Cyberpunk 2766AD

Suzu moved through the slum sector. She needed to move up where there were people who could protect and shelter her. Her arm was alive with agony and Suzu could do little but sniffle.

As she bustled along a woman stood at the steps of a ran down shop. Suzu made eye contact with her and the woman curled her index finger at her beaconing her to come. Suzu stepped towards her without caution. There was no need for it. She knew what the woman would want of her. Suzu just hoped in her state she was still strong enough to take her on.

“Thankyou,” Suzu said as the woman let her through the door. The woman’s hand rested on the frame and Suzu noted the awkward bludge of her fingers. So this was a setup. The woman smiled, indulging in what she thought was Suzu’s stupidity Suzu smiled back and the door was closed.

“I saw your face on them big screens Mrs,” said the woman signalling for Suzu to sit.

“It‘s not my face you need to worry about,” Suzu replied taking her place on the chair. The woman disappeared for a few moments. Suzu could here the sounds of doors opening and closing and the clang and clatter of her rustling about.

She returned with a bowl full of a thick soup and a first aid kit.

“Are you injured Mrs?” she asked.

Suzu gave a small smile, “Yes and you‘re about to be too.”

The woman’s eyes went wide with shock as Suzu lunged at her and pinned her to the floor. The woman struggled to Crawl and Suzu let her claws slide through their resting spot in her flesh and dug them into her neck. The woman howled in pain and dragged herself forwards, The claws dug in deeper and blood spurted from the grave wound in the woman’s neck. The woman’s own blades sprung from the tips of her fingers. Retractable and looking more like scalpels then claws. Her body started to jerk and Suzu held on until the woman was barely twitching. Suzu lifted herself from her. And returned to her seat at the table.

“Damn gang bangers,” she muttered as she sifted through the first aid box.

 

Tolva tells the good doctor to fix me up first. I suspect that she is a tad worried that he might try something and she will need to fix the situation, or it could be because I am still leaking all over the floor.

"Peter.." I ask him and see his eyes widen as I peel off my mask. I feel like my skin is sagging like it was dead.

"Is that?" he asks as he puts his finger into the hole in my bicep. "yes Varicostyrene over mollymer" he almost blabbers a bit as he pulls on it.

"Does this hurt?" I shake my head and then growl a bit

"I need to be repaired not admired" I do not know why this bothering me so much. Perhaps it is the idea that I do no have time that is burning into me, or the fact that this man knows something I do not feel very comfortable with him knowing. I see him step back and pull out several adhesive compounds as well as several infer-spectrum mending tools.

"I never thought I would be actually using the tools of my trade when Tolva arrived, I mean normally this is reserved for making people look somewhat normal again after I have to remove some really bad augments and stuff.."

"I need seventy five cubic centimeters of force" and he nods letting out a snort.

"fluid ballast, fascinating, what did you put in here? River mud?"

"I am not sure, maybe, I used water from an abandoned bathroom in the slums" I admit to him. He tells me that I am lucky that I did not infect my real body doing something that dangerous.

Then I show him my leg and he almost wets himself and starts to mutter that two limbs seems a bit extensive.

I explain that it is not what it looks like and he nods a bit still rather amazed at the extent of the 'work'. I feel bad about telling him a half a truth, but then I wonder how that works. I mean no one calls it a half lie if you add some truth to a lie, so how can I call it a half truth if I am in fact just telling a lie disguised as truth or containing truth? Does it change that it is in effect a lie?... OK... ENOUGH of that.

He even flushes the system and makes sure the pressure can hold. I have to hand this to Tolva. When she picks someone to depend on, they might be a bit crazy or freaky or just completely unexpected, but they are good.

I explain to Peter that if he tells anyone about my system I will make him into what people think I am. he gets the idea. After all it was Pinter who named me Ghost for a very adapt reason.

After a hardy drinking and feeling like myself again I strap two pistols procured from the car to my hips and walk out looking like a mean fighting machine. I feel good as new and fully alive again.

As I walk out I smile at Tolva "I believe it is your turn to receive medical assistance and then I think we need to plan our next move"

 

Zu awoke with a note on his chest. He grabbed it and rubbed his hand back and forth on his forehead. His headaches subsided. He rolled up his sleeve and, much to his delight, had a new flesh panel and keypad installed. He looked around the room for Zaxa, but he was gone. Zu opened the note:

"$500...pay me whenever. I'm calling the law 10 minutes after you leave...gotta cover my ass also."​

Zu pocketed the note and made his way to the back door. Once outside, he flipped his hood up, keyed in a new location and hailed a cab. He and the crew he worked with had an emergency safehouse on the midlevel. He needed to lay low for a couple hours and figure out how it all went wrong. Then he needed to contact Ino, and make sure he didn't have two bounties on his head.

