It took half an hour to walk to Victor Vector’s clinic.
On the way, they stumbled upon a standoff between the police and the Tyger Claws, along with a “jumper” who had plummeted from a roof.
Or perhaps he had been helped—Tony didn’t delve into the details.
This was already the fourth jumper Stark had seen in Night City, and he hadn’t even spent a month in the city yet.
“Idiots,” Eva commented, looking at the dying Claws.
The police weren’t bothering with formalities, crushing the bandits with the iron-shod boot of corrupt justice and finishing off the wounded.
“You have to be pretty dense to rob a spot that’s under police protection. Clearly, just some stupid greenhorns.”
“What do you mean?” Tony asked.
He was still struggling to orient himself in city life.
He had figured out the basics, but many of the finer details passed him by.
For example, he hadn’t heard of the Moxes until yesterday, even though Jackie clearly recognized Eva’s gang.
“See? No chrome? And instead of katanas, they have cheap clubs or pieces of pipe?” she pointed at the sprawled bodies.
“You can tell right away, they’re newbies, high on their own sense of impunity, trying to poach on someone else’s territory to make a buck. Stupid Claws, lacking brains, start acting up shortly after joining the gang because of the gang’s rule to avenge their own. They genuinely think it makes them untouchable, but it doesn’t. Police, solos, other gangs, even simple civilians who are well-connected to someone strong—they cut up these slant-eyed thugs without any consequences. The older ones with brains know this, but the dumb meat honestly believes it and starts doing crazy stuff.”
“Weeding out the stupidest ones?” Tony guessed.
“I don’t know,” the Mox shrugged.
“It seems like back in the day, the Claws really tried to avenge their own, but that was a long time ago. They can still send a squad of particularly zealous meat to ‘avenge’ things, but usually, it’s just the friends of the dead making too much noise.”
Tony said nothing.
He knew that detail about the Tyger Claws’ history, but he hadn’t realized how much it went to the heads of their new recruits, leading to civilian casualties.
He noticed the corpse of a shopkeeper the bandits had tried to rob, and passersby who had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
‘I need to compile a list of the most problematic gangs,’ Tony thought.
His stomach literally turned at what he’d seen, and his generally positive mood was rapidly plummeting.
Eva noticed this.
“I know it’s unpleasant, but there’s nothing we can do to change it,” she said, taking him by the shoulder with surprising sensitivity.
“So what? We just accept it?” he looked into her golden eyes.
“We have to protect what we already have, not think about everything else.”
Tony didn’t answer.
He knew that already.
He was no longer Iron Man, a man with influence over politicians around the world, a member of the Avengers, and a UN Secretary of Defense—he was just a guy on the streets of one of the most criminal cities in the world.
He knew it, but every time he saw scenes like this, he was forced to remind himself.
They reached Misty’s shop in silence.
The mood was spoiled, but Tony still wanted to check on Jackie.
He had liked the big guy overall; even though he was in a gang, there wasn’t a hint of rot in him, and such people should be valued in any era.
“Glad to welcome you again,” the shop owner smiled at them as she laid out her cards.
“Misty,” Tony nodded, and Eva followed suit.
“How’s Jackie?”
“He’s doing well,” Misty smiled.
“He woke up last night and he’s out of danger. He just needs to rest, and then he can go home.”
“We’ll go visit him, then.”
Entering the backyard and walking down the stairs, Tony shook his head against his will.
To him, an underground clinic in a dirty basement looked savage, but modern technology allowed for surgery even in the trash.
In general, this world was rich in technologies that Stark recognized as groundbreaking.
Braindances, for instance, which drastically accelerated learning, were a thing that had changed the entire human education system.
And the disinfection field seriously simplified the work of doctors around the world, making medical treatment cheaper and, in general, making expensive surgical rooms with their regular disinfection unnecessary.
But most importantly, these fields were the only reason why modern cities and their garbage weren’t overrun by rats and cockroaches.
The first thing Stark saw after descending was Jackie’s doctor himself.
A tall, muscular man of indefinite age, wearing dark glasses even in the underground room where light was already scarce.
He was fiddling with his ripperdoc glove—a universal tool that cut flesh and administered drugs with equal ease—while simultaneously watching a boxing match.
“Hmm?” he noticed the intruders.
“You’re the ones who brought Jackie in yesterday.” It wasn’t a question, but a statement.
“Came to visit?”
