Beep!
The scanner’s probe emitted a soft ping.
The doctor retracted the cable, turning back to face David: “This cheap gear of yours is completely normal.
Nothing wrong with it.”
“So everything I saw…” David rubbed the neural port at his nape.
“I told you, hallucinations.”
The doctor’s tone was absolute: “Classic BD sequelae.
Right now your brain is filled with all kinds of chaotic imagery, and you can’t tell what’s real from what you made up yourself.”
Hallucinations?
Impossible!
David still couldn’t accept this explanation.
He had never killed anyone in his life, nor had he even been in more than a few real fights.
If it really was just a hallucination, how could he have wiped out 6th Street so effortlessly, like some battle-hardened veteran or hitman?
“What I’m more curious about…”
The doctor looked at David, his tone unreadable: “…is how you managed to kill members of 6th Street with just this set of cyberware on you.”
“What did you say?”
David froze, his face turning pale as he forced a smile: “Kill people?
Don’t joke around like that…”
“Cut the act.”
The doctor pointed toward the door: “That ride—you drove it away from the scene, didn’t you?”
“…”
David fell silent.
“Why’d you go after 6th Street?” the doctor asked out of curiosity.
David opened his mouth, no longer defending himself.
Lowering his eyes, he said softly: “For the bike.”
“The Brennan Apollo?”
The doctor vaguely recalled the make of the motorcycle: “That’s hardly a rare model.
It’s not worth much.”
“It wasn’t for the money…”
David’s voice grew lower and lower, finding it hard to speak: “I jacked the bike to get to Watson Northside.
And I wasn’t the one who killed them!
It was that voice…”
As his words fell, the clinic went deathly quiet for a few seconds.
Then the doctor burst out laughing, his laughter growing louder and louder.
“Bwahahaha!”
He bent over, his metal prosthetic hand leaning on the workbench: “And you claim you’re not a cyberpsycho?
Jacking a ride and killing people just to get to Watson Northside—and fucking 6th Street members, no less!”
“You really are batshit crazy, hahahaha!”
“Doc, keep this a secret for me!”
David also felt this didn’t sound like the actions of a sane person, his expression turning grim as he said: “Consider it a favor for all those BDs I helped you sell.”
The doctor’s laughter slowly faded.
He removed his optics, revealing a pair of murky, grey-blue eyes as he looked at David.
“Keep it secret?”
“How much were those BDs even worth?
You think your little bit of piecemeal business was gonna make me rich?”
“Selling you out to 6th Street—now that’s gonna make me a real fortune!”
“?!”
David’s pupils shrank abruptly.
Instinctively, he tried to scramble off the operating table, but his thighs couldn’t exert any strength.
His knees buckled, and he collapsed straight onto the floor.
“You…”
David wanted to speak, but found even his tongue was completely numb.
“Inhaled muscle relaxant.”
The doctor stood in front of him, looking down at him: “It started working the moment you lay on the operating table.
The timing should be just right about now.”
“Before you even stepped through the door, I had already contacted 6th Street.”
“They’re on their way over right now.
Maybe ten minutes left?
Or even less.”
He squatted down, leaning close to David’s face, a hint of a grin finally emerging in those murky eyes: “Santo Domingo is their turf.
You’re not getting away.”
“Wh…
why?”
David’s lips quivered, uttering a few slurred syllables.
“Why what?”
The doctor chuckled: “All the bustle of the world is for profit; all the hustle of the world is for gain.”
He stood up, looking down on him: “This has nothing to do with whatever friendship we had.
It’s just business.”
“Business…”
David repeated the word under his breath.
He recalled those dirty BDs, those sneaky under-the-table deals where Doc never asked questions or marked up prices.
He had thought it was trust.
Turns out it was just business…
David closed his eyes and didn’t utter another word.
“Heh.”
Seeing this, the doctor stopped paying attention to him.
He had checked.
David’s cyberware had no real offensive capability, and no weapons were found on him.
