The NCART hummed quietly as it sped through the elevated rails.
Unlike Santo Domingo’s rusty stations, Corpo Plaza’s lines were clean enough that one could almost see their reflection on the windows.
Ken leaned against the glass without really looking outside.
The city moved.
His thoughts didn’t. He still couldn’t get used to the fact that yesterday his biggest worry had been a system error.
Today... He was an orphan. ‘Once again, haha.’
His holo buzzed and a familiar name appeared. The call connected almost immediately.
<Nishino: You really have it? Kitty Kat, the new one that just got released 3 days ago?>
<Ken: Hm.> Not even a greeting, Ken almost cackled.
<Nishino: Crazy, I searched so hard!>
<Ken: I need something different for this one.>
<Nishino: What do you want?>
<Ken: Chill, nothing difficult, when do you want the transaction to happen?>
<Nishino: ...Watson, in two hours. I’ll message you the location.>
The call disconnected.
Ken looked at the closing NCART exit.
“Sorry mom, I’ll visit you next time, promise.”
/ / /
Watson, Little China 8:23 PM
“Give me the shard.” Carla barked at the first moment their eyes met.
Carla was a petite second-year with shoulder-length black hair, and an expression that always seemed one step away from scolding someone. Nothing about her chrome was flashy. Exactly what Ken expected from the daughter of an NCPD officer.
“Talk about being cold, at least, you could greet your senpai.”
Carla Nishino kept her gaze fixed on him. “So, what do you need? Rare for you to be begging for something.”
“...” That got Ken silent.
Begging, huh. Was that how everyone saw him?
“Haha, true, isn’t that.”
“So? Out with it.” Carla didn’t give him the patience.
“I need a trustable ripperdoc–”
“Finally done with that shithead? Heard you tore a hole in the server, not a lot can do that.” For a daughter of a NCPD officer, her language was rather street-like. One of the reasons they got along, among many others.
Carla frowned when no reply flew at her. “I’m not a fixer. Find someone if you need to be introduced to those works.”
“I’m not searching for a partner to sell XBDs. Not that I’m saying that gonk was my partner... I want something implanted in me.”
“So~? Find a fixer.” Carla dismissed.
Ken took out the XBD chip. “I heard this one is going for 1,400, but you know, right? That is only for people with proper channels. How much should I charge you.”
“Tsk,” Carla looked visibly irritated, “I can give you Vicky’s contact, that would be all. I don’t know any other rippers around here.”
“Don’t play me. You’re throwing some eds if it's just the location.” Ken shot back.
“What? Victor’s not your everyday ripper,” argued Carla. “The contact’s worth way more than that XBD.”
“Just his contact? Are you sure?”
Carla appeared uncharacteristically confident. “I won’t compare him with anyone else and insult him. Vicky’s the best of the best.”
Ken threw the chip at her. Not being in the mood to bargain.
You wouldn’t imagine the interest of this diligent honor student, and NCPD father’s only daughter.
Giant monsters, modified anatomy, bestiality... He wished he never learnt that one.
Ken had slotted that BD after a series of goading from that crazy ripperdoc, even remembering it caused him to shiver.
“You sound different.” Carla suddenly commented.
“Hahaha~” Ken looked at her as the laugh uncontrollably slipped from his mouth.
Apparently everyone kept saying that.
“...Senpai.”
Ken paused, “What, did you take the wrong medicine today? You don’t call me that.”
She did not call him anything, not anymore.
Just you.
Was his behavior that unacceptable?
“Did something happen?”
Ken slowly said as if savoring the words, “I guess so. Why do you ask?”
“No reason. Tell Vicky that Nishino sent you.”
“Thanks...” ‘...for not prying.’
They parted. Ken watched her go before opening the address she sent.
The location was not far from here.
Walk, it was.
“She just gave me her local neighborhood ripper, didn’t she?” He knew she lived nearby, but seriously, he needed someone trustworthy. “Then again, she probably only knows the one connected with Padre, but let’s not go there. Let’s see, Viktor Vektor, hmm.”
After arriving at Little China, Watson, following Carla’s location, Ken first connected with the local SecureNet.
Viktor Vektor. A former boxer who went to finals, and had been a ripper for years.
And honestly, he hadn’t expected the guy to have such a good reputation.
In fact, it was so good that if it was not because of their strained relationship, Ken was tempted to ask Carla if this guy was for real.
