Absolutely nothing will go wrong!
"Run for your lives! It's Boom Girl!" cried one frantic man, a civilian who turned and started running away. He would call the police if he got out of my sight; it was just how this worked, so I frowned and narrowed my eyes behind my mask. Then, before he could get too far, a small explosion went off right in front of his face, causing a grievous wound and making him slump over and start gurgling grossly, so I sent a couple of more wasps over to finish him off with subsequent explosions.
I didn't like the name the NPCs, and a few players had given me, but I suppose it was my own fault for not picking out my own "cape name" before I got well-known. It was just that the number of appropriately heroic names for bug controllers was limited. And, if I was being honest, I wasn't exactly playing the hero role anymore. That hadn't lasted too long. I ended up joining Total Terror, but lately, I have been playing with Ruslan and Jean, who told me they played this same game as well.
I had gone in a weird direction with my powers. As you got better with them, you could develop them along certain paths; for example, I could have strengthened the number of total insects I could control, or I could have worked down a path so that I could control larger animals, as well as about a dozen different paths of advancement that the game's AI developed independently for each power. How the game managed to be balanced at all was a wonder, and honestly, parts of it were not. Although there was pretty much always guaranteed to be a way to counter certain powers, you weren't anywhere near guaranteed to have that counter be available to you, so some types of powers, especially Brute ones, ran roughshod, especially in the earlier parts of the game.
However, I worked down a path where I could issue commands to single insects. I didn't, obviously, have the multi-tasking ability to do so simultaneously, but the game gave me assistive technologies like; for example, I could set up control groups for certain insects and could issue a command to the total group or just one insect in the group, I could even give certain commands with some preconditions -- and I assume it used a simple AI to assist me in this. For example, "attack anyone who attacks me" was a command I always gave my wasps.
After that, I spent most of the rest of my power points on an interesting passive ability. It seemed useless at first and was very inexpensive to buy, but it was a passive buff to the ability of any minions had on their carry weight. It wasn't a bonus to their strength they could use in combat, just how much they could carry. Eventually, it got to the point where my wasps could carry twenty grams of weight and still be as fast as they were normally. This was a lot of weight since a wasp weighed much less than a gram in the first place.
I, of course, used this weight to put twenty grams of high-explosives on each wasp. The game engine saw what I was trying to do and thought about it for a while before converting any wasp I did this to a differently named "Wasp (Hymenboomtera)" creature. This was great because I didn't even need to include things like a detonator or anything; the wasps could explode on command, which was not realistic at all. It wasn't realistic, but it was very fun.
World of Heroes was set in the late 1980s timeline. I assumed this was selected so that they could keep it much easier to simulate, as there were a lot fewer computers at this time. There were simulated computers, and as far as I knew, they even ran something similar to the operating systems that were common in the eighties, but their processing power was minimal—things like spreadsheets, word documents, and clunky command lines.
As a result of the era, though, all I had access to was regular plastic explosives, not the more serious metallic-based explosives that could be made in the 2060s, but that was still sufficient. Twenty grams of high explosives wasn't a lot; in fact, a hand grenade had over seven times that amount. But twenty grams exploding right by your eyeballs? It was sufficient. Especially considering I usually had at least two thousand wasps surrounding me most of the time.
And that's how I got my name. I wasn't sure if it was one of the players or the NPCs, but now I would see articles in the newspaper with headlines such as, "Boom Girl strikes again!" It was a little annoying, as I had finally settled on the cape name "Ephemeral," based on the fleeting nature and beauty of explosions, but I got stuck with "Boom Girl."
As I sent a couple dozen or so wasps to crowd near where I knew the hinges would be on the other side of the armoured door, but then I jumped in surprise as Ruslan's character sidled up to my side. In the game, he had a seriously overpowered ability; it was a Stranger power. It made it so people would not recognise him as a threat, almost until he attacked them. NPCs could see him attack someone else, and they would assume he had a good reason or that it was a misunderstanding. It was very similar to the power that I thought Nice Guy, a famous serial killer villain in my old world, had.
Obviously, it couldn't work that way on players, so instead, it just changed his avatar into a different one if you lost line of sight on him, and it wasn't random either; it usually picked an NPC avatar that you would be unlikely to want to attack, like a policewoman in this case. It also always made him look like he wasn't carrying a weapon, even if he was, so he could walk up to a player, pointing a pistol at their head, and they wouldn't know as the game faked plausible arm and hand motions, although always with empty hands. It was a really strong power with how long he had spent levelling it up, especially against NPCs. It was strong enough that the NPCs hadn't ever given him a nickname because they mostly never realised he was there.
"You ready?" he asked, his voice not sounding right from a small Asian woman's body. I guessed he hadn't gotten his power to the point where it mimicked different voices, as I was sure that was an option.
I nodded, though, "Yes." The big issue with my power was that I used up explosives and wasps every time I used my ability. I had lots of areas in the city to get wasps, and thankfully for game-balance reasons, they all froze in time when I was logged off, acting like they were in my inventory, but explosives were a bit harder to get. That's why we were raiding the National Guard armoury today. Ruslan could usually use his ability to steal small things with impunity, but we were taking a truckload today. Literally, we had already stolen the military truck.
He wanted a lot of explosives, too, as he wanted to see if he could sneak in enough explosives, a little at a time, to blow up the equivalent of the local Protectorate headquarters, which was in a skyscraper downtown. I didn't think it would work, personally, and even if it did, they would have it repaired in a week, but he wanted bragging rights.
Jean's ability was a pretty straightforward Brute power, and it made him super strong and pretty much invulnerable unless these guys had a Carl Gustav. He was going to run through the door as soon as I "opened it." I made a stylish flourish, and the door to the armoury blew off its hinges.
We ended up stealing over two tons of explosives and automatic weapons, but we almost got caught by a responding hero. Thankfully, it was an NPC Hero, and while Jean and I were hiding behind a wall from the hero incinerating us with some sort of pyrokinetic ability, which unfortunately cooked any of my wasps that got near, Ruslan casually walked next to him and shot him in the head with a fifty calibre anti-material rifle.
Once we got away clean, I logged off and got dressed in one of my semi-professional outfits. Mr Jin wanted me to go to his office to meet his friend, whose daughter I had helped save. It had taken a week, after all. Apparently, he wasn't out of the country and couldn't fly back until a couple of days ago, and after that, he spent his time with his daughter. Not unreasonable, I thought.
