to assume you’re not in the system?”

Considering that she wasn’t even from this world, that was a given. “Is that going to be a problem?”

“Not really, people slip through the cracks all the time in Night City.” Viktor shrugged. “But you will need a credit account that fixers can pay into. Easy enough to do, but you need to decide if you want to handle it with an agent in your neuralware or if you prefer a digital wallet and phone.”

“The wallet and phone.” Taylor said instantly. She had looked up agents and learned that it was a limited AI assistant installed into the neuralware OS. That was absolutely not something she wanted in her brain.

She had let him jack her in to a pad and show her how to navigate the neuralware’s software, but she had absolutely zero inclination to ever let it connect to the net. People would no doubt call her paranoid and old-fashioned for it, but that was an acceptable price to pay for not being vulnerable to having your brains hacked.

“I thought you’d say that.” Viktor chuckled. “In that case I’m going to guess you only want the one mantis blade arm instead of replacing your left as well?”

“Definitely.” She confirmed. Frankly, the casual attitude towards mutilation was something she wasn’t sure she’d ever get used to.

“Alright, I’ll be happy to not have another chrome fiend constantly wanting more no matter how often I tell them to slow down.” Vik agreed easily.

“Does that happen a lot?” Taylor asked as he started preparing for the operation.

“More often than I’d like. Most people only get one or two pieces, but some get addicted to the sense of power that expensive chrome gives them, the ones who live on the edge especially. And once you get a taste for it you’re always thinking of your next piece. I try to talk them out of it, but they never listen. Then I refuse to keep chipping in more chrome and they curse me out and find a ripper who isn’t so opinionated. It’s why Night City has so many cyberpsychos. One of reasons, at any rate.” He finished with a heavy sigh.

“You can’t help people who don’t want to be helped.” Taylor said quietly. She’d learned that the hard way, and been accused of it herself.

“I know.” Viktor said, bringing an inhaler to her face. “Lights out for a while, kid. When you wake up, you’ll have a new arm.”

XXXXX

The new arm felt better than she expected it to. High tech metal alloys and plastic polymers made it weigh the same as a flesh and blood arm and it was just as responsive. She even had some sensation from the synthetic skin covering it. The only thing that betrayed its artificial nature were the barely visible seams in the forearm where the mantis blade popped out and the spot where it connected to her shoulder. Being a combat modification, Viktor had suggested replacing the shoulder joint as well for extra reinforcement.

Losing a few more inches of a useless stump didn’t bother Taylor, so she agreed to it and now sported a fully cybernetic right arm.

There was some inflammation at the spot where metal met flesh for a few days, which was why Viktor had suggested taking a week or so to get used to it, so she did. Just walking around the Watson district a bit and exploring.

The culture shock was pretty bad. Despite seeing some of it with her bugs before, seeing it with her own eyes was worse. Such a variety of people and so much noise.

And the porn. Oh God, the porn. Massive, building-sized ads promoting the most disgusting shit in full view of children. The most popular reality TV show was called Watson Whore, for pity’s sake, and this was somehow considered okay for daytime television. Taylor could already imagine the US government of Earth Bet suffering a collective heart attack at the thought of such a thing.

The porn wasn’t even close to being the worst of it either. No matter where she went, there seemed to be at least one person in her range with a braindance wreath attached to their head and an automatic sextoy attached to their groin, man or woman. Sometimes, these people were out in public, uncaring of who saw them. And the less said about the sheer number of prostitutes, called joytoys for some reason, on seemingly every street corner, the better.

Night City was a sick place. Sick in spirit.

Like any proper American teenager, she had often rolled her eyes when some old conservative politician tried to drag American culture back into the 1950s, especially in light of more important issues like villains and Endbringers. After seeing what had become of American culture in 2076? She was willing to concede that maybe the conservative politicians had had a point or two.

Of course, it was a moot point now that Scion had wrecked Earth Bet.

Shaking the grim thought off, she made her way down to Viktor’s clinic again. It was time to meet the friend he’d mentioned, the one that would show her the ropes of the mercenary lifestyle. Her bugs told her that he was already there, after stopping to chat with Misty for a few minutes. Moreover, it was a man she’d detected once before and pegged as Misty’s boyfriend.

“Vik?” She called out as she opened the gate to the basement clinic.

“Taylor, right on time.” The ripperdoc said with a grin and gestured to the man next to him. “This is Jackie Welles, the merc friend I told you about. Jackie, this is Taylor Hebert, an aspiring solo.”

Jackie Welles was a Hispanic tank of a man, around 6’4’’, about thirty and built like a brick shithouse. He was wearing a lot of gold jewelry and had a tattoo on his left forearm that hinted towards an association with the Valentinos, a Hispanic gang based in the Heywood district, but his hair was styled in a downright historic Japanese top knot.