Just then.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Connecting with the user...
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
A blue screen popped up.
Ken blinked. “...Again?”
This time, however. The world remained the same. No sense jumbling energy spheres.
Another line appeared.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Connection Successful.
Verifying host...
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
For a moment nothing happened.
Then.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Host Analysis Complete.
Starting installation...
Installing 0.1%
Installing 0.3%
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
“So, this is the Gamer Authority, that time I selected? Took its time–”
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Anomaly detected in the installed data.
Diagnosing...
ERROR3
Unknown type core data infection
Requesting one-way secure communication+
Ceasing immediate synchronization with Core.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
The windows moved quickly. Some appeared only for a moment before disappearing. Like they were there because they had to be. Not to let him understand.
“But infection? Didn’t that life mention something along the same line?”
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Requesting purge of installed data...
Requesting cancellation protocol...
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Ken frowned. “Whoa, choom. Slow down there. We can still talk this out.”
The next message appeared before all the previous ones disappeared.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Data Purge Approved ##Cleanse101
Cancellation protocol failed
#HigherAuthorityOverridden
Waiting for Core instruction
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Then it returned to silence once again.
“Just great, you’re doing a friggin job if you thought I was already not lost enough.” Ken cursed his luck. He had to convince himself to push open the door.
Triling
Misty's Esoterica occupied the first floor of an old apartment building. Compared to the endless chrome advertisements outside, the little shop looked almost absurd.
Dreamcatchers. Tarot cards. Incense. Crystals. Things Night City usually laughed at. Ken stepped inside for barely a few seconds before a soft voice greeted him.
“Looking for something specific?” A young woman with purple hair and spiky choker looked up from behind the counter.
“Yeah.” Ken scratched the back of his head. “You sell Viktor?”
“Haha, you’re funny, new face.” Misty laughed and pointed to the curtain, “He is downstairs.”
“...Thanks.”
She watched him leave without another word.
‘Weird shop.’ Ken couldn’t understand how a place selling rocks managed to stay in business in Night City.
Then again... Maybe that was exactly why it survived. Surviving in a hell-hole called Night City required more than guts and guns. At least the steady stream of customers during the time he spent researching says so.
Before even approaching the underground, Ken could hear the sound of some shows.
He pushed open the door.
The floor was far less colorful than the shop above.
Only shelves lined with surgical equipment, spare cyberware, and rows of unlabeled medication. The faint smell of disinfectant mixed with machine oil lingered in the room.
Several monitors hummed quietly in the background. Unlike the ripperdoc back in Santo Domingo, there wasn’t a single bloodstain left unattended.
A middle-aged guy looked up from the cyberarm resting on his operating table. He had a pair of magnifying optics lowered over his eyes, carefully adjusting a finger actuator with movements that had clearly been repeated thousands of times.
Without looking away from his work, he asked,
“You’re the kid Nishino mentioned?”
“Ken Martinez.”
The man finally removed the optics from his face and studied Ken for a brief moment.
“So Ken, friend of the Nishino girl?” His gaze naturally drifted toward the bandage wrapped around Ken's forehead. “...Looks like you’ve already met one of the city’s less competent meatwagons.”
Ken couldn't help letting out a dry laugh. “You can tell?”
“When you’ve been replacing people’s chrome for years, you start recognizing other people’s handiwork.” Viktor put the screwdriver down before walking closer. “Some leave clean work. Some leave ugly work. Yours...” He lightly tapped the edge of the bandage. “...was done by somebody who was in a hurry, or simply didn’t care.”
“Probably the second one.”
“Hm.” Viktor didn’t continue the topic. “So then, what brings you here? Carla only said you wanted someone trustworthy.”
Ken carefully unwrapped the plastic bundle from the jacket’s collar, before placing the metallic spine onto the operating table.
He had packed it when he had to pick Carla’s BrainDance.
For the first time since entering the clinic, Viktor’s expression changed. Not one of surprise–more of doubt. The look of a man who already guessed the answer, but not wanting to believe.
His brows slowly knitted together as he picked the implant up with both hands, rotating it beneath the operating light.
“Kid, you walked through Watson carrying this?”
Ken nodded.
Viktor rubbed his forehead.
“Either you’re unbelievably lucky... or unbelievably stupid.
...Where did you even get this?”
“Quite hard to answer that.”
“Figures.” Viktor didn’t press further.
Instead, he connected several cables from the diagnostic station into the implant.