Leaving my apartment, I walked the short distance to Clouds and was let in unescorted to Mr Jin's office. It seemed like I was becoming more of a fixture there. Knocking on the door, he bid me to enter, and I saw him, not behind his desk, and sitting on a couch in the corner of his large office next to another Japanese man who looked about his age; they were clearly in the middle of laughing when I walked in, several cans of empty beer on the coffee table in front of them.
I raised an eyebrow; it was clear these two were friends. "Taylor, Taylor! Come, sit! This is Kobayashi Daiki, Yui's father. Sorry, we go way back and have been looking back on old times."
I looked at the new man as I walked over to a comfortable chair catty-corner to them. He didn't precisely look like what I was expecting a manager of a bunch of gangsters to look like. He was in casual but high-quality clothes, not the suit that Mr Jin was wearing, and he didn't have flashy hair or jewellery. Before I could sit down, he rose up and held out his hands and grabbed mine, saying, "Ryuichi told me what you did, I can't thank you enough for helping save Yui-chan. She's all I have!"
I felt a little uncomfortable. Honestly, I didn't think they would have been successful at extracting the data that I had done, even if they had secured the support of one of the better surgeons in the city. The brain drive was designed to resist such efforts. It was possible I was wrong, but in either case, I didn't really want to make a big deal out of it. I nodded, "Of course. I was able to help a little bit, but I imagine it was your people who did all the heavy lifting."
He seemed to realise what I was saying and didn't push it too much further than that, letting me sit down. Mr Jin was smiling and said, "Kobayashi here is an honest-to-goodness Miyadaiku, so he actually has to travel extensively for his job. He wasn't able to come back until the day before yesterday. Otherwise, he'd have seen you sooner."
At first, I was expecting that unfamiliar word to mean assassin or something, but the auto-translate system subtitled the word as "traditional Japanese carpenter." Wait, what? When Mr Jin had said this man was involved in "traditional activities," I had an entirely different idea in mind. I brought up a screen with an encyclopedia article about Japanese carpentry while I floundered a bit, "Uhh... when you said traditional activities, I thought you meant traditional Tyger Claw activities...." I stammered out and continued, "I was expecting him to have a crew of two hundred leg breakers or something. Surely there can't be that much demand for traditionally built shrines and the like in North America that he would need a team of two hundred... right?"
From what my encyclopedia said, traditional Japanese carpentry used a lot of interesting joineries that minimised or entirely eliminated the need for fasteners like nails or glue. I guessed because while trees were pretty common in ancient Japan, iron was not. It looked very complicated and pretty labour-intensive, and I thought that the only reason it might still be done was aesthetic and bragging reasons by the ultra-rich. Certainly, today, the bottleneck would be wood and not metal fasteners.
Mr Kobayashi laughed heartily at my misapprehension and shrugged, "I mean, I did a little bit of that in the past, and it's true we have a number of no-show jobs for our brothers or sisters who just got out of the system, the ones who have a parole officer anyway." Well, he was just quite up front, now, wasn't he?
He chuckled, "But you'd be surprised at the demand for traditional architecture; I have been working non-stop in Pacifica and Watson lately... high-end tea rooms, mostly, but you're right. I only have about twenty actual helpers and apprentices. I guess I'm also a supervisor of a number of more legitimate businesses that we run, as well." He just shrugged, "It is what it is."
I looked at him oddly and let something pop out of my mouth that I immediately regretted, "Don't you ever feel bad for all the terrible things the Tyger Claws do?"
Mr Jin blinked, surprised, but instead of seeming offended, instead, he seemed amused.
"Uh, not really. Not in the way you seem to be implying, anyway. There are a lot of things that I believe we shouldn't be involved with, but as a whole, I think we're doing much better than the alternative," Mr Kobayashi said quickly and looked at me as if I was a little weird. Then he shrugged and asked, "Who do you suppose is our, the Tyger Claws, biggest competitor?"
I tilted my head to the side, glad I hadn't offended him at least. "The Valentinos are the biggest gang in the city," I said, curious as if the answer was obvious.
He grinned, obviously having expected my answer, "For as intelligent as you seem to be, you have a pretty big streak of naivety, Taylor. Our biggest competitor is the same as the Valentino's biggest competitor— the government. That's all a gang is, a group of people illegally offering the same services that a government might." He then tilted his head in the same way as I had, staring at me, "Ryuichi has told me about you. Do you suppose your dad felt bad about being associated with the NUSA government? I assure you our organisation doesn't hold a candle to all the terrible things they have done. Part of downtown is still a radioactive hole in the ground thanks to them, and that is not even close to the worst of what they've done." That was true; although it was supposedly Militech that had done that, there wasn't all that much difference.
Honestly, I did think Alt-Danny felt that way, as he had conversations with Alt-Taylor about how she should definitely not trust anyone, especially Militech or the NUSA government, although he wouldn't tell her precisely why. I thought that was why Militech or the NUSA didn't feature more prominently in his post-death plans, "I see what you're trying to say, but yes, actually. I happen to know that he detested a lot of the people he used to work for. You're saying that at least you're doing a better job than the NUSA government, but that is a pretty low bar, isn't it?"
He smiled and nodded, "That's true, I suppose. My own father explained all this to me when I was a little younger than your age, but it was stated a bit differently, but a lot of the conflict between our organisation and the government is just competition, not involving morality at all. I can guarantee you that the Tyger Claws give you better odds of winning at our casinos than the state does in the various lottery systems that have been set up."
What was he, some kind of libertarian gangster? It still felt like excuses to me, as I was pretty sure some branches of the Tyger Claws engaged in similar human trafficking that his daughter just recently escaped from, but I had to admit that the Tyger Claws did act as kind of a local government in Japantown and one that was more effective and more approachable too.
Perhaps I would have scoffed at this idea if I thought that the voters, either in Night City or the NUSA, had anything to say at all about what the government would decide to do. I didn't think that, and Alt-Taylor would have laughed in my face if I asked her if she thought, either. Also, I knew that my Tyger Claw taxes were a lot less than my Night City taxes, that was for sure.
Still, to me, it seemed a bit like whataboutism, like just because the government was ultra shitty doesn't give you the right to be slightly less shitty, but I wasn't going to push it, as I relied on a somewhat tranquil relationship with the Claws, although I knew that was being a bit hypocritical.
