Birds Of A Feather, Chapter 2.7

2.7

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It started when an urgent alarm went off, tones sharp and quick. I changed the screens that I was looking at, and the message displayed alongside the cameras.

A man with a silver face had entered the monitoring perimeter. I had added that particular trait to the watchlist last night, and while alone it wasn’t enough to trigger the alert, the weaponry that my scanners could detect the man was carrying changed that equation.

A sidearm, hidden poorly in the sleeveless jacket. A trio of grenades in pockets that were sewn to be much larger than normal. He had a backpack, and inside of that backpack was an assault rifle, a bottle of alcohol, a rag, several different types of accelerants, and a flare.

One arm was cybernetic, and it had a Projectile Launch System installed. On top of that, most of his body was covered by Subdermal Armour.

A rather rapid escalation from yesterday, to be sure.

Which means that I will now get to observe a higher level of my security system in action.

I leaned back.

The man stopped at the corner of my base, wholly unaware that he was observed. He took a look around for a moment, observing the positions of everyone around him, a lot of whom were currently giving him a wide berth- those who hadn’t left the area outright upon seeing his face, anyway.

I noted him nodding to himself, before he continued moving. One hand went to his jacket, an almost casual gesture that put his hand in his pocket, where his sidearm was. He approached my building on a bit of an angle, moving to the front of the main building before following the wall along towards the door.

His head stayed locked in the direction of the Bodega’s entrance. One arm tensed as he moved closer- pausing for a moment right as he got a direct line of sight towards the Autonnel.

He focused, muscles tensing, eyes narrowing, lips pursing, as he scoped out his targets.

Unfortunately for him, that meant that he wasn’t looking up.

Tension transformed into movement. Through the fabric of his jacket, his fingers closed around his gun. His arm shifted as he pulled back, drawing the weapon outwards and upwards.

The handgun came out, and his movement shifted to point it towards my Autonnels.

That was as far as he got before the security drones fell down on him like a sack of flying cannonballs.

The floating drones came in swarming, the first one smashing into his wrist with enough force to crack bone. His metal arm fared better, but not so good that he was able to avoid dropping his weapon, the gun knocked straight out his hands. As for the rest, they slammed into his body, smashing against his arms, chest, sternum, legs, and more. He didn’t fall, precisely. He crumpled.

Electric arcs flashed a moment later, and the man was instantly rendered unconscious as the drones gave him a very precisely modulated shock directly to his Neural Link.

Red walked out of the Bodega a moment later, and promptly dragged the man inside, much less gently than Blue might have.

My system suspended the alert status automatically, and I sighed, shaking my head. Some people truly just... don’t learn.

I did not need to look in order to know that this wasn’t going to be the end of things.

I did wonder how far down the list of security protocols this gang was going to get, though.

This time, it only took ten minutes for the NCPD to arrive. The car that rolled up was exactly the same as it was last time, as were the drivers. Since they were actually tolerable, I bothered to stand up and greet them on the way in.

“Welcome back.” I said. “I can’t say that I expected to be seeing you so soon.”

Officer Garcia nodded, and I noted that she looked a little tired. More tired than being a cop in this city usually leaves a person, anyway. “I have to say the same. Another incident?”

“This way.” I said, leading them back to the staff room.

Red had left the ganger laid out on the chair, but he’d slumped to the side at some point. The backpack was on the table, though, one of the buckles bent out of shape.

The male officer, who I still didn’t know the name of, narrowed his eyes when he saw the ganger. “Markus ‘Handy’ Hank.” He spoke, without even bothering to try and plug in. “Wanted for murder and arson, among other things.”

Garcia looked at the backpack, before walking over to it and opening it up. She sucked in a breath through her teeth as she looked inside. “I don’t have much trouble believing that.” She said, zipping it back up.

The male officer tossed the ganger over his shoulder, while Garcia grabbed the backpack by the handle on top.

“We’ll take him in immediately.” She said, lifting the backpack. Her partner went straight for the door, but she lingered for a moment. “I do have to give you a warning, however. The Silver Faces have a tendency to escalate dramatically. It would be a good idea to get some extra security around here. It may take a few days, but they’re going to respond to this eventually.”

I surprised her when I chuckled. “I am prepared. They are not.”

Officer Garcia’s head tilted, slightly, but it was fairly easy to read her thought process, from there. Clearly, I was rich, so clearly, I would have a better security system than it first seemed. “Right.” She said. “The NCPD appreciates your calls. Thank you sir, have a good day.”

She left after that.

I returned to my clinic chair.

An hour passed, and then two. I went downstairs for a bit to fix myself some lunch, briefly leaving a holographic sign on the door in case anybody wandered in looking for me. Nobody did, and so I ended up back upstairs shortly afterwards.

