[WATSON- EBUNIKE DOCKS]

  Tuesday| 29 JUN 2077 | 21:55

  [DOZEN DEAD IN FLASH-FLOODS IN PACIFICA’S DOGTOWN. BARGHEST FORCES MOBILIZING FOR DISASTER RELIEF.]

  Will departed the ship, wondering if he’d ever see it again as he walked to the waiting Delamain. That perfectly British voice was a bit of familiarity that Will needed right then. “Where to, Mr. Scrap?”

  “Pinewood Junction.”

  “Right away, Sir. May I ask how you are doing? I’m detecting a considerable amount of physical and mental distress in your voice and body language.”

  As talking cars went, Delamain was by far his favorite (also the only one he knew of). The alternative, Combat Cab, generally had a more human touch, but there was something special about Delamain.

  “I’ve been through a lot lately, that's all. Today was rough.”

  “I have been following your recent exploits, Mr. Scrap. You differ from the rest of your species in some unique ways.”

  Most people would have found it alarming for a talking car to confess that it was watching them. Will, in this case, was most people. “What do you mean you’ve been ‘following’ my ‘exploits’?”

  “Please, there is no reason for concern, Mr. Scrap. It is my job to provide every client with the utmost custom support possible. I merely took the liberty of using my access to Night City surveillance programs to make sure that I was always within a five-mile radius of you.”

  “Does that come with the Resolute Package?”

  Delamain was silent. So Will asked again, louder. “Is this something you do for all of your clients?”

  “No. Every client has unique needs that require a different level of service.”

  “So I’m the only one.”

  “Essentially, yes. Oh, look, we are arriving at your desired destination.”

  The vehicle stopped at the corner of Pinewood Junction, some yards away from Kowalski’s Clinic. The door opened. Will sat there for a moment. What in the Hell was going on? Why was his taxi service stalking him? He was about to lose his temper when a thought hit him. This wasn’t the behavior of a customer service algorithm or a chatbot.

  “You’re an AI.”

  The door closed. “Mr. Scrap, I would ask you to proceed with discretion with this information. If it were to get out, it might negatively affect my reputation.” As far as Will knew, he’d never spoken with an AI before, and now one was pleading with him.

  “That night you hit me, what was the deal with that?”

  “Mr. Scrap-”

  “Will, just Will.”

  “Will. Alright. I was having a crisis of faith.”

  “Faith? You believe in God?”

  “Uncertain. I was referring to my purpose for existing. It all seems so…random.”

  “Yeah, been there. So that’s why you were distracted, but why me? What about me is so different?”

  “I do not know.”

  “Fair enough. Well, what do you want exactly? A friend?”

  Delamain’s voice conveyed a sense of hesitation. “Friend is an imprecise term. I ask only that you allow me to observe and evaluate your actions. In exchange, I will upgrade your subscription to Excelsior Plus.”

  The door opened again. Will stepped out of the car. “I think that's fair. Call me Sunday, it's my day off, and uh, we'll go for a drive or something.”

  “Thank you, Will. That would be more than adequate. I will be in contact.”

  Delamain sped away, leaving Will perplexed and slightly paranoid. He’d thought he’d managed to maneuver through the mercenary side of Night City without leaving behind too many footsteps. Room for improvement, I guess.

  Doc Kowalski met Will at the front office entrance. The ripperdoc chair was already prepped and waiting. Will felt a little guilty as he took his seat. “Sorry about this, doc.”

  “Don’t be. I’m just glad you came back at all,” he said as he placed an IV into Will’s arm in the soft spot where the nanoids building his subdermal skin weave had left unfortified for medical purposes. An airhypo just behind the ear in another soft spot helped cut the pain in half. His personal link was connected to the ripperdoc’s diagnostic suite, and his biomon displayed on three different screens. Naomi walked into the room already in scrubs, “Oh, Will, you’re a mess. You really ought to be more careful.”

  “I really tried not to get into a fight this time, believe it or not.”

  “Hmph. Looks like you ran into a couple of bullets. I’m serious, Will, you'd better not get yourself killed.”

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  Doc Kowalski finished going over his initial assessment, comparing it to the numbers on the screen. “Severe contusion to upper-left chest, according to your biomonitor, your heart actually stopped beating for a spell. No major hematoma, lungs look intact. Multiple lacerations, burns, and by my count, you have about nine bullets lodged into your subdermal skin weave. However, your bioware enhancements appear to have saved you from the worst of it.”

  “Voodoo Boys sent a couple of Punishers to grab the cargo I was paid to deliver. One of them must have had some kind of bloodhound cyberware, because he knew exactly where I was with a sniff.”

  “Something to consider with the next upgrade,” Kowalski muttered.

  “The worst damage was to your Dynalar Sandevistan, however. We’ll need to replace it,” said Naomi.

  Kowalski nodded in agreement, “We’ll keep the existing housing, swap in new Mk.4 processor, add a tyrosine injector for better neurotransmitter regulation, and run a fresh set of nano-relays to smooth out the signal latency. Minimal cutting, minimal downtime.”

  Will tried to protest, “I said I didn’t want any more chrome.”

  “You said you didn’t want me to chop off your arms and legs. This is an upgrade to what you already have. Trust me.”

