“Hey!
What were you sneaking around back there for just to fix a cyberarm?
Did you mess with it?”
Seeing Loki step out, the waiting Tyger Claw demanded aggressively.
Generally speaking, very few ripperdocs in Night City’s back alleys kept clean hands.
Staying alert around an unfamiliar doc was just common sense.
But Loki clearly wasn’t one of those scum, nor did he appreciate being interrogated.
Glancing coldly at the belligerent gangster, Loki said flatly, “First of all, you can question my skills, but don’t question my integrity.
If it weren’t out of respect for Wakako, I’d have tossed you out on the street already.
“And second, if by ‘messing with it’ you mean giving it a full overhaul, then yeah, I messed with it.”
Without waiting for a response, Loki began reattaching the cyberarm.
Caught off guard by Loki’s firm pushback, the Tyger Claw swallowed his anger and shut his mouth.
Just as Loki said, the arm in his hands looked factory-new, not like a scrapped piece of garbage swapped in secret.
As for whether the internals had been tampered with, he’d know as soon as the arm went back online.
Installing cyberware wasn’t complex.
To a skilled ripperdoc, it was no harder than swapping out a SIM card.
Loki wrapped up the procedure in short order.
As the cyberarm synced with the patient’s personal neural link, diagnostic readouts flashed on screen.
It was definitely his original cyberware, completely intact.
“Checks out.
It’s my arm, alright…
but damn, why does it look so new?”
Flexing his newly restored Mantis Blade arm, the patient stared in wonder.
Loki casually replied, “Integrity is my business model.
I gave it a full complimentary overhaul while repairing it.”
Hearing this, the customer felt like he’d hit the jackpot—fair pricing and top-tier service.
Loki then grafted fresh synthskin onto the cyberarm and repaired the damaged outer surface.
The operation was a flawless success.
Extremely satisfied with his restored arm, the customer wired the eddies over.
Loki saw the pair out the door.
“If you’re happy with the work, spread the word!
Fair prices, quality service guaranteed!” Loki called out before they left.
Word-of-mouth through satisfied clients and local fixer networks was the only reliable way for an underground clinic to build a client base.
“Phew.
First customer down.”
Once the clinic was quiet again, Loki returned to his production area in the back.
Holding one of the finished booster vials, he pondered his pricing and sales strategy.
Based on its raw potency, it easily possessed a market value of over 500 eddies.
Selling it wholesale to other back-alley clinics for 300-plus eddies seemed ideal on paper.
But after thinking it through, Loki realized that model had flaws.
His main target demographic was mercenaries and gang members.
First, the Kinetic Booster Mark I was undeniably effective, but its description explicitly stated it caused harm to people with lower physical stats.
Loki had only tested it on himself so far.
Even setting cyberware aside, his natural physical stats surpassed ninety percent of gangers and freelance mercs out there.
The side effects didn’t bother him, but standard gonks were a different story.
Besides, these guys fought to make money.
Dropping a chunk of eddies on a single-use consumable every fight wasn’t realistic.
They’d buy one or two for emergency save-your-ass moments, which would tank his sales volume.
On the flip side, simply cutting the price was dangerous.
It could crash the local pharma market, and corporations like Trauma Team or Biotechnica would hunt him down like a dog.
*If I could just dial down the potency a bit, that’d be perfect.*
Loki decided to run a few experiments.
The booster was crafted by mixing two secondary potions in specific proportions alongside a fusing agent.
The recipes on the brewing stand were merely default presets—he could tweak the ratios himself.
With luck, he could create potions with custom effects.
If that worked, he could smoothly enter the consumer market while keeping the high-tier stuff exclusively for himself.
So Loki got to work, testing various custom ratios.
Fortunately, he had plenty of raw materials and the scanner on his workbench to help analyze the results.
[Useless Booster]
[Upon injection, grants the illusion of extreme speed with zero actual physical benefit.]
…
[Contaminated Potion]
[Ingestion results in severe diarrhea.
Injection strictly discouraged.]
…
[Deformed Booster]
[A bizarre potion born from an extremely warped recipe.
Injected into the human body, it dramatically boosts movement speed (+80%) for a brief duration.
Causes extreme hyper-excitement, making the user unable to stop moving, while inhibiting natural self-healing.
Repeated use leads to multi-organ failure.]
Staring at the scanner readouts, Loki facepalmed as failure after failure popped up.
“Jesus, what kind of garbage is this?
Total trash…
Wait, okay, this last one is actually kind of useful.
Let me bookmark that recipe.”
After saving the Deformed Booster recipe, Loki resumed tweaking parameters.
Most outputs were still complete junk.
But persistence paid off.
Through trial and error, he finally struck gold.
[Diluted Kinetic Booster]
[A diluted stimulant produced through adjusted ratios.
Sacrifices self-healing capability in exchange for longer duration and reduced strain on the body.
Upon injection, increases movement speed (+35%) for 60 seconds.]
*Yes!
Lower physical requirements, longer duration, and a decent speed boost.
Extremely practical.*
With the adjusted recipe, the manufacturing cost dropped to just 30 eddies per dose.
Loki planned to wholesale them to other underground clinics for 150 eddies each, targeting a retail street price of around 200 eddies.
At that price point, using one per fight became totally acceptable for mercenaries—after all, ammo cost money too, and you had to spend eddies to make eddies.
With the formula locked in, Loki used his remaining materials to craft 100 doses of the diluted booster.
He engraved each injector tube with a fresh label:
[Ascension Tech]
[Kinetic Booster Mark II]
Stowing the batch away, he flipped his front door sign to “CLOSED” and rode his motorcycle back to his apartment.
Loki slept soundly that night.
Overall, day one had been a success.
Only one customer, sure, but it was a solid start.
And Phase Two of his stimulant business plan was officially underway: market entry.
…
Early the next morning.
Instead of opening the clinic right away, Loki prioritized distributing the boosters.
Building dark-market partnerships with other ripperdocs was tricky work that demanded discretion.
Taking thirty doses, he split them into ten packaged samples.
He put on a hooded sweatshirt and pulled a mask over his face.
Although the scrambler in his cyberoptic array blurred his face on camera feeds, it couldn’t stop flesh-and-blood eyes from seeing him.
A physical mask was still the safest bet.
Mounting his bike, Loki rode off into Night City to drop off his supply.