Birds Of A Feather, Chapter 1.8

1.8

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That lasted all of ten minutes, and it had still been so uncomfortably slimy that I felt like I needed a shower.

I swept through the front doors of the building, rising to my full height outside in the sun. The guards were still there, both of them still on edge but one much jumpier than the other.

I ignored them, and moved off immediately.

I had my registration, now. I was officially a member of Night City. In the long term, it might be useful, but right now, that meant that if somebody scanned me, they’d find me on the database, and wouldn’t be able to bother me for being unregistered. That struck a single reason down from about a million, but at least that would keep most of the NCPD from trying to do something.

Now, to the next part of this entire mess.

Getting a bank account.

As with a great deal many things in Night City, this sounded straightforward, but in truth, it definitely wasn’t.

The First Bank of Night City, also called the First CitiBank and First Night City Bank, was founded in 2012. A mere eight years later, it was one of the largest banks of the USA, and one of the few capable of holding its own against the European and Japanese competitors.

I could only imagine the sheer amount of backroom deals and corporate assassination that had to have had taken place in order to make that happen.

Anyway, the bank had been built in City Center, and subsequently, it had been destroyed by the nuke. Of course, they’d eventually built a new office, and they’d placed it in the Glen, a bit south of the City Center.

The Glen itself was a district that was reasonably safe. The NCPD was highly active in the district, and it was patrolled at nearly all times. However, there was only a single way into the Glen that didn’t involve travelling through either the radioactive Hot Zone, or the incredibly violent and gang-controlled Combat Zones, and that was by going around the Hot Zone, through the Upper Marina, then through Little Europe, and then through the University District.

The First CitiBank did have branch offices across the city, but there was a small caveat that made them all useless to me. Namely, while it was possible to create an account at any of those locations, it was not possible to pay the fees in physical cash to do so.

A bit of a catch-22, there.

So, knowing that I had to visit the main building itself, I had planned my route accordingly.

I turned south as I reached the road, going down a little bit before I came across a much wider road, which I took a right at in order to follow.

The road itself continued a short distance before it turned into a bridge, the San Morro Bridge to be exact, which went across what was left of the San Morro bay to link with Little China.

The Combat Zone.

I could immediately see three NCPD armoured cars parked nearby, two on the oncoming side and one on the outgoing side. The cops they had nearby weren’t the average kind either, most of these guys were dressed head to toe in combat gear, with a full loadout to boot. Primary and secondary weapons, alongside grenades, drones, and one guy who was wearing a Virtuality Helmet, so he was either a Netrunner or a drone operator.

Maybe both.

I walked towards the bridge, heading to the outgoing side.

It was easy to see the moment that I caught their attention. One of the cops looked back, and then did a literal double-take, which was shortly followed by most of the others turning, subtly or otherwise, in my direction.

A few fingers drifted towards triggers, but none of them pointed their guns at me just yet.

I came closer, keeping my walk straight and consistent. My head didn’t turn at all, but I could still sense one of them growing more and more tense-

And then I walked right past them like they didn’t exist.

I felt the deflation, the expectation they had simply not occurring.

In the end, nothing happened, and I continued on to the bridge itself.

The walkway across was narrow for me, but not quite enough to be dangerous. Even so, the car that came up behind me went into the middle lane rather than drive so close to me.

Walking from one side of the bridge to the other was like walking from Santo Domingo into the Heywood Docks, but in reverse, and on a scale that was somehow much worse. On one side, clean streets. Halfway across the bridge, and there was already trash building up in the gutters, filth and stain appearing on the walls and barriers. Spray pain marked many buildings, colours applied on top of each so many times that it had all begun melding into a mottled mess.

Oh, and bullet holes. Plenty of those.

The atmosphere of violence was equally obvious. It tasted like copper, textured thick and slimey. It was deeply unpleasant, but somehow still not as bad as the Scav building.

My gait didn’t shift. I kept walking forwards, steadily and with purpose.

Who cared if I was moving into a Combat Zone? I had a fairly good sense of my abilities by now, and I was pretty certain that if anybody tried anything, I’d walk away and they wouldn’t.

Even then, it wasn’t actually as unsafe as it seemed. This was a Combat Zone, yes, but the main roads were wide, mostly intact, and usually spared from direct combat simply on account of how important and busy they were. Main roads were arteries for the entire city, even for the Combat Zones, and starting shit here usually meant you were going to be dealing with more than just your target.

I reached the end of the bridge, and kept going.

I stuck out even worse on this side, somehow. Attention was drawn to me like I was magnet, but unlike the Corporate Zone where everybody had stared openly or in the non-corporate parts of Santo Domingo where nobody was willing to look at me directly for very long, the people around here were much more varied in their attention.