“Decided to check on the integrity of a certain carcass,” Tony grinned, spotting his unwitting comrade-in-arms.
He was lying on the only operating table, looking a bit pale, showing off a patched-up torso, but overall looking good.
“How is he?”
“Blood loss, organ damage from thermal burns, one kidney failure, partial bowel failure, stomach damage, ribs smashed to powder…and the rest is minor stuff. Overall, nothing irreparable, but his body is severely weakened, so I’m keeping him on a vitamin cocktail. Once he’s over the surgery, he’ll be jumping around like before.”
“This buena persona replaced part of my liver on credit,” the patient himself spoke up, grinning from ear to ear at the sight of his visitors.
“But at the same time, he’s starving me,” he added, his mood instantly darkening.
“You damaged your stomach and intestines,” Victor retorted.
“You’ll have to starve while the synthetic parts of your stomach knit together with your own, and the sewn intestines adapt.”
“I know, I know,” he replied with a sad sigh.
“And as luck would have it, I hadn’t eaten properly yesterday either,” Jackie admitted.
“Suffer through it,” the ripper smiled.
“You know what they say? What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.”
“And poorer,” Jackie added.
“Poorer?” Eva didn’t understand.
“I thought Victor was a Valentino ripper, and they’re usually fed from the common pool.”
“No, Vic is a free-agent ripper,” Jackie corrected the girl’s—and Stark’s—misconceptions.
“I have a private practice,” Victor confirmed, forcing the newcomers to look at him with respect.
You needed pretty big balls to work in Night City without protection—that was practically a tasty morsel for all the city’s hyenas, from scavengers to corporations.
Of course, there were nuances as to why such loners weren’t particularly bothered, but they had their nerves frayed on a regular basis.
“Yeah, so now I owe him a tidy sum,” Jackie continued.
“Forget it,” the doctor countered.
Tony and Eva exchanged glances again.
Meeting a ripper who didn’t just save a patient for free, but also installed implants for him on credit out of his own pocket, without interest or a predatory price tag…they’d found a dying breed here.
“So that means congratulations are in order? Soon you’ll be back to work for the Valentinos?” Eva asked.
The Moxes had friendly-neutral relations with the Latino gang; the Valentinos didn’t leave their district, and the Moxes didn’t stop them from peddling their goods in their establishments—collecting a percentage from it—and the gangs themselves were too far apart, literally in different parts of the city, to conflict.
“No,” Jackie suddenly became serious.
“I’m leaving the Valentinos,” he admitted.
“Oh, really. What’s behind such changes, Big Guy? If it’s not a secret,” Stark asked, his curiosity piqued.
“Yeah, you guys are practically a family business,” Eva added.
“It’s no secret. It’s just that if I’m going to keep catching bullets, I want to do it of my own free will and for my own sake,” Jackie admitted honestly.
“And I don’t really like what the Valentinos do.” He grimaced.
Tony and Eva exchanged glances again.
A conscientious bandit?
Right after a conscientious ripper?
This was truly a surprising day.
“Well, good luck then. If you need some cool guns or anything else, let me know; I’ll hook you up with the best stuff. You’ve seen my work,” Stark offered his services.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Jackie nodded.
“Well, shall we go?” Eva asked.
“Victor, right?” instead of answering, Tony turned to the ripper.
“Call me Vic. That’s what everyone calls me.”
“Alright, Vic,” Tony nodded.
“I’m thinking of getting seriously involved in supplying chrome, and I’d like to discuss a few points with you. Since the chance has presented itself.”
Tony had long realized that his old methods wouldn’t work in his new life, but it was one thing to understand that, and quite another to accept it.
However, yesterday’s mishap clearly showed him that the locals, thanks to their implants, were on the level of full-fledged super-soldiers and could give even Cap—with his serum-boosted body—a run for his money.
This didn’t mean Tony was abandoning his suit; he would continue building it.
But even by the most optimistic estimates, a full-fledged Iron Man armor of the early models wouldn’t appear for another five or six years, while combat implants were available to him right now.
The other thing was that he didn’t agree to put just anything into his own cherished body.
The rest of the conversation took half an hour…not very polite toward Eva, but until a certain point, Tony simply hadn’t looked into the market of modern implants, contenting himself with the principles of their design and operation, which left him unpleasantly surprised by the assortment available to Night City ripperdocs.
In short, on the implant market, one could currently find either mass-produced consumer goods, old junk, or something from the premium segment, but none of these three options suited Stark at all.
