Chapter 47: Dino's Gig: Project Chimera End (Patreon)

"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."

- Allen Saunders

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"Fuuuuuuck," I groaned as I opened my eyes and my Kiroshi's booted up to a ceiling fan, my left eye calibrating half a second before my right. Wait, a fucking ceiling fan? The last time I had seen one of those was when I lived in the ivory towers of Charter Hill. Then I noticed a man leaning over me with an Airhypo in his hands, and I determined that he had just jacked me full of drugs to wake me up.

"There he is," the man said. "Welcome back, choom."

I blinked a couple of times as I wondered who the fuck was the guy standing over me. My overlay loaded with a fragmented pattern, as if it were still processing something, making the room around me render in pieces. After everything finished calibrating, I was able to get a good look at the man standing over me.

He had to be in his late thirties, if I had to take a guess; his skin complexion was similar to mine, and he had a ripperdoc glove in his hand. That explained who he was and where I was. But as I looked him head to toe, I noticed that he had no visible implants. I even scanned him to see if I was just tripping balls after waking up, but nope. This motherucker had no chrome, which was something I had only ever encountered with one other ripper in my life.

"Where the fuck am I?" I asked.

"You're in my clinic in Wellsprings," the ripperdoc said, setting the Airhypo down on the instrument tray beside the chair. "Name's Santiago Molina. Your chooms brought you in about five minutes ago. The big one carried you through the door while the broody one stayed outside."

"Santiago?" I said.

"Yeah," Santiago perked up.

"Nothing," I said, shaking my head. "I go by Ghost."

"Okay, que bueno," Santiago said. "Well, nice to meet you, Ghost. Wish it could be under better circumstances."

"You and I both," I said as another groan escaped my lips.

"Well, Ghost, it looks like you had a rough night," Santiago said. "Your neural chrome was running hot when they brought you in. Whatever it is you were doing, you ended up pushing right past the redline and kept pushing."

I pushed myself to sit up in the chair and felt the room tilt as a wave of dizziness struck me, then left as quickly as it came. My head felt like a fucking cement block, and I could feel the heat around the back of my head. I looked over my own systems real quick and noticed that my SRN was online but running at reduced sensitivity. Either I fried half my shit when that fucking AI did whatever it was he did to me, or my relay grid was still recalibrating. 

I tried to do a quick self-diagnostic on my chrome, with my Neural Link returning status codes I had never seen before while the diagnostic failed on everything else. Yeah, I probably fired some shit. Thank fuck that AI didn't turn my brain to soup.

I heard a door open, and someone walk in. It was Torque, and he was still wearing that shitty tactical jacket while carrying around his suppressed Tsunami Kyubi. I did notice that he had unloaded the magazine and the trigger was pinned back, meaning he had cleared it. 

"You gave us a fright, kid," he said.

"Yeah, didn't mean to do that," I said. "I think I'm all good now."

"You're not all good," Santiago said, pulling up a diagnostic screen on his terminal. "Your neural chrome is running temps that are almost twenty percent above what they should be, not to mention you had some other things wrong with you when they brought you in. I want to run a full diagnostic before I let you walk out of here."

"Look, I appreciate the sentiment," I said, sliding off the examination chair and finding my feet. "But, no offense, choom, I've got my own ripperdoc."

"Some taken," Santiago said. "But I understand. Most runners have their guy."

"Yeah," I nodded. "Everyone has someone they run to with these sorts of issues."

"Then go see your guy," Santiago advised. "Tonight, if you can. Whatever happened to your rig, it's not something you want to sleep on."

He gave me this concerned look, which kinda threw me for a loop considering nobody really gave much of a fuck about somebody else unless it was their choom, family, or output.

"Look, muchacho. The Airhypo I gave you is a cocktail of neural stabilizers and anti-inflammatories," Santiago said to me while waving one of his hands around. "It'll keep your chrome from overheating for a little while, maybe four or five hours. But after that, you're gonna need to go get yourself a proper diagnostic, o estaras jugando con la Santa Muerte, you're playing with death."

"I got the message, doc," I nodded. "Thanks."

"Hey, don't forget to pay me," Santiago said. "That Airhypo is two hundred eddies, and I'm not running a charity."

I flicked my hand his way and transferred him the two hundred eddies for the Airhypo. Then Torque and I walked out of the clinic, took a right, then a left, and then went down some stairs to see Moth leaning against the freight van with his arms folded.

