The House of the Reaper welcomes Operative Raul Bataclan to our ranks. Their contributions and dedication to our cause will be honored through the Net and through the Stars.
---
The next morning, we took the NCART straight into Watson.
Walking into the Chakra Harmony clinic with my mother felt surreal. Vik was waiting for us, having caught my ping earlier that morning. As soon as Mom stepped into the sterile basement, the tension in the air was thick enough to cut with a knife. She marched right up to Vik, looked him dead in the eye, and slapped him across the face.
It was a sharp, stinging crack that echoed in the clinic, but Vik didn't even flinch. He just took it with a solemn, apologetic look plastered on his face.
"You had no right," mom hissed, tears brimming in her eyes. "He is still a child, Viktor."
"I know, Julia. And you have every right to be angry," Vik said gently, his voice a rumbling, soothing baritone. "But you do see the irony in your statement, right?"
Mom seemed to short-circuit for a bit before nodding and apologizing.
"Hey, it's all good," Vik reassured her. "Anyway, you need to understand what you're dealing with. Please, sit down."
Over the next hour, Vik pulled up the holographic renders of my brain and proceeded to explain things to her without using the terrifying, corporate-espionage terms he had used with me. He used a flawless bedside manner to explain the effects of my Neural Link installation from 6 years ago, how it affected the astrocyte cell integration, and created a biological anomaly that was my neuroplasticity. He showed her the data proving that my brain wasn't just surviving the cyberware, but actively thriving on it. He assured her, even going as far as to put his title as a ripperdoc on the table, that I was at zero risk of cyberpsychosis from the current loadout.
Watching my mother's shoulders finally relax was the greatest relief I had felt in years. The terrified certainty that she was going to lose her slowly faded and was replaced by a reluctant, grudging acceptance.
Before we left, I told Vik we needed to replace her broken Agent. I wanted her set up with an internal unit, wired directly into her own Neural Link, so she wouldn't have to carry a physical device to drop or break. But the moment Vik mentioned the surgical integration process, Mom paled and immediately shook her head, vehemently refusing to let anyone cut into her skull.
Vik, reading the room perfectly, quickly pivoted. He suggested a compromise: a semi-integrated Agent. He pulled out a sleek, pill-shaped module designed to slot directly into one of the external ports of her existing Neural Link. It didn't require any surgery, but it also didn't have the triple-encrypted, Fixer-grade hardware I was rocking, meaning it was just as vulnerable to standard tracing and corporate snooping as the physical garbage she had just broken, but it operated the same way mine did. It would feed comms directly into her HUD and give her a seamless, mental line to my own internal comms. She agreed, and I transferred the funds to cover it without blinking.
By the time the following week rolled around, I was back in Vik's chair for the RAM Upgrade.
The procedure was significantly less invasive than the initial Paraline integration, but it still involved splicing a compact, high-density memory module directly into the primary processor of the deck. And as expected, the results were instantaneous.
When I woke up from the RAM integration, my head felt incredibly expansive, but I couldn't quite put my finger on why. It was a bizarre and hollow sensation, like waking up inside a massive, echoing warehouse where a cramped closet used to be. I hadn't executed a single line of code, slotted a daemon, or even initiated a basic ping since Vik had installed the Paraline a week ago, and I had followed his strict medical mandate to the letter, keeping my deck completely dormant to let my brain heal around the new splices. Because of that forced hiatus, my active memory was completely empty, leaving me with no real baseline to compare this new feeling to.
But that changed the second I stepped out of the clinic, and Vik finally gave me the green light to dive.
The moment I dipped my consciousness back into the Net, I understood exactly what that expansiveness was: pure, unadulterated bandwidth. I thought the bandwidth I had with my brain alone was crazy, but the expansion allowed me to compile, compress, and run a localized ping, a visual optics reboot, and a short-circuit protocol simultaneously in my active memory without experiencing a single millisecond of lag.
The extra lanes on my digital highway allowed my organic processing power to truly stretch its legs. I spent the next few weeks slipping through local subnetworks like a ghost passing through solid walls, effortlessly bypassing municipal ICE to secure the remaining forty-five thousand eddies I would owe Vik.
I wired him what I owed and decided to settle the payment in advance. Seeing that balance hit zero felt phenomenal, since it meant that I owned my chrome outright and would owe nothing to anybody, even if some chrome still hadn't been installed.
With a two-month waiting period stretching out before the Kerenzikov with its Boost System and Ex-Disk arrived, I needed a project to keep my mind sharp. Netrunning was my primary asset, but I knew relying solely on digital dominance in a physical city was a fatal flaw. I needed to understand the physical world just as well as the digital one.
So, I did what any sensible guy would do and bought a car.
It was a rusted-out, beat-to-shit Thorton Galena G240. I found it sitting in a scavenger's scrap yard on the outskirts of Arroyo. The paint was peeling off in oxidized flakes, the suspension was entirely shot, and the internal CHOOH2 combustion engine sounded like a blender full of loose bolts. I bought it for absolute peanuts, a mere twelve hundred eddies.
