Yeah, that's kind of what I was thinking about. He's been going pretty deep into programming and the generic healing items from the game are nanomeds. While fully developing Meld on his own would be a pretty arduous process, I would think he could repurpose local resources much the same way he did the artificial muscle for his power armor. At the very least, it's something that would be very useful in the future even if he doesn't have the time to make use of it fully yet.
The Brink and Back - Tinker of Fiction
- Thread starter MetaBettaOmega
- Start date
Chapter Four
Hey everyone, I'm here to say that I have a Patreon! Being a supporter has a lot of benefits, like early chapters and access to my original content. You could get up to four chapters early from this story and eight more for each of my other two. Board Members even get to vote on story beats, interludes, names, and more!
If you are interested in those benefits or just want to support my attempt to become a full-time writer, stop by and show your support. Every dollar helps!
I spent about an hour moving around the apartment, getting used to the armor system. By the time I finally took it off, I was pretty well acclimatized to it, having worked my way through a long string of stretches, burpees, jumping jacks, and shadow boxing. I could feel the entire system supporting me, speeding up my movements, and when I started doing one-handed pushups, enhancing my strength and stamina. I was far from some of the insane feats of strength that some of the borgs out there, like Adam Smasher, were capable of. People like him could tear a man limb from limb with little to no struggle or crumple a car with their bare fists. Still, I was definitely at least a hair or two above what a peak human could do.
As long as I was wearing the armor.
When I was done experimenting and testing, I pulled off the armor and set it aside. There was a temptation to just remove the outer AA shell and leave the skeleton and artificial muscle system on, but the knowledge I had gained from building the armor told me that prolonged use could result in serious muscle and bone atrophy. It could be countered by regimented workouts that compensated for the increased strength, but even that only lasted so long. Yes, it would take days, even weeks, for that to set in, but there was no reason to set up bad habits.
When I was finally free of the armor, I spent a few minutes inspecting it for any stress or mistakes. I now knew that the AA skeleton was the only reason that this system worked, as no other material was light and strong enough to withstand the mechanical disadvantage that many of the artificial muscle groups functioned under. It certainly explained why there were no compact power armors like this that existed in Cyberpunk, at least non that I knew about. I'm sure there were plenty of bulkier systems around, though.
I sat down at the computer and spun around in my chair, finally looking back at my computer. It was too late to start another project, for no other reason than I was exhausted from working nearly nonstop. I had five days left with the XCOM human tech tree, plenty of time to work with the plasma weapons, and two or three other smaller projects.
At this point, I had well and truly written off Psionics. I just didn't have the resources to tackle a whole room, not without doing a whole lot of stupid shit. Stupid shit that would probably get me killed. As much as I would have liked to have the ability to create Psionics in my back pocket, letting it go was my only realistic option.
For a moment, I considered pushing through my fatigue and starting on the plasma pistol, or at least the CAD design process for it, only to shake my head. I hadn't seen the outside of my apartment since going out with Jackie, and I was starting to feel the stress and tension coiling around my spine.
Before I could change my mind, I grabbed my keyfob and called Jackie, the only friend I had made here.
"Jackson! Good to hear from you, choom. What's up?" The familiar accented voice asked once the call went through
"Not a whole lot. I just got finished with another project and wanted to see what you were up to," I explained, leaning back in my chair. "I need to get out of the apartment."
"Aye, sure thing! I was thinking about heading to the Coyote tonight, you want a ride?"
"On your cycle?" I asked skeptically.
"It's fine, it's a short trip," He assured me. "I'll meet you out front in an hour."
"Alright, fine. See you then."
It took me a bit to get cleaned up, dressed, and ready to go, but I still ended up killing time by doing some online shopping. I set up an express delivery for the next morning before heading down to wait for Jackie. I was armed, of course, but rather than bring my rinky dink Unity, I strapped my mag pistol into a slightly modified holster. Its non-skeletonized casing made it seem just like any other pistol, though any aficionado would be able to tell it was custom. It was loaded with AA-tipped steel slugs that should be able to punch through any armor or subdermal I could reasonably run into at a dive bar.
I was also wearing my AA under armor, but honestly, I really only took that off when I showered.
I wasn't waiting long before Jackie showed up, his famous red Archer loud enough to hear him coming plenty far enough away. I winced when I saw how little room there would be for me. Not to mention the lack of a helmet.
What kind of idiot rides an organ donor generator without a helmet?
"You know what, I'm just gonna grab a cab," I said as he motioned for me to hop on.
"Ahh, don't be a gallino, hop on," He said. "I'll take it slow, promise."
I let out a sigh, realizing that, apparently, I was that idiot before hopping on. I put my hands behind me, using the back lip of the seat to keep myself on. After a moment, he nodded, the motorcycle rumbling as he gave it gas. Thankfully, he was telling the truth and kept the ride nice and slow, though I assumed that was for his own safety as it was for mine.
When we finally arrived at the bar, we pulled around to a long alleyway. We both got off his bike and walked it much further in, leaving the well-loved and maintained motorcycle at the back of the building. He then led me inside through a back entrance.
The interior of the building looked pretty much like how I remembered it from the game. It wasn't the worst dive bar I'd ever been in, but it was definitely in the running.
As we stepped into the main open area, I could see maybe about twenty or so people, some at the bar, but most scattered around the various sitting and standing areas. Nearby, there were two people playing pool while a third leaned against a game cabinet and watched, a beer in his hand. One of the people playing spotted Jackie and smiled, giving him a small wave before focusing on their game. Jackie waved back but led me to the bar, plopping down on one of the seats.