Zu looked out the window at the passing city as the cabbie took him to the midlevel. The smoke of the slums seemed to lessen, but it was still hardly anything to be proud of. Zu missed the top, and had to get back there soon. He thought he was in the wrong place at the wrong time when he was hauled in, but now that he had a price on his head, he began to ponder what exactly about him made him valuable.

These thoughts flew threw his mind, well after the cabbie had dropped him off. He made sure to be dropped off five blocks away from his destination. The walk was less than pleasant. People kept trying to peer at him. He almost preferred the shadows of the slums, at least they hid him better. Once he was at the safehouse, Zu fell onto the matress. He wasn't used to it, but it made him feel better to be off his feet and not being operated on.

Thoughts and worries ran through his mind like a train until Zu passed out from pure exhaustion. The chase would be back on in a few hours but, for now, Zu felt safe.

 

By the time fatso is done with Ghost, I'm bored stupid, leaned back on his couch with my big ol' boots propped up on his coffee table. It gives me some perverse pleasure that he no longer grins at me like a lusty teen and instead bustles over to shoo my feet off his precious real-wood table. Ghost comes swaggering out like he owns the world and announces that it's Tolva's turn. He looks better than he has in a while.

"Hey Creepy! Lookin' good!" I grin. *Some* of his swagger goes away, but not all. I chuckle.

 

I’m glad to see Ghost looking and sounding like Ghost again.

The man worries me enough when he’s healthy. I don’t need for him to be walking around damaged.

My turn for medical assistance…such as it is. I stifle a sigh and just nod.

I follow Peter to the other room when he's done scolding Kiara and see he's looking unhappy again.

“You think you can remember how to fix living flesh?” I ask him and of course he takes offense.

“I’ll have you know I studied…”

I wave off the explanation. Peter actually did study to be an MD but he found that he liked the dead better. Go figure.

“Drugs or no?” He asks. He already knows the answer, there is no hypo prepared.

“No. Unless you want to swab with local.”

“You’re a tough bird, Tolva.”

I’m not, really. He swabs the skin with something that numbs it but it won’t numb deep enough and I want to yelp when he begins disinfecting the wound.

“You okay?”

Damn him, I think he’s enjoying this.

“Um hm,” I tell him through clenched jaws, swiveling my golden eye to glare at him. He abruptly becomes more serious.

I can’t have drugs because if I allow Peter to shoot me up. I might wake in handcuffs with someone paying him a fat bounty over my giggling recumbent body.

He may have three really good reasons not to turn me in but he has 50 million excellent ones, not to mention fear for his life, if he does. And he knows I’d hate to kill him.

So, I just deal with the agony when he disinfects the deep furrow caused by the bullet and then every burning stab and tug after that.

My jaws ache.

Finally, after twenty-two stitches he bandages me up with something a lot better than the silk scarf. He has had to cut the catsuit which displeases me but there isn’t much to be done about it.

I flex the arm and move it, thankful that I still can.

“Thanks.” I tell him.

“Don’t mention it.” But his tone says, get lost now.

Going back out to Ghost and Kiara as I put on the bullet-holed duster I smile at them. My face feels rubbery after all that teeth gritting.

“We have to leave.” I tell the quietly, “right now.”

Before Peter even comes out of the other room, we’re trotting quick as possible down the corridor.

When we get to the landing pad I see that there are several other hovers there and I grin at the other two.

“I think we need a new ride.”

 

“I think we need a new ride.”

I could not agree more. Looking at some of the other cars here I glance over at Kiara "Shall we go with the typical, bust the window open and hot wire or go with a more subtle approach?"

I would like to see Kiara just bust a window open and whip one of these boys to life. I wonder why a whip would be required to be used on a car, I mean after all they can not feel pain can they?.. Horses, it has to do with old world animals called horse. I think.. at least.. yes... that answers that, time to consider a ride and how we get one.

 

"If we can do the more subtle approach that's probably best. But I'm not adverse to a little breakage." I tell them both.

 

"Shall we go with the typical, bust the window open and hot wire or go with a more subtle approach?"

"Pshh" I scoff. No tact. I'll smash a window if I HAVE to, but...
I saunter down and start checking door handles, on the third car I get a winner. I grin smugly up at Ghost as I slide into the driver's seat. A quick search of all the likely hiding spots, and a few not-so-likely turns up no keys... I guess he was partly right. In one quick motion I rip the cover off the column and start fishing around for the right wires. Tolva might be able to talk to the computers, but this was one of MY areas of expertise. A few seconds later and the engine hums to life.
"C'mon guys. Hop in, we ain't got all day. Where we goin?" I add in Tolva's direction as she gets in.

 

"C'mon guys. Hop in, we ain't got all day. Where we goin?"

"I have to admire your destructive subtly Kiara, as for where we are going, I believe 'anywhere but here' to be out first destination" I climb into the back seat and place a rifle across my lap, just in case.