My mother thought I had lost my mind when I managed to limp the sputtering, smoking metal carcass into our detached garage without crashing.
"It's a project, Ma," I had told her, patting the rusted hood. "And when it's done, you won't have to take the transit trains ever again."
"It's not the car I'm worried about," Mom looked at me wide-eyed. "Santi, where the hell did you even learn to drive?"
I looked at her with genuine confusion. "It's not rocket science, Ma. The long pedal means drive, the fat one means brake. Changing from drive to reverse is also pretty simple. Plus, it's an automatic."
She looked at me, flabbergasted.
"I downloaded a Nomad driving BD, Ma," I deadpanned.
I spent the next several weeks diving into a completely new category of braindances. I bought detailed, instructional BDs recorded by veteran mechanics and nomad gearheads, absorbing their muscle memory. I learned the precise torque required to tighten a cylinder head without cracking the block. I learned the distinct, acrid smell of a blown head gasket, the tactile feedback of stripping a corrupted wire, and the exact sequence of pressure valves regulating the CHOOH2 injection system.
The progression was grueling but incredibly satisfying. At fourteen, my physical strength was still developing, meaning I had to rely on leverage and precision rather than brute force when cracking rusted lug nuts or hoisting the alternator out of the cramped engine bay. My hands became perpetually stained with black grease and chemical solvents.
But I couldn't just rebuild the Galena. Any gon could do that. I fundamentally altered it. I began blending my coding proficiency with my new mechanical skills.
The Thorton's Electronic Control Unit (ECU) was a joke, a relic from three decades ago. I ripped it out completely. Sitting at my desk, I wrote a custom diagnostic daemon from scratch. I wired a small, localized sub-processor into the dashboard, routing the combustion sensors, the fuel-mix ratios, and the suspension hydraulics directly into a closed-loop network. When I was in the driver's seat, my Neural Link would sync with the car, feeding the engine's data straight into my internal HUD. I could adjust the fuel-to-air ratio of the engine with a mere thought, maximizing efficiency or dumping raw power into the drivetrain depending on the situation.
I was learning how to make the physical world bend to my digital will.
By the time the brutal, suffocating heat of July rolled around, the Galena was purring like a mechanized panther. It still looked like a rusted piece of garbage on the outside, which was the perfect urban camouflage, but under the hood, it was a finely tuned, digitally integrated machine. And sure, changing the bodywork was part of the plan, but not for the moment.
It was also in early July that my internal Agent pinged with a message from Vik.
{The hardware is here. Come down to the clinic. Bring a jacket, you're going to be cold for a while.} - Vik
The installation of the Ex-Disk and the Kerenzikov and its Boost System was, without a doubt, the most painful physical experience of my life. The Ex-Disk was relatively straightforward, a high-capacity storage module slotted into the neural port at the base of my skull. It expanded my resting memory exponentially, allowing me to harbor complex, military-grade viral payloads without bogging down my active RAM.
But the Kerenzikov was a completely different beast, one that Vik didn't put me totally under for while he used a localized epidural block. The reflex tuner had to be integrated directly into the central nervous system, meaning Vik had to physically splice the micro-servos and synaptic accelerators into my spinal column.
I lay face down on the surgical chair, biting into a leather strap as Vik worked. I could feel the bizarre pressure of his tools clicking against my vertebrae. The Neural Link inside my brain recognized the foreign hardware attempting to bridge the gap into my nervous system, and for a terrifying hour, my body was entirely consumed by violent, involuntary muscle spasms as the tech forcefully rerouted my biological pain receptors.
When Vik finally stitched the incision closed and wiped the sweat from his brow, I felt like I had been run over by a freight train.
"Don't even try to stand up," Vik commanded, pressing a firm hand against my shoulder as I groaned, attempting to push myself off the leather padding. "Your central nervous system is currently rebooting. If you stand now, your brain won't know where your legs are, and you'll crack your skull on the floor."
"Shit, Vik, it's not like I even have the energy to stand," I said as I lay there, panting, staring at the floor tiles.
"You can initialize the Kerenzikov," Vik ordered, monitoring the diagnostic screen. "Just a minor pulse. I want to see if the synapses catch."
I closed my eyes, focusing on the new, localized cluster of tech resting at the base of my spine, and pushed a sliver of intent into it. I felt as if the world came to a sudden halt.
I opened my eyes and noticed that the steady drip of water from a condensation pipe in the corner of the room was suspended in mid-air. Vik was turning his head to look at me, but the motion was painfully slow, tracking frame by frame. I could see the individual dust motes floating lazily in the fluorescent light, and my own heartbeat sounded like the slow, rhythmic booming of a massive drum.
I released the pulse, and reality snapped back to its normal speed. The water droplet splashed against the floor, and Vik finished turning his head.