Even the top-tier chrome used by solos was a generation or two behind military counterparts, and something comparable could only be found in high-level shops, but those had their own specifics.
High-class implants could be compared to sports cars, while military implants were tanks, airplanes, and artillery.
They were comparable in cost and complexity of production, but their trajectories never intersected.
“What if I develop my own implant? Can you advise me where to get all the necessary equipment? And knowledge bases for a ripper, preferably.”
“I can help with the bases; I still have some from when I was learning myself,” Vic pleasantly surprised Tony.
“But as for equipment, I’m sorry, I can’t help you there. I’m not a mechanic; my job is to install new chrome, stitch up bodies, and patch up the broken. If you need a repair kit, I can point you in the right direction, but as for a designer’s kit…you’d need corporations for that, but they have entire laboratories working on implant development.”
“That’s not an option, you understand,” Tony replied thoughtfully.
He was already calculating where to get the necessary equipment, but for now, he couldn’t do without the girls’ help.
“You could try Dogtown,” Jackie spoke up.
“Even if it is a real pozo de sangre, they’ve got top-tier chrome, experimental guns, and stolen advanced corporate equipment. The only thing is, it costs a ton of dough, and on the way to the seller or after, someone will try to rob you, but those are just details.”
“I’ll think about it,” Stark agreed, though he was leaning more toward robbing some corporate laboratory that was bound to be in the vicinity of Night City.
Or in that same Dogtown.
“Anyway, thanks for the chat, Vic,” he shook the ripper’s hand.
“Get well, Big Guy.” And then Jackie’s hand as well.
Susanna “Susie Q” Quinn.
A tired girl stumbled into the small room of the Lizzie’s club.
Of her original appearance, only black, almost charcoal-colored skin remained, while her limbs had been replaced with crude combat implants; her face was a solid implant, not even covered in synthetic skin, and on her jaw protruded the kind of implants favored by professional boxers.
All of this repelled people from the girl, even despite her exciting curves and skin that was smooth in spite of everything.
This wasn’t what you expected from the leader of the Moxes, known for their beauty.
Susanna Quinn had taken the position of Mox boss relatively recently; not even half a year had passed.
A former soldier, the daughter of a drug addict and an alcoholic, she had run away from home to the army the moment she turned eighteen.
She was a truly talented soldier, quickly learning the trade of killing.
Officers welcomed her, fellow soldiers respected her, veterans laughed indulgently at the youngest, having already mentally signed her up for their ranks, and her personal life was going well too.
A freshly minted major had set his sights on young Quinn and began courting her as an officer should: flowers, polite phrases, nice compliments…private shooting lessons, sparring sessions with overly long holds, his award pistol in her hands.
It seemed everything in her life was going well…and then the war started.
Susie Q didn’t like remembering that time, or the aftermath.
Her suitor was one of the first to die in that war, and she herself went through almost the entire meat grinder, ending up as a half-dead wreck with severed limbs, half her face melted, and kidneys and liver barely alive, killed by combat stimulants.
Returning to her “native and beloved” Night City had been difficult for her, not only because of the realization that she had ended up back where she started, only with ruined health and trash instead of arms and legs, but because her burned organs constantly ached.
In such a state, she quickly slid into drugs and street work.
Surprisingly, there were “connoisseurs” for her as well.
Then…then months of work, sliding into a drug-filled hole, and awaiting death, when her already killed body would finally surrender under the pressure of the synthetic filth being pumped into it.
She was already on her last breath when she was kidnapped by scavengers.
Overall, she had expected this and didn’t even put up much resistance, just wanting to end it all somehow, since she lacked the courage for a simple bullet to the head…and a gun with a shell.
While in an underground black-market operating room, she waited for her fate, habitually fighting the pain in her body that returned every time the drug fog dissipated.
The other victims sobbed, begged for mercy, cried for help, but she…she just waited.
Surprisingly, they were saved.
The scavengers were too greedy and bit off more than they could chew, grabbing girls who worked for the Moxes, and while they were messing around with too much “merchandise,” a combat squad of Moxes arrived in time, shot up the Night City scum, and saved most of the captives, including her.
Then…then she got lucky.
One of the girls who had come to drag their own out turned out to be her former neighbor from the street, with whom they had often hung out in childhood, and one thing led to another, and she was introduced to their leader.
The Moxes always had difficulties with military strength, and here their leader was presented with a veteran of a corporate war—albeit a broken one—who had undergone full training with practice and survived where others had died.
