Retirement

For the second time since arriving in Night City, Taylor awoke laboriously and reluctantly. This time it wasn’t because she’d been shot in the head, although it sure as hell felt like it. The habitual nightmares she suffered from were not improved by a hangover.

Squinting against the light streaming through the window and swearing to never drink again, Taylor cursed Jackie Welles and his puppy dog expression. No man his age should be capable of pulling it off.

“Come on, hermana. You’re not going to let me drink alone, will you? Let’s have a toast to your first gig.” He had cajoled after she’d told him that she didn’t drink. The thought of pointing out that she was too young to drink legally had occurred to her, but she suspected it would get her laughed at. And she wasn’t sure if twenty-one was the legal drinking age in Night City anyway. Signs pointed to no.

Not wanting to sour relations with one of her only maybe-friends in this new world by being too stiff, she had eventually agreed. He had looked so impressed by the way she refused to cough as it burned down her throat that she couldn’t even be annoyed with him. Then had come the food and a pair of beers with it, which he had insisted was the only proper beverage to have when you were eating hot wings.

They did make the spiciness more bearable, admittedly.

That was the point where Taylor figured her inhibitions had started slipping. She didn’t exactly have a lot of meat on her, nor anything resembling an alcohol tolerance. When Jackie proposed another drink, she had put up far less resistance than to the first one.

After that, things went pretty hazy.

Ignoring the pain in her head with familiar stubbornness, she got out of the bed and took stock of the situation. Number one, she was still dressed, which meant that she hadn’t misjudged Jackie and he got to live. Number two, this room looked like it belonged to him. Number three, there were two people moving around on the floor below, Jackie and his mother.

Night City had strange ideas about room design, so there was a sink in the bedroom for some reason. She availed herself of it to wash out her nasty-feeling mouth and drink some water. It tasted off the same way tap water always did in Night City, but she’d been repeatedly assured that it wouldn’t make a hole in her stomach.

Taking a deep breath to brace herself, Taylor made her way downstairs.

“Hey hey, look who’s finally awake.” Jackie crowed as soon as he saw her, sporting a big grin.

This seemed to infuriate his mother, as she immediately hurled a flip-flop at his head. “And whose fault is it that she slept so late? Apologize to Taylor right now!”

Jackie had covered his head as if he was being shelled by artillery fire and only peeked out when it was clear there were no more projectiles incoming. “Sorry, chica. I just wanted you to relax a little and was going to stop offering you drinks as soon as you looked buzzed, but you looked stone cold sober all the way until you passed out. Never seen anything like it.”

Yeah, that would be because she’d been using her bugs to help coordinate her limbs, countering the disorienting effect of the alcohol. And she supposed that she was too much of a lightweight to really have a slurring phase.

“It’s fine, I shouldn’t have let you pressure me into it.” Taylor sighed.

“Jacquito is almost twice your age, he should know better than to get teenage girls drunk.” Mrs. Welles refused to let her take any responsibility.

“Mama, come on, don’t say it like that.” Jackie complained weakly.

The obvious affection beneath the banter made the old wound of her own lost mother ache.

“Hmph!” The older woman huffed and turned back to Taylor. “Are you hungry? We saved some tamales for you.”

Her stomach growled at the thought of food and she nodded. “That would be great, Mrs. Welles.”

“I asked you last night to call me Mama Welles, but I suppose I can understand that you forgot.” Taylor hadn’t, she’d just felt too awkward to comply. However, that almost threatening sentence told her that she’d better do so in the future. “Sit down and I’ll bring you a plate.”

“Thank you.”

“So…” Jackie boomed, doing a drumroll on the table and earning himself an exasperated look from his mother. “Any plans for today? I could show you around Heywood for a bit if you don’t have anywhere to be.”

“Not really.” Taylor shrugged. “I was thinking of calling Regina and asking if she needed any locations scouted.”

With how many bugs there were in Night City, she was even more functionally clairvoyant inside her range than she had been on Earth Bet.

“Oof, jumping right into it, huh?” He gave an exaggerated wince. “You know that the whole point of being a merc is so that you don’t have to work regular hours, right?”

“The sooner I build up a cash reserve, the sooner I can move out of Misty’s place and get out of your way.” She replied with a shrug.

“Hmph.” Mrs. Welles made a distinctly disapproving sound. Taylor would have thought it was aimed at her, if not for the fact that she was looking at Jackie, who just looked annoyed in turn.

The awkward moment passed when Mrs. Welles turned to her with a change of subject. “If you don’t mind me asking, Taylor, how did you get into mercenary work at such a young age?”

“I guess… this is kind of my retirement.” She explained evasively, wondering what that had been about. “My last line of work wasn’t something I chose and it ended with two shots to the back of the head. I was supposed to die, but an… acquaintance  decided to bring me to Night City so I could disappear instead. I thought about living a peaceful life, but I started going crazy in a matter of days. Working as a mercenary, getting to choose which jobs I take and when, is downright relaxing compared to what I’m used to.”

The older woman looked incredibly sad to hear that, while Jackie just looked grim. No doubt they were putting together all kinds of horror stories about child soldiers that they would be too considerate to ask about. It made Taylor feel a little guilty for misleading them like that, but she wasn’t going to tell the truth to people she’d just met, no matter how nice they seemed. Besides, the child soldier thing wasn’t even 100% a lie. It had been a frequent criticism pointed at the Wards.

“Well, I’m sure Padre could find some work for you, too.” Jackie said with forced cheer. “He’s the district fixer for Heywood, been in the biz for decades.”

“Co… uh, preem?” She stumbled over the slang, ignoring his amused snort. As weird as it sounded to her, it was for the best that she start using the local lingo as soon as possible. There was no benefit to sticking out because she refused to adapt. “I’m going to need to get a car, though. Or at least figure out the public transport.”

The PRT did teach her how to drive, even if she never got to actually do it. Would the cars of the future be different enough to invalidate her lessons?

Jackie snapped his fingers and pointed at her. “That’s what we can do today! I can show you around the NCART system, let you get a feel for the city. It would be pretty damn embarrassing if a fixer calls you for a gig and you have to turn it down because you don’t know how to get there.”

“Sounds good to me.” Taylor agreed, standing up from the table. “Thanks for breakfast and letting me sleep over, Mrs… err, Mama Welles.”

“Think nothing of it.” The older woman smiled. “Look after Jacquito for me. He isn’t very smart.”

“Mamaaaa…” Jackie moaned again and this time it was Taylor giving the amused snort.

