Cyberpunk: I'm Not a Scavenger - Chapter 79: Braindance (Patreon)

That night, at Judy's workshop.

After Pantheon handed Shota Kosugi and his two accomplices over to Judy, she kept her side of the bargain and helped him analyze the original Braindance recordings.

When she finally rose from her workbench, her face was dark with anger, and her chest heaved.

"Those fucking corpo dogs are animals wearing human skin! They experiment on living people like that? Aren't they afraid of going to hell?"

Surprised by her outburst, Pantheon handed her a bottle of water.

"I thought a Braindance editor like you would be used to seeing this stuff."

"Fuck! You think someone who cleans out septic tanks actually likes shit? I'm not one of those sick freaks!"

Judy drank some water and gradually calmed down. She might normally sound like an angry internet troll, but she knew perfectly well when something was genuinely serious.

"Don't worry."

She transferred the processed recordings onto a chip while reassuring him.

"Once we're done today, I'll destroy all this data and the hard drive with it. No backups. Nothing left behind."

"Thanks."

Pantheon accepted the chip and inserted it into the slot on his Braindance headset.

Let's see where Biotechnica has been hiding those people.

He pulled on the headset and started playback. White light flashed, and his consciousness entered the Braindance.

Braindance captured everything the original recorder had experienced, including sight, hearing, smell, and even changes in emotion and thought. After professional editing, that experience could be passed on to someone else.

In that instant, Pantheon felt as though he'd become the member of the Red Ocher clan strapped into the experimental chair.

The harsh stench of disinfectant filled his nostrils. Restraints held his limbs tight, and countless monitoring devices were attached to his body.

A cold substance entered his veins, and suddenly it felt as though tens of thousands of ants were gnawing at every nerve in his body.

Veins bulged at Pantheon's temples, and his brow tightened.

After a brief moment of discomfort, Judy separated out the emotional layer of the experience, leaving only its basic sights and sounds.

Those few seconds had been more than enough to give Pantheon a taste of the despair lingering in the prisoner's body and the blazing hatred directed at Biotechnica.

He took a deep breath, steadied himself, and began examining the surroundings through the captive's eyes.

"He" was inside a sealed, transparent glass compartment, with a much larger laboratory beyond it. Two researchers in heavy protective suits were recording data inside the compartment.

Looking into the larger lab, Pantheon noticed several coffee cups casually left on a workbench. All bore the logo of a café called Leblanc.

It was a Japanese coffee chain with only a few branches in Night City, and it offered delivery only within five kilometers of each store.

That clue immediately narrowed the search area considerably.

Aside from the coffee cups, however, the laboratory offered little else. There were no windows or distinctive signs.

Pantheon fast-forwarded. The point of view shifted, and "he" watched a researcher inject him with something else, probably a sedative.

Gradually, his breathing slowed and his vision blurred. Fortunately, the Braindance recorder continued running even as his consciousness faded.

Without clear images, the recorded sounds became all the more noticeable.

Through the haze, "he" was roughly stuffed into an orange negative-pressure isolation stretcher, the kind normally used to transport patients with highly contagious diseases or hazardous biological samples.

The stretcher was completely sealed, apart from a small transparent observation window near the head.

The workers loaded it onto a cart. The wheels rumbled across the metal floor, and after several rounds of washing and disinfection, they finally wheeled it out of the laboratory.

They passed along a long corridor and entered an elevator.

"Man, when is this shit ever going to end? The pay's lousy, and they make us do things like this!"

One researcher spoke in a low voice, full of frustration.

"Be glad you're still getting paid. Business has been terrible lately. I heard they haven't paid the rent on this facility in ages."

The other voice sounded older, with a weary indifference to it.

"What? Doesn't City Hall do anything about that?"

"Of course it does. The NCPD came by three times last month. They practically blocked the entrance. If the boss didn't know the local precinct chief, we'd never have gotten away with it."

Pantheon silently committed the exchange to memory.

If Biotechnica were running the project directly, it wouldn't be struggling to pay rent, much less getting hounded by the NCPD over it.

That meant the project was operating out of a poorly managed small company with ties to Biotechnica.

When the elevator doors opened, it felt as though "he" had reached ground level. Sunlight streamed in through the observation window.

The sounds around him grew more complicated. Deep rumbling filled his ears, punctuated by the harsh, continuous shriek of metal grinding and deforming. Even the floor beneath the stretcher kept vibrating.

He seemed to be inside an industrial park. The noise sounded like some enormous stamping machine at work.

The point of view swayed again. A door to a decontamination chamber opened, and the workers wheeled the stretcher into another room.

The two researchers lifted "him" onto a bed and left.

Pantheon fast-forwarded again, finally getting a clear view of the room.

It was a large isolation ward divided into individual cubicles. Every one held a nomad from the Red Ocher clan.

The prisoners were in various stages of illness.

Some had great patches of ulcerated skin, their chests barely rising and falling as they clung to life. Even those with milder symptoms had scarlet patterns spreading over their bodies.

They huddled in the corners of their rooms, avoiding the light. Whenever staff in protective suits passed, the captives glared at them with hatred so deep it was almost tangible.

The Braindance ended there. Suppressing his fury, Pantheon watched the entire recording two more times.

During the second viewing, he noticed that the number of nomads in the ward didn't match the information he'd previously obtained.

There were only a little over thirty captives. Even accounting for those who'd already died, the number fell well short of the Red Ocher clan's total population.

The recording had been made before Pantheon's assault on Biotechnica Tower.

In other words, someone in the Red Ocher clan must have discovered the corporation's scheme and led a group away before the attack.

And Biotechnica's relocation of the captives must also have begun before that assault.

The image shook violently. White light flashed, and Pantheon returned to the real world.