"Sync rate is absolutely flawless," Vik noted, sounding thoroughly impressed. He disconnected the diagnostic cables. "But the physical toll is immense. The Kerenzikov floods your system with synthetic adrenaline and accelerates your synaptic firing rate. When the effect wears off, the biological crash is brutal. Now you'll go under for the Boost System. See you in a bit, kid."
"Wait-" was the only thing I managed to say before my mind blanked out.
When I woke up, Vik had already grabbed a rolling stool, sitting beside me as I slowly pushed myself up into a sitting position while every single muscle in my back screamed in protest.
"Listen to me very carefully, Santi," Vik said, his tone absolute. "I am placing you on a strict, non-negotiable two-week medical mandate. Your spinal column needs time to scar over the synthetic splices, and your organic muscles need to adapt to the new reflex speeds. In other words, you are completely grounded. No running, no jumping, no parkour across the rooftops of Watson, and absolutely no high-stress gigs. If you trigger that Kerenzikov, especially now that it has a Boost System as well, while doing any of these activities before the integration is fully healed, you will tear your own spinal cord in half. Do I make myself clear? I cannot put into words just how important this is."
I winced, rubbing my temples as a dull headache bloomed behind my eyes. "Two weeks of downtime. I get it, Vik. I won't push it."
"I mean it, kid," Vik reiterated, handing me a small bottle of specialized painkillers. "Rest and let your body catch up to your brain."
The ride back to Rancho Coronado was an experience I would never like to relive ever again. Every single fucking bump on the NCART rails sent a jarring spike of pain up my spine. When I finally stumbled through the front door of our house, Mom took one look at my pale face and trembling hands and immediately ushered me to the couch.
For the first four days, I barely moved. The pain in my back was constant, and the painkillers kept me in a hazy, lethargic state. I spent the time navigating the Net from a supine position, utilizing the massive storage of the Ex-Disk to organize my growing arsenal of daemons, optimizing my code, and refining the polymorphic stealth capabilities of my viruses.
By the second week, the sharp pain had dulled to a persistent ache, and the cabin fever began to set in. Following Vik's orders, I avoided any strenuous physical activity, but I couldn't just lie on the couch forever. So I spent the remainder of my mandated downtime in the garage, putting the final touches on the Thorton Galena.
Of course, I moved slowly and methodically, letting the tactile sensation of wrenching metal ground my mind. I flushed the brake lines, recalibrated the steering column, and installed a set of durable, puncture-resistant synthetic tires I had ordered off the local boards. And no matter how much I wanted to touch up the exterior rust, the ugly, decaying aesthetic was the best anti-theft system money could buy in Santo Domingo. The interior, on the other hand, was immaculate. I even rigged the archaic AC unit to blow ice-cold air, which I considered a vital necessity for the sweltering summer afternoons.
On the exact day my two-week grounding ended, I tossed the physical key fob onto the kitchen counter in front of my mother.
She looked at the keys, then up at me, a cautious, tentative smile on her lips. "Is this what I think it is?"
"Go look in the garage," I said, a proud grin breaking through my usual stoicism.
We walked out to the detached structure. When I rolled the aluminum door up, Mom stared at the rusted Thorton Galena G240. She blinked twice, trying her hardest to look appreciative.
"It's... wonderful, Santi," she said, her voice entirely unconvinced.
I laughed. "Yeah, Ma, that's one word to describe it. But have you ever heard the saying 'Don't judge a book by its cover.'"
I walked over to the driver's side door and opened it. I synced my Neural Link with the custom ECU I had built and sent the ignition command directly through the network. Without even putting the key in the ignition, the engine roared to life. Unlike the last time my mom had seen this bad girl, there was no sputtering, smoke, or metallic grinding coming from the engine. The only sound that filled the garage was the smooth, aggressive, perfectly tuned purr of a flawless combustion cycle. The dashboard lit up, and a blast of cold air immediately flooded the stuffy garage.
Mom's jaw dropped, and she looked from the rusted exterior to the pristine, humming interior.
"Looks can be deceiving, Ma," I said, leaning against the doorframe. "You're looking at the most reliable ride in Rancho Coronado. And now, it's yours. No more walking to the market in the rain or sketchy transit stations whenever you have to go somewhere."
She reached out, running a hand over the steering wheel, her eyes shining with unshed tears. She pulled me into a tight, fierce hug, burying her face in my shoulder.
"Thank you, mijo," she whispered.
I hugged her back, feeling the solid, painless flexibility in my spine, a tear slipping from my own eyes.
I could feel that the Kerenzikov was now fully healed, and the rest of my body ached to get me back to work. The Paraline was humming quietly in the back of my skull, begging to be let off the leash, and the Ex-Disk was loaded. For now, my downtime was officially over, and it was time to get back to work.
---
Stones needed...
The infamous P@treon exists for those of you who want to read ahead.
patreon .com/Crimson_Reapr (Don't be a gonk, remove the space)
They get around 3 long-form weekly chapters (4.5-6k words each).