Chapter 14 - Chapter Fourteen

The morning after the file on Aperture Science and Black Mesa made its rounds, two different rooms on two different sides of Night City did the same thing—shut the door, kill the external mics, and make people talk in complete sentences; at Central, a lieutenant from the precinct that covers the clinic's district clicked to the first slide and said their scout units had tried the usual angles—public records, contractor filings, supplier manifests—and came up with nothing but clean permits on the Vault-Tec Medical Clinic and a shared-services line that described "technical partners" without naming anyone, no open websites, no hiring pages, no vanity press releases, and every attempt to bounce a probe off the clinic's network died on the curb because the place wasn't on any external net at all, which meant no quick warrant trick, no "oops we found a port," and the lieutenant added that two undercovers had gone in as patients on small injuries to see how the staff moved; result: staff were professional, prices posted and reasonable, consent forms plain, and both undercovers were offered the same thing at checkout that patients in rough shape got offered—an optional field-testing contract from a company called Aperture Science to offset bills in exchange for trying pre-cleared hardware and coming back for scheduled data pulls, with language that read simple even if you didn't finish high school, "tell us if it hurts," "show up for checkups," "we fix anything we break," and the line that made the captain grunt, "no sales required, you can say no," which explained why the program wasn't exploding across the city: most people assumed it was a scam and walked away; at a Corpo boardroom a few blocks uptown a security chief said almost the same thing in a cleaner suit, only now the slides showed two failed infiltrations—one at an Aperture site that looked like a test labyrinth made of white panels and moving walls, where alarms tripped inside of five minutes and the scout left with nothing but a blurry photo of a lift shaft and a lot of doors, and one at a Black Mesa plant where the intruder made it farther but lost an arm to a green bolt from a pistol the chief's analyst labeled "unknown energy discharge, mercury vaporization signature," which is a fancy way of saying the shot turned chrome to slag, and the chief ended with a line the board hated, "We can't do this digitally, we need bodies in rooms," which meant time, money, and risk; both rooms had the same follow-up question: "What's their angle," and both got the same answer from their analysts: "If Vault-Tec Medical stays boring and clean, and Aperture keeps field-testing through the clinic, they build reputation without buying ads, and if Black Mesa only equips their own people, they look like a supplier that doesn't care about retail, which makes the other two look safer by comparison," and in both rooms somebody swore quietly because that kind of deliberate smallness is harder to attack than a billboard. Word of the offer didn't stay in rooms; it drifted to crews and then to Maine in the form of a short report from Kiwi compiled off chatter, "Clinic's test program is real, patients offered bill relief and supervised installs for prototypes that have already cleared internal safety, not top-shelf flashy, but durable, conservative, aimed at keeping people working," and Maine sent back, "Fine, let's see it," because he preferred data to rumor; Lucy set the appointment through the clinic the legit way because that's how you keep surprises to a minimum, "baseline consult for a potential work reinforcement," and the front desk booked a slot like it was any other checkup, no fanfare; David came in early to translate the room for Maine because it's easier to breathe when a familiar face says "it's normal," and the staff were the same as always—calm, busy, not impressed by anyone's swagger—an aide weighed Maine, a tech took scans, another tech put him through a simple grip-strength and reaction test, and a clinician in a gray coat with the small Aperture patch sat down after and explained how their field program worked without selling anything: "We don't hand out random chrome, we only place devices that have passed internal safety, we prioritize reductions in strain and stabilization over raw output, we require checkups, and we cover maintenance for anything we install during the program; if the clinic says there's a medical justification for reinforcement and you agree to the schedule, you can opt in; if you just want to see how it feels, we schedule a supervised demo with staff observing, data recorded, no commitments," and Maine nodded because the words lined up with what he'd told the crew he wanted—stability not drama; Dorio asked the questions anyone with sense asks, "What about cyberpsychosis risk," and the clinician gave the same short line David had heard during his install, "Our designs are tuned to lower neural load, and we refuse installs for users who are already red-line unstable or stacking incompatible mods," which is a polite way of saying they say no to clients who think "more" is the same as "better." A staffer slid a laminated page across the table with "eligible devices for field evaluation" in plain type—forearm tendon assist for grip endurance, knee-ankle ligament augmentation for jump and land stability, retinal package with low-light and motion clarity upgrades, dermal mesh that routes heat away from high-draw systems and hides interface seams—and that last line made Rebecca lean over David's shoulder and whisper, "That one's for you," because David's back still glowed faintly in the right light; the clinician noticed, turned the page, and explained in simple words that their new "biomimetic dermal sheath" wasn't armor and wasn't cosmetic surgery either, it was a living mesh that sits under the surface, disperses heat, dulls impact slightly, and most importantly makes modified areas look and feel like the original skin to the touch and eye, with no ports or seams visible unless you're looking under a scanner, "it looks like you, it flexes like you," and David felt something in his shoulders relax he hadn't noticed was tight, because being fast was one thing, looking like a billboard for it was another; when the clinician said, "Given your existing unit and work profile, you're a candidate for that mesh in a limited patch over the spine and shoulder blades, small incision, outpatient install, we'll log it as part of your ongoing data program, no charge," David said yes without looking at anyone else, because he knew what it meant to walk through a hallway without broadcasting "target." While an aide scheduled that, Maine asked for the demo slot the clinic had mentioned for something he cared about—"no flex mods," he said, "just something that keeps a back from quitting on a long pull"—and they set him up behind the