“Pleasure to meet you, chica.” He said with a friendly grin, the expression stretching the cosmetic cyberware on his face.

“Likewise.” Taylor said, shaking his hand with her new cybernetic arm, a little bemused. He wasn’t really what she’d been expecting.

“You got any more biz with Viktor or can we head out?” Jackie asked.

“There’s one more thing.” Viktor spoke up before Taylor could reply in the negative. “Got you a present for the start of your career.”

The ripperdoc reached into a drawer and pulled out… a set of sunglasses?

“Not everyone wants to wear sunglasses all the time, Vik.” Jackie jeered playfully.

“Quiet, you.” Viktor shushed him. “Put them on, Taylor.”

Bemused, she did so, inwardly feeling a bit silly. She’d never seen herself as the sunglasses type, but Viktor had done a lot for her so she could humor him. As soon as they were on, however, she saw a system boot sequenced scroll past in the corner, then the glasses started scanning everyone and everything she focused on.

“Since you don’t want to replace your ‘ganic eyes, I figured this would be the next best thing.” Viktor explained before she could ask. “They’re not nearly as good or as convenient as a set of high grade cyberoptics, but they have anti-dazzle protection and they’ll display English subtitles if you’re looking at someone while they’re talking.”

On Earth Bet, this kind of thing would be considered some fairly serious tinkertech. And they were pretty cool-looking, too. The arms were incredibly sturdy and hugged her head tightly, so they weren’t going to fall off easily. They didn’t even darken her vision, despite the lenses looking pitch black from the outside.

“Thanks, Vik.” She said, touched. “How much were they?”

She still had a bit of Contessa’s money left. Probably enough to pay for the glasses.

“Don’t worry about it.” Viktor dismissed with a wave of his hand. “Now go on, get out there and give ‘em hell, kid.”

Something about his tone made her heart clench up. “I will.”

“Vik is really something else, isn’t he?” Jackie said once they were out in the alley and walking towards the main street.

“I’d be dead if it wasn’t for him.” Taylor replied agreeably.

“So would I.” Jackie laughed lightly. “The man has patched me up more times than I can count. Anyway, hope you don’t mind riding bitch on my bike. I don’t have a car.”

It took Taylor a moment to parse the slang and realize that she wasn’t being insulted. Jackie was just asking if she was okay being a passenger on his bike. “I’m cool with it.”

“Cool?” Jackie echoed, bemused. “Where did you get that ancient word from?”

To live in a time when ‘cool’ was considered an ancient word… “It’s not that old.”

“Chica, it was old when my mama was young.” He snorted. “You’ll have to become more nova if you don’t want to look like a poser wearing those sunglasses everywhere.”

The good-natured ribbing was making her relax almost against her will. The last time she’d had something like this had been with the Undersiders… and even then things had usually been too tense, Lisa tended to be too smug, Alec tended to be too much of an asshole, Rachel didn’t really get people, Brian tended to be too serious...

“I think I’ll do just fine.” She said neutrally, not yet feeling comfortable trading banter.

“No need to be so tense, chica. I’m just teasing you.” Jackie assured, throwing a leg over the parked motorcycle they had been walking towards. Even to her inexperienced eyes, it looked like a beautiful piece of machinery. “Hop on. First thing that you need before you can start as a solo is a reliable piece of iron.”

Taylor awkwardly settled behind him on the bike and wrapped her hands around his waist for stability.

XXXXX

Iron was slang for a gun in 2076. Taylor was pretty sure that they had passed by at least half a dozen gun shops before reaching the one Jackie took them to. Either he was a regular here or he just wanted to drive around town a bit.

“Alright, chica, first tell me if you’ve ever fired a gun.” He said once they were inside.

“I have experience with guns.” Taylor nodded firmly. She’d carried one for a while and the PRT had given her plenty of training with them.

“Ever killed someone with it?” He pressed.

His tone wasn’t the slightest bit judgmental, but she still tensed. “Yes.”

“Alright, then we can skip the basics.” Jackie nodded.

“Good, because I like to consider myself a bit past that.” She replied drily.

“I did figure as much.” He admitted. “You got any gigs you don’t want to do?”

“I won’t take missions that target innocents, but I have no problem going after gang members that are killing or kidnapping people, peddling drugs, dealing in forced prostitution or that kind of shit.”

That would already be less ambiguous than what she’d been forced into doing as a villain.

“Plenty of work like that. Alright, let’s get back to the guns. What kind do you want?”

He gestured to a table that had a bunch of handguns displayed on it. From small and techie looking ones to a giant handcannon that almost looked like it should be mounted on a tripod.