"Pepe, we'll take a round when you got a sec," Jackie said, nodding to the bartender, who smiled and nodded back but continued talking to a different patron. "So, how's your work going? Anything interesting genio?"
"Just exploring some of the basics for now," I said vaguely. "Still pushing against that single fabricator and 3D printer."
"Well, invest in some more," He said. "I could find more people looking to buy some of this armor."
As he offered, he tapped his chest, the sound of tapping metal audible, though muffled by his shirt.
"That's the thing. The more I focus on making things to sell, the less time I have to develop new stuff," I explained.
Before I could continue, the bartender, who I vaguely remembered had a quest involving debt or something, dropped off two beers.
"Jackie, Mama Welles was looking for you," He said, before giving me a smile as he leaned on his side of the bar.
"She was? Where is she?" He responded, turning around in his stool to look around before stopping after looking up. "Never mind, Pepe, I see her. Put these on my tab and then start one for Jackson. I'm gonna go see what she wants."
Pepe nodded, and Jackie stood, patting my shoulder before walking out of sight. When I spot the bartender staring at me with a frown, I realize he is trying to connect with me. I reach out and pull out my keyfob to swipe.
"Sorry, all 'ganic," I explained with a shrug.
He nodded, looking surprised but generally indifferent, connecting my tab to my account before walking away to another customer. I made a mental note to change the settings on my keyfob to let money transfers in from now on. I sipped from my beer for a few minutes, letting the tension from nonstop pushing myself slowly leave me. After a few minutes, Jackie returned, this time accompanied by his mom.
"So you are the man who got my mijo to wear some protection?" She asked, leaning against the bar on the other side of me. "It's not as good as getting some subdermal, but it's better than nothing. Gracias m'hijo."
"It's no problem, Ms. Welles. He helped me test it out and sell a few pairs of it," I explained. "Small price to pay for good help."
"And polite, too. Just call me Mama Welles. Everyone does. Mijo, don't drink too much, si? I know you've got a job por la mañana" She said, giving me a smile and a nod before walking away.
"I won't Mama, thank you," Jackie responded, watching her leave before leaning heavily on the bar top with a long groan. "I need to move out."
"You know, hearing that would break her heart," Pepe said, having stopped by when Mama Welles did. "She loves having you around so much."
"I would still be around," He insisted. "But she is treating me like niño imaduro. I can't even bring Misty around 'cause she doesn't approve of her. Likes my ex more."
"She means well, pendejo," Pepe reminded him, shaking his head. "Just remember what's important."
"Aye aye, I know," He responded, waving his words away. "So, how's the little one?"
We sat at the bar for a bit, chatting with Pepe, before eventually making our way to the pool table when the previous group of people left. After setting everything up, Jackie hit the break and ended up with solids.
"So, güey, what's your next move?" He asked, leaning over the table. "We made some money, you know what you're doing next?"
"I need to up my production abilities," I explained, watching him smack the cue ball. "My fabricator is impressive, but it's slow. I need a few more production tools, maybe another 3D printer, another fabricator…"
"Sounds expensive."
"It is, especially when I'm spending a lot of money on materials too," I explained.
With XCOM's extreme reliance on AA and Elerium, I was forced to constantly invest more and more money into material production, making everything I made more and more expensive. The warden armor cost more than every weapon I had made so far combined. It had nearly three times as much Alien Alloy as my AA under armor. At this point, I was really looking forward to having a tech tree that was built from normal materials.
"Well… there are other ways to get what you need," He pointed out after missing his second shot. "Plenty of ways we could earn a little money on the side."
"Like what?"
"We could always roll a few Scav dens," He explained with a shrug. "Flatlining them is practically a public service, even includes a bounty usually. They won't even care as long as we don't hit too many."
"'We'?"
"Yeah, choom! I told you I had a good feeling about you, and we made a good bit of eddies already," He said, slapping my shoulder. "I'm the muscle, you're the brains, genio."
"You realize I have no combat experience," I pointed out. "Not even shard simulations."
"Everyone's gotta start somewhere," He answered with a shrug. "I'll keep you alive until you can keep yourself alive."
For nearly a minute, I was silent, Jackie leaving me be so I could think. Morally, I had no issues killing Scavs. No level of 'down on your luck' or 'I need to survive somehow' could excuse openly murdering people and tearing out their cyberware to sell. I had no idea how I would react to actually killing someone, but from a distant perspective, I had no issue dealing out a little justice.
That said, it was definitely a step in a direction. Good, bad, dangerous, safe, I wasn't entirely sure. But it was definitely a step, one I wouldn't be able to take back. I let out a long sigh, before finally nodding.
"Okay. You find us a target, we can hit it," I said. "Keep it small…. And give me a few days. I want to make you some armor and some guns for myself."
"I don't need armor," he said, waving me off before leaning over the pool table and taking a shot. I didn't comment that he had skipped my turn.
"Really? You want to go into combat wearing just the under armor?"
"That's what I got it for, güey," He responded with a smirk. "Can't cover myself up to much, how will the ladies admire me?"
I shook my head, but ultimately gave up trying to convince him. He was an adult, and I couldn't force him to do anything he didn't want to. When he finally took the shot he had been lining up for a few minutes, I tapped up on his pool cue with mine, causing him to hit the cue ball wrong and completely miss. When he pointed at me, and I laughed.