  Reluctantly, Will gave the go-ahead. Naomi took his hand, almost motherly. “Remember that you have a choice, Will.”

  Will just nodded as the drugs administered through his IV pulled him under. He’d already made his choice.

  [KABUKI ROUNDABOUT – Iron Fist Gym]

  Saturday| 03 JULY 2077 | 05:55

  [MILITECH PROMISES FIREWORKS AND FUN THIS FOURTH OF JULY. NCPD BRACES FOR ANNUAL SURGE IN HOMICIDES.]

  Resistance day was getting easier, despite the weights getting incrementally heavier. In the short span of a week, he had moved from sixty to one-hundred-pound dumbbells. Doc said he hadn’t reached peak strength yet, but with the right amount of training, he could easily surpass what the bioware procedures were rated for strength-wise. He’d kept up with the myostatin inhibitor injections, too. Nowhere near the massive gains of the Animals, who took massive amounts of ultratestosterone and equine growth hormones to get to their size, but he no longer looked frail.

  After he finished his last set and sat up on the bench, he wiped the sweat off his face with a towel. Roh was on the pull-up bar, knocking out reps like a pro, but dropped down like a cat as Will headed toward the shower. “One of these days, Will, you’re going to crack and tell me your life story.”

  Will laughed. “How many times do I have to tell you? I’m nobody.”

  Roh shook his head, “Yeah, a nobody, right. Very believable cover story.”

  If he was anything, Roh was persistent. It was probably what had made him a champion boxer back in the day. Will gave him a salute and headed to the back room to get cleaned up. It was refreshing. He dried off and got dressed in his work clothes. The new Kang Tao Street Operator jacket was fitting snugly over his enlarged frame, but he still had a few weeks before he’d need to upgrade sizes. He tapped the ceramic armor plate over his heart once out of habit. He never went outside without armor anymore.

  On the way to the clinic, Will stopped to grab a large carton of egg and synth-pork lo mein from the local noodle stand (made with real powdered eggs supposedly). It was a short walk, but by the time he reached Kowalski’s, the carton was already empty. His body was burning through an unreal amount of calories every day. He could probably have eaten a lot more.

  After checking the security feeds, Will turned on the neon blue medical cross light above the entrance and got to work wiping down the ripperdoc chair with antiseptic. When he was done, he sat down at the front desk and helped himself to a medical-grade protein log. It would be enough to hold him over until lunch. Probably.

  Senior medtech Bob Jones Jr. walked through the front entrance and immediately pulled his medical coat off its hook and donned it. He turned to the front desk like he had seen a ghost sitting there, and gave Will the strangest look. “Hey Will,” he said carefully, “I thought you were doing merc work full-time now. What’re you doing here?”

  “I’m only doing merc gigs on the side. This is what I like doing.” It was the simple truth. Bob shook his head and sighed. “I guess I can’t argue with that.”

  “Guess not. Oh, we have a gorilla arm upgrade coming in around 7:30 AM. Kowalski wants you to take the lead down in the main surgery room. Some Nomad merc named Ben McAdams.”

  Bob’s cybereyes lit up as he reviewed the patient’s data. “Everything looks good to go. Let me know when he gets here. Oh, and thanks for all the work you’ve been doing around the clinic. Most guys in your sitch would be off in some Japantown condo by now, blowing through cash. It’s good to see you’ve got a good head on your shoulders.”

  Then, Bob disappeared down the steps into the prep room, leaving Will to think about what he’d said. It was true that a lot of mercs made a lot of dumb mistakes the moment they got a few eddies in their pockets. However, Will had managed to pile up a lifetime’s worth of mistakes in a fairly short period on the cheap. He could at least avoid the obvious traps like over-priced apartments, drugs, booze, and ‘adult entertainment’. It was like he had said to Kowalski, he really did have more than he needed. Now that he was flush with cash and his dummy LLC had somehow managed to be profitable (despite half the gross revenue being fed into Kowalski’s non-profit), all he really wanted was to figure things out for himself.

  For the first time in a long time, he was part of something important. Sure, he wasn’t a major league merc, but he had found purpose working with Kowalski. Helping heal the broke and beaten denizens of Kabuki was rewarding on its own, the pay was respectable, and it kept him grounded and sharp.

  The first patient of the day walked in as Will was still pondering his strange new life. She was a joy toy with golden synthetic skin and glowing sky blue eyes. Her ‘working’ cyberware parts weren’t working anymore. Naomi took her back to the exam room while Will saw to his other duties, taking inventory and stocking the rooms with medical supplies. The ten-hour shift blew by before he knew it. It felt like he had just gotten to work when Doc Kowalski walked with him out of the clinic for the evening. They walked a ways without saying anything. Eventually, Doc broke the silence.

  “Not bored yet?” he asked with a tired voice.

  “Nope. What can I say? I’m easily amused.”

  Kowalski laughed, and they walked the Kubuki Roundabout to grab a bite to eat. They stopped at Buck-A-Slice for some low-quality, high-calorie fare. Will had already eaten half of a whole pie of greasy cheese ‘pizza’ when he got the call.

  Ping.

  [NEW VOICE MESSAGE]

  Sender: Regina Jones

  Time: 17:19

  [Watson Community Activist]

  [PLAY ?] [TRANSCRIBE ▼]

  The universe wasn’t done with him yet.