“Definitely not those.” She gestured to the handcannon and a collection of revolvers. The low bullet count and inconvenient reloading mechanism was just not her thing.

“Not my style either.” Jackie admitted and removed the ones she’d indicated.

“Nothing high tech either, I don’t have the cyberware for it.” She continued.

“Got it.” Jackie removed another set of guns.

There weren’t many choices left. Of the ones remaining, the most eye-catching was a somewhat large and sleek pistol that reminded her of a Beretta, if a Beretta was made both longer and blockier. It was all in dark gunmetal grey and looked fairly simplistic.

“How about that one?” She pointed at it.

“Ah, the Liberty.” Jackie said, picking it up. “No bells, no whistles, just like most of the iron Constitutional Arms makes. It’s a gun designed to do one thing and one thing only – shoot bullets. Fourteen rounds per magazine, and you can fit it with both a scope and a silencer if you want. Has more power and range than its little brother, the Unity.” He gestured to a very similar pistol still on the table that had a shorter barrel.

“What about recoil?” Taylor asked.

“Not too bad once you get used to it, definitely nothing that new arm of yours can’t handle. If you’re confident in your aim without any cyberware to help, then it’s a reliable piece of iron that’ll never let you down.”

That sounded perfect. “I’ll take it.”

“A lady that knows what she wants. I like it.” He winked.

Taylor knew better than to take him seriously. “Aren’t you with Misty?”

“Oh, she talked about me?” Jackie grinned, looking as pleased as a school boy with a crush.

“Once or twice.” She nodded. Mostly, however, Taylor had picked up on their relationship through her bugs.

“Hehe.” He chuckled happily. “Alright, now that you’ve got your iron, how about you pop off a few rounds for practice and then we can call up the fixer and ask for a gig?”

“Wait.” Taylor interjected. “Is there anywhere I could get a knife and a baton?”

“Mmm, you like having some close range options, too?” Jackie asked rhetorically. “Not a bad idea. I know a few places we can go for that kind of thing.”

She might have asked how exactly he expected the store owner to just give them the gun and ammo without any ID, but she was getting a feel for how Night City worked. The fact that this store also sold automatic weapons and grenades was another clue as to how little concern there was for collateral damage. Then again, there were also vending machine selling single-use, disposable pistols.

In Night City, guns were literally on the same level as candy bars.

XXXXX

The baton she got was not only extendable, but also electrified. According to the salesman, it was guaranteed to ruin the day of both organic and borged enemies. The knife was something that even Defiant would probably be proud to have. It reminded her of a Ka-Bar, but with a monomolecular blade. Not as good as the nanothorn she’d once had, but still nothing to sneeze at.

They also sold knives that had neurotoxin capsules embedded in them for extra lethality, which was a piece of Night City insanity Taylor decided not to indulge in. A regular knife that could carve through metal was dangerous enough already, thank you very much.

“Alright, chica, you know why mercs work through fixers instead of talking to the client directly?” Jackie asked once they were done weapon shopping.

“So that nobody can screw anyone over, presumably.” Taylor replied.

“Got it in one.” He nodded sharply. “There’s always some pendejo who thinks paying the fixer’s fee isn’t worth it, either a client or a merc, and it never ends well. Clients try to screw mercs out of their pay, mercs try to squeeze clients for more money, intel is bad and Heaven help you if you end up tangling with a corp without a fixer to cover your ass.”

“Understood.” She nodded curtly. That all made sense to her.

“Now, the district fixer here in Watson is Regina Jones. There’s a few others working the area, but she’s the head honcho. Well, aside from Rogue, who’s the Queen of Fixers in Night City, but we’d need a lot more rep before she’ll even let us order drinks at her club, much less give us the time of day.”

“So it’s a hierarchy?” Taylor interjected.

“Eeeeehhh.” Jackie made a wishy-washy gesture. “Not exactly? Fixers can be independent, but it’s a dangerous biz. You gotta know people and what they want, who to put in contact with who, how to avoid stepping on the wrong toes, that kind of shit. It can be done, but most fixers start out by working for bigger fixers.”

Not so different from caping, then. Going independent lets you have the most freedom, but it was the most dangerous.

“I see.” She said, noncommittally.

“I think you’ll like Regina, she’ll play straight with you if you play straight with her. She also appreciates it when her gigs are done clean and without collateral damage.” Jackie continued.

“Sounds like a woman I can work with.” Taylor nodded. God knows she’d worked with far, far worse.

“Preem.” Jackie used yet another of the future’s weird slang terms. She could only assume it had somehow grown out of ‘premium’ and then moved on to mean other things. Her mother would probably be both fascinated and horrified. “I’ll give her a call and set up a gig, then. Something easy to get your feet wet.”