building on the same course David had used after his own install, only now with a temporary rig that attached externally under a jacket and simulated the tendon assist and knee stabilizers at low power so you could feel the difference without a cut; Maine ran the cones, came back breathing steady, and said, "Okay, it's not flash, but it holds," which coming from him was a small flag planted, Dorio stepped into the knee rig for a short hop and nodded once, "Landings are cleaner," and even Rebecca tried the retinal demo and blinked when the low-light sharpening made an oily puddle look like watered ink instead of shadow, muttering, "Huh, okay," which is Rebecca for "that's good"; nobody signed anything that day, but nobody walked out saying "never," and that was new. While the crew processed "safe and boring," the cops were processing "weirdly normal"; the two undercovers who had taken the paper offers went back in separate days, said no to the contract because that's what they were told to do, and still got treated like people, bills explained, payment plans set without being shamed, and both reported back to their lieutenant that nothing about the place felt like a front for an organ theft ring, which is the exact phrase that shows up in too many precinct rumors; the lieutenant wrote in his memo that the clinic's presence in the district correlated with a tiny drop in ambulance calls for botched back-alley surgeries, which he didn't mind even if it made his data people say words like "confounders," and the captain wrote a note in the margin, "Monitor only," because picking a fight with a clean clinic is the kind of thing that makes voters yell at you at town halls. The Corpo board went the other way: they greenlit two more "personnel-based probes," which is money words for sending an employee to smile at a receptionist and pretend to be butter-wouldn't-melt while wearing a recorder, one aimed at the clinic side and one at an Aperture consult; the clinic probe came back with the same info anyone could have gotten by asking—pricing, the referral pathway, the field program terms, a printed list that matched what Maine had seen—plus one extra observation the board found annoying: the cafeteria attached to the lobby sold decent food at decent prices, which meant people came in to eat and left with a better opinion of the brand, and the marketing head said, "So they're running a hospitality funnel," and the COO said, "Whatever it is, it's working," and the security chief said, "It also means more civilians on site during any action," which is the polite version of "raids will be on the news." The Aperture consult probe got farther because the staff there were friendly but firm; the "patient" asked about shine mods and was told bluntly that "we don't prioritize show, we prioritize safety and endurance," was offered the same dermal mesh explanation David had heard, and left with the same card David carried for emergencies, which made the board's general counsel say, "Their lawyers are good," because that kind of small clear language on a hotline reduces lawsuits; conclusion for the board: wait, watch, buy a seat at the table through a shell if one shows up, don't kick the anthill yet. Back on the ground, David came in for the dermal mesh install two mornings later, signed the one-page consent that said the thing it does and the things it doesn't, lay facedown while a tech numbed a thin strip and a surgeon slid the mesh under the skin like laying a patch under a blanket, smoothed it, sealed the tiny entry with a strip that would fall off in two days, and told him to avoid twisting like an idiot for forty-eight hours; when they peeled the film and he touched the spot it felt like his back always had, only cooler, and the mirror showed nothing but skin, no glow, no seam, the faint pattern of circuitry now gone unless you hit it with the right light at the right angle, and he pulled his shirt on and rolled his shoulders and smiled without meaning to; the clinician handed him an info card that said the mesh would wick heat from the Sandevistan during bursts, bleed it across a wider area, and cut hot-spot fatigue by a margin that looked like "a small number" on paper and "one more run" in the field, and David said thanks and meant it; when he met the crew that night for noodles, Rebecca demanded to poke his back and he told her to knock it off and she did, after one mock swipe, and Dorio asked how it felt and he said, "Normal," and Maine called that "the best answer." In the same day Kevin sat in the underground camera room with Angela scrolling anonymized field charts—one subject's heat spikes clipping lower after the mesh patch, micro-activations smoother—and he approved a tiny firmware tweak to lean into that change and told Angela to expand the field-offer script so more patients heard the part about "no sales required," because he wanted the invite to feel like an out, not a shove; Angela reported quietly that the precinct had moved from "poke them" to "monitor," and two Corpo probes had looked and left, and Kevin said "good," because steady was what he wanted, the kind of steady that turns curiosity into acceptance. By week's end the pattern had set: the clinic kept seeing regular patients, the front desk kept offering the same field option to anyone who met the criteria and needed help with bills, most said no and went home with a payment plan, a few said yes and came back on time for checkups; the cops stopped warning each other about "organ harvesters on fourth street" and started telling rookies to use the clinic when they bash a knee on a door; the boardroom took another meeting and chose to delay anything loud; the crew kept eating real food and didn't get shot for it, which in Night City passes for a holiday; and David walked through halls without glowing like a target and ran his routes with a spine that ran cooler under load, which meant fewer aches and less noise in his head; it all felt almost normal until Lucy leaned on the van one afternoon with her arms folded and said, "Next thing—Maine wants to see if they'll sell us maintenance plans without installs," and David said, "I'll ask," because that was the new rhythm, he asked clean and the clinic answered clean or said no clean, no games; somewhere out past the edge of the city, Nomads were cutting new tracks through green corridors and sending short vids to each other of streams where there hadn't been any, which Kevin watched with Angela in silence before turning back to the console to check the next deployment plan; and in all of it the weirdest part for the people who pay attention wasn't the tech or the plants or the guns, it was that nothing blew up on schedule, just a clinic doing medicine, a lab doing cautious chrome, a weapons plant arming only its own, and a crew that hated scams being forced to admit that sometimes the boring answer is the right one.