Some looked at me with jealousy, eyes picking at my form like they might somehow steal something with just their envy as a tool. Some looked at me with hatred, a single glance at fine-looking clothing enough to stir their anger, their blame laid upon me for my perceived traits regardless of anything else. Many looked at me with fear, my presence alone enough to drive them to stay as far away as possible, shoulders hunching into nervous, quiet postures.

I let apathy speak for me, and ignored them entirely.

It was a relatively short distance to the main road. Skyline South was its name, and all I had to do from there was follow it all the way to the Glen. I’d only be turning off once I hit Scoffield Street.

The road did a sudden zig-zag not far down, turning right before suddenly turning left again, with more streets breaking off from both directions. This little section actually marked the district change from Little China to Japantown, and showed exactly where the screwup in planning had been made when road construction had started.

One Combat Zone out of the way, and so far, no problems. So long as one ignored the fact that I had entered and moved along the edge of Little China, anyway.

There was still plenty of road waiting for problems to happen, though.

The shift from Little China to Japantown honestly wasn’t that different, in terms of people. The change in architecture was more notable, but I imagine that the effect would have been more pronounced if both areas were... less destroyed.

I had to wonder how much of Richard Night’s original work still survived. Probably a bit less now.

The road from Japantown to the Old Combat Zone was short and straight, about the same length as the distance from getting to Skyline South from the San Morro Bridge. It branched off a few times, most of them being smaller roads that dripped with sketchiness, which I didn’t even need my Supernatural Bullshit to see.

And then, I reached the Old Combat Zone.

This place was called the worst place in the city, and it really wasn’t hard to see why.

Where Japantown and Little China had been damaged, the Old Combat Zone had been destroyed. Once, it had been a flourishing industrial area, and now it was a bombed out wreck, with the only roads still intact through the area being the Skyline South that had been repaired before social order had collapsed completely, and another street to the north that bordered on the Japantown. If the buildings still stood, they were in ruins, husks of whatever they had once been, looted of all value and home now only to gangers and the truly psychotic.

Blood hung thick in the air. Violence was a constant, here, even more so than the other Combat Zones. It’d almost be impressive, if it wasn’t such a pestilent blight.

I walked in regardless, my breathing slowing slightly as I tried to avoid tasting the smoke, the fire, and blood. A futile effort, as they remained pervasive.

The road branched nearly immediately after entering, but that road was also immediately blocked by a fallen building, brick and concrete scattering from one sie of the street to the other. There was another one on the left just a bit later, though a crater terminated the already short road early.

I almost reached a third branch in the road before something finally happened.

“Hey, Choom!” Someone called out as I approached an alley. A brief glance in that direction showed a man with too little clothing and evidently too little sense and too much confidence to go with it. “Those are some nice threads you got! You’re one of them fancy types, huh?”

It was an idiot. A ganger, clearly, but one with a considerable degree of Cybernetic replacements. Both arms, both legs, both eyes, with skin that was too solid and stiff to be unaugmented. He dripped in greed, but the blood that surrounded him was surprisingly light.

I walked right past him. I saw, on the edge of my vision, his wide grin break into a scowl.

“Oi, Choom. I’m talking to you, here.” He said, jogging past me.

“I don’t care.” I said, continuing to walk. He decided to keep going backwards, at quite the pace too, considering the difference in the length of our strides.

It was actually a little silly looking.

His eye twitched. “But someone like you has surely got something to spare for the innocent and needy, right?”

“You are neither.”

His teeth grit. His hand started drifting to his side. “Alright, since you’re not picking up what I’m putting down, I’ll be all blunt-like. People like you, Choom? There’s an expectation, see. You live, you give, and we all appreciate the gifts. Otherwise, who knows what might happen? You getting it? What you thinking?”

“I think you should make better choices.” I answered.

What kind of amateur hour shit was this? It was just one guy. There are eyes on us, but none of them are friendly to this fuckwit.

Still, my answers drove him past whatever he had that passed for patience. He let out a sharp huff of air, his hand reaching down to his side before he pulled out his gun.

Not the worst gun I’d seen so far, admittedly, but still not nearly good enough.

His arm started moving up, his chest expanding as he prepared his next words.

The back of my hand caught him straight in the solar plexus. A casual strike from me, but for him?

The air wheezed out of him as he flew backwards through the air. He went straight over the barrier of the road, before slamming into the side of a building and bouncing off, falling down directly into the open dumpster at the base of the wall. The impact was loud, jarring, and it dislodged the lid, leading to it falling shut a second later.

I’m pretty sure I felt his ribs cracking when I did that, but I wasn’t certain.

...

I can’t believe my first mugging was that guy. I almost feel robbed.

Oh well. I’m sure the bank will take care of that.