“Wait!” Taylor quickly stopped him. “I’d prefer to work under an alias, if that’s possible.”

Cape names were something so ingrained into her that it would feel incredibly wrong to work as Taylor Hebert.

“You mean like a netrunner?” Jackie asked with a raised eyebrow.

She wasn’t sure what he meant by that. Netrunners were the hackers of the future, except capable of doing actual physical harm due to how ubiquitous technology and cybernetics had become. From what little she knew of them back on Earth Bet, hackers would only identify themselves with online tags.

“Kind of?” She shrugged, dismissing the details as irrelevant. “I just prefer to keep my work and my civilian life separated.”

“Sure, if that’s how you want it.” Jackie shrugged back. “What name are you going to be using, then?”

“Skitter.”

Her villain name was something she’d originally disliked, but it had grown on her in ways that Weaver never had.

“No shit?” Jackie let out a startled laugh. “I should introduce you to T-Bug someday soon. I got a feeling you two will get along.”

“Who’s T-Bug?”

“A netrunner I work with. She’s even more serious than you.”

“…How about we call the fixer now?” Taylor asked seriously after a moment of not knowing how to respond.

“You got it, chica.” He smirked. “Call me first and then I’ll call her.”

Conference calls were apparently extremely simple in 2076.

“Talk to me, Jackie. What do you need?” Regina Jones answered after less than a single ring.

“You got any easy gigs? Got a newbie looking to get into the biz and she needs something to get her feet wet.” Communications technology had gotten so good that hearing Jackie’s voice coming from two sources at once was no problem at all.

“Bringing in some fresh blood, hmm? What’s her name?”

“Skitter.” Taylor introduced herself.

“Alright, Skitter, welcome to the edge.” She wasn’t sure what exactly that meant, but Regina’s voice was welcoming enough. “Can you give me a rundown of your skills? Don’t want to send you to clear out a Scav den if you’re a chairjockey.”

Scavengers. Criminals so bad that joining them basically got a kill order put on your head. At first, she’d been disturbed at the idea of treating a gang like they were the Slaughterhouse Nine, but then she read up on what they did. Thousands of murderers, spread out across the entire city in small, independent cells, kidnapping people, ripping out their cybernetics and organs for sale on the black market. And that’s if the victims were lucky. Sometimes, Scavs kept people alive so they could make what was essentially torture porn.

No wonder everyone had collectively decided to expel them from the human race.

“I’m great at reconnaissance and sneaking around and pretty good in a fight. I can’t do netrunning or jobs that require tech savvy at all.” Taylor gave as honest an assessment of her skills as she could without revealing her powers.

Netrunning honestly sounded interesting, but she rather doubted that her mild talent for programming in high school was going to translate well, not to mention that she would need to implant a cyberdeck to even do it.

“Someone with a more subtle touch, hmm? I can always use more of those.“ Regina said approvingly. “Gonks with guns are a dime a dozen.”

“I resemble that comment, Regina.” Jackie chimed in.

“I’m sure you do.” The fixer said back drolly. “Got something for you. Three days ago, a married couple in Northside decided they’d take a romantic walk in the evening. Problem is, so did a pair of Maelstrom recruits. Our clients got mugged and made to run back to their apartment in their underwear for laughs. Could have ended way worse, but the clients have a sentimental attachment to their wedding rings and want them back. Find the Maelstrom brats and get the rings back, how you do it is up to you. Sending you the detes.”

And that was that, she had her first mission as a Night City mercenary.

XXXXX

The details that Regina sent to her phone contained a map of the industrial zone border, the site where the mugging occurred, along with known and suspected Maelstrom hangouts. Taylor was familiar with how gang territories could shift and part of a fixer’s job was apparently to keep track of their movements. There was easily enough information for her to get started without having to resort to randomly accosting Maelstrom gangers.

Instead of immediately going after Maelstrom, however, Taylor led them to every pawn shop in the area. Unfortunately to no avail.

“It was a good thought, Maelstrom doesn’t care for jewelry.” Jackie assured despite the failure. “Could be that they just haven’t gotten around to selling the rings yet.”

“If that’s the case, or if they just tossed them somewhere, then we need to ask them directly.” Taylor commented.

“Maelstrom won’t talk to someone as ‘ganic as either of us, chica, not for something like this.” He warned, but his tone was knowing.

“I plan to insist.” She replied, patting the Liberty in her shoulder holster.

“That’ll sound more persuasive.” He joked. “You ready to go?”

