529 A Day To (Not) Relax Part One

It wasn't a surprise to leave the building and find the limo was no longer there. What was a surprise was that no one had asked me for my new security card back. I did get a few odd looks from the security personnel in the lobby and that was it, which was probably because of the elevator I used. I also doubted the card would allow me back inside, not that I needed it.

I looked around and thought about summoning a Delamain taxi, then chose not to. Going for a walk was something I had only done in The Glen and I was sure that my current appearance would allow me some leeway if I walked the less safer streets in the downtown area. Was that a weird thing to do, knowing what the city was like? Not really. It was still very early in the morning.

So, I started walking and the difference from my walk in The Glen was immediately apparent. The noise of the city, the prevalent billboards and ads everywhere, and the people that seemed to be both busy and not really going anywhere. Fashion of all kinds could be seen on them all and each of them had a wide range of chrome on their person. I didn't see any full borgs, though.

I walked for a good 15 to 20 minutes, which was long enough for a healthy person to cross about two kilometres. I also crossed the bridge that took me from the city center and into Little Chinatown. Why did I choose this direction? I was going to visit Victor Vektor. It was the weekend, so he should be in his shop and he did ask me to stop by if I was in the area.

I walked up the back street where the entrance to his ripperdoc business was and the amount of garbage and debris I could see was concerning. It gave me a few ideas and I wondered who I could contact to see who handled those kind of things. If it wasn't anyone important, it was another means for me to gather materials and to also make the place better.

I went down the stairs to his basement business and didn't knock, since the open sign was lit. I stopped walking as I saw Victor bent over a guy's abdomen and his forearms were dappled with blood specks and his gloved hands were dark red with blood.

A quick check with the security system let me know the guy was a regular customer and had been in a tussle with a Scav that thought he was an easy target to kidnap and harvest. I rushed over to the surgical bed and pulled on a pair of surgical gloves from the box on the tool tray by the bed. I nodded to Victor and he nodded back, then we both went to work.

Twenty minutes later, the guy's remaining intestines were cleaned, repaired, and put back into his body. A few liberal doses of dorphs ensured he would recover in a reasonable time and I used Panacea's power to boost the guy's immune system to ensure it.

“Did he put the bastard down at least?” I asked and took off the bloody surgical gloves. I tossed them into the garbage can and sat down at Victor's workstation.

“He did and I already sent the NCPD the deets of where and when.” Victor said with satisfaction as he tossed his own gloves and then he pulled over a stool and sat beside me. “Thanks for the help, V.”

I waved his thanks off. “You could have handled it yourself, it just would have taken twice as long.”

Victor nodded and used several cleaning wipes to disinfect his forearms. “Do you see any other drops anywhere?”

“A few on your pants, the knee on the left and a couple on the right thigh.” I said and pointed to them.

“Drek! I knew I should have grabbed my smock.” Victor said and stood. “Give me a sec to change.”

I nodded and he went into the back and out of sight. I turned to his cyberdeck and touched it as I checked it for any foreign programs. Luckily, nothing showed up and I checked through his client files for anything he needed help with. There was nothing, so I disconnected and turned back around to look at the guy on the surgical bed.

He was unremarkable, in the same way a brown haired and brown eyed man would stand out in a crowd. He wouldn't. This guy could have been anyone, anyone at all, and it wouldn't make any difference. It made me wonder how he would feel if I pointed that out to him, and chuckled. Why would I ever be that cruel?

“What's funny?” Victor asked when he came back wearing black pants.

“I had quite an interesting introduction to real life Arasaka corpo politics this morning.” I said instead of what I was actually thinking.

“I can imagine.” Victor said and sat down again. “Hit me with it so I can laugh, too.”

Saying that made me laugh and I spent the next half an hour regaling him on my adventures that morning. Victor looked suitably impressed and told me about some of the visits and persistent messages he received from several companies, like Biotechnica and Militech. The first to join their research branch and the second to join their medical department as a valuable deployment asset.

“Damn, choom! I didn't know you were that desirable.” I joked.

“You're one to talk, Mister I'm Meeting Hanako Arasaka On My First Day Of Work!” Victor joked back and we both laughed.

I turned to the workstation and quickly typed up a few commands on the keyboard there and brought up a list of the visits he had the last couple of weeks. “I don't see anything you need my help with here.” I said, just to keep up appearances that I couldn't do it remotely, and turned back around. “Do you have any cyberware I can check out for you?”

Victor shrugged. “I haven't gotten anything special lately.”

“Well, drek.” I said and crossed my arms. “You got anything going on off the books?”