And then…to her own surprise, the former broken whore began to rise from the abyss of despair, even becoming friends with her own boss, starting to perceive her as something of a sister.
Susie quickly proved her ability to kill, began to pull in other girls, established order in their bar with a firm hand, and taught the guards the same, fully making up for her restored health and new implants, literally living for her work. This chapter is updated first at novelping dot com.
It didn’t go unnoticed; she was brought into the inner circle, made one of the captains, and eventually appointed head of their security and deputy head of violence.
And everything would have been fine…if the previous leader of the Moxes hadn’t been killed.
Who, how, and why, she didn’t know; nobody knew.
Even though everyone glared at the Tyger Claws, they didn’t have any evidence or coherent motives, which just made them grit their teeth in impotent rage.
But worst of all, with the leader, the entire previous leadership of the organization had died, even the accountant.
And while the Moxes hadn’t slipped much in terms of combat, a quiet horror was unfolding in every other aspect.
Secret accounts, known only to the accountant and the leader, were lost; the experienced administrator who managed all their establishments and knew the specifics of each one in detail had not left a deputy, just like their only decent netrunner, which was why they were leaking everywhere.
The gang was still holding on, but they had already lost two bars and one brothel, seized by more significant gangs, and Susanna herself couldn’t do anything, frantically trying to save at least the core of the Moxes.
She was even succeeding, but it was sad to watch how chunks were being bitten off them, and it was scary to imagine what she would have to do later to survive.
“Boss, Eva is here to see you with a guy,” the voice of her bodyguard reached the head of the Moxes.
Asian features, purple hair tied into two braids, long false eyelashes behind which you couldn’t even see the color of her eyes, and an ultra-short tank top barely covering her chest.
And, of course, pink arms with purple spikes that could tear through metal.
“Thanks, Dolly, let her in,” she replied, sitting properly in her chair instead of like a jellyfish, as she had been before.
That, by the way, was one of her little joys of recent times—Eva, a talented girl who promised to grow into a top fighter for the gang.
Her disappearance would have been a blow to their already small group, but she had returned with pomp and pathos…and also the smell of ash and gunpowder.
And today she had brought them her savior—according to her, some cool mechanic who sold custom weapons to the Valentinos through Padre.
Quinn didn’t expect much from the conversation itself; most likely, he would ask for a reward for saving Barnes, which he would honestly receive.
Not much, they already had problems with finances at the moment, and Eva wasn’t exactly high in their internal hierarchy.
And then, who knew, maybe she would manage to sway him to her side?
All the gods of this cursed world knew that her gang needed any help it could get right now, and she was ready to grab even at a ghostly chance.
“Suit,” was the Mox’s first thought when she saw her visitor.
A polished appearance, a classic haircut that was clearly taken care of, zero chrome in sight, and an old-style business suit that nobody wore anymore…except for her counterpart.
“Tony Stark,” he greeted her with a charming smile, showing off perfect white NATURAL teeth, and kissed her hand.
Her former loader’s implant, converted into a combat one, felt nothing, but the fact that this guy wasn’t afraid at all was what mattered.
The Moxes were a small gang, only two hundred people, but even so, Quinn had to deal with corporates far more often than she would have liked, both during her service in the army and now in the gang.
It was hard not to cross paths with the true masters of Night City when you lived in it and were trying to hustle.
And all of them, with extremely rare exceptions, shared one thing: fear.
They could shake your hand, smile nicely to your face, swear friendship and admiration, but their eyes gave them away.
Anxious, tense, always focused on you as if you were a rabid animal that might lunge at them.
Corporates, for the most part, weren’t used to violence; for them, all their victims were nothing more than lines in reports, dry figures of inexorable statistics, rather than living people.
And when they were forced to go out into the field, to meet those whom they contemptuously splashed with mud in their high offices—the cleaners of their own shit, ready to die for the scraps from their table…they were afraid.
Afraid because they understood what kind of people these were, knew that these people were restrained only by the military power of the corporation standing behind them, and the moment its powerful shadow disappeared from behind their backs, they would immediately pounce on such a weak, valuable, and tasty victim, milking everything possible out of it.
Like people in a zoo, they would disdainfully curl their lips, dote on, or tease the wolves behind the fence, content with their position as rulers of the world, but the moment they ended up face-to-face with a wolf, they were immediately seized by the fear of a victim before a predator.