XXXXX

Public transportation in Night City was actually… really good, in both price and coverage. Given that it was a corporate playground that operated pretty much exclusively on the principle of infinite greed, Taylor figured that it must somehow be profitable. They had probably calculated the exact amount of money they could charge passengers in order to make maximum profit.

Jackie showed her how to navigate the system, move across city districts and within the subdistricts. They started out in Heywood since they were already there, then went to Santo Domingo, then Westbrook and finally up to Watson.

Pacifica was skipped with a firm warning to never go there if she could help it, and definitely not alone. Apparently, the place was basically completely lawless and had no ‘citizens’, only potential victims and predators. Kind of like Brockton Bay after Leviathan.

They hadn’t encountered any trouble on their way through the city. Taylor had sensed more than one shady deal go down with her bugs and she strongly suspected that several hidden clinics and brothels were both illegal and unethical, but she was no longer a rookie to go charging in head first.

In fact, she constantly had to ignore a lot of things. There was so much crime happening in Night City that it simply wasn’t feasible for her to stick her nose into every single incident. To say nothing of how dangerous it would be if people started getting suspicious of her seeming omniscience.

On the other hand, sensing an unconscious man being carried by a group of people joking around in some eastern European language was not something she could just let go.

“Jackie, over there.” She said, already putting on her mask and sunglasses.

“What’s going on?” He asked, instantly tensing up.

“Saw a glimpse of four men carrying someone. I think they might be Scavs.” She lied. They were currently somewhere in between and to the north of Kabuki and Little China and it was late enough that foot traffic had thinned out on the main streets. The side alley where she’d sensed the Scavs was well out of sight.

“You want to play the hero?” Jackie raised an eyebrow and she shrugged. He shrugged back. “Alright then, let’s go be heroes.”

Taylor was glad that he didn’t protest. She knew that, as a mercenary, she should never fight for free, but she couldn’t just let a man be horribly murdered when she could help.

“You sure we’re going the right way, hermana?” Jackie asked a minute later as she led them through a trash-filled side alley and into a dilapidated building.

“Positive.” She affirmed, the out of sight bugs writhing with her anger. The Scav den had come into her range a short while ago and she could feel a whole lot of maggots writhing through a hollowed out body down in the sewers. The Scavs had been busy.

The building they had entered was an old apartment block, clearly neglected and falling apart, hidden from view by the taller buildings around it.

“Down here.” She said, leading the way into the basement and pressing her ear against the door, pretending to listen to what was on the other side. “Six scavs. One ripper and some kind of assistant in a room at two o’clock, getting ready to operate. Three snatchers settling down into a makeshift living room at nine o’clock, the fourth getting a drink from a cooler at eleven o’clock. The ripper and assistant are unarmed, but there’s one handgun close. The snatchers have shotguns and SMGs.”

Jackie stared at her, his eyes full of questions, but he kept them to himself for now. “Chica, if we’re doing this, then we take no prisoners, not with Scavs. Shoot to kill.”

There was a part of Taylor that wanted to protest, but that part was easily brushed aside. Even if they took the Scavs prisoner and called the police, they would ‘resist arrest’. NCPD had long since stopped bothering trying to arrest them.

“Got it.” She said curtly, sinking into the familiar mindset of cold focus and drawing her Liberty. Just treat them like the Slaughterhouse Nine.

“Then we go in on three.” Jackie drew the twin Nue pistols he preferred and gestured for her to go first, which made sense. As the one who had a better grasp of enemy positioning, she would waste less time making mental assessments. The implicit trust in her abilities was also appreciated.

“One, two, three!” Doors in 2076 unfortunately tended to be automated, but the Scavs had broken the electronic lock, so it presented no challenge.

Taylor stepped through and lined up a headshot to the guy that seemed in charge. He still had a surprised expression on his face as his head snapped back with a fresh hole in it. Her gun was already moving to its next target before the others got their wits about them. They’d been caught at exactly the worst moment, the ‘job complete’ moment when you started to unwind after doing something you knew was risky.

The second man died just as he was starting to reach for the shotgun on the couch next to him. Taylor sensed Jackie aiming at the last snatcher on the couch and adjusted her aim towards the one just coming out of the kitchen area, putting a hole in him as soon as he poked his head around a corner.

The Scav ripper and his assistant had been getting ready to harvest their victim, so they were slower to react. Jackie had just put four bullets into the last couch guy by the time the assistant was lunging for his gun. The ripper still had his hands full of scalpel and that ripperdoc multitool glove.

Taylor moved behind cover just as the assistant charged into the room, firing wildly and screaming something in some Eastern European language. Was he actually on drugs? Because that didn’t sound coherent even without understanding the language.

Either way, Jackie put him down while he was tunnel-visioning on Taylor.

“Just the ripper now.” She said and walked boldly into the operating suite, knowing that he had not armed himself.

The ripper was like every stereotype of an amoral hackjob doctor ever conceived. Bald, pale, bony face, red cyberoptics and an apron covered in old blood. He slowly put his hands up as soon as Taylor aimed her gun at him.

“You want me to do him in, chica?” Jackie offered, seemingly unbothered by the minor massacre they’d just committed.

Taylor… was also less bothered than she expected to be. Huh, looks like thinking of them as being equivalent, morally if not in threat level, to the Slaughterhouse Nine did help. She had been fully committed to killing every last one of those psychos, after all.

Still, she could accept Jackie’s offer and let him finish it… but it wouldn’t take away any of the responsibility for the deed. It would just make her a coward that needed others to pull the trigger.

“No need, I got it.” She said evenly, ignoring the Scav ripper’s attempts to bargain for his life. The Liberty barked one more time before falling silent.

“That was some preem work, chica. It’s like you were born for this life.” Jackie complimented with bemusement, shaking his head. “I’ll call Regina, tell her about this place so she can send in the NCPD for the bounties.”

“What about the victim?” Taylor nodded towards the still unconscious man. The Scavs must have sedated him or something.

“Not our problem.” Jackie shrugged and called the fixer.

That seemed a bit callous… but the cops would probably take care of him.

While Jackie called Regina and explained the situation to her, she took a moment to just take in what they’d done. A minor massacre committed in the basement of a dilapidated building, among the garbage and ruin. She could sense the movements of nearby people and knew they’d heard the shots, but none of them seemed to be calling the police or even hiding. To them, it was just background noise.

They had probably known about the Scavs, too, and just not cared. As long as it wasn’t them. It was the same kind of callous indifference that had always pissed her off, the same kind of indifference that had allowed her trigger event to happen.