Finally, it rolled around to one in the afternoon, and my second client of the day showed up exactly on time.

Literally. He walked in on the very same millisecond that his appointment started.

He had a Kerenzikov, I quickly found, and his method of adapting to living life at a faster pace than anybody else was to not slow down at all, and simply keep all interactions to the absolute minimum. I matched his energy, speaking in short, but information dense sentences, and he seemed glad for it.

His problem was his fingers. Both of his arms were cybernetic, and both of his hands had upgrades from Rocklin Augmentics’ Quick Digits package. Recently, they had started to slow down, and he’d decided to get them tuned up alongside being repaired.

The repair itself was a simple fix. The artificial ligaments had been a bit threadbare after heavy use, so all that was needed there was replacement. I suggested to him that he may want to find a replacement, however, since this particular model was five years old by now and there were better things on the market for a relatively cheap price.

Re-tuning his fingers was quick and easy, since they were small and relatively simple. He found himself impressed enough by the results that he then asked if it was possible to get the rest of his arms to be altered. Since my next appointment wasn’t until three, I had plenty of time.

I ended up having a moderately interesting time of it, too. He was pretty broad of frame, and the Cyberarms he’d acquired were a bit too small for him. It wasn’t enough to look wrong, but I’d wager that most Docs and Medtechs would have noticed, let alone someone like me.

The weight was about right already, though, so rather than adding on more mass, I instead altered what was already present into a larger shape, shifting the entire sensory array of the arms along with it. This gave the internals a bit more space, not enough to be truly useful, but certainly enough that anybody who had to work on the arms in the future would be finding themselves to have a much more comfortable margin of error. Reprogramming the nanotech with the new configuration was the last thing I did, and the man walked out a satisfied customer.

Three in the afternoon rolled around relatively quickly after that, but the customer actually arrived slightly beforehand.

Janet didn’t look much like Buck, but in this city you couldn’t rely on appearances for much of anything. Her accent, on the other hand? She had the exact same south-American drawl that crept around in Buck’s tone, and if that wasn’t enough to give away their relationship, the fact that she introduced herself by saying “My brother sent me.” certainly did.

I was perfectly fine with starting a little early. It certainly proved interesting.

“Under what conceivable circumstance-” I asked, slowly, as I looked at the holographic display. “- did you manage to crack a Cyberspine?”

“Took a bullet.” She answered.

She had a Sycust Cyberspine. That was a corporate military-grade spinal replacement that was covered in durable plating that doubled as EMP shielding. It was extremely durable, and ‘a bullet’ implied something of a calibre that would normally be used to perforate light vehicles. Hers was cracked just below the base of the neck, though it was still functional aside from that.

“Certain people don’t like it when Medias talk.” She said, after my gaze landed on her. “’Specially not corporations when you’re talking about secrets.”

I had no trouble believing that. It also explained, at least a little, why she had such an implant.

From my scanning, and her own testimony, it was clear that she’d taken a bullet to the upper spine while out on an ‘investigation’. Her would-be assassin had likely been aiming for her head when she’d been kneeling or crouched, only for her to stand up just in time to take the shot to a less immediately lethal area. She went to lay low for a bit, but two weeks later, it still hadn’t fixed itself, so she went looking for someone to get it fixed. That’s when her brother called her to rave about the job I’d done.

“Would you like to get some extra Skin Weave on top of this fix?” I asked. Normally, Skin Weave was an expensive investment which most people wouldn’t do on a whim, but Janet, after browsing the catalogue that I handed her and seeing my quite-reasonable prices, elected to accept that offer... Probably because she was here since somebody had tried to kill her already.

I noted her eyeing the options for Subdermal Armour quite closely, after all.

Either way, her acceptance turned a twenty-minute repair job into an hour-long augmentation session. Most of the time was spent going back and forth on the layout of the Skin Weave, because she had several examples of cosmetic Cyberware that interfered with easy installation. Finding a balance between effectiveness, and future ease of maintenance and further cosmetic alterations was... not precisely difficult, but it was exacting, especially since I wanted to make sure that there would be no undue strain on her mental state from having Cyberware that she wasn’t completely comfortable with.

Skin Weave was pretty effective, but it could be harsh on the mind. Subdermal Armour was twice as bad, but more effective still.

It was... not really that easy to counteract, honestly. Skin Weave affected the skin and dermis layers, and getting enough durability out of them to stop bullets usually required some significant changes in how that skin felt. Making sure that those changes weren’t irritating required some effort on my behalf, though most of that was because I was using the same basic materials rather than something more effective.

While I did leave it distinctly in the upmost percentile of produced Cyberware, it was still Cyberware, at the end of the day. Not, say, Chozo Bullshit.

It would keep her alive. That was the most important thing.

It was about the most that people could hope for, in this city.