"Did you get adequate repair done to your shoulder Tolva?" I watch her rub it a bit as she flops into the passenger seat. It must still cause her discomfort and I can not help the feelings that fill me that I want to be able to take away her pain.

 

I slide in with Kiara, unsurprised, leaving the rear seat for Ghost to stretch out in. Kiara’s one of the finest car boosters I’ve ever met.

“Head for tower four, central hub, midsection,” I tell Kiara, then I look in the rearview at Ghost.

Thankfully the hover is nondescript but powerful, unlike the ‘look at me’ attention-getting sportster next to it.

“We’ll blend in with the mall traffic and park if we have to while I hack and we plan. We have to get hidden in thick traffic quickly, though, Peter will probably only give us a ten-minute head start – fifteen if he’s feeling generous – after all, Pinter was his brother.”

"Did you get an adequate repair job done to your shoulder, Tolva?" asks Ghost from the back seat.

I don't know why I keep doing this, it's as though I think that suddenly I'll be able to see his expression but all I see is white. It's frustrating.

"I think Peter did a good job, thanks, Ghost." I force myself to drop the hand that was rubbing my boo-boo and ask Ghost, "Did he do a good job for you?"

I hope so. I can't help liking Ghost for all that he has some strange foibles.

 

"after all, Pinter was his brother.”

That does explain my desire to want to end his existence, or more to the point my uncomfortably around him. That look he had. Must be just a genetic thing, I thought it was caused by Pinter's crazy relentless determination, apparently I was wrong.

"Did he do a good job for you?"

"I am quite pleased with what he has done, but I can not help but wonder if he was going to just turn us in do you think letting him live was a mistake or perhaps just poor judgment on our part?"

I shift my shoulders back a bit into the seat. She let him live. I need to respect that. She has not led us wrong yet.

"We need to change, blood soaked is not the new rage, last time I checked"

Why do they call every new fashion trend a 'rage' I mean to rage means anger or fight, but they do not fight the trend they embrace it... Must be a woman thing.

 

Fox paces around the room about forty time. Her eyes a dilated. "Damn it, I'm bored. I'm going to the mall. I'll see you guys when I get back." She leaves the hotel and begins a quick paced walk to the mall. Thanks to the drug she if feeling great and energetic. She looks around and sees that people are mostly in there own world.

 

Jimmy was wandering around the mall, just trying to blend in and figure out what he needed to do next. He couldn't go home, for obvious reasons, and he couldn't stay here. He walked up to the counter of a fast food place.

"One number four please."

The pimply girl behind the counter handed him a bag filled with greasy meat and nearly inedible deep fried vegetables. It wasn't anything near delicious, but it would do for now.

He needed money. This stuff wouldn't last for long. He did have a secret bank account that his parents had set up in case of an emergency, and this definitly qualified. The problem was that even though it was secret there was always the possibility that someone knew about it.

He sat in the food court for a long time, choking down his meal and watching for anything suspicious. He was still uncertain.

He shoved his chair out from the table and stood up. "Screw it, I'm going for it." He went over to a cash machine and accessed his account. There was plenty in there, but there was no need to be greedy. Thirty thousand should be enough for now. He ended up with about a hundred in small bills, and the rest in thousand dollar bills. It didn't all fit in his wallet, so he put the rest in his pocket.

The next thing he did was find a clothing store to replace the clothes he had on. They were beat up, and the cops knew what they looked like. He hid the cash in various places including his shoes, a pocket on the inside of his waistband, and a pocket in the lining of his new jacket.

 

I glance over at him. "You need to change, you mean." Then I looked down at myself. Uhg. Between the crash, and the rust, and the bumps and the scrapes, and the badly scraped left hand, I really did need a refresher, too. "I'm not givin' up my jacket or boots without a fight," I mutter sourly. A few chuckles are had at my expense.

"Too bad we're gonna be right by the mall and can't stop in. That'd be the perfect place to pick up some new threads."

 

Wraith caught up to Fox as she entered the store. She figured that he didn't want her to be by herself. She lookes around with her dilated eyes. "So much activity. This is just what I needed what I needed." whispers Fox. She prances around the mall, in her dazed stuper. She spots Jimmy at some clothing store. She walks up to him and says "So this is where you ran off to." Her eyes were practically darting around the store, thanks to the flash.

 

I'm not givin' up my jacket or boots without a fight,"

And a puzzle has been solved! I always wondered why they made a fuss about knocking someones boots off.. or was that socks... I need to look that one up. Either way that does explain things. I think. I hope. Well it was nice to think I was finally figuring that out but I just feel more confused now.

"Too bad we're gonna be right by the mall and can't stop in. That'd be the perfect place to pick up some new threads."

