"What the hell, kid! You go and get a dangerous implant installed without telling anyone, then pull a stunt like this. Just what were you thinking!"
Watching Gloria lose it, Vito quietly pulled Misty aside and asked her to run so damage control before Gloria managed to finish the job the scavs had started.
He steered a considerably-recovered David out of Vik's clinic and asked:
"What exactly did you get up to? And who's this? Introduce us."
David explained.
"This is Lucy. She's not from school. We're working together. Vik said I overdid it with the Sandevistan. That's why I went down."
Vito frowned. "Overdid it with the Sandevistan? Doesn't it just reset after the cooldown? I used that thing to get across town. Did you get a knockoff installed? I scanned yours though. Looked clean to ."
Lucy, standing off to the side, quietly rolled her eyes. Using a Sandevistan to get across town. Fantastic.
David continued. "Vik said once or twice a day, maximum. I used it eight tis today, and I hadn't taken any nerve suppressant. Collapsing was basically guaranteed."
Vito said: "Eight tis? Even if your classmate had it coming, nobody hits soone eight tis. I thought you went to Arasaka Academy, not a back-alley fight club."
David said: "No. It was Lucy and lifting chips on the city rail."
The second it was out of his mouth he knew he'd said too much. He looked sideways at Lucy.
Vito was at a loss for words. He lit a cigarette and said: "Running a Sandevistan to lift chips. I respect the commitnt. What did you get? Relic chips?"
Lucy produced a small handful of chips and weighed them in her palm. Vito scanned them: low-grade credit chips, the kind that needed cracking before they were worth anything.
That genuinely confused him. An entire afternoon for this?
He turned to Lucy.
"You're a netrunner? Solo?"
Lucy nodded.
Vito reached into his jacket and produced a quickhack chip he'd assembled, an Overheat-Puppet hybrid, and held it out.
"What would sothing like this go for?"
Lucy scanned it and handed it back.
"Four hundred and fifty eddies. Market rate."
Vito pocketed it. "Thanks. Do you smoke?"
Lucy took the cigarette he offered. The two of them stood in a comfortable cloud while David kept his distance. Vito, with brand-new lungs, found the whole experience noticeably more enjoyable than it used to be.
Cough cough cough!
David, downwind, was not having the sa experience. Vito looked at him.
"Stand further back."
"That doctor, the one who tried to take David's implants. Do you know him?"
"Not personally. But I know who he is. Are you going after him?"
Vito exhaled. "I don't have a lot of patience for doctors with no professional ethics. He's going to need to make a contribution."
Then Misty ca out and told them things inside had settled down considerably. Gloria was in much better shape. The one thing she was insisting on: David needed to get the Sandevistan out as soon as possible.
Vito exhaled in relief and slung an arm around David's shoulder, grinning.
"Thank god we didn't ntion anything about you dropping out."
"What? David dropped out too?"
Misty clapped both hands over her mouth. She had made up her mind: David was a disaster, and Vito was the fallen angel who'd pointed him toward the cliff.
Vito grabbed David and Lucy and moved before that could go anywhere. The three of them went for ran, which turned out to be the best al Vito had eaten since arriving in Night City. The food actually tasted like food was supposed to.
After they'd finished, Vito tracked down the address of the ambulance ripperdoc. He was planning a professional ethics consultation, with a corresponding financial settlent, and the implant work at Vik's that morning had not been cheap.
While Vito stepped outside to arrange a car, Lucy invited David back to her place. David wasn't sure what to do with that. Then Lucy said first ti?, and whatever uncertainty David had evaporated. He said yes and made a point of clarifying that it wasn't.
When Vito ca back, David told him he'd be heading to Lucy's once they finished Vito's errand.
Vito waved it off. "Who said I needed you along? Go do your thing. I've got more than one stop tonight, and I need to track down parts as well. Do whatever you like. Actually, hold on. Mr. Vito hasn't clocked out for the evening yet. Let's find a bar, get a bottle of Four Hundred Rabbit, and you can tell how you two t."
The three of them found a bar and had a few drinks. It took Vito exactly three minutes to hear the full story of how David and Lucy had t. There wasn't much story to hear. These two knew as little about each other as you'd find printed on the front of a chip bag.
Vito called David into the bathroom with him.
Inside, he handed David a pistol.
"Compact, an, and built to make people reconsider. I modified this one. New modules, different rounds. Hollow-points. Whatever cos at you is going to stop. But the modules are on the gentle side. Unless you're pressing it against soone's skull for an execution, it's not going to be lethal. Solid for self-defense."
David took it, excited, but puzzled.
"Thanks, Vito. But why are you giving a gun?"
Vito clapped him on the shoulder.
"Where I'm from, when a girl you've known for exactly one afternoon invites you back to hers, you could walk in and find the place full of very large n. Take that with you. Last thing you want is to co out of the bathroom with nothing to reach for. And rember: a pretty girl can have a lot more angles than she looks like she does."
David went red.
"I'm just going over to her place. What's this about bathrooms?"
Vito pushed two extra magazines into his hands.
"The point stands even if I said it badly. Look after yourself."
"You really did say it badly."
Out of the bathroom, Vito said his goodbyes to both of them and told David to call if anything ca up. He pressed the quickhack chip into Lucy's hand on the way out.
"I made that myself. Check if it's any different from the market version. Field test, on . I'll get out of your way. See you around."
Vito found the ambulance ripperdoc. Sa routine as always: gun out, barrel at the forehead, transfer.
Except this particular ripperdoc wasn't the folding type. He knew his way around a firearm, and his clinic ca with two heavy-set n who handled the less dical aspects of the job when the situation called for it.
They saw Vito walk in with nothing but a pistol. Both of them grinned and moved forward.
Two shots. Both down.
"Sorry. This one's custom."
Eddie wasn't running anything gentle. Up close it hit like a hand cannon. High stopping power, and the hollow-points carried a hardened core for punching through subdermal armor. Armor-piercing capped rounds. Inside twenty-five ters, devastating. Past fifty, the rounds went wherever they felt like going.
Nobody brings a pistol to a rifle fight. Twenty-five ters was plenty.
The ripperdoc looked at what was left of his two enforcers and made the smart call. He transferred the eddies without being asked, dropped to his knees, and produced the pistol he'd had behind his back, handing it over before Vito had to ntion it.
"Doc, you've got a professional ethics problem. I'd recomnd discussing it with Janpeng. He had so very relevant experience on that subject."
"Who? Who's Janpeng?"
Bang!
User Comments
0 comments from readers