"I seem to remember you having a girlfriend already," I reminded him, the annoyed expression he had morphing into a chagrined shrug. "And you skipped my turn."
We continued to play pool for another hour or so before I called a cab home, since Jackie had been drinking. I was barely comfortable on the back of his Archer when he was sober, never mind four beers and two shots later.
When I arrived home, I restocked the generators before dropping down into bed. The combination of relieved tension and just enough alcohol to feel a bit of a buzz put me to sleep almost immediately.
----------------------
The next morning, I finally got to work on my plasma weapons, starting, as I had with every weapon level, with the pistol. Once the design was finished and the fabricator and 3D printer were running, I started working on the internals. First, I prepared the parts, starting with magnetic field generators, which were essentially a series of powerful electromagnets. Each generator would be directed and contained by Alien Alloy.
Essentially, the system used all of the accumulated knowledge from previous weapon systems, working them together in one final design. For starters, like in the laser weapons, an Elerium shard was agitated with high levels of energy. The shard would absorb and magnify this energy before releasing it as a plasma-esque energy pulse. Rather than converting that energy to charge a laser or a battery, it was directed and fired out as a high-energy beam. The beam was directed by a line of magnetic field generators, just like the mag rifle bullets. Technically, plasma was a bit of a misnomer, but it was close enough.
This system was simple in design, but complicated in execution. Everything had to be precise and reinforced to withstand the high stress and heat put out by the energy released by the Elerium shard. The amount of energy in play energy was a higher concentration than was used in any other weapon. Because of this, Alien Alloy made up a much more significant amount of the weapon frame. Essentially, everything but the outer protective covering, the sight, and the trigger system was Alien Alloy. That meant that not only was each of these weapons going to be more expensive, but I would also have to modify quite a few of the parts off the shelf parts, replacing significant portions with AA.
Thankfully, that also meant all the weapons would be very durable, even the sniper, which looked particularly fragile. In fact, the plasma weapons were overall much safer than the laser and magnetic weapons since they held no charge save a small battery used to generate the agitation energy.
Plasma or Beam weapons, as they were sometimes called, were superior in every way, save cost, to all of the other weapons I had made so far. In fact, the only thing that slowed down the plasma weapons was the charge and energy release time of the Elerium, and a need to cool down after consistent shooting. There was a warning light system that would warn the shooter of overheating before the gun shut down to prevent a critical failure.
It took most of the morning and into the afternoon to finally finish my pistol. When I was done assembling the pieces, I spent a few minutes inspecting it for any issues before turning it on, the subtle whine of charging electronic coming from the grip. Satisfied that my new weapon functioned and armed with a much better understanding of how the pistol worked in much greater detail, I immediately dove into making the rifle.
Unfortunately, I didn't have nearly enough time to finish it that day, so once I was done putting together the CAD files, I set the fabricator up with a specific piece I would need quite a few of, a casing for the magnetic coil. The robotic arm would remove finished ones and insert new stock material as needed. Satisfied that a chunk of it would still get done, I ended up going to bed early.
It was late in the afternoon of the next day when I put the finishing touches on the plasma rifle. I turned it on to test it, and the weapon powered on with no issues, though it whined quite a bit louder than the pistol.
As I gained even more information about the plasma weapon system, I realized I could probably build the plasma lance without the actual mental blueprint. After a quick check of the tech tree in my mind, it showed that the same was true for the laser sniper and mag sniper. Either completing plasma weapons had somehow filled in a few blanks, or all of the sharpshooter variants fell under the concept of "more power=better." At the end of the day, it didn't matter. I could now focus on other things rather than rushing to cover all weapon types.
I had no interest in figuring out the shotgun variants. The rifles were more than adequate at close range, and having a weapon that stopped being effective past fifteen meters was beyond stupid, no matter how much more powerful it was at close range.
When I was done mentally studying what I had learned and what it meant for my tech tree, I realized I had a new problem. This was all a lot of gear, gear I didn't want people to know I had. Eventually, I wanted a place to live and work that wasn't a heavily populated arcology. Unfortunately, for now, I needed a way to get my armor and weapons out of the building so I could use them without showing all of my neighbors what I had.
It only took me a minute to remember that in the game, Jackie had a garage where he kept his bike. The fact that he didn't live out of it was odd since, by the time he had died in the game, he was.
Rather than call him directly, I sent him a message, using my computer to contact his neural link to ask if he had a place I could store my stuff, someplace easier to use than my apartment. It didn't take long for him to respond back and confirm I could use his garage. He even offered to help me move it, saying he knew a guy he could borrow a van from. After a bit of planning, he agreed to come by in a few hours since it would take him a bit to borrow the vehicle.
I settled down on the couch, my brain more than a little fried from working nonstop for two days… again. Still, even if it was a bit rough on me, I realized I was enjoying myself immensely. I could feel my knowledge expanding with everything I made. It was a heady, worryingly enjoyable feeling. I was already looking forward to what kind of secret, other reality knowledge I would get from the next tech tree.
I sat alone for a while, contemplating what I could possibly get, before shaking off the daydream. I was unlikely to get something perfect on my second draw, especially considering that, if my current tech tree was any hint, the trees would be divided up beyond just one entire universe. I was not looking forward to getting something like the Zerg.
Besides, I didn't really want to hit the jackpot so soon. If I unlocked something outstanding, I would end up fighting my limited resources to make anything exceptional. The idea of getting something like Star Trek and not getting to the matter replicator, the holodeck, or the transporter, because I was trying to make a power generator strong enough to support those things, hurt my soul.