After that, he invited me to lunch with him and Mr Jin, which I accepted, and the rest of the afternoon was quite amicable. I would have liked to have seen his daughter, but apparently, she was still under a doctor's supervision and her mom, who had also been out of town, wasn't letting her out of her sight. Although they hadn't harmed her precisely, they had kept her and about a dozen other children in a drugged stupor for a period of time. For her, it was just under a day, but others were longer.
This fact made me want to see her even more, just because I hardly trusted the quacks that called themselves doctors around here, even if I knew that Mr Kobayashi would likely spring for the actual, decent physicians. And although I had, theoretically, all the knowledge on psychology that I could ever want, the truth was I was a very subpar therapist, and I suspected that it was mainly post-traumatic stress that the doctor was treating her for.
He once again thanked me, exchanged contact numbers and claimed if I ever needed anything that he could provide, all I had to do was ask.
A month later, I was working on the brain in the jar. I had already interrogated him over the past few days, getting as much information as possible and cross-referencing it with what I read from his data. He had three password-protected banking accounts. The first one, it turned out, wasn't a banking account at all but a line of credit— and already shut down by the time I used several dozen proxies across North America to log into that banking account.
The second account, at a different bank, contained just over twenty-eight thousand Eurodollars, which I siphoned into an anonymous numbered account, which I would keep separate from my other money. Assuming the bank didn't claw it back in a couple of days, I would see if I could convert it into something I could use or cash. I didn't precisely want to just have a link directly to my bank account to this guy's account, but I could likely withdraw the total amount in cash through automated teller machines in a day or two if I tried.
In this world, cash was of two varieties. There were the actual physical notes, which were mostly untraceable, as well as the digital equivalent. You could have a sum of Eurodollars on a data shard or transmit the money digitally to other people without having to go through a bank to do so. Cash on these "digital wallets" wasn't untraceable, but it was irrevocable, namely that a bank could not void a transaction conducted this way or claw back money; it was the same as actual cash that way in that once it was out of your hands it was gone.
It was only the work of a couple of seconds to set up a random "digital wallet" to accept or send cash this way, and that was how I sent most people money. Most phones and implants had apps for this built-in, which was why the majority of people didn't have legitimate banking accounts. That said, I would still try to acquire the funds in physical cash, which was still very popular. Alt-Danny had once said that the government would shift to a completely digital currency the day that politicians stopped accepting bribes.
The last bank account was something that I couldn't access, yet. Apparently, you could only move money out of the account in person with the correct bank account number and password. I had both of those, but I didn't have time for a trip to Europe right now. The bank was based in Spain, and the balance was over a hundred thousand Eurodollars. Perhaps I could hire someone to pick it up for me, for a share of the proceeds.
I didn't find anything earth-shattering in his files, but I came to the conclusion that he worked for a number of people and was something a specialist on person retrieval, in general, in addition to his human trafficking. There wasn't anything listed about who he worked for, precisely, although there was a fair amount of information about who worked for him, so it seemed like he worked using what I recognised as a cellular structure, so compromising his operations, such as getting tortured by the Tyger Claws for abducting the wrong person, couldn't compromise anything but his own team of people.
That was a sign that his organisation was probably, a larger one, which I didn't like the sound of. That first account, which was some kind of line of credit, also led me to that belief as well. From what I could tell, the only thing I could think of was that account was supposed to be used to charge business expenses.
That line of credit would have been the next step if I wanted to continue my investigation, but I didn't because I could see no way of doing it that wouldn't expose me to a potentially murderous group of criminals or, worse, a corporation. So, a little unsatisfied, I decided to stop there and killed Mr Human Trafficker. His brain, though, was still useful.
I decided to go with a hybrid cybernetic solution. It was very easy to permanently end any consciousness the brain might have, and I also carefully excised large portions of his prefrontal cortex and basal ganglia, replacing the connections of this area with specially designed cybernetics based on commercial off-the-shelf memory modules that I had bought.
The memory storage modules were all standard and cheap, but I created a semi-novel neuron-machine interface that would emulate the natural memory access process. It was different from normal data storage implants as those were designed to interface only with other electronics, specifically with an operating system; this was both a simpler and more complicated direct neural interface.
It would allow me pretty much direct access to the unit's "memories", though, which was important as I trained its neural network. There were chemical and biological ways to either remove or create memories in the brain, of course, but they were a messy biological process, something akin to controlled brain damage and not something you'd want to do continuously.
It might seem weird to have bought these storage modules instead of reusing the existing data storage implant that, until recently, had been installed on his brain, but not only was that a very expensive piece of wetware which I had set aside, but it was also not really optimised for this purpose. Sure, it had tons and tons of storage, which I needed, but its complicated security and cryptographic modules just got in the way. I would have needed to disassemble it anyway, and that would have been a real shame.
"Tomorrow, we'll see if you can move the arm on the waldo and maybe see out of the optic sensor," I told the cybernetic brain excitedly as I set my surgical tools aside. Rather than interface with the optic nerve directly, like most cybernetic eyes did, I was experimenting with direct access to the sensory cortex. I thought that maybe, the brain might be able to learn to see using numerous, not just two, optical sensors.
There were a number of similar experiments in this world testing full-borgs in a similar way, but their results were mixed, with attempts at three-hundred-and-sixty-degree vision and the like being failures. I thought it might be due to the individual already being habituated to binocular vision, though; perhaps if I built this neural network from the ground up it might work for sure, but it wasn't like I was starting from scratch here, either. I didn't have the equipment for cloning experiments, and I wasn't entirely sure I could build it from scratch either, so it was a good thing if I ever wanted to branch out that it was a relatively mature technology base here.
It was interesting to see the edges of where my power was considered not entirely in keeping with my speciality, too. I could think of ideas for therapeutic cloning systems that would only duplicate, say, a person's limb or one of their organs, but thinking about how to create traditional clones was just on the edge of what my power wanted to help me with. I got the feeling that it was flexible, though, and that I could probably convince it to help me in time. I wondered if it just preferred me taking brains from people, as I did get the impression it got excited whenever I got into fights.
I wasn't sure if I could succeed with interesting vision experiments where others before had failed as although this brain had no memories anymore, it still had all of the connections it had built up in its previous life, including the same optimisations in its visual cortex for binocular vision. I had added daily neuro-plasticity treatments to it's tank, though, but I wasn't sure that would be enough.