"Is everything alright?" Moth asked me.

"Yeah," I nodded. "Everything is preem. Let's delta." 

As soon as the three of us got into the van, we started heading towards teh Afterlife. As Torque drove, I listened to the distant sound of gunfire, which was probably from some gang war or whatever. I didn't really keep up with all of the shit that went down in the city unless it posed real danger. But gangers were usually gonks who could hit a giant shitstain while they pissed, let alone while shooting.

I also noticed that there were very few NCPD vehicles on the street tonight, but there were a fuckton of cars on the road. Most likely people trying to leave the city due to what happened yesterday to Sacramento. But where the fuck were they gonna go? Whatever road they took, they would just end up facing the NUSA military one way or another.

I slipped my hands in my pant pockets and noticed that I had both of the shards in there with me. So I inserted my personal shard, which was supposed to copy a lot of shit for me to use or sell at a later date, and contrary to my expectations, it wasn't corrupted or damaged at all. I felt the headache I had gotten when I woke up slowly return, and it only got worse the longer we drove.

The silence between the three of us was finally broken by Torque as he asked me a question. "What happened in there?"

I turned my head to look at his eyes through the rearview mirror, noticing that he hadn't turned his head and had kept his eyes on the road.

"There was another runner who had infiltrated the facility offsite," I said. "He was a Voodoo Boy. Came in right as I was finishing the extraction and was about to pull out."

"And?" Moth asked.

"And he decided that although we weren't there for the same shit, he just had to flatline me," I said, carefully considering my next words so that I wouldn't reveal anything about what happened after I met that Voodoo cunt. "We fought, and with the Voodoo Boy's fame for diving behind the Blackwall, it was actually a bit of a challenge. Closer than I would've liked in the beginning."

"But you won," Torque said.

"You bet your sweet bippy I did," I said, smiling to myself as I remembered how quickly I shifted the playing field. "I decided to stop playing by his rules and closed the range. Be the snot out of the fucker after that."

Torque glanced at me through the rearview mirror, and I could see the calculation running behind them. I don't know why, but I got the feeling he didn't fully buy into what I was selling and knew I was leaving things out. Thankfully, he chose not to push it.

"Glad you're alright, kid," he said as he turned his eyes back to the road.

I leaned my head against the cargo compartment wall and tried to run another self-diagnostic on my Chrome. It seems the ripperdoc was right in advising me to get myself checked as soon as possible, because now I wasn't even getting the information I had when I was in the clinic and instead got an outright error.

I could still see the status of my chrome, and could see that it was all online. But the meta-layer that was supposed to tell me whether all of those functional reports were accurate was telling me to go fuck myself.

I tried another diagnostic again, only to get the same shit.

Okay, if doing it the regular way won't work, I guess I'll have to do it the old way.

I tried a third time, manually specifying each implant in the query string rather than letting the suite poll the full array. Everything came back fine, with my SRN giving me a thermal advisory flag that I already knew about.

However, something new was now going on with my Neural Link. It gave me a status code I had never seen in my life, a string of hexadecimal that none of my chrome knew how to handle.

I thought back to HADES' "microscopic fraction." That could be the only possible explanation for what was happening to my chrome. Whatever it contained, it was still doing whatever it was going to do. Sure, the name HADES didn't really inspire much trust in me, since that was the name of a literal god of the underworld, and this thing was an AI living beyond the veil of the Blackwall that quite literally housed straight-up demons.

But the way it acted told me it held no malicious intent towards me. And if it did, I think I would've been done like that Voodoo Boy runner. I closed the diagnostic window and closed my eyes for the remainder of the drive.

I looked at my internal clock when I felt the van take two turns and slow down to a complete stop. It was 2:30 AM, and there was music blasting outside.

"We're here," Torque said as he killed the engine.

I stepped out of the van and took a look around. It seemed like tonight had been a busy night for mercs, as there were a shit ton of them walking around with their iron on display. There was a line to enter the Afterlife as well, and I noticed fixers in the mix. How did I notice that? Well, I saw that one of the people in line was that Faraday guy I had hired to remodel my current home.

However, since all of our biz had been conducted through messages and calls, he didn't recognize me as Torque, Moth, and I walked right past the line and towards the front of it. The people in line were about to talk shit until they saw us reach the bouncer, who stepped aside without saying a word to let us in. 