The monitor flickered before lines of information appeared.
Model: —————
Manufacturer: —————
Serial Number: —————
Same as Ken had seen.
“...Interesting.”
Ken kept his guard up and eyes open. “Was hoping you’d say typical.”
“It isn’t.” Viktor zoomed further into the firmware. “The military doesn’t erase this information.
“They encrypt it.
“They want stolen cyberware to remain traceable. If somebody strips the firmware, they still have ways of proving who manufactured it.”
He leaned back slightly, still staring at the monitor. “This one wasn’t simply corrupted or erased. The whole identification layer was intentionally omitted.”
“I can see that.”
“And that means whoever developed this implant had no intention of taking it back or never thought to lose it.”
Silence settled over the clinic.
Ken slowly swallowed.
Viktor looked directly at him. “I don’t even need to guess... genuine prototype, never meant to be on the street.”
Ken handed him a chip.
Viktor frowned. “Kurosaki Jim’s XBD?”
“Just a guess,” Ken simply offered.
“You want me to slot this in? That fucker is simply crazy.” Viktor complained, slotted it in a reader and checked the emotional spectrum. “No way I’m slotting that in. Not interested in borrowing some cyberpsycho’s insanity. Not to mention, that’s a genuine cyberpsycho with little to no emotional suppression.”
“If you see it on a screen, it’s hardly understandable.” Ken commented as Viktor ran the XBD without wearing a wreath.
Ten seconds in, he handed the chip back to Ken. Massaging his temple, Viktor looked at Ken.
Really looked.
“The spec pretty much matches. And I will tell you kid, I have handled more military implants than years you’ve lived, but the spec on this one is nothing like I’ve ever seen. How sure are you that it’s the same implant?” Viktor questioned, but his tone betrayed what he already knew.
“70–no, 90 percent.” Judging from the timeline, Ken was almost certain.
“Are you looking to die? How dare you walk on the road with this? This implant has been missing from the body and both gangs and corpos alike are on the lookout for this. Calling this fire is an understatement!”
Ken frowned, showing something like this without long-term trust had its own risk. “Can you chip it in?”
“Depends on whom I’m chippin it in for.”
“Me.” Ken didn’t even hesitate.
“Don’t even think about it! This is a highly experimental prototype implant. Saw the guy in the braindance? That’s a former veteran and lieutenant from the military, and the reason he went psycho is most likely this one implant. Even if you don’t go psycho’ you will fry your brai–”
“Can you chip it in for me?”
“Give it up, kid.” Viktor leaned back on his chair. “No way I will push a kid to death knowingly.”
“Ah, fine! I should’ve gone to Doc in the first place. He would chip it without questions.”
How long had he been in Night City? Ken no longer knew whose memories he was counting. Had he lived here for two days? A few weeks? Or for seventeen years and had always been David?
But never had he felt so fed up.
Everyone seemed to have an opinion on his life. Everybody seemed to know what he should do with his life.
Drop out.
Behave.
Pay.
Give up.
Somehow nobody bothered asking what he wanted. If that had not been enough. Some incomprehensible cosmic screens made his life even more confusing.
Ken grabbed the spine, about to turn back but a strong hand on the spine stopped him.
“You’re not talking about Arroyo’s Doc, are you?”
“So what if I am?” Ken discreetly grabbed the gun on his waist.
“Are you crazy? That bastard would kill you on the operating bed for something worth this much! That bastard has no ethics–”
“Let me go if you are done.”
Viktor removed his hand, his eyes glanced at the hand that Ken slipped into his EMT jacket.
“Chill down, I’m not stopping you in the hopes of robbing you.” Viktor sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “You know... I hate kids like you.”
Ken blinked.
“The ones who come in here after they’ve already made up their minds.” Viktor shook his head. “You don't want advice. You want someone to tell you your suicide plan isn’t suicide.”
“...”
“And when I refuse, you walk into some butcher and get yourself flatlined in some alleyway.” Then, Viktor gave him a hard look, “You sure you want this chipped even if it kills you?”
Ken found it ridiculous. Why bother so much for a guy you just met, if you didn’t plan on robbing? He met Viktor’s eye and replied seriously, “I’d rather die chasing the life I wanted than spend another year wondering what would’ve happened.”
In a life where he was not even allowed to read alien journals, what worth was even left here?
{Alternative Titles: Resilience, Defiance, On My Own Terms;}