There was no threat nearby, but Taylor could feel her hackles going up at the realization. The need for strength, power, control to make sure that she was never a victim again rising up inside. She looked at the unconscious victim of the Scavs. That could have been her and nobody would have cared.

“Hey, you alright?” Jackie nudged her, a hint of concern in his tone. He’d apparently finished his call with Regina.

Well, maybe someone would.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” She said, shaking off the strange malaise. The sudden insight into the true nature of Night City and this Earth in general made her grateful that she’d been dropped into the laps of decent people.

Contessa looked like she was really trying to be less of a heartless bitch.

“Then let’s get out of here, Scavs are starting to stink the place up.” He suggested.

That was certainly the truth. Some of the formerly living present had apparently been on the verge of needing a bathroom break, and had voided their bowels.

“Let’s.” She agreed, once again grateful for the mask and its built-in air filter.

“So…” Jackie began casually a few minutes later, once they were out on the street..

“I don’t want to talk about it.” Taylor shut down immediately. “You’re one of the better people I’ve known in my life, Jackie, but we did only just meet yesterday.”

“You must not have known many good people.” He joked.

“I haven’t.” She agreed. Earth Bet was full of assholes.

“Alright, chica, I won’t ask again.” Jackie grinned. “But maybe you’ll tell me yourself once you get to know the Jackster better?”

Taylor couldn’t help but be amused by his hammy tone. “Maybe.”

When they made it to Misty’s Esoterica, Taylor only said a quick hello to the woman and a good night to Jackie before going up to the apartment to take a shower.

“Why are you sitting in the dark?” Misty asked in confusion when she came up about an hour later.

Because Night City television was all hot garbage and she wasn’t in the mood to try reading an e-book.

“Just thinking.” She said, turning fully to her host. “Hey, Misty, is there some kind of drawing tool I could get for my phone?” She was pretty sure there had to be. By 2013 Earth Bet standards, the very average Night City phone she had now was a supercomputer.

“Of course, there’s hundreds of apps for that kind of thing.” The spiritualist confirmed her suspicion. “What are you looking for? Portraits? Vistas? Abstract art?”

“More like sketches, blueprints and 3D models. Preferably something that does most of the work for me after I tell it what I want.” Taylor said wrily. “This would be for work, not a hobby.”

Her initial thought was to get a pencil and paper to do it by hand, but that was only until she remembered that she was now living in a sci-fi dystopia. There had to be something more convenient.

“Oh.” Misty deflated, excitement visibly draining at the realization that she wasn’t artistically inclined. “Yeah, there should be something like that. Might cost you a few hundred eddies to get something with a limited AI to do all the heavy lifting.”

This Earth had an oddly cavalier attitude towards artificial intelligences, particularly in light of the damage they’d done in the past and the potential technological apocalypse waiting to happen in the form of rogue AIs. The PRT would have absolutely shat a brick and handed out kill orders like candy, whereas the governments and megacorps cheerfully waved it all off as collateral.

“Can you help me find a program like that?”

“Sure.”

XXXXX

As both a former villain and former hero, Taylor had a keen understanding of the importance of reputation.

Reputation meant respect. Reputation opened doors that would otherwise be closed and warded off threats that would otherwise bother her. Of course, it also tended to invite bigger threats, but that was simply the cost of doing business.

In this particular case, better rep meant getting some flexibility with the jobs she could take, as well as better pay. And better pay was something she needed, because she wanted to set up her own place as soon as possible. Misty was a nice girl, but she was a civilian and Taylor was uncomfortable living with her for a multitude of reasons connected to that fact.

The only way to increase her reputation was by doing jobs and doing them well. However, instead of calling Regina and bugging her for work, Taylor took a detour to the nearby Megabuilding H10.

Megabuildings were gigantic constructions, basically miniature cities within cities. People could be born, live, work and die in them without ever coming out. To her sensibilities, they were something horrible, like a gigantic prison complex almost.

Personal feelings on the damn things aside, she took a seat on a bench down at the very bottom level and brought up her phone.

Staring at it for a moment, she took a deep breath and reached into the inner pocket of her jacket and brought out a spool of cable. With another deep breath, she jacked one end into the phone and the other into her neural port.

She’d done this before, but it still hadn’t stopped feeling weird as she felt her neuralware connect to the phone, allowing her to mentally navigate through its operating system and find the AI-assisted 3D drawing tool Misty had helped her find and buy.

She also had to ignore a couple of preteens pointing at her and calling her grandma for using such an outdated connection method instead of a built-in cable like normal people.

They could laugh all they wanted, but she wasn’t the one that was going to have her brain infected with malware. How anyone thought that having a permanent open cyberlink to the fractured internet was a good idea still escaped her.

Well, that was a lie. She knew exactly why they thought it was a good idea – it was convenient and they were lazy. The program on her phone was just another example of high tech convenience.

All she had to do was think at it and it would draw. It responded to her power-obtained knowledge and created an extremely accurate picture of the Megabuilding, complete with all its dirty secrets.

Finishing the snack she’d bought and disconnecting from the phone, Taylor was just about ready to get up and continue with her self-assigned mission when something caught her attention, something that she had dismissed as irrelevant earlier.

It was nothing special, just a bunch of kids playing tag somewhere halfway up the megabuilding. With her instinctive distaste for these massive housing blocks, it was almost jarring to think that children could still laugh in them. Somehow, she’d simply assumed that everyone living in a megabuilding would be miserable.

In a slightly better mood thanks to the unexpected wholesomeness, she started walking away. There was a temptation to scout several more locations, but she didn’t want to go overboard and make anyone insatiably curious, so she just went ahead and called Regina.

“Skitter, what can I do for you?” Regina asked. “Did you wipe out another Scav den?”

“Not today.” Although she might have if she ran into any. “I’ve got a request and a gift for you.”

“I get plenty of requests, but not a lot of gifts, so this is a nice surprise.” The fixer said with a tinge of humor. “Alright, lay it on me.”

“I have no legal identity in Night City and I need one before that becomes a problem.” Taylor had thought long and hard on the benefits of staying a ghost in the system. In the end, the downsides just weren’t worth it and might actually draw even more attention. Besides, it wasn’t like it would be her real information.

“Easily done, though it’ll cost a bit to skip the bureaucratic bullshit you’d be subjected to in City Hall. And I’ll need a name other than Skitter and some personal details to put on your ID.”

Revealing her civilian identity went against her instincts, but she knew that things worked differently here. Besides, Regina’s reputation hinged on her ability to keep confidences.

“Taylor Hebert, eighteen years old, born on the ninth of June, 2057.”