“Just a second.” Taylor raised a finger and reached into her leather jacket with her other hand. She had every intention of remaking her spider silk bodysuit along with whatever futuristic armor she could get her hands on. For now, a pair of dark jeans, comfy sneakers, a dark shirt and the leather jacket would do. And of course, the final touch that she had hidden inside the jacket’s inner pocket – an armored black mask/rebreather that covered her jaw and nose, styled in the shape of a spider’s mandibled mouth. There was perhaps a bit of spite towards the spirit of Glenn Chambers in the deliberately horrifying choice of mask. The man had tried to help her in his own way, but fucking hell had it been frustrating to listen to him tell her how she should stop being so scary.

A lot of bad things could be said for this technological dystopia of a future, but the ability to easily find cool little accessories like that wasn’t one of them.

“You’re really going all in on your brand, huh?” Jackie commented as she fastened the mask to her face.

Another wonderful thing about it was how easy it was to attach. No need for straps or anything like that – some technological wizardry allowed the mask to attach directly to the skin and it wouldn’t forcefully detach unless something pulled on it hard enough to start damaging the tissue beneath.

“This is how we did things where I came from.” Taylor said a little humorously, noting with satisfaction that the mask was distorting her voice without muffling it. For a finishing touch, she put a pair of leather gloves on her hands.

“Oh, so you have some experience with this line of work already?” He prodded curiously.

“Not exactly, but it was close enough.” Taylor answered evasively. “Come on, let’s go that way.”

“It’s your show.” Jackie agreed easily. “What’s the plan?”

“The mugging comes across like an opportunistic and vicious prank more than anything else, something that teenagers would do.” Taylor reasoned, knowing very well how casually cruel teenagers could be. “Regina’s information says that an abandoned building near the site of the mugging recently had some fresh, uninitiated Maelstrom gangers moving in under the supervision of an older, more experienced one. Obviously, Regina thinks we’re likely to find our culprits there.”

“Mmm.” He hummed with a nod. “With the element of surprise on our side, we could probably take them all easily enough, but I get the feeling you’ve got something else in mind.”

“I was thinking of just walking right in, disabling them all and then talking to them from a position of strength.” Taylor mused, remembering that one conversation with Lisa, the one about how she always tended to ask for things when it was hard to say no to her. It had been a criticism, but in this case, that kind of approach was warranted.

Maelstrom was classified as an extremely violent gang, and that meant that violence was their primary language. She knew the type.

“You think you’re ninja enough to pull that off?”

“I’ll know after I see the building.”

She sensed the building in question with her bugs before she saw it. Northside was an industrial area, although most of the factories were no longer operational for one reason or another. The target building was a warehouse filled mostly with empty cargo containers. Inside were half a dozen Maelstrom moving the containers around to the overpoweringly loud blare of some genre of metal that involved lots of profanity and industrial sounds.

Taylor quickly tagged them all with her bugs, using mosquitoes to get a feel for how cybernetically augmented they were. While they all had far more metal attached to them than the average civilian, it was still less than what you’d expect from a gang that practically worshiped augmentation. That would fit with the information that they were uninitiated recruits.

Except for one. Up on the second floor was a woman sitting behind a computer that was quite the horror show. She had a metal faceplate with multiple optics replacing the upper half of her face, glowing red in her bugs’ poor vision, a metal grille replacing her jaw, metal arms, and metal legs from the knee down. Her remaining skin was horribly scarred from hacksaw surgery and the only clothes she was wearing was what felt like a tactical vest and some leather panties.

Which was just… didn’t that chafe, or was there an implant for that, too?

Bug hearing was more like sensing the vibrations of the air, which the ‘music’ was unfortunately disrupting, but on the upside it would make being heard a non-issue.

“Looks like they’re planning to get entrenched.” Jackie observed. “You sure you want to try sneaking in?”

“They’ll never see me coming.” Taylor assured. With her bugs, she knew that warehouse better than the Maelstromers inside, including the unobserved roof access ladder in the back. From there, she could easily get to the borg woman in charge of the group.

“Alright, but keep the comms open so you can call for help if you need Jackie Welles to come in guns blazing.” He smirked and patted the shoulder holsters under his jacket.

“Will do.” She said and took her phone’s wireless earpiece out of her utility belt before affixing it in place and calling the big Latino.

Once the call was established, she checked her own weapons once again. Liberty in the shoulder holster, knife in a thigh holster and baton ready at her waist. She was ready to do this.

XXXXX

Angela ‘Amiga’ Rubio was a very angry Maelstrom, and all of that anger had to do with the six gonks she was babysitting. She hated babysitting the fresh meat, but Brick had ordered her to do it and you didn’t tell Brick to fuck off unless you wanted to get flatlined. Maelstrom’s boss seemed to think that it was better to get whatever worth they could squeeze out of the fresh meat before half of them inevitably chickened out just before the initiation.