Not that I would ever use a transport on humans. Teleportation was fucked, and there was no way I was going to mess around with Prestiging myself in real life.
Eventually, Jackie showed up, knocking on my door. I opened it to reveal him standing there with an old shopping cart filled with broken-down boxes. He pushed it in past me, and I shut the door behind him.
"Really? Do you know a guy who deals in shopping carts, too?" I asked as he stopped at my workshop door.
"No pendejo, just paid a homeless guy out front a few eddies for it," He said with a shrug. "Sounded like you had a lot to move."
I snorted and nodded, tapping the door controls to my workshop and grabbing some of my armor.
"No mames! What the hell is that!" Jackie asked, his accent getting deeper for a moment. He continued in a string of Spanish that was too fast for me to even parse out.
"It's power armor," I said with a shrug.
"Are you serious? How did you get this! This is preem, better than preem!" He asked, taking the chest piece and examining it closely.
"I made it," I explained with a shrug, Jackie's growing tirade halting immediately, his eyes looking to mine. Whatever he was looking for, he seemed to find it.
"I might have underestimated you, compadre," He finally said, eyes going back down to the armor. "I can see why you want to get this out of your apartment. Gonna catch a lot of eyes wearing this around."
"Exactly. Would rather keep what I'm making separate from me for a while," I explained, and he nodded in understanding. "At least until I can take care of myself,"
We spent a bit packing up the various armor pieces, really just using the boxes to cover up everything rather than actually boxing everything up. When I finally brought out the rifle and pistol, Jackie went wide again, though this time I stopped him from taking them from me.
"These are powered weapons, Jackie. No messing around with them," I explained, waiting for him to nod in understanding before handing him the pistol.
"Dios Mio, Jackson, is this what I think it is?" He asked, turning the weapon over in his hand.
"That depends. Do you think it is a high-energy rifle?" I asked. "Cause that's what it is."
"You made a laser gun?"
"Yeah, it's over there," I answered, gesturing back into my workshop to the laser rifle I made a couple of days ago. "These aren't laser weapons. It's closer to plasma, but that's not really right either."
For a long moment, he looked down at the pistol in his hands, then at the rifle I was holding. After a full thirty seconds, he finally spoke again.
"... Jackson, you can't use these," He said, sounding very serious. "I'm no expert, but I know this kind of shit is a big deal. If you start shooting these off, you're going to have a corpo strike team on you before you can blink."
I cursed and chewed my lip, looking down at my rifle in a new light. I had considered the fact that these weapons would get some attention, but I had assumed there would be some leeway, that as long as I didn't use them completely in the open, any rumors would get dismissed. But Jackie was by and far the expert here, for obvious reasons. If he thought using them would be stupid, then using them would be stupid.
And after I spent so long getting them ready.
"Fuck… well, there goes my trump card," I said, shaking my head. "Alright, fine, I can deal. What do you think about my mag guns. Are they fine?"
"I… think they would be," Jackie said with a nod. "They are definitely unique, but they don't come off as being crazy high-tech corpo shit. How powerful is the rifle?"
"Mid to high range," I explained. "At least as good as that high-powered rifle you got for the armor testing."
"Really? That's pretty powerful… Still should be fine, though," He assured me.
We spent about ten minutes securing everything before I walked him out of the building and helped him load it into the back of a different vehicle, this one a van. When everything was all set, he slapped me on the shoulder and said he would be in touch before jumping into the van and driving away. I shook my head and made my way back up to my room, where I got the fabricator working on the more steel and AA rounds for the mag rifle and pistol, before getting the 3D printer going on the mags that would hold them. The only other thing I would need was a spring, which I had plenty of.
Barely a few hours passed when I got another call from Jackie.
"Hey Jackson, I just got word from a netrunner friend about a scav den. She found it scoping out another gig, so she only charged me a small favor," He explained. "Its a bit sooner than we planned, but you up for a scav hunt?"
I let out a long breath before nodding. Then I spoke up because I realized he couldn't actually see me.
"Yes, let's do it,"
"Great! I'll drop by and pick you up in an hour. We can go back to the garage and get you into that a more."
"Sounds good, Jackie. See you then."
I spent the free hour preparing my ammo, stuffing three rifle mags and two pistol mags into a large utility belt. The warden armor had magnetic latch points on the back for my rifle, but I needed a holster for my pistol. Luckily enough, I could remove the holster I was using on my empty belt and affix it to the utility belt. When I was done getting everything set, I threw it all into a bag and made my way down to the first floor.
I only spent a few minutes waiting before I spotted Jackie's borrowed van. By this time, the sun has set, and the city is going dark. There are still plenty of people walking around, but the normal bustle had faded. I made my way to the van and climbed into the passenger seat.
"What's in the bag?" Jackie asked as I shut the door and put the bag down at my feet.
"Ammo for my guns," I explained. "I only had ammo for the pistol, not the rifle, so I machined out some more.
"You can just make more?" He asked, looking over at me with a surprised look. "Damn, now I'm really jealous. I don't usually fuck around with tech weapons, but they sound pretty good."
"Just wait till you see them in action."
We arrived at Jackie's garage, the larger man lifting up the door into the smaller space. His motorcycle was already there, and in the corner was my rifle, my pistol, and my armor. I double-checked that everything was in order before putting on my armor. When I finally felt the last piece connect into place, the artificial muscles flexing and shifting around my body, I shook myself a bit to settle the suit in place.