This Earth was thankfully only a few months ahead of Bet, calendar wise, so there would be minimal confusion about her actual age.

“Alright, I’ll just put place of birth as Night City. Plenty of kids don’t show up anywhere until they’re teenagers.” Regina said instead of prying for further details. “I’ll have it all filed within the next few days. Now, what was this about a gift?”

“Sending it to you now.” Taylor said and uploaded the information she’d spent all day gathering.

“Skitter, this is…?” Regina trailed off pointedly a minute later. There was a trace of surprise in her tone.

“I told you I was good a reconnaissance, but I don’t think you realized what I meant.” The parahuman stated. “Some of that information you might already know, but some you probably don’t. I’d like to build a reputation quickly, so I’m asking you to send any recon missions you have my way. Unless the place is locked down airtight, I can scout it.”

“Missions, huh?” Regina repeated neutrally. “You’re too young to have fought in the war, but you talk like a soldier. None of my biz, but you might want to change up your choice of words.”

“Got it.” Taylor said curtly, annoyed at herself. She’d decided just yesterday that she was going to try adopting Night City slang to fit in and then she makes a mistake like this?

“As for your ‘gift’… I’m definitely impressed. This is preem intel and I’ll be happy to set aside some recon gigs for you.”

“Thanks, Regina.”

“No. Thank you, Skitter.” The fixer said and hung up.

She had not said anything about paying for the intel, which made sense since it was a gift. On the other hand, she also hadn’t said anything about paying for the ID Taylor had asked for.

She must have really liked the gift.

Taylor exhaled in relief. Things were coming together.

XXXXX

Over the next couple of weeks, she got fully settled into this new life of hers. Regina sent her a few gigs and she did one more with Jackie for Padre, but that wasn’t the important part. The important part was that she now had a place in Night City whereas before, she was relying on other people to help her.

Not having her own space to live in still grated, but it was an issue that she was working on. The villain in her wanted to go out and claim an abandoned building as a lair. With the state of Night City, there were plenty of such buildings to choose from, but picking the right one was more problematic.

An abandoned factory or warehouse in the Industrial District would have lots of space, but the heavy Maelstrom presence in the area made it too risky.

Anywhere in or near Tyger Claw territory ran into the same problem. While not as aggressively violent as Maelstrom, the Asian gang reminded her far too much of the ABB in both temperament and the kind of crime they engaged in. They even used the same red and green color scheme… albeit the Tyger Claws were even more tacky by making those colors bright neon. Taylor knew herself well enough to know that if she saw any of their more heinous crimes that she would end up fighting them and that was simply too dangerous to do if her base was in their territory.

Pacifica was even worse. Taylor was fairly sure that she would be able to carve out a chunk of that lawless wasteland for herself. Whether she would be able to do it without exposing her powers was another matter entirely. That was something that absolutely could not be allowed to become known. The megacorps would come down on her like a ton of bricks, every single one of them. It might even ignite another war as they fought for the opportunity to cut her head open. Powerful as she was, Taylor had no illusions about being able to win that conflict. They simply had too many resources they could throw at her.

Currently, the most attractive idea was to set up somewhere in Heywood. The Valentinos mostly controlled that district and were the largest gang in Night City, with over six thousand members. More to the point, their crimes mostly leaned towards the less heinous variety and Jackie was on good terms with the gang as a former member, so he could vouch for her. It would take relatively little work for the gang to consider her a nominal ally, or at least someone that was off limits as a target.

Not ideal, but the gangs were even more a fact of life in Night City than they had been in Brockton Bay. The megacorporations might own the city, but it was the gangs that ruled the streets. Unless there was some kind of profit to be had in fighting them, then that state of affairs was going to continue. Outside of MaxTac, their heavily cyber-augmented kill squads, the NCPD was a bit of a joke. A dangerous joke, but a joke nonetheless, especially since it became privately owned just this year.

For the moment, Taylor still needed more information and a bigger cash reserve before she could risk a move like that, but it was something that was frequently on her mind.

Another, completely unrelated, thing that was frequently on her mind was the bodysculpt clinic right in front of her.

One of the things she’d done in the past two weeks was to get a gym membership. Being in good shape was just as important for a merc as it was for a cape, and Taylor had no intention of going back to being a flabby twig. Nanomed inhalers meant that she didn’t even have to take rest days if she didn’t want to, and she often had nothing better to do than exercise.

And every day, after she finished her workout, she sat at a café that sold a sad imitation of proper tea, ate a sandwich and stared at the bodysculpt clinic that operated next to the gym in a very blatant piece of silent marketing.

Boobs.

Taylor had lamented her flat chest ever since it became clear that puberty would not be blessing her in that department. She’d felt ugly and unfeminine for years, eventually able to push that admittedly trivial concern aside in the face of ever escalating threats. Even before Emma had betrayed her, she’d started worrying about how unattractive she was compared to her already developing friend, something that the traitor had taken ruthless advantage of later. Most of the reason why she was able to stop caring so much about the boyish shape of her body was because a large part of her was grimly resigned to dying too young for it to ever matter.

And yet she had survived in spite of all odds, and here was an easy answer to her flat chest, with no apocalypse looming on the horizon to overshadow that petty personal concern. And she couldn’t stop thinking about it, as if her mind needed something to fixate on and it had run out of more important matters.

Bodysculpt clinics were to plastic surgery what a sniper rifle was to a slingshot. Over the past century, biosculpting procedures had become incredibly refined and could achieve just about anything. Once it was done, nobody would ever be able to tell that she hadn’t been born that way. The truly high end ones could even rewrite your DNA, although that was a service that only the extremely rich and connected could afford.

First there was a body scan in a private booth with a terminal. She would be able to change the model of herself however she wished, within the limits of the clinic’s ability of course. Nanobots would be programmed with the desired appearance and injected into her body. Then over the course of several days or weeks, depending on how extensive the changes, her body would be altered to match. Surgery was only required for the more extreme procedures, such as bone replacement and alteration, gender swaps, animal attachments, and so on. For the regular stuff, she would just have to eat more as the nanobots redirected her body’s resources to make the desired changes, then they would deactivate and eventually be filtered out of her body by her liver just like any other contaminant.

It was so common that she had literally seen parents bring their preteen children there to fix things like freckles or smooth out the shape of their noses. Multiple pairs of giggling thirteen-year-old girls had gone inside and gotten boob jobs or tattoos without any need for parental consent. Bodysculpting was being treated with only slightly more seriousness than a manicure. Dedicated tattoo parlors had morphed into something artisanal, or if you wanted specialty stuff like glowing or animated body art.