Which she could admit was smart, she just didn’t want to be the one doing the babysitting. That was why she was playing a stupid video game on her computer. It wasn’t what she’d prefer to be doing, but it was a way to pass the time until this stupid babysitting assignment was done.

Her head shot up when she heard something fall over in the adjacent bathroom, barely audible over the heavy metal pounding from the speakers they’d wired inside the warehouse. The meat had ‘rooms’ in the cargo containers downstairs and a shared toilet, but she had a proper bathroom up here. It was only accessible through the door she was staring at right now… and the windows, if someone managed to climb up to the second floor from outside.

Getting up, she tensed further when there was another clatter of something moving behind the door. There was definitely someone in there!

Grabbing her shotgun, Amiga cautiously stalked over to the door and prepared to kick it in, fully intending to flatline whichever dumb motherfucker had crawled in there.

A millisecond’s dread premonition was the only warning she received before an electric baton discharged into her, overloading her cyberware and sending her crashing to the ground.

While her optics were still glitching and her limbs still not obeying, a sharp knife slid into the back of her neck, neatly severing her spine.

It would have been easier to ram it all the way through her neck, but they’d instead gone down at an angle, severing the spine without causing any fatal damage.

Amiga had medical cyberware that would easily keep her alive through such an injury, but she’d need to see a ripperdoc to fix her spine. She couldn’t move or feel anything below her neck. She was out of the fight.

She felt her still unknown attacker inject her with a health booster and almost wanted to laugh. That would help heal the superficial injuries without doing shit for her spine. It wasn’t really funny, because it meant that whoever this was wanted her alive and that rarely boded well. She didn’t have much hope that the meat downstairs would be able to stop this ninja assassin.

The attacker kicked the shotgun away and Amiga finally got a look at them.

It was a thin woman with long dark hair, shiny and curly and obviously well cared for. She was wearing a pair of sunglasses with pitch black lenses and a mask that made her look like she was part spider. The Tyger Claws favored that kind of mask style, but the design was more like something Maelstrom would go for.

“Lights out.” The woman said coldly, priming the baton with another electrical charge.

“Fuu-“ Amiga tried to curse as she realized she was in for more pain. Pain editor ‘ware usually made sure that nothing hurt too bad, but powerful electrical shocks tended to disrupt them.

This time, the shock knocked her out.

XXXXX

The shock baton was incredible. Taylor wished she’d had it back on Earth Bet. Life would have been so much easier with a combination taser and blunt weapon. Even Alec’s stupid scepter was nowhere near this good.

She hadn’t initially intended to sever the borg woman’s spine, but the sheer amount of cyberware she had convinced her that it was better to be safe than sorry. Not like she’d die anyway.

“The babysitter is down. Going after the recruits now.” She said to Jackie.

“Nice going, Ta… Skitter.” Jackie quickly corrected himself. “She give you any trouble?”

“Never saw me coming.” She repeated what she said earlier.

It was good to have some action again.

Down below, three of the Maelstrom recruits were using some kind of metal-cutting tool to carve the empty cargo containers into pieces, while the other three were welding them to the walls and entrances as a sort of makeshift reinforcement. Individually, it wouldn’t make much difference, but with enough layers the warehouse would actually be quite well fortified.

If she walked down the stairs they would see her, so she instead climbed over the railing and dropped down to one of the cargo containers. The pounding music covered any noise and the containers blocked all sightlines.

Taylor waited until the three metal cutters were done carving up a new piece, then she waited some more for two of them to pick it up and carry it to the welders. As soon as they were past the little alcove she was hiding in, she peeled off and beelined for the now solitary metal cutter. He never saw the shock baton coming.

The other two reached the welders and put down their load, stopping to chat for a minute. Or yell over the music, to be more accurate. Taylor grabbed the unconscious recruit and dragged him off towards the bathroom. She was more glad than ever for the mask, because it spared her from the no doubt unholy stench emanating from the toilet.

She made it back to the main area and hid behind another corner half a minute before the other two metal cutters made it back. When they saw their friend missing there was some gesticulating and then they settled in to wait, but Taylor knew that it wouldn’t be long before they got impatient.

Sure enough, it wasn’t even a minute before they had a brief argument and one of them stomped off towards the toilet.

Taylor was already moving by then and sent the one who stayed to dreamland via shock therapy. Then she stalked after the last one, reaching him before he got to the toilet and knocking him out, too.

“This shock baton is fucking amazing.” She said, moving to take care of the welders. On the way there, she picked up what looked like one of the clamps that held cargo containers shut.

“Always hated the damn things myself. Too many run-ins with the cops.” Jackie joked. “Did you get them all?”