"Fucking hell, you look like a borg, choom," He said, watching as I picked up my utility belt and fastened it around my waist, then slid my rifle over my back, letting the magnets grab it firmly. "You look like a fucking borg!"
"Well, I don't think I would be able to go toe to toe with one, but the armor does give me a bit of a boost," I responded. "Stronger, faster, tougher, the whole nine yards."
For a moment, Jackie stared at me before he started to laugh, full belly laughter that had him wiping an eye after he was done.
"And you were worried about getting into a fight? 'Borgs scare people, compadre! They might off themselves when you walk in!" He said, shaking his head with a smile. "C'mon pendejo, get in the van. We got scavs to kill."
If you are interested in those benefits or just want to support my attempt to become a full-time writer, stop by and show your support. Every dollar helps!
I spent about an hour moving around the apartment, getting used to the armor system. By the time I finally took it off, I was pretty well acclimatized to it, having worked my way through a long string of stretches, burpees, jumping jacks, and shadow boxing. I could feel the entire system supporting me, speeding up my movements, and when I started doing one-handed pushups, enhancing my strength and stamina. I was far from some of the insane feats of strength that some of the borgs out there, like Adam Smasher, were capable of. People like him could tear a man limb from limb with little to no struggle or crumple a car with their bare fists. Still, I was definitely at least a hair or two above what a peak human could do.
As long as I was wearing the armor.
When I was done experimenting and testing, I pulled off the armor and set it aside. There was a temptation to just remove the outer AA shell and leave the skeleton and artificial muscle system on, but the knowledge I had gained from building the armor told me that prolonged use could result in serious muscle and bone atrophy. It could be countered by regimented workouts that compensated for the increased strength, but even that only lasted so long. Yes, it would take days, even weeks, for that to set in, but there was no reason to set up bad habits.
When I was finally free of the armor, I spent a few minutes inspecting it for any stress or mistakes. I now knew that the AA skeleton was the only reason that this system worked, as no other material was light and strong enough to withstand the mechanical disadvantage that many of the artificial muscle groups functioned under. It certainly explained why there were no compact power armors like this that existed in Cyberpunk, at least non that I knew about. I'm sure there were plenty of bulkier systems around, though.
I sat down at the computer and spun around in my chair, finally looking back at my computer. It was too late to start another project, for no other reason than I was exhausted from working nearly nonstop. I had five days left with the XCOM human tech tree, plenty of time to work with the plasma weapons, and two or three other smaller projects.
At this point, I had well and truly written off Psionics. I just didn't have the resources to tackle a whole room, not without doing a whole lot of stupid shit. Stupid shit that would probably get me killed. As much as I would have liked to have the ability to create Psionics in my back pocket, letting it go was my only realistic option.
For a moment, I considered pushing through my fatigue and starting on the plasma pistol, or at least the CAD design process for it, only to shake my head. I hadn't seen the outside of my apartment since going out with Jackie, and I was starting to feel the stress and tension coiling around my spine.
Before I could change my mind, I grabbed my keyfob and called Jackie, the only friend I had made here.
"Jackson! Good to hear from you, choom. What's up?" The familiar accented voice asked once the call went through
"Not a whole lot. I just got finished with another project and wanted to see what you were up to," I explained, leaning back in my chair. "I need to get out of the apartment."
"Aye, sure thing! I was thinking about heading to the Coyote tonight, you want a ride?"
"On your cycle?" I asked skeptically.
"It's fine, it's a short trip," He assured me. "I'll meet you out front in an hour."
"Alright, fine. See you then."
It took me a bit to get cleaned up, dressed, and ready to go, but I still ended up killing time by doing some online shopping. I set up an express delivery for the next morning before heading down to wait for Jackie. I was armed, of course, but rather than bring my rinky dink Unity, I strapped my mag pistol into a slightly modified holster. Its non-skeletonized casing made it seem just like any other pistol, though any aficionado would be able to tell it was custom. It was loaded with AA-tipped steel slugs that should be able to punch through any armor or subdermal I could reasonably run into at a dive bar.
I was also wearing my AA under armor, but honestly, I really only took that off when I showered.
I wasn't waiting long before Jackie showed up, his famous red Archer loud enough to hear him coming plenty far enough away. I winced when I saw how little room there would be for me. Not to mention the lack of a helmet.
What kind of idiot rides an organ donor generator without a helmet?
"You know what, I'm just gonna grab a cab," I said as he motioned for me to hop on.
"Ahh, don't be a gallino, hop on," He said. "I'll take it slow, promise."
I let out a sigh, realizing that, apparently, I was that idiot before hopping on. I put my hands behind me, using the back lip of the seat to keep myself on. After a moment, he nodded, the motorcycle rumbling as he gave it gas. Thankfully, he was telling the truth and kept the ride nice and slow, though I assumed that was for his own safety as it was for mine.
When we finally arrived at the bar, we pulled around to a long alleyway. We both got off his bike and walked it much further in, leaving the well-loved and maintained motorcycle at the back of the building. He then led me inside through a back entrance.
The interior of the building looked pretty much like how I remembered it from the game. It wasn't the worst dive bar I'd ever been in, but it was definitely in the running.
As we stepped into the main open area, I could see maybe about twenty or so people, some at the bar, but most scattered around the various sitting and standing areas. Nearby, there were two people playing pool while a third leaned against a game cabinet and watched, a beer in his hand. One of the people playing spotted Jackie and smiled, giving him a small wave before focusing on their game. Jackie waved back but led me to the bar, plopping down on one of the seats.