Victor glanced over at the guy on the surgical bed and back to me. “The Scavs have been hitting more people lately.” He said and leaned in close. “I don't know why or how many have been taken, only that I've noticed a few regulars haven't come in for their checkups this month.”

I thought about that for a few seconds. “You got their deets? Or are they off the grid as well as off the books?”

Victor gave me an odd look and then smiled. “You're gonna track them down like a normie?”

I barked a laugh. “Naw, choom. I might not have the chrome to show off anymore; but, I'm still one of the best programmers at the academy.” I said and turned back to his workstation and took out my clicker to pretend to load in the same program I used to find David and shared with Gloria. “I got a GPS tracker that can ping them if their implants are still active.”

“Then give me a sec.” Victor said and plugged a cord into his neck port. A second later, the display showed the info he had for three clients that hadn't shown up this month.

“Got them. Loading in the first.” I said and typed like a demon to run commands, which surprised Victor. “Okay, here's their last known route. It was two weeks ago and they seemed to take all the back streets out of Night City and disappeared into the badlands.”

Victor stared at the display and blinked his eyes as he examined the program, then he looked at me. “You're using an ad tracker program across the entire city?”

I grinned at him catching on and nodded. “It's the quickest way, since it's independent of the implant's power source. As long as it's receiving, we can track it.”

“Damn, choom.” Victor whispered. “Try the second one.”

I entered the info and ran it again, and neither of us were surprised to see it follow the same route, only it was a week ago. I entered the third without being prompted and the same pattern emerged, only two days ago. All of them went out past the last billboard at the edge of Night City going into the long abandoned Rocky Ridge subdivision.

The problem was, it was well known to be controlled at various times by scavengers, or Scavs for short, and they harvested valuable cyberware from living people to sell. The Wraiths were the worst Scavs on the planet and they didn't care who or what they kidnapped and killed, since everyone hated them and they hated everyone right back.

They were a clan of the Raffen Shiv, nomads that had been kicked out of their old clans for being the scum of the earth, criminals, and ignoring their clan rules and even basic human decency. In fact, they were so hated by everyone, corpos and nomads alike, that they were classified as 'shoot on sight'... and these were the people taking Victor's customers.

“So, do we report it?” I asked and let him keep a copy of the program.

Victor sighed and shook his head. “I've already done that. Unfortunately, since I only just did, they aren't going to do anything. If we give them this evidence...”

“...they'll write the crimes off, since they can claim the victims are obviously dead.” I said and Victor nodded. “That doesn't mean they are, they just could be.”

Victor gave me a sad look. “It's been a few days since the last went missing, choom. Why would the Scavs waste the eddies to feed them and keep them alive if they were going to kill them for their cybernetics?”

I sighed and nodded. “All right, I won't bother notifying the police or send them the deets.”

“I need to put the word out on the street.” Victor said and stood. “The more people that know to be careful, the less that will be lost.”

“Tell them to call or message you or someone else they know.” I suggested and he nodded.

“Thanks, V.” Victor said and patted my shoulder, then walked towards the door. “Lock up when you leave. I don't know how long I'll be.”

“You got it, choom.” I said and waited for him to leave before I stood. I went into the back of the shop and pretended to raid his stores and changed out my expensive suit for armor pieces, cammo pants, a ballistics vest, and a helmet with a VR visor that hid most of my face.

I did this in full view of the cameras, just so Victor would know I had made an effort to protect myself. I stuffed my uniform into a dufflebag and went over to the door, pretended to use my clicker to lock it, and ran around the building and down a back alley. As soon as I was out of sight, I used a touch of clairvoyance and saw where I needed to go.

I stepped from the alley to just behind the billboard on the outskirts of Night City. What I knew and what Victor didn't, was that he was right that Scavs wouldn't waste money feeding prisoners. What they would do was use them for fun and not bother feeding them at all. I took out a wand and held it in my hand. “Point me Jasmine Onyx.”

The wand swirled slowly and came to a stop pointing east. I stepped from there to the top of the closest structure I could see, which was a 100 foot tall powerline tower. The wand shifted and I kept stepping until I reached Rocky Ridge. My first impression was that it was a garbage dump and I wasn't far off. Once the corpos had abandoned the project and cut off the funding, it quickly fell into disrepair and under the control of any gang or nomad that passed by.

You would think they would learn from their mistakes.I thought and my mind went over the failed Pacifica renovation and how it was supposed to become a well known resort and vacation spot, only for it to suffer the same problem of abandonment for lack of funding. Several lesser gangs had immediately moved in and claimed different parts of it for themselves.

