The cult welcomes Fiddlerlee to its mighty ranks, their grand work in the soup lines shall forever be remembered!
-----
Michael 'Magos' Sobronov
With every word I shared I felt a small weight dropping from my chest.
The genuinely compassionate, if dulled by drugs, reactions of Rebecca only helped me in making peace with myself, despite not even knowing that I needed it in the first place.
But it was never meant to last, and before I even got to telling her about my Biopod operation, she had already fallen asleep again, the tiny emotional jolt more than enough to fully exhaust whatever energy she was pretending to have.
Part of me wanted to stay there, let myself rest for a short while, but I wasn't tired enough not to think myself into insanity if I did, and so I got up as slowly and carefully as I could before tucking Rebecca in and leaving her to her rest.
Her face scrunched up in annoyance and she mumbled something unintelligible, but thankfully she remained asleep, beginning to snore lightly mere seconds later.
I caught myself just standing there for a while and quickly shook myself out of it.
In the kitchen, Jackie and Pilar were now playing some kind of card game, and feeling curious I took a few beers out of the fridge before joining them.
"Everything fine, Mike?" Jackie asked, and Pilar also perked up, even if he tried hiding it.
"They'll both live." I said, taking a sip of beer "How are you two holding up?"
Jackie immediately snorted, taking a long gulp of his own drink and shaking his head "Man, if you told me this is the kind of shit I'd be doing when I got back I'd have stayed in the fucking desert."
"The money certainly doesn't hurt." I pointed out.
"You know it." He smirked before wincing lightly as he lowered his battered elbow on the table "Doesn't mean I wasn't shit scared the entire time."
"Man what kind of a little bitch admits he was scared?" Pilar rolled his eyes "You were driving like a fucking Legend, and you are telling me you are actually a bitch? Where have your balls gone, man?"
Jackie didn't hesitate for even a split second "Still up in my fucking throat, choom."
For a moment all that could be heard was pin drop silence, and then all three of us burst into laughter.
"You are lucky I armored the van a few days back." I spoke up as my chuckles died down "Those Biotechnica gonks must have shot us at least a few hundred times."
"For real?" Jackie asked, surprised "Barely felt a shake."
My Optics flashed slightly "Do I ever do things halfway?"
"No, no you don't." He huffed, and then frowned as he turned to Pilar "Why did the Biotechnica fuckers seem so intent on flatlining you all anyway?"
Pilar chugged down an entire bottle before smacking it down almost hard enough to crack "We weren't supposed to stay long enough for them to respond, but that dumb bitch Sasha decided to be a fucking gonk."
He spat to the side "It was supposed to be a quick thing, get in, steal some financial data, and get the fuck out before even the bots could react."
"Should you really be telling us this?" Jackie asked slowly while not hiding his curiosity.
"Fuck it, I don't care anymore." The gangly mercenary shrugged before offhandedly pointing my way "This chromefucker would probably find out in minutes if he cared anyway."
"How kind." I deadpanned, slowly chewing on my glass bottle.
Pilar looked at me for a long second "You have fucking issues man."
"Uh huh."
Crunch.
"Aaaanyway." He turned back to Jackie "Sasha found out Biotechnica knew one of their drugs was fucking poison, but didn't care."
Ah, a classic.
"And apparently her mom had been buying the shit for years and died from it or something." Pilar shrugged "Honestly I never gave a fuck about the details but she wanted to stick it to them and upload the data, and so we stayed behind like fucking gonks."
"Your Fixer is going to stiff you for that one." I hummed.
The lanky man scowled "Right." He grunted "Thanks for reminding me of that."
"You are most welcome."
His left hand shot up to flip me off.
Crrrunch.
And quickly went down as I kept chewing.
"Well I can understand being pissed about your mama." Jackie exhaled, leaning back into his metal chair "But couldn't have she like... downloaded it or something?"
"Most Cyberdecks and Agents don't have that kind of space." I pointed out "Besides, her plan was shit to begin with." Even if her cause was as just as a cause could get.
Both men looked at me curiously.
"Securine, the drug she found out about." I explained "Even if every single large Biotechnica client learned about their lack of proper testing for health and safety, their stock value would barely drop. All Yakovleva has accomplished with her stunt was lose a couple thousand mooks their jobs, and maybe a mid rank corpo if they end up needing a fall guy."