The bar was being worked by the same man who had been there the night Dino had made me create my own drink. He had just finished serving someone a drink when I approached the bar, and before I could even order-

"Purple Ghost," Idris said. "Four ounces vodka, one ounce blackberry, quarter ounce black cherry synth. Three cubes to top it off."

I closed my mouth and nodded. He built the drink with ease, his hands moving as if they had a mind of their own. He set a glass in front of me fifteen seconds later, the violet liquid turning white at the edges and around the ice.

"Purple Ghost," I said.

"Every drink needs a name," Idris said. "Figured this would fit yours quite well."

I picked up the glass and took a sip, nodding at the taste. Liquor was beginning to grow on me, and with this headache I had right now, it even served to alleviate it.

Moth appeared at my shoulder and glanced at my drink.

"I'd like to try what he is having," Moth said, and Idris quickly made another drink.

"Let me just get a bottle of vodka," Torque said, leaning against the bar. "Nothing fancy."

Idris bent down under the bar and brought out a bottle of glass that Torque almost snatched from his hands and unscrewed the cap to take a long swig.

"Aaahh," Torque sighed. "Now that's some good shit."

We carried our drinks across the floor toward the private booths in the back, towards a private booth Dino had apparently booked. As we opened the bead curtains, we noticed that he wasn't alone.

There were three women sitting with him, and all of them were- holy momma bazookas! My eyes quickly locked onto one of the women's bare chests. Her skin was pale, and though she had chrome, none of it was within the immediate vicinity of their breasts. I was never one to be hooked on those porn BDs or anything, but damn. 

I forced myself to look away from those holy mountain peaks and look at Dino, who had a bottle in one hand and a boob in the other. He had been enjoying his evening and was not expecting it to be interrupted by biz. But when money calls, all else can go fuck itself.

His expression shifted from leisure to attention in a split second as he released the breast he was holding and leaned forward. He said something to the three women, and they stood up and left the booth with their drinks in hand.

"Talk to me," Dino said as we took our seats.

"I've got good news and bad news," I said, setting my glass down on the table. "Which one do you want first?"

Dino's jaw seemed to clench as he closed his eyes. "Give me the bad."

"Bad news is that the price for this job just went up tenfold," I said.

Dino's expression did not change, but the look he gave me with his eyes told me he wanted to murder me. "And what could possibly be the good fucking news after that?"

"Data's worth way more than we thought," I said.

Dino's eyes looked like he wanted to rip my head off. But before he could say anything, Torque cut him off.

"The site was not abandoned," Torque said. "It was an active NetWatch observation post. We walked into it blind because the client's briefing was wrong, and Ghost nearly got zeroed inside their architecture by a Voodoo Boy netrunner who had also made their way in."

Dino's mouth closed, and his eyes moved to scan all three of us. He then leaned back into the booth's cushions in calculation, and raised both his boots onto the table.

"That changes things," Dino said.

"Yeah," I said. "It does. We have everything the client asked for, but the price is two million eddies per person. Two and a half for me."

"And why do you get the extra half-mil?" Dino asked.

"'Cause I'm the one who fucked with NetWatch for this shit," I said.

Dino looked at me for a long moment before turning his eyes to Torque. "Do you have proof that it was a NetWatch facility?"

Torque flicked his hand toward Dino, and I watched both their eyes glow orange as Torque probably sent him a visual recording he'd made. Dino remained quiet for a while before finally speaking.

"Give me a minute," he said as he leaned his head back into the cushions of the booth.

We sat in the booth and drank our drinks while Dino's eyes glowed a steady orange in what I could only guess to be a very long back-and-forth conversation. Every few minutes, Dino's jaw would tighten, or his fingers would drum once against the table, or he would tilt his head. I could tell that he was negotiating, and he was negotiating hard. On our behalf and on his own behalf.

Moth and I finished our drinks and ordered a second one from a passing server. Moth's mask pasted just enough at the mouth to allow him to drink with elegance, as if he was considering keeping my drink around. Given that he ordered a third, I assumed he liked it well enough.

About an hour had passed since Dino had asked us to wait a minute, and by the time his eyes stopped glowing, I was a little bit buzzed. Then my account pinged twice, and I felt myself sober up almost immediately.

Transfer authenticated: 2,500,000 eddies.

Transfer authenticated: 2,000,000 eddies.