I used the tracking spell again and it pointed to a group of run-down trailers with several Mad Max style cars parked around them. I put the wand away and thought about the best way to handle things, and shrugged as I took out a phaser rifle from Star Trek. I set it to stun and fully automatic, just because I could, and I stepped from my tower perch and right in front of the trailer with the most minds inside.

My heavy boot slammed into and through the door, shattering it into splinters, and I held the trigger on the rifle as I swept it from side to side and then in a circle, just to make sure I hit everyone. I felt three more people rushing over to the trailer and I stepped forward, turned around and knelt, then aimed at the open doorway. One more sweep of shots and everyone was down and unconscious.

I hung the rifle across my back and started rummaging for weapons, eddies, incriminating evidence, and anything else they had on them to identify them or to prove they were actually criminals. Not that I needed the last. Shoot on sight bounties didn't ask for names, just images of them and their tattoos.

I pulled the three Scavs into the trailer and tossed them into the corner and did the same to the others. Fortunately, none of them were the victims and I stripped them all down to their underwear or gave them underwear if they didn't have any on. I searched through the trailer and found the woman I was looking for. She was a dancer that had only recently went missing.

Unfortunately, the scum weren't gentle with her at all and she was in really rough shape. She was covered in bruises, cuts, and scrapes, and was also doped up to the gills on Glitter and illegal dorphs to keep her breathing.

I used several spells to clean her up, and the bed, and then the bedroom. With everything clean enough to touch, I sat beside her unconscious form and placed a hand on her. The diseases she had were virulent and were already wrecking her immune system, the drugs were eating away at her organs, and her kidneys and liver had already shut down.

I had to take my time fixing her, so her body wouldn't go into shock and kill her. Her mind was trapped in a nightmare and she had enough presence to not want to wake up, even though the nightmare was a terrible one with her living in a bomb shelter alone during a nuclear war.

Once I had her stabilized and recorded her medical diagnosis, I went to each of her kidnappers and matched her diseases and wounds to them and their weapons. With that done, I went to the next trailer and found two men, one of which had also been missing.

Again, they were both so high on Glitter that they technically should have died, except their cyberware barely kept them from the brink of death and they didn't suffer a catastrophic failure. One had only been used as a punching bag and the other had been dressed in a cheap wig and a red dress and used like a prostitute.

It was the first time I had seen someone forced to install Joytoy programming and then they lost all control of their own body as the Scavs had them perform all kinds of sick and depraved acts on them, on themselves, and even using various tools and objects.

That was going to be a problem, because they had overwritten the man's cyberware to the point that there was no trace of the man's original personality. He had been one of the first people taken, over two months ago, and they'd done it to him right away. It was both an experiment and a way for them to have fun, and his normal meat brain was so dosed out that there wasn't anyone at home anymore.

Sick bastards.I thought and did what I could. I didn't fix anything but the physical damage, since the mental damage was something an expert was going to have to deal with. Either that, or he was going to become a weird addition down on Jig-Jig Street.

I healed the other man as well and then searched the rest of the trailers. I only found several dismembered bodies, one of which was the third person I was looking for. The Scavs had harvested everything, from his cyberware to every viable organ in his body, including his eyes.

I recorded everything, with both video and pictures, and brought the still living prisoners to the vehicles outside the first trailer. I put the woman in the front seat of the best one and put the two men in the backseat, strapped them in, and went back inside the first trailer. I couldn't connect using technopathy to the networks in Night City from this far out, so I had to cheat.

With a touch of clairvoyance, I found a bored desk sergeant at the closest police station and gave him the impression to browse through the nomad, Scav, and gang member bounty lists. The subject piqued his interest and he wistfully fantasized about hunting them down and rolling in the eddies.

I encouraged him and he happily scrolled through everything the database had. It gave me the faces and tattoos, and a few nicknames, of everyone that had a registered bounty. Apparently, the small group I had found, had pissed off a corpo from Biotechnica and taken one of their volunteers.

Oh. That makes more sense.I thought, because when I checked who the volunteer was, the man's picture and name appeared. I knew then that it hadn't been the Wraiths that had reformatted the guy, it had been Biotechnica. The Wraiths had only realized the fun they could have when delivering the guy and made off with both the goods and the payment for the delivery they never made.

I suppose that meant I would have to do some judicial sculpting of the man's face, and maybe a few other things, so they couldn't find him and take him back. Then again, maybe Biotechnica had a way to reverse it? I would have to visit them later and see if that was true. For now, I had to stash the guy somewhere... and I smiled as I remembered a particular contact I had made with my Atlas persona.

How much did I want to bet that Wakako Okada would happily welcome a new waitress for her pachinko parlour, someone that was more than willing to provide private services and happy endings for her more important customers? It made me laugh, because it was such an easy bet to win.