"Pepe, we'll take a round when you got a sec," Jackie said, nodding to the bartender, who smiled and nodded back but continued talking to a different patron. "So, how's your work going? Anything interesting genio?"
"Just exploring some of the basics for now," I said vaguely. "Still pushing against that single fabricator and 3D printer."
"Well, invest in some more," He said. "I could find more people looking to buy some of this armor."
As he offered, he tapped his chest, the sound of tapping metal audible, though muffled by his shirt.
"That's the thing. The more I focus on making things to sell, the less time I have to develop new stuff," I explained.
Before I could continue, the bartender, who I vaguely remembered had a quest involving debt or something, dropped off two beers.
"Jackie, Mama Welles was looking for you," He said, before giving me a smile as he leaned on his side of the bar.
"She was? Where is she?" He responded, turning around in his stool to look around before stopping after looking up. "Never mind, Pepe, I see her. Put these on my tab and then start one for Jackson. I'm gonna go see what she wants."
Pepe nodded, and Jackie stood, patting my shoulder before walking out of sight. When I spot the bartender staring at me with a frown, I realize he is trying to connect with me. I reach out and pull out my keyfob to swipe.
"Sorry, all 'ganic," I explained with a shrug.
He nodded, looking surprised but generally indifferent, connecting my tab to my account before walking away to another customer. I made a mental note to change the settings on my keyfob to let money transfers in from now on. I sipped from my beer for a few minutes, letting the tension from nonstop pushing myself slowly leave me. After a few minutes, Jackie returned, this time accompanied by his mom.
"So you are the man who got my mijo to wear some protection?" She asked, leaning against the bar on the other side of me. "It's not as good as getting some subdermal, but it's better than nothing. Gracias m'hijo."
"It's no problem, Ms. Welles. He helped me test it out and sell a few pairs of it," I explained. "Small price to pay for good help."
"And polite, too. Just call me Mama Welles. Everyone does. Mijo, don't drink too much, si? I know you've got a job por la mañana" She said, giving me a smile and a nod before walking away.
"I won't Mama, thank you," Jackie responded, watching her leave before leaning heavily on the bar top with a long groan. "I need to move out."
"You know, hearing that would break her heart," Pepe said, having stopped by when Mama Welles did. "She loves having you around so much."
"I would still be around," He insisted. "But she is treating me like niño imaduro. I can't even bring Misty around 'cause she doesn't approve of her. Likes my ex more."
"She means well, pendejo," Pepe reminded him, shaking his head. "Just remember what's important."
"Aye aye, I know," He responded, waving his words away. "So, how's the little one?"
We sat at the bar for a bit, chatting with Pepe, before eventually making our way to the pool table when the previous group of people left. After setting everything up, Jackie hit the break and ended up with solids.
"So, güey, what's your next move?" He asked, leaning over the table. "We made some money, you know what you're doing next?"
"I need to up my production abilities," I explained, watching him smack the cue ball. "My fabricator is impressive, but it's slow. I need a few more production tools, maybe another 3D printer, another fabricator…"
"Sounds expensive."
"It is, especially when I'm spending a lot of money on materials too," I explained.
With XCOM's extreme reliance on AA and Elerium, I was forced to constantly invest more and more money into material production, making everything I made more and more expensive. The warden armor cost more than every weapon I had made so far combined. It had nearly three times as much Alien Alloy as my AA under armor. At this point, I was really looking forward to having a tech tree that was built from normal materials.
"Well… there are other ways to get what you need," He pointed out after missing his second shot. "Plenty of ways we could earn a little money on the side."
"Like what?"
"We could always roll a few Scav dens," He explained with a shrug. "Flatlining them is practically a public service, even includes a bounty usually. They won't even care as long as we don't hit too many."
"'We'?"
"Yeah, choom! I told you I had a good feeling about you, and we made a good bit of eddies already," He said, slapping my shoulder. "I'm the muscle, you're the brains, genio."
"You realize I have no combat experience," I pointed out. "Not even shard simulations."
"Everyone's gotta start somewhere," He answered with a shrug. "I'll keep you alive until you can keep yourself alive."
For nearly a minute, I was silent, Jackie leaving me be so I could think. Morally, I had no issues killing Scavs. No level of 'down on your luck' or 'I need to survive somehow' could excuse openly murdering people and tearing out their cyberware to sell. I had no idea how I would react to actually killing someone, but from a distant perspective, I had no issue dealing out a little justice.
That said, it was definitely a step in a direction. Good, bad, dangerous, safe, I wasn't entirely sure. But it was definitely a step, one I wouldn't be able to take back. I let out a long sigh, before finally nodding.
"Okay. You find us a target, we can hit it," I said. "Keep it small…. And give me a few days. I want to make you some armor and some guns for myself."
"I don't need armor," he said, waving me off before leaning over the pool table and taking a shot. I didn't comment that he had skipped my turn.
"Really? You want to go into combat wearing just the under armor?"
"That's what I got it for, güey," He responded with a smirk. "Can't cover myself up to much, how will the ladies admire me?"
I shook my head, but ultimately gave up trying to convince him. He was an adult, and I couldn't force him to do anything he didn't want to. When he finally took the shot he had been lining up for a few minutes, I tapped up on his pool cue with mine, causing him to hit the cue ball wrong and completely miss. When he pointed at me, and I laughed.
"I seem to remember you having a girlfriend already," I reminded him, the annoyed expression he had morphing into a chagrined shrug. "And you skipped my turn."