“Three down, three to go.” Taylor reported, sheathing the baton and drawing her Liberty. “If you hear gunshots at the west end of the warehouse, it’s because they decided to be stupid.”

“Got it.”

She stopped next to one of the cargo containers, about five meters away from where the welders were working. Then she threw the clamp she’d picked up at them and aimed her gun at the middle one.

It wasn’t a strong hit, but the Maelstrom recruit jumped in surprise, dropping the piece of cargo container he was helping hold up. All three of them jumped away from the wall and turned around, only to freeze when they saw her aiming a gun at them.

Carelessly, two of them had laid their guns down on nearby tables instead of keeping them in their holsters. Her gun was pointed at the more paranoid one that hadn’t done that. Pointedly, she used her free hand to gesture that they were to lay down.

Bugs were tiny creatures. To them, the tensing of muscles and tendons might as well be an avalanche. Taylor knew one of the unarmed ones was going to do something stupid probably before he did. Her gun was already moving by the time he lunged towards the big Overture revolver lying on a table, lining up a shot towards the bug sitting on his hand.

The Liberty barked once and he fell with a scream, clutching his mangled hand and missing fingers. The armed one, meanwhile, went for his gun. He had cybernetic arms, so he got a shiny new hole in his fleshy thigh for his trouble. A potentially fatal wound, but she had another nanomed injector that should keep him stable. Those things were really opening up options for her.

The last one did the smart thing and laid down on the ground.

With all the enemies dealt with, Taylor did what she’d wanted to do this whole time and shot out the speakers these fools had hooked up to the corners of the warehouse so that they could inflict that atrocious noise on themselves.

Blessed silence descended on the area, interrupted only by the pained groans of the two gunshot victims. Then Jackie came in, his own guns drawn.

“I guess they decided to be stupid?” He commented, relaxing.

“I think it might be congenital.” Taylor bantered back, in the best mood she’d been since waking up on this Earth.

XXXXX

A few minutes later, all six recruits and their paraplegic babysitter were rounded up in one place. Some wire that her bugs had found in a box somewhere served the purpose of tying them up, except for the crippled borg of course. Taylor could have used silk ties weaved by her spiders, but she didn’t want to give any hints about her powers.

“Three days ago, two of you decided it would be funny to mug a married couple and then make them strip down to their underwear before letting them go.” Taylor addressed them, pushing everything into the swarm deliberately to achieve that state of eerie stillness that she knew people found off-putting. “Among the things you took from them were their wedding rings. They want them back and contacted a fixer to make it happen. Where are the rings?”

There was a moment of silence before the borg woman spat out. “All this over some fucking wedding rings?!”

“Yes.” Taylor replied, the simple answer delivered in the deadly calm that had once terrified Brockton Bay shutting her up.

The parahuman was well aware that she sounded like a stone-cold killer to people when she was shunting her reactions into the swarm and made use of that fact.

“It was just a prank.” One of the uninjured goons muttered.

That pissed her off, because it reminded her of another ‘prank’ from a few years ago. Unseen to all, the bugs around them went into a violent frenzy, tearing at each other viciously.

“So was me shooting your friends.” Taylor, Skitter, told him coldly. “Now is anyone going to tell me where the wedding rings are, or do I have to play a few more ‘pranks’ on you as encouragement?”

“We tossed them.” A heavily sweating red-haired boy blurted out, and continued when she turned her stare on him. “They were just basic crappy gold rings, so we didn’t think we’d get much for them.”

“Where?” Taylor demanded.

There was an inlet a few blocks to the south. If they’d thrown the rings into the sea, then even she wouldn’t be able to find them.

“A garbage pile a little further up north.” He answered hastily.

“You’re going to take me there.”

“You sure this is worth it, chica?” Jackie spoke up. “Even if this cabrón shows you the right spot, you’ll be hard pressed to find two small gold rings in a pile of garbage.”

“I took the job and I’m not going to abandon it until I’ve tried everything.”

He muttered something in Spanish that she didn’t catch, shaking his head. “Alright, I’ll watch this bunch. Don’t take too long.”

“I won’t.”

The nervous and clearly drug-addicted kid led her to the garbage pile. The sight of an armed and masked woman marching a teenager in a jacket that had Maelstrom tags on it provoked no more than mild curiosity. From what she overheard through her bugs, most of them assumed – correctly – that she was a mercenary on a job. There was no sympathy for the ganger.

“This is it.” He said unnecessarily.

Taylor said nothing. It wasn’t a huge pile of garbage, but it still would have been like looking for a needle in a stack of needles to find the rings in it. Fortunately, she could cheat. Turning her power towards the task, a veritable carpet of creepy crawlies moved through the stuff. Spiders, roaches, worms, flies and much more. It was much like running her hand across the whole thing and she already knew what gold felt like to the touch. If this didn’t work, only then would she give up.