Having inhaled the muscle relaxant, he was now a fish on the chopping block, utterly powerless to resist.
He walked back behind the workbench, dug out a BD wreath from a drawer, strapped it onto his head, then leaned back onto that battered recliner and hit play.
Silence returned to the clinic.
David lay paralyzed on the ground, his bloodshot eyes staring intently at the dim, yellow light on the ceiling.
He hated Doc for betraying his trust, and hated that lunatic even more for ruining his life.
If not for him…
…he would still be a student at Arasaka Academy, so how could he have fallen into being a prisoner of a crooked ripperdoc?
David thought of Gloria, his eyes smarting once more.
Mom hadn’t even seen him climb to the top of Arasaka Tower yet…
No!
I can’t die like this!!
He took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down slightly.
David tried moving his fingers.
His fingertips were still numb, unable to exert much force.
If he wanted to move, he would need adrenaline.
Adrenaline could boost sympathetic nerve excitation and relieve muscle relaxation symptoms—a point covered in his biology class at Arasaka Academy.
Adrenaline…
where was he supposed to find any right now…
Wait!
David suddenly remembered something.
Bounce-Back!
Bounce-Back was the essential life-saving medicine for everyone in Night City, from mercenaries to ordinary citizens.
In one of the illegal BDs he had watched, someone had mentioned it.
Besides its core components for stopping bleeding, relieving pain, and fighting infection, Bounce-Back also contained secondary ingredients to maintain basic vital signs and prevent loss of consciousness.
Those secondary ingredients were low-dose neural stimulants!
Where was that Bounce-Back Mk.1 the lunatic had looted from those corpses earlier?
Thinking up to this point, David suddenly realized something was off.
Under the overpass, the lunatic had indeed stuffed all that gear onto his person—he had seen it with his own eyes.
But where on his body was there room to hold all that equipment?
And another thing.
If those weapons were supposed to be on him, why couldn’t he feel their weight?
At the time, he was so shocked by the lunatic wiping out 6th Street just to jack a bike that he had completely overlooked these anomalies!
Damn it!
What now?
Bounce-Back…
David was thinking anxiously.
The very next second, a cold metallic touch landed in his palm without warning.
He lowered his head with difficulty.
That silver-white pneumatic hypo-injector was lying securely in his palm, the light blue fluid inside the syringe glinting faintly under the dim yellow light.
Without any warning, without any physical contact.
It had materialized out of thin air, falling straight into his hand.
This…
David looked at the injector in his hand, his eyes widening in disbelief.
Did he have an inventory space specifically meant for storing these meds and weapons?
Was this also the lunatic’s doing?!
As something struck David, a sudden chill rushed to his heart.
The guy controlled time and space, acted with insane eccentricity—his identity was practically obvious by now.
A demon!
I’ve been possessed by a demon!
David didn’t dare overthink it, quickly suppressing his emotions.
The urgent priority right now was still to escape!
He rolled his eyes with difficulty, glancing toward the workbench.
Doc was leaning on the recliner with the BD wreath strapped to his head, his eyeballs twitching slightly under his eyelids.
Seeing that the doctor hadn’t noticed him, he began shifting his hand with great effort.
Because he couldn’t exert strength, every millimeter of movement cost him all the strength in his body.
Sweat slid down from his forehead, flowing into his eyes and stinging painfully.
Finally.
Exerting every ounce of effort, David pressed the injector against his neck.
He had seen his mom administer injections and mercenaries sticking themselves on the streets, so he knew the general spot.
The needle slowly pierced his skin, penetrating into the vein.
Pfft—
Accompanied by a hiss of compressed air, the cold liquid surged into his bloodstream.
One second.
Two seconds.
Three seconds…
David felt a surge of heat explode in his chest.
Then his blood rushed wildly into his limbs as if set ablaze.
His muscles began regaining sensation.
The Bounce-Back had kicked in!