Taylor wanted it. She wanted to go in there and get a pair of breasts that would actually fill out her clothes. She wanted to be shaped like an hourglass instead of like a board. It wasn’t even that expensive, easily within her current budget.

Her paranoia around cybernetics had been somewhat assuaged since her arrival in Night City. Her arm and neuralware had given her no trouble, nor had the medical nanites she’d grown accustomed to using. As long as she was careful and didn’t go overboard, it would be fine. Biosculpt nanites were considered among the very safe kind.

But it was petty. The only reason this kept coming back to mind was because she had nothing more important to think about. Bigger boobs weren’t going to make her any happier, and if that was the only thing that drew a man’s eyes to her, then it probably wouldn’t have a happy ending. At best, it would make it easier to have meaningless flings, which wasn’t something she was interested in. Frankly, she wasn’t sure she was interested in trying out another relationship at all.

There was also another voice – one that sounded suspiciously like Lisa – telling her to go for it. Hadn’t she earned it? What was the harm? Aren’t you an adult now? You can do whatever you want! Go for it, Godkiller.

Aisha would call her a pussy for hesitating. Brian would shake his head in exasperation and stay out of it. Rachel would grunt, having no idea what the problem was and not caring. Alec would tell her to get GG-cups and offer to motorboat them afterwards. Her dad would say that she was perfect just the way she was. Would he support her if she really wanted to do this?

Taylor bit into her sandwich savagely and chewed like she had a grudge against it, glaring at the clinic. Maybe she was fixating on the idea of getting bigger boobs because she didn’t want to think about the friends and family she would never see again. She couldn’t do anything except hope that they were doing well, but had the sinking feeling that they were all dead.

When her phone chimed to warn of an incoming message, she was glad for the distraction. Working was better than brooding.

It was from Regina.

Got a gig for you. Recon. You interested?

Taylor sent back a simple yes.

Target is Jotaro Shobo. He’s recently taken over management of the Ho-Oh Club on Allen Street in Kabuki. He’s a rising star in the Tyger Claws, but I haven’t been able to get much information on him. Security tightened up as soon as he took over and the club’s profits went through the roof. Everything but the first floor is off limits to the public now. I want to know what’s going on in the upper floors. If you can find any dirt on Shobo, all the better.

There was a picture attached of the man in question. Japanese, unsurprisingly. Handsome, wearing a crisp white suit over a black shirt that managed to make even the gaudy fluorescent purple bowtie look decent.

Taylor didn’t like the look in Jotaro Shobo’s eyes. She’d looked into the eyes of monsters before and this was giving her a case of déjà vu. It could be her imagination… but it also might not be. She had a feeling that Regina was also worried about the Tyger Claws pushing deeper into Watson. This was the third gig against them, with the one other she did for her being against Maelstrom.

I’m on my way there now.

Personal dilemmas about her boobs could wait.

XXXXX

There was a Japanese tea shop that had the Ho-Oh Club within her range. Taylor went there in the hopes that maybe oriental style tea would be better than the western style she’d just had.

Nope, still shit.

She supposed that was to be expected when the ecosystem had been torpedoed and all the plants were bioengineered. Nothing tasted right. Or maybe you needed more money to get the good stuff?

But the tea shop offered enough privacy and an unobtrusive way to spy on Shobo, which was what she was really there for. And there was some gruesome shit to report. Her bugs had detected old blood in what was clearly an operating suite on the same floor as Shobo had his apartment long before she’d made it to the tea shop. Further exploration told her that there was also some kind of studio, with a bed that reeked of cleaning products and old blood that whoever cleaned it had missed.

She quickly made a model of the whole building and sent the file to Regina, along with her notes on the dried blood. The response came back a few minutes later.

Fuck! I think we’ve stumbled on a real sick bastard here. Soon after Shobo took over the Ho-Oh an especially nasty XBD hit the streets. A joytoy being brutally raped and tortured for over an hour, then finally killed. Then it happened again a couple of weeks later. The Mox are fucking pissed and have a bounty out for any information on whoever scrolled that shit. What you sent me looks like the layout of the room in the XBD, so I think we just found him and they are going to be out for blood.

Taylor remembered reading about the Mox. A small and young gang made up mostly of prostitutes, former prostitutes and bouncers. Their goals were a good deal more altruistic than the other gangs… for now. They had formed after a group of Tyger Claws had raped a joytoy, only to get axe-murdered by the owner of the strip club where she worked and their severed heads paraded around.

Had Lizzie simply killed them quietly, the Tyger Claw higher ups would probably have thanked her for taking care of the idiots and paid a bit of compensation, but making a spectacle of it forced their hand. They had to retaliate or else they’d lose face. That was how gang politics worked.

But something about the timing must have been wrong, because Lizzie’s execution sparked a wave of outrage and riots that must have cost the Tyger Claws millions. The Mox had formed in the wake of that event, with the intention of protecting joytoys from similar events. They’d since taken over the strip club, renamed it Lizzie’s in honor of the previous owner and it now operated as their headquarters.

Yeah, this would strike very close to home for the Mox.

I’m going to kill him. Taylor found herself sending. While she was still leery about becoming a killer for hire, she couldn’t let this kind of psychopath live and reporting him to the police wouldn’t accomplish a damn thing.

Regina unsurprisingly didn’t protest.

Can you do it? From what I know, there has to be at least two dozen Tyger Claws in the building at any given time.

26. And they won’t be a problem.

Taylor was already moving bugs up the walls and through the ventilation system. The nearby buildings were cramped enough that she could have gotten in without having to deal with all the gangoons on the lower floors, but she wasn’t sure if she could get to Shobo without setting off any alarms.

But he had no cameras in his room, which would be his undoing. Taylor knew that she needed to keep the use of her powers subtle, but there was a difference between being subtle and being too paranoid to use them at all. Plus, there were ways to further obfuscate what had happened.

Then give me a minute to contact the Mox with this info. We can collect on the information bounty and get them to take a gig on this sick fucker’s life.

Sounds good. I need to wait to get him alone anyway

Several hours passed. Regina sent confirmation that the Mox had opened up an assassination gig on Jotaro Shobo, the sun went down and the walls of the Ho-Oh Club teemed with her swarm while Taylor played around with her phone and occasionally ordered more bad tea until the shop closed for the day and she was asked to leave.

That was when something incredibly annoying happened.

Kabuki definitely had a heavy Japanese culture to it, but during the day you could find all kinds of people moving through it. Not so much when it got dark. That was when the ratio of Tyger Claws in comparison to regular people started to even out a bit more.

