Cyberpunk: I'm Not Cheating Chapter 30

Vito wanted to use the Old Captain as an interdiary to reach Nomad families out in the Badlands. He had a supply list. The items on it were for the clinic he'd been planning to open.

His plan: a grey-market operation in Heywood, offering basic cyberware repair and maintenance alongside weapon modification and servicing. With that running, he and Jackie could pursue higher-value contracts instead of grinding through low-pay gigs just to keep the lights on.

"I need Badlands people to source so items. So of it's corporate-grade. See what they can do. I'm flexible on the price."

The Old Captain knew the list wasn't going to be simple. He agreed anyway.

"Done. Send it over."

He looked at the list. His eyebrow went up.

"My friend. This is a serious set of ambitions. Planning to leave the rc life and open a gun shop? So of this I've genuinely never heard of. You're not quietly building sothing to blow up Arasaka Tower, are you?"

Vito smiled.

"Blowing up Arasaka Tower is very last generation. I want to open a clinic. Sell so modified weapons on the side."

The Old Captain looked mildly surprised.

"A clinic? The weapons I believe completely. A clinic is a new wrinkle. What brought that on?"

Vito shrugged.

"I need sothing besides the shooting. Soone told people do better when they've got sothing they're building toward."

The Old Captain tilted his head, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.

"Saving people on one side, selling weapons to kill them on the other. You are a genuinely interesting person."

Jackie ca back around the corner in a controlled slide, rear tire kicking out, front tire kissing the curb. He climbed off with the expression of soone who had just confird a major life theory.

"What are we talking about?"

Vito glanced over.

"The shop plan. Let's go, we need to get back to Vik's. I've got implants going in today. See you, Old Captain."

He got in the Magician.

At Vik's clinic, Vik listened to the list and frowned before Vito had finished.

"Subdermal armor, circulatory upgrade, leg reinforcent. Vito. You know that stacking implants like that causes serious neural problems. Too much at once and your nervous system will start fighting you."

Vito held his ground.

"I'm aware of my limits, Vik. I'm opening a shop and I need capital. That ans taking on so higher-risk contracts, and for those I need the hardware. I'll be fine."

Vik kept going.

"You can do this in stages. I can lend you money if the funding is the issue. Don't gamble with your nervous system."

It was the most serious Vito had ever seen Vik. He thought it over.

"Alright. Just the subdermal armor today. I'll co back for the rest."

After the procedure, Vik handed him a nerve stimulant spray.

"Don't treat this like a small thing. I've watched a lot of people load themselves up with chro and end up cyberpsychos. There's only one Adam Smasher. Don't make yourself a slave to the hardware."

Vito nodded.

"Understood. I've got it under control, Vik. Don't worry."

Jackie had been watching the whole exchange from across the room without saying anything. It sat in him in a way he couldn't place. He was soone who'd always kept his distance from chro, always found reasons to avoid it. Watching his partner stack implants just to be functional enough for the next job hit him sowhere specific and uncomfortable.

Vito said his goodbyes outside the clinic.

"I'm heading back to prep so things. Take the rest of the day. Take Misty to a film, or take the Kusanagi out for another run. You've earned it."

Jackie watched the Magician pull away. Then he turned around and walked back into Vik's clinic.

"Vik. I want subdermal armor."

Vik looked at him.

"You thought about it too?"

Jackie lowered himself into the chair.

"Vito needs backup. I can't help him more by staying out of the chro. At minimum I can stop slowing him down."

Vik loaded a syringe.

"Relax, Jackie. You're holding yourself like you're made of stone." His voice ca from sowhere above the chair, carrying a quiet resignation. "You two are a matched set. Both of you stubborn as anything."

The procedure moved faster than Jackie had expected, but it was considerably more present than he'd prepared himself for. He could feel the small connection points entering the skin and interfacing with the nerve endings below, and then the cold foreign sensation moving outward from the installation sites, spreading from his arm to his shoulder and then across his chest in slow, unavoidable waves.

"Done. Initial rejection response may be strong. Sit with it."

Vik handed him a suppressant.

"This is the high-grade version. Don't build a habit on it."

Jackie nodded and pressed it to his neck. The numbness ca first. Then, very quickly, a burning sensation spread from every installation point, like sothing under the skin running heated needles through it from below. He kept his jaw locked. Sweat gathered along his hairline.

"How does it feel?" Vik watched him.

"Like ants." Jackie pressed the words out carefully. "Crawling in the bone."

His arm moved the way arms moved when they weren't entirely certain they belonged to you anymore.

"Normal. Your nervous system is learning new parts."

Vik sighed.

"Go ho and rest. Nothing intense. If you get hallucinations, emotional dysregulation, or anything past manageable pain, you co back imdiately. Rember, Jackie. Cyberware is a tool. It's not who you are."

On the other side of the city, Vito walked into his apartnt and went straight to the workbench.

Vik's warning was still in his ears. He had more imdiate things to work on.

He needed a new kind of concealnt. Not a bioplastic preset. Sothing that operated at the optical level, at the level of Kiroshi scanning, that erased the face underneath completely rather than replacing it.

He worked on the face-spoofing equipnt through the evening and arrived at sothing new.

When activated, the device generated a square mask precisely sized to cover the entire face. On the front of it, instead of any expression, a miniaturized panoramic view of Night City rendered in full motion: skyscrapers reaching past the top of the fra, flying vehicles moving between them, the neon that never went out scrolling slowly across the surface as if the whole city had been shrunk down and set into the mask.

He stood in front of the mirror.

The person standing there was no longer Vito. Caras resolved nothing. A Kiroshi scan produced a cascade of scrambled data or simply returned no target. Any facial recognition system looking for him would find nothing but a square of moving light, a city miniaturized and blinking in the dark.

He was satisfied with it.

He opened the files Kiwi had unpacked from the exploitation network's servers. He looked through the list of nas and locations. Then he picked one, more or less at random.

"Let's start sowhere. You're the lucky winner."

He left the apartnt with the Malorian Arms Overture revolver and a Kang Tao Nine Tails kinetic assault rifle. The usual weapons stayed ho.

"I hope you've got the eddies I need in there. Got a clinic to fund."

Tonight was the debut of Night City's Cube Man.