"I'll procure us some clothing, but I'll need some credits" feel the words fall from my lips but I can not believe I am saying them. Oh goodie I get to go clothing shopping for two girls.

I wonder if I can still just turn myself in and get be killed swiftly by a bounty hunter or something.

 

I have to laugh, even if it’s not a happy laugh at Ghost’s remark.

“It probably was both poor judgement and a mistake.”

I tell him, turning around and patting his hand where it sits holding the rifle. I wince as that movement makes my shoulder hurt, pulling my arm back over the seatback with a slight groan.

“But I’m reluctant to kill him both because of Pinter and because we may need his services again. I wouldn’t go back to him soon but maybe once things cool off.”

I look at my beloved coat. It’s dusty and there is a bullet hole in it. My catsuit has a hole around where my bandage is, too.

“I really don’t want to risk the mall,” I tell them, “everyone and their mother will be seeing our mugs on signs and flashboards in there. But if you can think of a way for us to do that and minimize the risk I’ll listen.” I look hard at Ghostie. "I can get you credits...unless you'd rather shoplift."

 

I opened my mouth, and then shut it because nothing came out. I opened it again and hissed at her in a low voice.

"What the hell are you doing here? Can't you see our pictures are on every screen in the place?"

There's something wrong with her eyes, other than the fact that they are green of course. It's like she's staring right through him, and watching everything in the place at the same time.

 

<<< Moved for sake of Continuity >>>

 

Mask or no mask, I can practically FEEL his discomfort when Ghost realizes he just volunteered to go shopping for two girls. I chuckle quietly, then pipe up to save his bacon. "Don't worry so much, Creepy. I'm easy to shop for. Just pick me up a medium tank top, any color, and a pair of pants. Size 8."

Tolva offers to get him credits, unless he wants to shoplift. After whatever stunt it was that he pulled to get us the food, I honestly think he could probably buy or steal new clothes with equal ease without attracting any undue attention to himself.

"Tell ya what... Creepy, you go get clothes, Tolva, you work your magic, and I'll guard till Ghost gets back. Sound good?"

 

"I can get you credits...unless you'd rather shoplift."

I want to stop the words that come out like a dull monotone sound tack that my lips are forced to say "Stealing would be illegal and counterproductive to society"

I grit my teeth and let out a sigh of pure frustration; I want to shoot myself in the head for saying that. Yes stealing is fine, I am all for stealing from greedy money grubbing fad making marketers that treat people like nothing more then paychecks on legs.

But they are not the retailers.

"Tell ya what... Creepy, you go get clothes, Tolva, you work your magic, and I'll guard till Ghost gets back. Sound good?"

"Perhaps a mall might not be the best Idea, too many eyes upon us and this baby does not have tinted windows, so even if the car did blend in, we would not"

I still think about my mistake in the apartment building. I don't want to make another bad call that could end up with them dead, but at the same time I have an idea.

"Where do you think they would NOT expect us to go?"

 

See why I like Ghost? His sense of humor tickles me. Or lack of it. Whatever.

He also asks good questions.

"Where do you think they would NOT expect us to go?"

"Two places I can think of. One, a drycleaner's. We can pick up someone else's laundry. And Two...we could go clubbing at a crashjoint."

Crashjoints are found at every level of the city and every economic strata, which is often the same thing. They are constant parties with pounding music, flowing alcohol, strutting mostly-naked women, and drugs. Lots of drugs.

The reason they are called 'crashjoints' is because they provide rooms for the customers to crash out for hours, usually ejecting them the next day so the place doesn't get cluttered up.

Depending which one you go to, they aren't curious about ID and people are blind to everything but their current hit of kinky good times.

"So whattaya say we knock off someone's laundry and go clubbing?" I ask.

 

Fox gives a short laugh. "Relax shorty. I don't bounty hunters do their shopping at the mall. Besides I have Wraith here with me to keep a look out. So where did ya get the money for new cloths, huh."

 

"So whattaya say we knock off someone's laundry and go clubbing?"

For the life me I shall never understand how a building where people gather and dance somehow got associated with an item used to inflict blunt force trauma.

Both options sound good, but I had another thought. These ideas are getting dangerous, mainly because I know I won't be able to steal someone's clothing form a laundromat.

"How about a female clothing store, very high end, top of the line stuff, they would never think we would have the brass ones for that"

now why would brass... NO.. Just NO... I am NOT going to ponder that. I'll look it up. I'll just look it up.

 

Okay, I can spare Ghost a look of pity. The poor soul wrestles with the thieving part of freebooting though he's great at all other aspects.

"And what will you do for your own clothes?" I ask him dryly, "While you're busy showing your brass monkeys at a store that sells feminine clothing you may have to make a second stop for yourself. The laundry would be easier."

((Author note: I couldn't stop laughing the whole time I wrote this post.))