Taylor kept track of everyone in her vicinity as a matter of habit. Mosquitos or ticks or similar small bugs on strategic locations gave her what was essentially 360° vision of all motion. That was why she knew the very instant that one Tyger Claw pointed her out to his buddy, and they started walking behind her after a short conversation in Japanese.

It was all she could do to hold back an aggravated sigh. Two low level morons looking to start trouble was not something she was in the mood to deal with right now. Hoping to get rid of them while still keeping the Ho-Oh Club in her range, she started taking a roundabout path through the neighborhood.

It didn’t work. The Tyger Claw duo kept on her trail, the one who first pointed at her more enthusiastically than the other. Seeing that this was probably going to get ugly, Taylor turned into a small side street that was filled with garbage and one sleeping homeless man. Usually a bad idea for a young woman to do when looking to avoid unwanted male attention, but she wasn’t exactly normal.

Predictably, the two idiots followed, now half-running to catch up to her. They hadn’t drawn their weapons, so neither did Taylor, but she was ready to spin around and clock the first idiot with her baton and then quickly shoot the other at the first sign of hostility.

“Hey, pretty lady. Wait!” The more enthusiastic one called out, making Taylor freeze in surprise.

She turned around, finally getting a look at both with her human eyes. They were… ridiculous. Teenagers, about her age or at most a year older. One of them had blazing red hair and a neon green jacket, while the other had bright green hair and a neon red jacket. They were a color coded advertisement for their gang.

“What?” She demanded coldly, immersing herself in the swarm.

“No need to be scared.” Red Hair said in a fairly thick Japanese accent, vastly overestimating how intimidating he was. “My friend here saw you in the tea shop earlier and fell in love.”

“Tajima!” Green Hair protested, clearly embarrassed.

Meanwhile, Taylor was having a crisis as her assumptions were proven false and the violence she had been prepared to unleash was stalled.

She wasn’t being attacked, she was being hit on. This was somehow even worse.

“So what do you say?” Red Hair grinned in what he probably thought was a winning manner. “Do you want to come party with us? Go dancing? Sing at a karaoke bar?”

“No.”

“Don’t be like that.” Red Hair cajoled, swaggering forward. Green Hair trailed behind him with clear awkwardness. “We’re Tyger Claws, you know? We can show you all the best places in Kabuki.”

“Tyger Claws. You don’t say?” Taylor responded with a tone as flat as her gaze, staring at their color scheme.

“Hai, we just had our initiation today.” He said proudly, clearly missing the sarcasm. “And my friend here would like to celebrate with you. Isn’t that right, Uchima?”

Green Hair seemed to get over whatever shyness he had and nodded, puffing out his chest. “Hai. I think you are very beautiful. What is your name?” His English was obviously not as good.

“Not interested. Find someone else.” Taylor shot them down coldly, now tremendously annoyed.

Green Hair looked like she’d just kicked his puppy, while Red Hair looked a little annoyed. She fully expected that they would finally get to the violence and this embarrassing incident could then be forgotten about.

But yet again she was… disappointed?

“Fine.” Red Hair replied, annoyed. “Come on, Uchima. Let’s go find a couple of joytoys, at least we know they won’t be frigid bitches.”

Taylor was left standing there, feeling strangely cheated. She’d already committed herself to beating the crap out of those two, only for it to be unnecessary.

Exhaling deeply to release some tension, she stomped over to a nearby restaurant. There was still a psycho sadist to kill.

XXXXX

Jotaro stepped out of his shower with a sigh, toweling himself off before crawling into bed.

It had been a long day, as it always was. The Ho-Oh wasn’t a night club, but it stayed open quite late and it always got rowdiest in the evenings. It was best that he stay awake to manage it, especially in these early days.

Jotaro was forever conscious of his obligations, both social and to his superiors in the Tyger Claws. Unlike the stupid low level punks, he followed the gang’s philosophies religiously. He didn’t make trouble or pointlessly harass outsiders. He didn’t goof around or waste opportunities to make money. He paid his dues on time and didn’t keep the bosses waiting.

And in return, he was allowed to have his little pleasures.

Just thinking of it made him hard, but he forced it down. It was too soon. A joytoy disappearing every couple of weeks was acceptable, having it happen every couple of days would bring trouble. He had worked too hard to get to where he was to screw up now.

Jotaro refused to go back to the days when he had no status and had to content himself with rushed rapes and murders. Finally, he could take his time to draw it out until he’d extracted every drop of suffering from his victims and then share his art with the world in the form of scrolled XBDs. He would not ruin this for himself by getting greedy.

He fell into the deep, peaceful sleep of those who had an untroubled conscience.

Some time later he awoke to strange prickling sensations all over his body. At first, the strange sensations merged with his dreams and he merely tried to turn over, but then the prickling became painful, especially around his crotch, throat, and chest. Disoriented, he turned on the light.

And screamed. Spiders, hundreds of them, were crawling over his body and biting him. He recognized only the distinctive red-on-black coloration of the black widow, but there were others. Or he tried to scream at least. All that came out was a wheeze as his throat felt closed up and swollen.

It was also a mistake, because it invited a tide of buzzing flies to fly into his mouth, choking him. He flailed desperately, trying to force them away, but nothing worked. The bugs invaded his mouth, nose, ears, eyes, everything.

Jotaro Shobo died choking, gagging, and screaming, and then his flesh was devoured by the tide of bugs. Once the flesh was gone, the bugs started on his bones until those were also gone.

The next morning, when he didn’t show up, his men found nothing but some bloodstains and his modest cyberware on his bed.

Jotaro Shobo’s mysterious disappearance would eventually become part of an urban legend, one of many in Night City. The superstitious would say that the vengeful ghosts of his victims came to take their revenge.

XXXXX

Walking away with the grim satisfaction of knowing there was one less monster in the world, Taylor sent a message to Regina informing her that the job was done. With justice being such a laughable concept in Night City, this was the closest thing to it that Shobo’s victims would ever see.

XXXXX

“I don’t get it. How can you shoot like a pro when we’re on a gig, but struggle to hit a bullseye on the range?” Jackie asked, bewildered.

Because I cheat with my bugs’ proprioception.

“I guess I work better under pressure.” Taylor shrugged. She could have easily hit perfect bullseyes here too, but that would invalidate the point of practicing. In case she ever got into a theoretical no insect situation and needed to actually be a good shot, it was better to not do that.

“I can actually believe that.” He chuckled before taking a dramatic deep breath, quickdrawing his twin Nue, cracking his neck and letting lose on the firing range.  He… kinda hit the targets?