We'd just have to see, I supposed. Standing up, I carefully put all of the equipment I was using in my autoclave to sterilise and noticed a sound coming from my apartment, a soft pecking sound. Mrs Pegpig often pecked at the door when she wanted to get my attention, so I walked into the back to find her, indeed, pecking at the door, standing precariously on the doorknob. Even if she had the knowledge of how to open the door, and even if she was a super strong pigeon, well, she was still a pigeon and couldn't open it.
She warbled at me and jumped off the wall to land on my outstretched hand. She lifted up her cybernetic foot to me, and I automatically zoomed in on the limb. My eyes could barely be called Kiroshis anymore; I added so many aftermarket features to them. They were really the thing I had made that I was most proud of, as I couldn't just add things without either optimising something else or removing it, as the size was fixed. In this case, I added a very tiny gyroscope for stabilisation on the upgraded sixteen times zoom, twice the zoom that Kiroshi's came with by default. To do this, I had to actually remove some of the other electronics in each of the eyes and relocate them to my orbit, devising a near-field communication protocol so that the electronics could be split up.
It did mean that I had to perform surgery on myself again, reducing my sinus area somewhat in the process. As for Mrs Pegpig's peg? There was a malfunction in the actuator, and it didn't close all the way anymore. It looked like it had suffered something akin to battle damage. Who did she think she was, some kind of raptor? Who was she fighting out there? She was missing a couple of quill feathers in her tail, too.
I made a tsk noise and then started fixing it fairly quickly, but a call from Wakako interrupted me. I answered while continuing to work on the leg, verifying the encryption was on, "Hello, Mrs Okada."
"Hello, Taylor. I have news. I heard back from my contact, and he wanted to know if I was, ahem, fucking with him. So I take it that to mean he has just seen the packet I sent him," she began with a cheery tone.
I smiled, "Well, that is good, I suppose. It probably won't take them that long to verify the efficacy. I assume you followed the plan to discourage dragging their feet?"
"Naturally. I suggested that if I didn't hear anything else within a month or two, we would sell everything to one of their competitors, and I gave him a price of five million eurodollars. He hasn't started to haggle yet, but he did mention that for a price in this range, he would likely need an in-person meeting with the seller, which I will very much try to discourage," Wakako said.
I shook my head firmly, "I would really rather not do that either. I would prefer a total digital exchange," I said, frowning, "Any in-person exchange just provides them with... excessive temptations."
"Yes, however, it might be unavoidable, at least partly. I am sure they will have a technical person on staff who will want to review the data prior to handing over the funds. I'm sure they'd agree to a digital exchange, but only if they get the data first, and frankly, I wouldn't trust him not to stiff us both in that case," she said, then paused, "But it doesn't necessarily mean you need to expose yourself. We're still presenting this as a case of stolen technology, after all."
I hummed, "Well, let's try to avoid as much as possible some stereotypical meet-up in an abandoned warehouse. I don't believe the men with free candy written on the side of their white-panelled vans, either." I rubbed my chin and thought about it more, "If they demand an in-person exchange, then we can demand a very safe location to conduct it, and we can hire mercenaries to conduct the exchange. I might take part as just part of that team, and they'd see me as only another merc. Do you have any ideas for a very safe place you could suggest the meeting take place if they insist on it?"
She frowned, "They'll suggest Bitechnica Plaza, and I'd suggest somewhere in Japantown, which neither side will agree to. Maybe the Azure Plaza."
I considered that. That was one of the most exclusive hotels in the city and only had been in operation since 2060. Ostensibly, it was an independent hotel and resort, but it was linked to the Arasaka-owned Konpeki Holdings, in style if not in technical owners. There were "Konpeki Plaza" hotels in numerous cities around the world. Still, in North America, there were only two, and they were called Azure Plazas and theoretically owned at least fifty-one per cent by a New United States citizen, with also theoretically no link back to the main Arasaka corporation.
I wasn't sure I bought their separation at all, and I doubted anyone in Night City did either. The large Azure Plaza building started construction in the mid-2050s, as much a protest by the Night City city council to the NUSA government as anything else. The twenty or so years of being duped about the Arasaka headquarters explosion really pissed off a lot of people in Night City.
It would be a good choice, though, the security was insane, and it was an internationally known name for business meetings exactly like the kind we had, where neither party trusted the other. The Azure/Konpeki Plaza employees were always trusted interlocutors between two fractious parties, though. Still, there was one issue, "Don't people already think you're a catspaw for Arasaka?"
She scowled at me. Wakako didn't like Arasaka at all, and she had never really told me the reason why, "Absolutely not. And even if they did, there is no way Arasaka... oh, excuse me, there is no way the totally organic American holding company that operates Azure Plaza would take a risk to ruin their reputation on a deal as small as ours. It would be unthinkable."
I slowly nodded. That did make sense, "Okay, push that, then. We'll need to secure a group of mercs and maybe some extra muscle on top of that. Do you think Kiwi's team might be appropriate?" I liked working with them, and I trusted them, so it would be nice if they were watching my back, especially Kiwi, who could likely see a double cross before it happened with her net support. She wouldn't be able to invade the Azure Plaza's subnet, I doubted, but she could set up for our infiltration and exfiltration.
Wakako looked thoughtful for a moment, "I might not have thought of them first, but if you're comfortable working with them, they could work with you as the exchange team, but we'd probably need a couple of additional people. Ruslan has settled down lately and hasn't been taking as many wild risks, so it might work out."
I nodded. I still saw some worrying signs with both Jean and Rus, but it was true they had settled down significantly. I no longer felt that they were circling the drain, merely treading water. I still felt that they needed therapy and probably psychoactive medication, but I couldn't force either of them to get it.
"Let me handle reaching out to them, but I will do so this week or next. Suppose my guy in Biotechnica nixes either Konpeki Plaza or a couple of the other similar locations in town. In that case, I know they'll plan on double-crossing you, so we'll have to move quickly to the next seller. However, I think they'll go to the meeting there if they demand one. Even if we have to pay ten or twelve thousand eddies to rent a conference room for a few hours, it will be worth it," Wakako said, nodding.
She paused for a moment and then asked, "Is there anything else we need to discuss?"
Yes, if they demanded we meet them in some sketchy location or in the middle of their headquarters in town, there was only really one reason they'd do so. I really hoped we didn't have to go with a number two option, as then we'd really be on a clock. "I don't think so. I think it's just a waiting game for us now."