Jackie just sighed deeper, while Pilar smashed the table with enough force to dent the metal "Are you telling me all of that shit was for fucking nothing!?"
"Correct." I deadpanned.
"Fuck!" He threw his hands up.
Jackie shot me a sideways glance, the silent 'You sure?' Flashing in his eyes.
"99.9% sure." I nodded "Unless something completely unexpected happens, this was all a massive waste of your time, effort, and money."
"No need to keep rubbing it in, man." Pilar, who by now was resting his forehead against the table with both of his hands on the back of his head, grumbled.
Ignoring him, I went on "If she wanted any kind of actual vengeance she should have been ready to dedicate the next twenty years of her life minimum to getting skilled enough and infiltrating Biotechnica from within to dismantle it."
"Yeah right." Jackie snorted "As if that was possible."
My serious stare made him chuckle.
Then the chuckle turned strained.
Before he too looked back at me seriously "You really think it can be done?"
"If one is dedicated enough." I shrugged, leaning back against my seat and opening my second bottle of beer "It isn't a guaranteed thing by any means of course, but is sure as shit beats trying to do it with public fucking opinion."
Both of them snorted at how ridiculous the very sound of the idea was.
"Man." Jackie exhaled "I could have gone without my epic moment being ruined like that."
"What are you on about?" I tilted my head curiously.
"Eh." He shrugged "Just feels like all that excitement is worth... less now."
"I mean objectively." I waved my hand as if to say 'so-so' "But we weren't the ones to fuck up, that dubious honor belongs to Maine and his crew."
"Oh go fuck yourself." Pilar groaned, and then groaned harder "Oh, 'Becca is going to be so fucking smug when she wakes up."
"Heh." I couldn't help the chuckle.
"Alright, that's enough of that." Jackie clapped his hands "How about instead of bitching about things we can't change we go for another round?"
And that is how I found myself spending three entire hours playing uno of all things with the two increasingly inebriated mercenaries, only stopping once the both of them finally had enough of my constant victories and started crashing out about me cheating.
Wasn't my fault they couldn't count the entire deck in their head, the gonks.
I made sure to do another last minute checkup on the two heavily injured women, and then left with Jackie after a curt goodbye with Maine and Dorio, telling them I'd be back tomorrow afternoon to make sure everything was fine.
Irritatingly, the cyberized merc's attitude only seemed to worsen with each passing hour, and by the time we spoke again he was even more standoffish than when we first met, almost as if he had completely deleted our dickmeasur- *cough* meet and greet from his brain.
Oh I understood I had stepped on his pride harder than I probably should have, and the only reason he didn't actually try to run off when we were out was that very same pride stopping him from stiffing someone who had done him a favor.
But I never expected the man to be so utterly controlled by perception to start treating me like some kind of opposition after my simple offer of assistance.
None of this was said aloud of course, but the feeling was there, and even someone new to social interaction as I could feel it plain as day.
And so, knowing the man was either an idiot or plain unstable, I made sure to use one of the internal cameras of the safehouse to upload a daemon into his system as I left, just to keep an eye on him.
It wouldn't do for others to pay when he finally snapped.
And maybe, just maybe, I too was feeling the tiniest bit petty.
Imply another ripper was more trustworthy than me.... The fucking audacity!
"Mike." Jackie deadpanned "Stop glaring at the fuckin' trash pile already."
I blinked a few times and nodded "Right."
-----
My mind was a hardened fortress as I marched through the hallways of my home, prepared to face any demand or question that may be directed at it by the terrible master of its depths.
"So." Mother's voice rang out with a terrible finality as I approached our home, her arms crossed and her brows furrowed in judgement "Who is the lucky girl?"
"Moooom!"
The fortress crumpled in an instant.
Damn you Jones!
-----
I was secluded (and most definitely not hiding from mom's teasing!) in my workshop, attaching the many equally sized joints together in my twelfth attempt in creating a powerful yet maneuverable extra limb I dreamed up during my first days of walking, when I felt a ping on my Agent.
The moment I saw who the sender was, I was so very tempted to just ignore it, but I knew better, and with a long sigh I opened the voice chat.
[Mad Tyger: Street samurai! You didn't tell me you were going to challenge an entire corp today!]
[Magos: How the fuck do you know about that already? And its Magos, keep your weeb names for your gangoons.]