We continued to play pool for another hour or so before I called a cab home, since Jackie had been drinking. I was barely comfortable on the back of his Archer when he was sober, never mind four beers and two shots later.
When I arrived home, I restocked the generators before dropping down into bed. The combination of relieved tension and just enough alcohol to feel a bit of a buzz put me to sleep almost immediately.
----------------------
The next morning, I finally got to work on my plasma weapons, starting, as I had with every weapon level, with the pistol. Once the design was finished and the fabricator and 3D printer were running, I started working on the internals. First, I prepared the parts, starting with magnetic field generators, which were essentially a series of powerful electromagnets. Each generator would be directed and contained by Alien Alloy.
Essentially, the system used all of the accumulated knowledge from previous weapon systems, working them together in one final design. For starters, like in the laser weapons, an Elerium shard was agitated with high levels of energy. The shard would absorb and magnify this energy before releasing it as a plasma-esque energy pulse. Rather than converting that energy to charge a laser or a battery, it was directed and fired out as a high-energy beam. The beam was directed by a line of magnetic field generators, just like the mag rifle bullets. Technically, plasma was a bit of a misnomer, but it was close enough.
This system was simple in design, but complicated in execution. Everything had to be precise and reinforced to withstand the high stress and heat put out by the energy released by the Elerium shard. The amount of energy in play energy was a higher concentration than was used in any other weapon. Because of this, Alien Alloy made up a much more significant amount of the weapon frame. Essentially, everything but the outer protective covering, the sight, and the trigger system was Alien Alloy. That meant that not only was each of these weapons going to be more expensive, but I would also have to modify quite a few of the parts off the shelf parts, replacing significant portions with AA.
Thankfully, that also meant all the weapons would be very durable, even the sniper, which looked particularly fragile. In fact, the plasma weapons were overall much safer than the laser and magnetic weapons since they held no charge save a small battery used to generate the agitation energy.
Plasma or Beam weapons, as they were sometimes called, were superior in every way, save cost, to all of the other weapons I had made so far. In fact, the only thing that slowed down the plasma weapons was the charge and energy release time of the Elerium, and a need to cool down after consistent shooting. There was a warning light system that would warn the shooter of overheating before the gun shut down to prevent a critical failure.
It took most of the morning and into the afternoon to finally finish my pistol. When I was done assembling the pieces, I spent a few minutes inspecting it for any issues before turning it on, the subtle whine of charging electronic coming from the grip. Satisfied that my new weapon functioned and armed with a much better understanding of how the pistol worked in much greater detail, I immediately dove into making the rifle.
Unfortunately, I didn't have nearly enough time to finish it that day, so once I was done putting together the CAD files, I set the fabricator up with a specific piece I would need quite a few of, a casing for the magnetic coil. The robotic arm would remove finished ones and insert new stock material as needed. Satisfied that a chunk of it would still get done, I ended up going to bed early.
It was late in the afternoon of the next day when I put the finishing touches on the plasma rifle. I turned it on to test it, and the weapon powered on with no issues, though it whined quite a bit louder than the pistol.
As I gained even more information about the plasma weapon system, I realized I could probably build the plasma lance without the actual mental blueprint. After a quick check of the tech tree in my mind, it showed that the same was true for the laser sniper and mag sniper. Either completing plasma weapons had somehow filled in a few blanks, or all of the sharpshooter variants fell under the concept of "more power=better." At the end of the day, it didn't matter. I could now focus on other things rather than rushing to cover all weapon types.
I had no interest in figuring out the shotgun variants. The rifles were more than adequate at close range, and having a weapon that stopped being effective past fifteen meters was beyond stupid, no matter how much more powerful it was at close range.
When I was done mentally studying what I had learned and what it meant for my tech tree, I realized I had a new problem. This was all a lot of gear, gear I didn't want people to know I had. Eventually, I wanted a place to live and work that wasn't a heavily populated arcology. Unfortunately, for now, I needed a way to get my armor and weapons out of the building so I could use them without showing all of my neighbors what I had.
It only took me a minute to remember that in the game, Jackie had a garage where he kept his bike. The fact that he didn't live out of it was odd since, by the time he had died in the game, he was.
Rather than call him directly, I sent him a message, using my computer to contact his neural link to ask if he had a place I could store my stuff, someplace easier to use than my apartment. It didn't take long for him to respond back and confirm I could use his garage. He even offered to help me move it, saying he knew a guy he could borrow a van from. After a bit of planning, he agreed to come by in a few hours since it would take him a bit to borrow the vehicle.
I settled down on the couch, my brain more than a little fried from working nonstop for two days… again. Still, even if it was a bit rough on me, I realized I was enjoying myself immensely. I could feel my knowledge expanding with everything I made. It was a heady, worryingly enjoyable feeling. I was already looking forward to what kind of secret, other reality knowledge I would get from the next tech tree.
I sat alone for a while, contemplating what I could possibly get, before shaking off the daydream. I was unlikely to get something perfect on my second draw, especially considering that, if my current tech tree was any hint, the trees would be divided up beyond just one entire universe. I was not looking forward to getting something like the Zerg.
Besides, I didn't really want to hit the jackpot so soon. If I unlocked something outstanding, I would end up fighting my limited resources to make anything exceptional. The idea of getting something like Star Trek and not getting to the matter replicator, the holodeck, or the transporter, because I was trying to make a power generator strong enough to support those things, hurt my soul.
Not that I would ever use a transport on humans. Teleportation was fucked, and there was no way I was going to mess around with Prestiging myself in real life.