"Alright then, I'll let you go. But I feel good about this deal, despite these hiccups," Wakako said with an uncharacteristic smile on her face.
Shit, did she just jinx us?
I didn't like the name the NPCs, and a few players had given me, but I suppose it was my own fault for not picking out my own "cape name" before I got well-known. It was just that the number of appropriately heroic names for bug controllers was limited. And, if I was being honest, I wasn't exactly playing the hero role anymore. That hadn't lasted too long. I ended up joining Total Terror, but lately, I have been playing with Ruslan and Jean, who told me they played this same game as well.
I had gone in a weird direction with my powers. As you got better with them, you could develop them along certain paths; for example, I could have strengthened the number of total insects I could control, or I could have worked down a path so that I could control larger animals, as well as about a dozen different paths of advancement that the game's AI developed independently for each power. How the game managed to be balanced at all was a wonder, and honestly, parts of it were not. Although there was pretty much always guaranteed to be a way to counter certain powers, you weren't anywhere near guaranteed to have that counter be available to you, so some types of powers, especially Brute ones, ran roughshod, especially in the earlier parts of the game.
However, I worked down a path where I could issue commands to single insects. I didn't, obviously, have the multi-tasking ability to do so simultaneously, but the game gave me assistive technologies like; for example, I could set up control groups for certain insects and could issue a command to the total group or just one insect in the group, I could even give certain commands with some preconditions -- and I assume it used a simple AI to assist me in this. For example, "attack anyone who attacks me" was a command I always gave my wasps.
After that, I spent most of the rest of my power points on an interesting passive ability. It seemed useless at first and was very inexpensive to buy, but it was a passive buff to the ability of any minions had on their carry weight. It wasn't a bonus to their strength they could use in combat, just how much they could carry. Eventually, it got to the point where my wasps could carry twenty grams of weight and still be as fast as they were normally. This was a lot of weight since a wasp weighed much less than a gram in the first place.
I, of course, used this weight to put twenty grams of high-explosives on each wasp. The game engine saw what I was trying to do and thought about it for a while before converting any wasp I did this to a differently named "Wasp (Hymenboomtera)" creature. This was great because I didn't even need to include things like a detonator or anything; the wasps could explode on command, which was not realistic at all. It wasn't realistic, but it was very fun.
World of Heroes was set in the late 1980s timeline. I assumed this was selected so that they could keep it much easier to simulate, as there were a lot fewer computers at this time. There were simulated computers, and as far as I knew, they even ran something similar to the operating systems that were common in the eighties, but their processing power was minimal—things like spreadsheets, word documents, and clunky command lines.
As a result of the era, though, all I had access to was regular plastic explosives, not the more serious metallic-based explosives that could be made in the 2060s, but that was still sufficient. Twenty grams of high explosives wasn't a lot; in fact, a hand grenade had over seven times that amount. But twenty grams exploding right by your eyeballs? It was sufficient. Especially considering I usually had at least two thousand wasps surrounding me most of the time.
And that's how I got my name. I wasn't sure if it was one of the players or the NPCs, but now I would see articles in the newspaper with headlines such as, "Boom Girl strikes again!" It was a little annoying, as I had finally settled on the cape name "Ephemeral," based on the fleeting nature and beauty of explosions, but I got stuck with "Boom Girl."
As I sent a couple dozen or so wasps to crowd near where I knew the hinges would be on the other side of the armoured door, but then I jumped in surprise as Ruslan's character sidled up to my side. In the game, he had a seriously overpowered ability; it was a Stranger power. It made it so people would not recognise him as a threat, almost until he attacked them. NPCs could see him attack someone else, and they would assume he had a good reason or that it was a misunderstanding. It was very similar to the power that I thought Nice Guy, a famous serial killer villain in my old world, had.
Obviously, it couldn't work that way on players, so instead, it just changed his avatar into a different one if you lost line of sight on him, and it wasn't random either; it usually picked an NPC avatar that you would be unlikely to want to attack, like a policewoman in this case. It also always made him look like he wasn't carrying a weapon, even if he was, so he could walk up to a player, pointing a pistol at their head, and they wouldn't know as the game faked plausible arm and hand motions, although always with empty hands. It was a really strong power with how long he had spent levelling it up, especially against NPCs. It was strong enough that the NPCs hadn't ever given him a nickname because they mostly never realised he was there.
"You ready?" he asked, his voice not sounding right from a small Asian woman's body. I guessed he hadn't gotten his power to the point where it mimicked different voices, as I was sure that was an option.
I nodded, though, "Yes." The big issue with my power was that I used up explosives and wasps every time I used my ability. I had lots of areas in the city to get wasps, and thankfully for game-balance reasons, they all froze in time when I was logged off, acting like they were in my inventory, but explosives were a bit harder to get. That's why we were raiding the National Guard armoury today. Ruslan could usually use his ability to steal small things with impunity, but we were taking a truckload today. Literally, we had already stolen the military truck.
He wanted a lot of explosives, too, as he wanted to see if he could sneak in enough explosives, a little at a time, to blow up the equivalent of the local Protectorate headquarters, which was in a skyscraper downtown. I didn't think it would work, personally, and even if it did, they would have it repaired in a week, but he wanted bragging rights.
Jean's ability was a pretty straightforward Brute power, and it made him super strong and pretty much invulnerable unless these guys had a Carl Gustav. He was going to run through the door as soon as I "opened it." I made a stylish flourish, and the door to the armoury blew off its hinges.
We ended up stealing over two tons of explosives and automatic weapons, but we almost got caught by a responding hero. Thankfully, it was an NPC Hero, and while Jean and I were hiding behind a wall from the hero incinerating us with some sort of pyrokinetic ability, which unfortunately cooked any of my wasps that got near, Ruslan casually walked next to him and shot him in the head with a fifty calibre anti-material rifle.
Once we got away clean, I logged off and got dressed in one of my semi-professional outfits. Mr Jin wanted me to go to his office to meet his friend, whose daughter I had helped save. It had taken a week, after all. Apparently, he wasn't out of the country and couldn't fly back until a couple of days ago, and after that, he spent his time with his daughter. Not unreasonable, I thought.