“You know that’s still stupid, right?” Taylor asked drily. “Unless you’ve got some kind of cyberware to help you aim both guns at once, humans just don’t have the multitasking ability to duel wield guns effectively.”

She could do it, but she was a cheating cheater who cheats. Unlike everyone else, she didn’t have to devote any mental capacity to keeping track of targets, not when every bug was an extension of her.

“It’s my style, chica.” Jackie insisted. “One day, everyone in Night City will know the name of Jackie Welles, the man with the golden guns.”

“Your guns aren’t golden, Jackie.” They were, in fact, a completely default grey.

“Not yet, but as soon as I have enough scratch saved up, I’m getting a custom job done.”

“I still don’t see how having golden guns is going to make you special. Half the Valentinos have gold-plated guns.”

The Latino gang was well known for ‘pimping out’ their stuff. Cars, clothes, guns, their own bodies, all of it could be gold-plated and shiny. Half was probably an overly conservative estimate.

Personally, Taylor suspected that it was a leftover from the time when the Valentinos were just a gang of posers whose only ambition was to seduce beautiful women. She’d been incredulous when Jackie had told her that bit of history, followed by bafflement that they had somehow transformed into arguably the most powerful gang in the city.

“Then how about this: Jackie Welles, the Latino Samurai?” He said, posing.

“Please never do that again or I’ll be too embarrassed to keep associating with you.” Taylor never had much of a chance to get good at harmless banter, but she could at least enjoy being the straight man to Jackie’s eccentric goof.

“Oof, you wound me, hermana.” He mimed a fatal injury with a grin. “But this is really your own fault.”

She had to put down her gun to stare at him properly. “How is you acting twelve my fault?”

“You’ve already got your mercenary swagger all figured out.” Jackie reasoned. “Skitter, the terrifying spider assassin! I gotta keep up or you’ll blow past me and become a legend all by yourself.”

Despite the jovial tone, Taylor thought she could hear a hint of frustration in it. She knew that Jackie had been trying for years to make it as a big time mercenary. She’d overheard him talking to Misty about how he was going to make it to the big leagues, become a legend, rake in loads of eddies and they would raise a family together in luxury.

Now here she was, some rookie out of nowhere bringing in more money than him. Fact of the matter was that Jackie was good in a fight, but that was basically all the skills he had. Compared to the intel she was able to bring in and the speed at which she could scout locations, he just couldn’t compete.

Mama Welles had even taken her aside one day for a talk about her son’s ambitions and to please look after him. The Welles matriarch was a tough woman, but she had lost all her other sons to street violence, so it was a wonder that she had the strength to keep quiet about Jackie’s choice of lifestyle.

Taylor had quickly become fond of the older woman and found herself promising to do her best to keep Jackie alive, and that meant keeping him from doing anything stupid in a bid to get famous.

“Don’t be ridiculous, we’re a team.” She shook her head.

“I guess you’re right.” He exhaled, shaking off the momentary dark mood.

Taylor didn’t personally care about being some legendary mercenary, but she did very much care about keeping the few people she had in this world safe and happy. At some point during their first meeting, Mama Welles seemed to have decided that she was part of the family and wasn’t taking no for an answer. When Jackie took her to the El Coyote Cojo the second time, she had been welcomed with a hug that definitely didn’t almost make her cry.

In any case, it made her seriously think about what she wanted out of her life. At first, it had been all about getting settled so that she could stand on her own two feet, but that wasn’t a goal. There was a faint urge to start a crusade against the hilariously evil megacorporations, but she was just so goddamn tired of fighting against the odds all the time. And this world was already pretty fucked anyway. Even if she somehow brought the corps to their knees, it wouldn’t make anything better. The chaos afterwards might actually make it worse.

So she decided to just… live. Maybe one day, she’d find herself in an ever escalating conflict with the powers of this world, but Taylor wasn’t in a hurry to get there. For now, she would just look after the few people she was close to, like Jackie, Mama Welles, Misty, and Viktor, while also indulging her undeniable violent urges on the scum of Night City.

They spent a little longer at the firing range and then went for a walk around Heywood, during which Taylor surreptitiously scouted for any buildings that might make good lairs or hives for her spiders.

Much to her annoyance, she’d determined that spider silk wasn’t quite as amazing a material in 2076 as it was in 2011. There were synthetic fibers that worked better as armor, although they were expensive as hell, but even those wouldn’t stand up to a lot of the guns that were commonplace in Night City.

She had some ideas for enhancing the silk that had been impractical back on Earth Bet but might work here, but it had somewhat taken the wind out of her urgency to remake the suit. Still, she was steadily working towards that goal and it was always good to gather information in advance. There were several buildings that might work and she could hire the Valentinos as a sort of moving/construction/remodeling service. For all that they were a criminal gang, they also owned a lot of legitimate businesses. All the gangs did, even Maelstrom.

It was late in the afternoon that Jackie got a phone call.

“V, you need something?” He asked, turning aside to talk to this person.

Taylor politely wandered off so that he could have his private conversation, even moved her bugs away so that she wouldn’t unintentionally eavesdrop. When he hung up, he looked troubled and came to her with a frown on his face.

“Something up?” She asked.

“Could be.” Jackie nodded. “That was a friend of mine, a corpo. Said she needs to talk, right away.”

“You are friends with a corpo?” Taylor’s eyebrows shot up.

“I’m a man with many connections.” He said mysteriously before chuckling. “We ended up saving each other’s assess during some corpo fuck up down at the Mexican border and stayed in touch. I give her the word on the street and she gives me the word in Arasaka. It works out for both of us.”

“I see. You need someone to watch your back?” She asked.

“Nah. Strange as it sounds, I trust V. Been telling her to quit her job and partner up with me for years.” He waved off. “Maybe she’s finally wised up?”

“If she needs to talk to you in person this urgently then it sounds like she might be in trouble.” Taylor pointed out. “Even if you trust her, what about her coworkers?”

“Mierda, you’re right.” He swore after taking a second to think about it. “Half the reason I keep telling her to quit that fuckin’ job is because her coworkers would stab her in the back in a heartbeat. Alright, listen, the meeting is at Lizzie’s. You can come along, but stay out of sight. V’s a bit paranoid and won’t react well if she spots you.”

“Got it.” Taylor nodded, relieved. She had been planning to get the meeting location out of him and follow even if he said not to, because she wasn’t going to risk something happening to him at this meeting. Jackie might trust this V woman, but Taylor certainly didn’t.