[But it is so fitting!] The Tyger Claw Captain immediately replied with a toothy ass grin.
I felt my right Optic twitch, somehow [Right. How did you find out so quickly?]
[How did I-] He stopped himself halfway, looking genuinely confused [It is all over the net, Michael.]
I blinked, and absently connected my computer to the net, and the television because I couldn't be asked to browse now that I was in the middle of work.
And there it was, 'Night City's man Stan' on his stupid fucking show, bragging about the surprisingly high kill count in Downtown NC today, while a slow motion recording of me cutting the Mech's leg off replayed in the background.
[How the fuck did they get that recording?] I half-growled [I scrubbed all the cameras. Repeatedly.]
[Ah, about that.] The Tyger boss chuckled [Apparently a bunch of the NC netrunners decided to be nosy, and managed to put that clip together.]
[Only that clip?] I asked slowly.
[That is what they claim.] Isamu Okada smirked.
I began uploading probes onto the net, and especially around the EdgeNet cafe.
Those bored ass fuckers would do something like this.
[Michael?] Isamu repeated a few times.
[What?] I focused back to my Agent with a snap.
[Ah good, I thought we lost connection for a moment.] He hummed [What were you doing?]
Frowning for a second I almost told him to mind his own business, but decided otherwise [Oh nothing serious, just finding out where all of my... enterprising colleagues live.] I said with a dark chuckle.
For the briefest moment, there was a flash of concern on the man's face, before it was twisted into an approving grin. One he quickly hid under a false cover of solemnity [I will offer a prayer for their poor souls.]
I snorted.
Unfortunately, as much as Isamu liked to goof off whenever he could, we both knew he did not call me just to congratulate me for the many 'sick edits' about my kill spreading on the net.
His brows furrowed and he turned serious [Michael, are you trying to bring Biotechnica attention to your ass?]
[It was an emergency job.] I justified simply [And the pay was more than worth it.]
[Even if I start having corp squads sniffing about my building?] He merely quirked an eyebrow, the underlying threat obvious [You know that is bad for business.]
[Oh don't get too excited, Okada.] I scoffed, and there was a small twitch on his lips as I did [We both know the corpos will be looking for the Fixer who organized it all, and I was but a loan from another directed to extract the team they hired.]
[And you know who this Fixer is?] He asked.
[Of course not. The Fixer was as anonymous as all the others.] I deadpanned, ignoring the fact I already extracted the information of the frontman for a subsidiary of a subsidiary of Militech that wanted some minor dirt on their rivals and shelled out a fat mil for Maine's crew to get it for them.
Which was now 800k, what with all the attention Maine's crew dragged onto themselves.
'And with my payment they lost almost half, just for Yakovleva's idiocy' I did my best not to shake my head.
[Fine.] Isamu huffed [Just tell me. Are you sure this isn't going to come back to bite me?]
[95%] I listed off [I am simply not worth bothering, and have enough layers of removal that even if they did want to bother with me I would reasonably not have any of the true information they wanted.]
The Tyger boss nodded a few times at my explanation [You know what you are doing, yes. Just make sure not to bite off more than you can chew. You are in the big leagues now, choom, and there is no leaving them except by the grave.]
[Excellent] I deadpanned [Maybe I will finally save up for that apartment sometime before next year then.]
Isamu just burst into laughter at that, wiping pretend-tears out of his eyes [Oh and Michael.] He said [When I get back, we are having a spar.]
[Sure thing, oh Jugo-sama.] I drawled.
The man snorted and ended the call.
And to my annoyance, I failed to immediately wipe the smile off my face.
Shaking my head, I focused back on the... mechadendrite?
That one does sound most fitting of all of them.
Anyway, I focused back on my work, already mentally going through all the software I'd have to create in order not to overload my brain whenever I tried using one, or inevitably many of these at the same time.
Naturally it was exactly at this moment that I got another call, this time from an unknown number.
But I was not a kid anymore, and so I bit down on my irritation and answered.
[This is Magos.]
[Good.] An older blonde woman appeared on the other end of the call [I won't waste your time kid. You impressed a lot of people today, and that means you and I can discuss biz. Come over tomorrow evening for a face to face if you are interested.]
The side of my lip quirked upwards [I'd be happy to, Ms. Rogue.]
-------
More stones to grind!
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