Leaving my apartment, I walked the short distance to Clouds and was let in unescorted to Mr Jin's office. It seemed like I was becoming more of a fixture there. Knocking on the door, he bid me to enter, and I saw him, not behind his desk, and sitting on a couch in the corner of his large office next to another Japanese man who looked about his age; they were clearly in the middle of laughing when I walked in, several cans of empty beer on the coffee table in front of them.
I raised an eyebrow; it was clear these two were friends. "Taylor, Taylor! Come, sit! This is Kobayashi Daiki, Yui's father. Sorry, we go way back and have been looking back on old times."
I looked at the new man as I walked over to a comfortable chair catty-corner to them. He didn't precisely look like what I was expecting a manager of a bunch of gangsters to look like. He was in casual but high-quality clothes, not the suit that Mr Jin was wearing, and he didn't have flashy hair or jewellery. Before I could sit down, he rose up and held out his hands and grabbed mine, saying, "Ryuichi told me what you did, I can't thank you enough for helping save Yui-chan. She's all I have!"
I felt a little uncomfortable. Honestly, I didn't think they would have been successful at extracting the data that I had done, even if they had secured the support of one of the better surgeons in the city. The brain drive was designed to resist such efforts. It was possible I was wrong, but in either case, I didn't really want to make a big deal out of it. I nodded, "Of course. I was able to help a little bit, but I imagine it was your people who did all the heavy lifting."
He seemed to realise what I was saying and didn't push it too much further than that, letting me sit down. Mr Jin was smiling and said, "Kobayashi here is an honest-to-goodness Miyadaiku, so he actually has to travel extensively for his job. He wasn't able to come back until the day before yesterday. Otherwise, he'd have seen you sooner."
At first, I was expecting that unfamiliar word to mean assassin or something, but the auto-translate system subtitled the word as "traditional Japanese carpenter." Wait, what? When Mr Jin had said this man was involved in "traditional activities," I had an entirely different idea in mind. I brought up a screen with an encyclopedia article about Japanese carpentry while I floundered a bit, "Uhh... when you said traditional activities, I thought you meant traditional Tyger Claw activities...." I stammered out and continued, "I was expecting him to have a crew of two hundred leg breakers or something. Surely there can't be that much demand for traditionally built shrines and the like in North America that he would need a team of two hundred... right?"
From what my encyclopedia said, traditional Japanese carpentry used a lot of interesting joineries that minimised or entirely eliminated the need for fasteners like nails or glue. I guessed because while trees were pretty common in ancient Japan, iron was not. It looked very complicated and pretty labour-intensive, and I thought that the only reason it might still be done was aesthetic and bragging reasons by the ultra-rich. Certainly, today, the bottleneck would be wood and not metal fasteners.
Mr Kobayashi laughed heartily at my misapprehension and shrugged, "I mean, I did a little bit of that in the past, and it's true we have a number of no-show jobs for our brothers or sisters who just got out of the system, the ones who have a parole officer anyway." Well, he was just quite up front, now, wasn't he?
He chuckled, "But you'd be surprised at the demand for traditional architecture; I have been working non-stop in Pacifica and Watson lately... high-end tea rooms, mostly, but you're right. I only have about twenty actual helpers and apprentices. I guess I'm also a supervisor of a number of more legitimate businesses that we run, as well." He just shrugged, "It is what it is."
I looked at him oddly and let something pop out of my mouth that I immediately regretted, "Don't you ever feel bad for all the terrible things the Tyger Claws do?"
Mr Jin blinked, surprised, but instead of seeming offended, instead, he seemed amused.
"Uh, not really. Not in the way you seem to be implying, anyway. There are a lot of things that I believe we shouldn't be involved with, but as a whole, I think we're doing much better than the alternative," Mr Kobayashi said quickly and looked at me as if I was a little weird. Then he shrugged and asked, "Who do you suppose is our, the Tyger Claws, biggest competitor?"
I tilted my head to the side, glad I hadn't offended him at least. "The Valentinos are the biggest gang in the city," I said, curious as if the answer was obvious.
He grinned, obviously having expected my answer, "For as intelligent as you seem to be, you have a pretty big streak of naivety, Taylor. Our biggest competitor is the same as the Valentino's biggest competitor— the government. That's all a gang is, a group of people illegally offering the same services that a government might." He then tilted his head in the same way as I had, staring at me, "Ryuichi has told me about you. Do you suppose your dad felt bad about being associated with the NUSA government? I assure you our organisation doesn't hold a candle to all the terrible things they have done. Part of downtown is still a radioactive hole in the ground thanks to them, and that is not even close to the worst of what they've done." That was true; although it was supposedly Militech that had done that, there wasn't all that much difference.
Honestly, I did think Alt-Danny felt that way, as he had conversations with Alt-Taylor about how she should definitely not trust anyone, especially Militech or the NUSA government, although he wouldn't tell her precisely why. I thought that was why Militech or the NUSA didn't feature more prominently in his post-death plans, "I see what you're trying to say, but yes, actually. I happen to know that he detested a lot of the people he used to work for. You're saying that at least you're doing a better job than the NUSA government, but that is a pretty low bar, isn't it?"
He smiled and nodded, "That's true, I suppose. My own father explained all this to me when I was a little younger than your age, but it was stated a bit differently, but a lot of the conflict between our organisation and the government is just competition, not involving morality at all. I can guarantee you that the Tyger Claws give you better odds of winning at our casinos than the state does in the various lottery systems that have been set up."
What was he, some kind of libertarian gangster? It still felt like excuses to me, as I was pretty sure some branches of the Tyger Claws engaged in similar human trafficking that his daughter just recently escaped from, but I had to admit that the Tyger Claws did act as kind of a local government in Japantown and one that was more effective and more approachable too.
Perhaps I would have scoffed at this idea if I thought that the voters, either in Night City or the NUSA, had anything to say at all about what the government would decide to do. I didn't think that, and Alt-Taylor would have laughed in my face if I asked her if she thought, either. Also, I knew that my Tyger Claw taxes were a lot less than my Night City taxes, that was for sure.
Still, to me, it seemed a bit like whataboutism, like just because the government was ultra shitty doesn't give you the right to be slightly less shitty, but I wasn't going to push it, as I relied on a somewhat tranquil relationship with the Claws, although I knew that was being a bit hypocritical.
After that, he invited me to lunch with him and Mr Jin, which I accepted, and the rest of the afternoon was quite amicable. I would have liked to have seen his daughter, but apparently, she was still under a doctor's supervision and her mom, who had also been out of town, wasn't letting her out of her sight. Although they hadn't harmed her precisely, they had kept her and about a dozen other children in a drugged stupor for a period of time. For her, it was just under a day, but others were longer.