Meanwhile…

She turned her eyes on the… gangoon? She had to admit that it was an efficient term, combining ganger and goon. Colin would approve. Either way, she turned her eyes on him and spoke. “What are you waiting around for? Get lost, and maybe find something better to do with your life.”

“Aren’t you going to untie me?” He turned around and wiggled his bound hands in her direction.

“No.”

“… Oh.”

Head bowed in defeat, he sulked off.

Taylor perked up as she felt her tiny minions come into contact with something round and smooth, with an engraving on the inside. Directing a team of roaches to bring it to her, she soon had one of the two wedding rings in hand. A minute or so later, she also found the other.

Thank you, Passenger.

There was no response, but she liked to think that she felt the cyberware connecting them heat up in her brain.

“Jackie, I have the rings.” She said to her mentor in the ways of the solo.

“No shit?” He sounded surprised. “Let me call Regina, then.”

“Jackie, Skitter.” The fixer was prompt to pick up. “I’m assuming this is about the gig?”

“I have the rings, in desperate need of a good wash, but intact.” She said.

“Really?” Regina was even more surprised than Jackie. “I’m going to be honest with you here, I didn’t have high hopes of being able to close this one. Plain gold rings of low carat gold wouldn’t have scored those gonks more than thirty or so eddies in a pawn shop if they were lucky. Since I haven’t heard of any angry Maelstromers wrecking a pawn shop, I figured that they must have tossed them somewhere.”

“They did, but I found them.”

“Well consider me impressed.” Regina praised. “Jackie, how did she do with the Maelstromers?”

Taylor and Jackie had by now rendezvoused and walked in step back to his bike.

“Like a pro.” The big Latino said. “Took down the borg ‘sitter and all six baby Stroms before they even knew what hit ‘em. Was cool as an iceberg the whole time, too. She said she had experience doing similar work and I believe it. I didn’t have to do a thing.”

He nodded at her with a wink and Taylor made the effort to smile back at him. He was just so damn likeable, mostly because he was treating her like an equal despite being a good dozen years older. She’d grown so used to the condescension of people older and supposedly wiser than her that the absence of that grating attitude was almost jarring.

Maybe Contessa ‘s bullshit power had actually worked in her favor for once.

“Preem. Sending you the detes on a drop off location now and closing the gig. I’ll send the NCPD to pick up the Maelstromers and send you your cut of the bounty for the borg once it’s paid out. Eddies from the gig itself will be coming your way as soon as the client confirms the package. I look forward to working with you in the future, Skitter.”

“Likewise, Regina.” She said and turned to Jackie with a raised eyebrow as the call dropped. “Bounties go through fixers, too?”

“It’s better that way.” Jackie nodded. “NCPD can get trigger happy around armed mercs.”

Yeah, that made sense. The cops would definitely at the very least cuff them and keep them cuffed until they established what had happened. And with how corrupt Night City was, there was no way Taylor would trust a cop to play straight with her.

The cut Regina would take for this service was more than worth not having to deal with them.

Jackie looked up at her as he straddled his bike. “Hey, how about we go to my mama’s place and get something to eat? This kind of work always makes me hungry. I can introduce you, too.”

“I was going to just go back to Misty’s…” Taylor replied awkwardly, easily a hundred times more nervous at the idea of meeting Jackie’s mother than she had been facing up against a gang of violent cyborgs.

“Aaaawww, don’t be like that.” Jackie cajoled. “My mama always likes to meet the people I work with. She owns a bar called the El Coyote Cojo down in Heywood and the food served there is better than what you’ll find anywhere else, I guarantee it.”

Frankly, Taylor felt that the food in 2076 left a great deal to be desired. The natives might not realize it since they’d been born into it, but when you have products like RealWater (as opposed to regular water), and advertisements proudly declaring that their meat product is 70% real meat, you have a serious problem.

Most of it was still, somehow, edible, but she dreaded finding out the long term consequences, even with advanced medical technology. It was probably for the best that she was going into a profession where dying young was almost a guarantee.

But looking at Jackie’s earnest expression, there was no way she’d be able to slink away in proper introvert fashion. Just like it had been with Lisa, another extrovert had adopted her.

“Fine, just stop looking at me with that gonk face.” She grumbled and climbed onto the bike behind him, deliberately testing out some of the local slang.

“Look at you, getting up to speed on modern lingo, choomba.” He crowed with a shit-eating grin. “Soon you’ll be nova enough for those sunglasses.”

“Just drive and stop trying to be funny.”

Night City was an objectively horrible place. Taylor shouldn’t be surprised that she fit into it so easily.