Their gaze trembled, their movements were stiff, their backs tense, and their legs ready to bolt at any moment—it didn’t matter where, just away from the source of that very fear.
That wasn’t in Stark.
His eye was firm, he looked eye-to-eye, his posture was relaxed, his movements natural, and the smile on his face wasn’t forced, but quite natural.
He couldn’t help but understand his position—he was in the center of a gang’s den that earned its living through violence—but nevertheless, standing here, he felt confident, simply refusing to be afraid.
“Nice to meet you, Chocolate,” he winked at her, causing a slight stupor.
“Chocolate?” she arched an eyebrow, folding her arms under her imposing chest.
“Because you’re sweet and dark,” Tony pretended not to understand, while Eva, standing behind his back, gasped with wide eyes like a fish on dry land.
“You’ve got balls, I’ll give you that,” she decided, snorting.
“If you want, I’m ready to prove it. If Eva doesn’t mind.”
“Wha…you…ugh!” the young Mox was lost in indignation.
As far as Susie knew, she wasn’t even kissed yet.
What could she do?
Being a scoundrel by character, she wasn’t interested in any of this at all, which is why, without even noticing it, she had broken more than a few male hearts.
And female ones too, what the hell, the devil turned out to be too beautiful.
“Fine, enough with the dubious compliments and even more dubious proposals. You’re here for a reward, aren’t you?” the main Mox decided to get straight to the point.
“A reward?” Stark was surprised.
It seemed sincere, even.
“I wanted to discuss joining your gang.” Breaking into a smile again, Stark replied, causing the interlocutor’s eyebrows to fly up sharply.
In general, men were in the Moxes, but there weren’t many of them.
Mostly civilian specialists, too valuable to keep in low-level positions or as third-party contractors.
The netrunner and the accountant were representatives of the stronger sex; one was the son of a Mox and had grown up in the gang, the second was a horny pervert, so there weren’t any particular problems with Stark joining the gang…except for his motives.
“And what do you want from joining us?” Susanna Quinn asked, inviting her guests to sit opposite her.
“How about I outline the situation instead?”
“Alright, go ahead.”
“Let’s start with the basics,” he began, leaning back in his chair, crossing his legs, and resting his hand on his knee.
“I am a genius. That’s not an assessment, not an inflated ego or self-deception, just a fact. Engineering, genetics, programming, part of the medical field, chemistry, and physics—in all of these, I can handle myself better than most modern ‘scientific luminaries.’ I know it sounds like nonsense, but it’s true. I can see in your eyes that you don’t believe me.” Oh, there was far more than just disbelief in her eyes.
“Then just type ‘Poland. Tony Stark’ into your search,” he grinned smugly.
“Or ask Eva about my grenades and try to find analogs for less than ten thousand eddies. I built mine from household chemicals and a basic 3D printer, by the way. And now you must have the question: what is someone as beautiful and brilliant as me doing with you, a gang of lower-middle-tier status with a bunch of problems? The answer is simple: because I’m so beautiful, sooner or later, the big uncles and aunties will pay attention to me if I decide to act. And I won’t like their actions.”
“And you want to hide behind our backs?” she had stopped liking the conversation a long time ago, and now her hand was reaching for her pistol.
“Who were you listening to?” Stark rolled his eyes.
“I already said I’m a genius. Your gang at best numbers from two to five hundred fighters, albeit of relatively good quality, while the Tyger Claws alone have more than five thousand. Even if you suddenly became filled with feelings for such a beautiful me and were ready to lay down your lives defending my carcass, you wouldn’t manage it.”
“And you want to fix that,” the Mox leader finally understood the meaning of all this bravado.
“Exactly,” his blue eyes narrowed contentedly.
“If you had bothered to look at the network, as I suggested, you would have seen that I’m credited with a breakthrough program in medical cybernetics, a full-fledged logistical structure for weapons production that begins with the extraction and purification of materials, and new models of weapons that the entire Polish army is switching to.”
Susanna checked, typed the surname Stark and Poland into her desktop computer, clicked the very first link…
and saw the smug mug of the man sitting before her—only younger, still a child, shaking hands with the President of the Republic of Poland.
Five minutes on the internet made her take her guest’s boasting much more seriously.
Now, in her eyes, he wasn’t a self-confident idiot with an inflated ego and pride instead of brains, but a quite valuable specialist…
still with the same inflated ego, but at least a justified one.