This fact made me want to see her even more, just because I hardly trusted the quacks that called themselves doctors around here, even if I knew that Mr Kobayashi would likely spring for the actual, decent physicians. And although I had, theoretically, all the knowledge on psychology that I could ever want, the truth was I was a very subpar therapist, and I suspected that it was mainly post-traumatic stress that the doctor was treating her for.
He once again thanked me, exchanged contact numbers and claimed if I ever needed anything that he could provide, all I had to do was ask.
A month later, I was working on the brain in the jar. I had already interrogated him over the past few days, getting as much information as possible and cross-referencing it with what I read from his data. He had three password-protected banking accounts. The first one, it turned out, wasn't a banking account at all but a line of credit— and already shut down by the time I used several dozen proxies across North America to log into that banking account.
The second account, at a different bank, contained just over twenty-eight thousand Eurodollars, which I siphoned into an anonymous numbered account, which I would keep separate from my other money. Assuming the bank didn't claw it back in a couple of days, I would see if I could convert it into something I could use or cash. I didn't precisely want to just have a link directly to my bank account to this guy's account, but I could likely withdraw the total amount in cash through automated teller machines in a day or two if I tried.
In this world, cash was of two varieties. There were the actual physical notes, which were mostly untraceable, as well as the digital equivalent. You could have a sum of Eurodollars on a data shard or transmit the money digitally to other people without having to go through a bank to do so. Cash on these "digital wallets" wasn't untraceable, but it was irrevocable, namely that a bank could not void a transaction conducted this way or claw back money; it was the same as actual cash that way in that once it was out of your hands it was gone.
It was only the work of a couple of seconds to set up a random "digital wallet" to accept or send cash this way, and that was how I sent most people money. Most phones and implants had apps for this built-in, which was why the majority of people didn't have legitimate banking accounts. That said, I would still try to acquire the funds in physical cash, which was still very popular. Alt-Danny had once said that the government would shift to a completely digital currency the day that politicians stopped accepting bribes.
The last bank account was something that I couldn't access, yet. Apparently, you could only move money out of the account in person with the correct bank account number and password. I had both of those, but I didn't have time for a trip to Europe right now. The bank was based in Spain, and the balance was over a hundred thousand Eurodollars. Perhaps I could hire someone to pick it up for me, for a share of the proceeds.
I didn't find anything earth-shattering in his files, but I came to the conclusion that he worked for a number of people and was something a specialist on person retrieval, in general, in addition to his human trafficking. There wasn't anything listed about who he worked for, precisely, although there was a fair amount of information about who worked for him, so it seemed like he worked using what I recognised as a cellular structure, so compromising his operations, such as getting tortured by the Tyger Claws for abducting the wrong person, couldn't compromise anything but his own team of people.
That was a sign that his organisation was probably, a larger one, which I didn't like the sound of. That first account, which was some kind of line of credit, also led me to that belief as well. From what I could tell, the only thing I could think of was that account was supposed to be used to charge business expenses.
That line of credit would have been the next step if I wanted to continue my investigation, but I didn't because I could see no way of doing it that wouldn't expose me to a potentially murderous group of criminals or, worse, a corporation. So, a little unsatisfied, I decided to stop there and killed Mr Human Trafficker. His brain, though, was still useful.
I decided to go with a hybrid cybernetic solution. It was very easy to permanently end any consciousness the brain might have, and I also carefully excised large portions of his prefrontal cortex and basal ganglia, replacing the connections of this area with specially designed cybernetics based on commercial off-the-shelf memory modules that I had bought.
The memory storage modules were all standard and cheap, but I created a semi-novel neuron-machine interface that would emulate the natural memory access process. It was different from normal data storage implants as those were designed to interface only with other electronics, specifically with an operating system; this was both a simpler and more complicated direct neural interface.
It would allow me pretty much direct access to the unit's "memories", though, which was important as I trained its neural network. There were chemical and biological ways to either remove or create memories in the brain, of course, but they were a messy biological process, something akin to controlled brain damage and not something you'd want to do continuously.
It might seem weird to have bought these storage modules instead of reusing the existing data storage implant that, until recently, had been installed on his brain, but not only was that a very expensive piece of wetware which I had set aside, but it was also not really optimised for this purpose. Sure, it had tons and tons of storage, which I needed, but its complicated security and cryptographic modules just got in the way. I would have needed to disassemble it anyway, and that would have been a real shame.
"Tomorrow, we'll see if you can move the arm on the waldo and maybe see out of the optic sensor," I told the cybernetic brain excitedly as I set my surgical tools aside. Rather than interface with the optic nerve directly, like most cybernetic eyes did, I was experimenting with direct access to the sensory cortex. I thought that maybe, the brain might be able to learn to see using numerous, not just two, optical sensors.
There were a number of similar experiments in this world testing full-borgs in a similar way, but their results were mixed, with attempts at three-hundred-and-sixty-degree vision and the like being failures. I thought it might be due to the individual already being habituated to binocular vision, though; perhaps if I built this neural network from the ground up it might work for sure, but it wasn't like I was starting from scratch here, either. I didn't have the equipment for cloning experiments, and I wasn't entirely sure I could build it from scratch either, so it was a good thing if I ever wanted to branch out that it was a relatively mature technology base here.
It was interesting to see the edges of where my power was considered not entirely in keeping with my speciality, too. I could think of ideas for therapeutic cloning systems that would only duplicate, say, a person's limb or one of their organs, but thinking about how to create traditional clones was just on the edge of what my power wanted to help me with. I got the feeling that it was flexible, though, and that I could probably convince it to help me in time. I wondered if it just preferred me taking brains from people, as I did get the impression it got excited whenever I got into fights.
I wasn't sure if I could succeed with interesting vision experiments where others before had failed as although this brain had no memories anymore, it still had all of the connections it had built up in its previous life, including the same optimisations in its visual cortex for binocular vision. I had added daily neuro-plasticity treatments to it's tank, though, but I wasn't sure that would be enough.