Moth sat up straight in the booth, his posture shifting from relaxed to rigid while Torque set the vodka bottle slowly on the table.

"Did you mean to send us two and a half instead of two?" Torque asked.

"After a conversation with the customer, they saw fit to pay a little extra," Dino said, picking up his own bottle and downing what remained of it in a single breath. "Given the fact that fucking NetWatch was involved, they considered it appropriate. Also, don't question a client who's feeling generous. It's bad for business."

Moth began tapping his fingers in a slow rhythm. This was the closest thing to excitement I had ever seen him display. Torque's mouth spread into the broadest smile I had seen on the man's face.

I didn't have to think much before I reached into my pocket in search of the shard. A second later, I slid it across the table to Dino.

"Every single thing on the Chimera," I said. "Just as the client requested."

Dino picked up the shard and examined it for a moment before he slotted it into his neural link port. His eyes glowed orange as he verified the contents. Then he pulled the shard, pocketed it, and looked at me.

"Now get the fuck out of my booth and send the girls back in on your way out," he said.

We stood up to leave when Dino called after me.

"Ghost," Dino said.

I stopped.

"Stay back a second," he said. "I want to talk to you."

Torque and Moth walked out of the booth and disappeared into the Afterlife's floor as I sat back down. Dino's smile dropped as soon as we were alone.

"This is the second time you've pulled this little fucking stunt," Dino said.

"Dino-" I tried to speak, but he cut me off.

"Shut the fuck up," he said. "I'm talking."

Well fuck. I think I kicked the shit bucket this time.

"This is the second time you've sat across from me in front of other people and demanded a change to the terms of a job I brokered. You brought me extra data last time, and I rewarded the initiative. But this time, you walked into my booth, in front of solos I hired, and told me the price went up tenfold before anything else."

He leaned forward, and if looks could kill, Dino would have zeroed me ten times over by now.

"The only reason I am not cutting you off," Dino said, "is because, whether I like it or not, the shit you brought back about the facility being NetWatch made me an additional nine million eddies on top of the client's original fee. That is a number I respect, and it also buys you grace. But it does not buy you the right to dictate terms to me in front of other people."

"I understand," I said.

"I don't fucking think you do," Dino said. "So I'm going to say this one more and last time."

He picked up the empty bottle and pointed the neck at me. "I want you to get soem shit clear. You are a runner without a crew. You work for me... I set the price. I broker the job. I manage the client. I do the shit that needs to be done. If the job goes sideways and the price needs to change, you come to me privately to explain the situation, and I handle the renegotiation. But what you don't fucking do is walk into a room full of people and announce that the price has changed. That is not how this works. And if you do it again, I will find another runner who understands the difference between style and arrogance."

He set the empty bottle down and leaned back into the booth.

"I paid you an extra two million eddies tonight because I like your work," he said. "I like the way you think. I like the way you move. I like the fact that you walked into a NetWatch outpost and walked out with data that made me rich. As much as it pisses me the fuck off to say it right now, you have got motherfucking style, kid. But style without discipline is just a dead runner with a good wardrobe."

He gestured at the converted mortuary around us.

"We good?" he asked.

"We're good," I said.

"Then get the fuck out of my sight and tell the girls I'm ready," he ordered.

I stood up and went to exit the booth as the three women, who had been outside waiting to be ordered in, walked past me.

"Ghost," Dino called out from behind me, and I turned to look at him.

"You've got motherfucking style," he said, and pointed the empty bottle at me one last time before turning his attention to his company.

I walked out of the Afterlife and looked at my internal clock. It was 4:04 AM, and the city was still very alive with traffic. I pulled up my Agent and sent Vik a message.

Me: "Hey Vik. Can I drop by the clinic?"

I got a reply within a few seconds, which meant he was awake. Not something too unusual for a ripperdoc, but considering Vik didn't have any chrome, he needed his beauty sleep.

Vik: "This something that can wait?"

Me: "I don't really know."

Vik: "Then come."

"I really need to get myself a proper ride while I rebuild the Mustang," I muttered to myself as I got into the cab I had ordered.

Twenty minutes later, the cab dropped me at the corner of the alley that led to Vik's place. As I stepped out of it, I felt as if the ground had rolled beneath me, and for a fraction of a second I was surrounded by red rock and tall grass while animal-shaped machines moved past me. Then I was standing on the edge of a cliff, watching a red-haired woman run through the grass with a bow in her hand as the machines hunted her. However, she fought back and, at times, hunted them back. As she did, I noticed that the sky above her was a beautiful blue color that reminded me of the safari BDs I used to watch as a kid.