Looks like they were both a bit paranoid.

XXXXX

They got there well before V did, which was a blessing. Lizzie’s Bar was definitely not Taylor’s natural habitat and it took a while before she managed to get comfortable enough to not stick out like a sore thumb. In the end, she settled for sitting at the bar and nursing a drink while looking broody. A few men and women approached her and tried to chat her up, but thankfully didn’t press the matter when she made it clear that she wanted to be left alone.

Just over an hour into the wait, the show started. Her bugs picked up an AV landing on the roof in a move that just had to be illegal. A few guys had been shooting hoops up there and didn’t appreciate some corpo using their court as a landing pad and went to cause trouble.

Two of them got a variety of minor injuries for their trouble, as the clearly augmented woman easily smacked them around.

So far, Taylor was not getting a good impression of Jackie’s friend, and it had nothing to do with the fact that she could already tell that V was a very beautiful woman. Her bugs had mapped out her body and it was the sort of curvy and voluptuous that would naturally bring sex to mind.

That was confirmed when she came into view. V was the kind of femme fatale that she had sometimes fantasized of being before reality made it clear she would never have the body or social skills for it. She was a spectacularly beautiful woman, almost a work of art, through either top of the line bodysculpting, genetics, or some combination of both.

About the same height as her at 5’11’, with straight, shiny black hair held in a high ponytail by a golden clasp, full lips, a face that was downright intimidatingly beautiful, a pair of cold golden snake eyes shaped to hint at a mixed Asian heritage glaring forward, large breasts and a firm ass straining the Arasaka business wear… and she knew it, too. Just by the way she walked, she might as well be declaring herself the hottest bitch around.

At least it meant that Taylor wasn’t the only one staring. Pretty much everyone in the bar was doing the same thing as V went to sit next to Jackie in one of the booths.

Taylor turned back to her drink, this time brooding for real. The thought of going to a bodysculpting clinic once again reared its head. It was a decision she’d been waffling over and putting off for weeks at this point, hovering between juvenile desire and the certain knowledge bigger boobs were actually a liability and that they wouldn’t really make her happy.

Her brooding was thankfully interrupted, allowing her to push the topic back into the depths of her mind where it belonged, though the nature of the interruption was less welcome. A trio of goons that moved very differently from anyone else came into her range, wearing fabrics that her bugs identified as being identical to V’s outfit.

Backup… or betrayal? Taylor waited until they entered the bar and then blended in with all the other starers again. She also wasn’t the only one with her hand hovering close to her gun. Everyone could smell the violence brewing and the Mox bouncers were already tensing up. She sent her bugs close to listen in.

“…assigned you a task today. You’ll share all the details with us.” She caught the leader of the new guys saying.

Definitely betrayal. Someone had screwed over Jackie’s friend.

“Name and department?” V demanded, glaring at them.

Instead of answering, the corpo goon did something and V suddenly swayed, groaning low in her throat.

“How you feeling? Pretty sharp dive, huh?” He taunted. “Your access to company networks is hereby revoked. In two minutes any company cybernetics in your possession will cease functioning. Give us the data you received from Jenkins. This will conclude termination procedures.”

Taylor looked towards Jackie for direction on what to do, but the Latino gave a minute shake of his head. He was content to let this play out.

Left with no other choice, V handed over the datashard they were after. “Information’s on the shard.”

“Smart choice.” The corporate goon said and handed it over to one of his friends, who then slotted it into his neural port to check it.

“We done?” V asked stoically once it was confirmed to be legit.

“With the formalities, yes. But I think Abernathy would gladly pay us extra for ridding her of a piece of rot like you. Stand up, you’re coming with us.” He said and moved to grab V by the arm.

Now Jackie finally moved, pushing off from the railing he’d been leaning against.  “Whoa, hold on. I think you fellas might have forgotten just how far from home you are.” He went in close to one of them, violating personal space with his bulk. “Not sure this barrio’s your style, let alone a healthy option. Quedo claro?”

“Is that a threat?” The corporate goons didn’t take it well, preparing to throw down.

“Well, you start shootin’, maybe we join in, huh? Before you know it, somebody might die today.” Jackie replied, pointedly looking around the bar.

The bar which was full of hostile glares and itchy trigger fingers.

“We have what we came for. It’ll do for now.” The leader of the corpo goons bowed out and they left.

“Phew, dodged one there. Hijo de la chingada.” Jackie gusted out, tension leaving his form. “V, how you feel? You alright?”

The concern in the question was well earned, because Taylor’s bugs were telling her that the newly unemployed woman was sweating hard, swaying, having trouble breathing.

“Like shit.” V managed to croak out. “I can’t see. They turned off my optics.”

Oh, that would explain her fumbling movements. Well, that and her obvious physical distress.

“Don’t worry, V. We’ll get you to a ripper and get you a new pair. Might not be as fancy, but they’ll do the trick.” He reassured.

“This is it, Jack. Just lost control of my life. Completely.” V sounded lost.

“I’d say you got it back.” Jackie disagreed. “You couldn’t say ‘no’ to ‘em, so they said it for you. This is a turn for the better, you’ll see. ‘Sides, you haven’t lost everything.”

“Gonna say I still have a friend? That’s sweet.” The hardass façade fell away and V cracked a small smile.

Jackie laughed. “Haha, no… dumbass. You still got that wad for the hit job, don’tcha? Fat ass chunk of cha-ching there, just right for a new start.” He slapped her on the shoulder. “That’s right, fool. Buckle up.”

His enthusiasm was a bit misplaced, because that light hit knocked V to the floor. She gasped for air, clearly struggling to breathe.

“Shit, V! Come on, we need to get you to a ripper.” Jackie said, picking her up.

Taylor decided that she’d waited around long enough and moved to help, sliding under the wheezing woman so that she and Jackie each had one arm thrown across their shoulders. V was surprisingly heavy.

“What’s wrong with her?” She asked.

“Corpos got all kinds of cyberware regulatin’ their hormones and shit.” Jackie quickly explained as they carried V out the front door. “And now those fuckers just turned it all off. It’s like being a drug addict and trying to go cold turkey.”

“And you wonder why I refuse to get any chrome that would open me up to hacking.” Taylor grumbled.

Sure, it was inconvenient, but she’d take the peace of mind any day. She could deal with having to do things the ‘old fashioned’ way, whereas the paranoia of knowing her brain could get fried from a distance or infected with malware would eat her alive.

“Yeah, but can you call a cab with your hands busy?” Jackie taunted jokingly before proceeding to do just that.

“Shut up.” She grumbled some more.