We'd just have to see, I supposed. Standing up, I carefully put all of the equipment I was using in my autoclave to sterilise and noticed a sound coming from my apartment, a soft pecking sound. Mrs Pegpig often pecked at the door when she wanted to get my attention, so I walked into the back to find her, indeed, pecking at the door, standing precariously on the doorknob. Even if she had the knowledge of how to open the door, and even if she was a super strong pigeon, well, she was still a pigeon and couldn't open it.
She warbled at me and jumped off the wall to land on my outstretched hand. She lifted up her cybernetic foot to me, and I automatically zoomed in on the limb. My eyes could barely be called Kiroshis anymore; I added so many aftermarket features to them. They were really the thing I had made that I was most proud of, as I couldn't just add things without either optimising something else or removing it, as the size was fixed. In this case, I added a very tiny gyroscope for stabilisation on the upgraded sixteen times zoom, twice the zoom that Kiroshi's came with by default. To do this, I had to actually remove some of the other electronics in each of the eyes and relocate them to my orbit, devising a near-field communication protocol so that the electronics could be split up.
It did mean that I had to perform surgery on myself again, reducing my sinus area somewhat in the process. As for Mrs Pegpig's peg? There was a malfunction in the actuator, and it didn't close all the way anymore. It looked like it had suffered something akin to battle damage. Who did she think she was, some kind of raptor? Who was she fighting out there? She was missing a couple of quill feathers in her tail, too.
I made a tsk noise and then started fixing it fairly quickly, but a call from Wakako interrupted me. I answered while continuing to work on the leg, verifying the encryption was on, "Hello, Mrs Okada."
"Hello, Taylor. I have news. I heard back from my contact, and he wanted to know if I was, ahem, fucking with him. So I take it that to mean he has just seen the packet I sent him," she began with a cheery tone.
I smiled, "Well, that is good, I suppose. It probably won't take them that long to verify the efficacy. I assume you followed the plan to discourage dragging their feet?"
"Naturally. I suggested that if I didn't hear anything else within a month or two, we would sell everything to one of their competitors, and I gave him a price of five million eurodollars. He hasn't started to haggle yet, but he did mention that for a price in this range, he would likely need an in-person meeting with the seller, which I will very much try to discourage," Wakako said.
I shook my head firmly, "I would really rather not do that either. I would prefer a total digital exchange," I said, frowning, "Any in-person exchange just provides them with... excessive temptations."
"Yes, however, it might be unavoidable, at least partly. I am sure they will have a technical person on staff who will want to review the data prior to handing over the funds. I'm sure they'd agree to a digital exchange, but only if they get the data first, and frankly, I wouldn't trust him not to stiff us both in that case," she said, then paused, "But it doesn't necessarily mean you need to expose yourself. We're still presenting this as a case of stolen technology, after all."
I hummed, "Well, let's try to avoid as much as possible some stereotypical meet-up in an abandoned warehouse. I don't believe the men with free candy written on the side of their white-panelled vans, either." I rubbed my chin and thought about it more, "If they demand an in-person exchange, then we can demand a very safe location to conduct it, and we can hire mercenaries to conduct the exchange. I might take part as just part of that team, and they'd see me as only another merc. Do you have any ideas for a very safe place you could suggest the meeting take place if they insist on it?"
She frowned, "They'll suggest Bitechnica Plaza, and I'd suggest somewhere in Japantown, which neither side will agree to. Maybe the Azure Plaza."
I considered that. That was one of the most exclusive hotels in the city and only had been in operation since 2060. Ostensibly, it was an independent hotel and resort, but it was linked to the Arasaka-owned Konpeki Holdings, in style if not in technical owners. There were "Konpeki Plaza" hotels in numerous cities around the world. Still, in North America, there were only two, and they were called Azure Plazas and theoretically owned at least fifty-one per cent by a New United States citizen, with also theoretically no link back to the main Arasaka corporation.
I wasn't sure I bought their separation at all, and I doubted anyone in Night City did either. The large Azure Plaza building started construction in the mid-2050s, as much a protest by the Night City city council to the NUSA government as anything else. The twenty or so years of being duped about the Arasaka headquarters explosion really pissed off a lot of people in Night City.
It would be a good choice, though, the security was insane, and it was an internationally known name for business meetings exactly like the kind we had, where neither party trusted the other. The Azure/Konpeki Plaza employees were always trusted interlocutors between two fractious parties, though. Still, there was one issue, "Don't people already think you're a catspaw for Arasaka?"
She scowled at me. Wakako didn't like Arasaka at all, and she had never really told me the reason why, "Absolutely not. And even if they did, there is no way Arasaka... oh, excuse me, there is no way the totally organic American holding company that operates Azure Plaza would take a risk to ruin their reputation on a deal as small as ours. It would be unthinkable."
I slowly nodded. That did make sense, "Okay, push that, then. We'll need to secure a group of mercs and maybe some extra muscle on top of that. Do you think Kiwi's team might be appropriate?" I liked working with them, and I trusted them, so it would be nice if they were watching my back, especially Kiwi, who could likely see a double cross before it happened with her net support. She wouldn't be able to invade the Azure Plaza's subnet, I doubted, but she could set up for our infiltration and exfiltration.
Wakako looked thoughtful for a moment, "I might not have thought of them first, but if you're comfortable working with them, they could work with you as the exchange team, but we'd probably need a couple of additional people. Ruslan has settled down lately and hasn't been taking as many wild risks, so it might work out."
I nodded. I still saw some worrying signs with both Jean and Rus, but it was true they had settled down significantly. I no longer felt that they were circling the drain, merely treading water. I still felt that they needed therapy and probably psychoactive medication, but I couldn't force either of them to get it.
"Let me handle reaching out to them, but I will do so this week or next. Suppose my guy in Biotechnica nixes either Konpeki Plaza or a couple of the other similar locations in town. In that case, I know they'll plan on double-crossing you, so we'll have to move quickly to the next seller. However, I think they'll go to the meeting there if they demand one. Even if we have to pay ten or twelve thousand eddies to rent a conference room for a few hours, it will be worth it," Wakako said, nodding.
She paused for a moment and then asked, "Is there anything else we need to discuss?"
Yes, if they demanded we meet them in some sketchy location or in the middle of their headquarters in town, there was only really one reason they'd do so. I really hoped we didn't have to go with a number two option, as then we'd really be on a clock. "I don't think so. I think it's just a waiting game for us now."
"Alright then, I'll let you go. But I feel good about this deal, despite these hiccups," Wakako said with an uncharacteristic smile on her face.
Shit, did she just jinx us?
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