Then I blinked, and it was all gone. I was standing on the sidewalk where the cab had left me. I felt my hands shaking as it began to rain.

"What the fuck," I whispered, and I heard something whisper back. I turned my head to look around, but I was alone on the street, save for the hobo who was sitting against one of the stores.

I felt the world begin to spin and leaned onto a light post to steady myself. Then I looked up and saw a Galena G240 parked at the curb; its faded gasoline green paint and rust along the wheel arches hinted it was the car I had bought, fixed up, and given Mom. 

I frowned as my brain tried to come up with a reason for Mom's car to be parked here, blinking in confusion. As soon as I blinked, the G240 magically disappeared and in its place there was a GA32T in preem condition. Not only that, but it was also a whole different color.

"Okay, weird shit is happening," I whispered to myself, and this time, I heard multiple whispers coming from behind me. I turned to see who it was, only for the ground to tilt once again. I was, once again, in a whole new world, my surroundings having completely shifted as the same red-haired woman I had seen earlier stood in front of me, on a cliff overlooking a valley full of the animal-shaped machines.

I noticed that she seemed to be speaking with someone, but there was no one around her. Then she turned and looked right at me, and started walking my way. Just as she was about to reach me, the scenery once again disappeared, and I found myself back on the same sidewalk with a twitch in my left eye as louder whispers surrounded me.

My Kiroshis flickered, and for a split second, there was an overlay projected of a targeting reticle I had never seen. Glyphs seemed to form the edges of a triangle before disappearing from existence. My guess was that whatever the fuck that HADES fucker had sent my way was going to kepe on doing this shit, and it was only going to get worse.

So I pushed myself off the lamp post, forcing myself to walk as straight as I could as the world around me seemed to tilt. I reached the esoterica and noticed it was closed, so I had to go around to the side entrance and over the padlocked metal door.

Once I reached the door, I pulled myself up and over, landing in the alleyway, and walked down the steps that led to Vik's clinic. The door slid open as I approached, and my world changed once again as soon as I crossed the threshold. I was now staring at a massive machine, taller than any building I had ever seen, its body assembled from metal and cables and thousands of other smaller machines. The machine was letting out a screech that would have liquefied my brain, were this not a hallucination. I then noticed that the red-haired woman had climbed on its back and was pokign her with her magic voodoo staff as the machine flailed in an attempt to shake her off.

And as it flailed, something on it came flying at me, and then I found myself tripping and crashing onto Vik's medical shit by the chair.

"Jesus, kid," Vik said. "You alright? You look like shit."

He helped me up and helped me steady myself.

"Easy there," Vik said. "What's going on? What's gotten into you?"

"I don't..." I was about to start lying, but I realized that I needed serious medical attention at the moment, so I couldn't be hiding any secrets any longer from Vik. "An op tonight almost flatlined me. I need everything in my head checked. My self-diagnostic keeps coming back null or error, and I'm..."

I trailed off as the door to my left opened. It was the door I had always assumed led to a storage room, a garage, or some kind of back-office space Vik used for inventory. But for some reason, Mom was standing in the doorway, wearing a bathrobe. She was looking at me with an expression that was equal parts surprise and guilt, and I felt my brain malfunction because, like five minutes ago, I had just hallucinated her car on the street, and the hallucination had dissolved when I blinked, and now she was standing in Vik's doorway.

"Ma?" I said.

"Who are you talking to, kid?" Vik asked, drawing my attention.

"The fuck you talking about, Vik?" I said, looking at a confused and concerned Vik. "She's standing right th..."

I turned my head back toward the doorway, only to see that it was closed with my mother nowhere to be seen. I was then assaulted by another wave of whispers that was longer than the last one. They were saying something in a language I did not speak. Something that sounded like a name.

When they stopped, I found myself with one hand on the surgical chair, feeling out of breath. I could feel Vik's eyes.

"Sit down," Vik said quietly, and I obeyed. "You have to shoot straight with me, kid. What the fuck is going on with you?"

"I... I don't know," I said. I mean, it wasn't really a lie. I had a hunch about what was causing this, but I really had no idea what the fuck was happening to me.