Eventually, Jackie showed up, knocking on my door. I opened it to reveal him standing there with an old shopping cart filled with broken-down boxes. He pushed it in past me, and I shut the door behind him.
"Really? Do you know a guy who deals in shopping carts, too?" I asked as he stopped at my workshop door.
"No pendejo, just paid a homeless guy out front a few eddies for it," He said with a shrug. "Sounded like you had a lot to move."
I snorted and nodded, tapping the door controls to my workshop and grabbing some of my armor.
"No mames! What the hell is that!" Jackie asked, his accent getting deeper for a moment. He continued in a string of Spanish that was too fast for me to even parse out.
"It's power armor," I said with a shrug.
"Are you serious? How did you get this! This is preem, better than preem!" He asked, taking the chest piece and examining it closely.
"I made it," I explained with a shrug, Jackie's growing tirade halting immediately, his eyes looking to mine. Whatever he was looking for, he seemed to find it.
"I might have underestimated you, compadre," He finally said, eyes going back down to the armor. "I can see why you want to get this out of your apartment. Gonna catch a lot of eyes wearing this around."
"Exactly. Would rather keep what I'm making separate from me for a while," I explained, and he nodded in understanding. "At least until I can take care of myself,"
We spent a bit packing up the various armor pieces, really just using the boxes to cover up everything rather than actually boxing everything up. When I finally brought out the rifle and pistol, Jackie went wide again, though this time I stopped him from taking them from me.
"These are powered weapons, Jackie. No messing around with them," I explained, waiting for him to nod in understanding before handing him the pistol.
"Dios Mio, Jackson, is this what I think it is?" He asked, turning the weapon over in his hand.
"That depends. Do you think it is a high-energy rifle?" I asked. "Cause that's what it is."
"You made a laser gun?"
"Yeah, it's over there," I answered, gesturing back into my workshop to the laser rifle I made a couple of days ago. "These aren't laser weapons. It's closer to plasma, but that's not really right either."
For a long moment, he looked down at the pistol in his hands, then at the rifle I was holding. After a full thirty seconds, he finally spoke again.
"... Jackson, you can't use these," He said, sounding very serious. "I'm no expert, but I know this kind of shit is a big deal. If you start shooting these off, you're going to have a corpo strike team on you before you can blink."
I cursed and chewed my lip, looking down at my rifle in a new light. I had considered the fact that these weapons would get some attention, but I had assumed there would be some leeway, that as long as I didn't use them completely in the open, any rumors would get dismissed. But Jackie was by and far the expert here, for obvious reasons. If he thought using them would be stupid, then using them would be stupid.
And after I spent so long getting them ready.
"Fuck… well, there goes my trump card," I said, shaking my head. "Alright, fine, I can deal. What do you think about my mag guns. Are they fine?"
"I… think they would be," Jackie said with a nod. "They are definitely unique, but they don't come off as being crazy high-tech corpo shit. How powerful is the rifle?"
"Mid to high range," I explained. "At least as good as that high-powered rifle you got for the armor testing."
"Really? That's pretty powerful… Still should be fine, though," He assured me.
We spent about ten minutes securing everything before I walked him out of the building and helped him load it into the back of a different vehicle, this one a van. When everything was all set, he slapped me on the shoulder and said he would be in touch before jumping into the van and driving away. I shook my head and made my way back up to my room, where I got the fabricator working on the more steel and AA rounds for the mag rifle and pistol, before getting the 3D printer going on the mags that would hold them. The only other thing I would need was a spring, which I had plenty of.
Barely a few hours passed when I got another call from Jackie.
"Hey Jackson, I just got word from a netrunner friend about a scav den. She found it scoping out another gig, so she only charged me a small favor," He explained. "Its a bit sooner than we planned, but you up for a scav hunt?"
I let out a long breath before nodding. Then I spoke up because I realized he couldn't actually see me.
"Yes, let's do it,"
"Great! I'll drop by and pick you up in an hour. We can go back to the garage and get you into that a more."
"Sounds good, Jackie. See you then."
I spent the free hour preparing my ammo, stuffing three rifle mags and two pistol mags into a large utility belt. The warden armor had magnetic latch points on the back for my rifle, but I needed a holster for my pistol. Luckily enough, I could remove the holster I was using on my empty belt and affix it to the utility belt. When I was done getting everything set, I threw it all into a bag and made my way down to the first floor.
I only spent a few minutes waiting before I spotted Jackie's borrowed van. By this time, the sun has set, and the city is going dark. There are still plenty of people walking around, but the normal bustle had faded. I made my way to the van and climbed into the passenger seat.
"What's in the bag?" Jackie asked as I shut the door and put the bag down at my feet.
"Ammo for my guns," I explained. "I only had ammo for the pistol, not the rifle, so I machined out some more.
"You can just make more?" He asked, looking over at me with a surprised look. "Damn, now I'm really jealous. I don't usually fuck around with tech weapons, but they sound pretty good."
"Just wait till you see them in action."
We arrived at Jackie's garage, the larger man lifting up the door into the smaller space. His motorcycle was already there, and in the corner was my rifle, my pistol, and my armor. I double-checked that everything was in order before putting on my armor. When I finally felt the last piece connect into place, the artificial muscles flexing and shifting around my body, I shook myself a bit to settle the suit in place.
"Fucking hell, you look like a borg, choom," He said, watching as I picked up my utility belt and fastened it around my waist, then slid my rifle over my back, letting the magnets grab it firmly. "You look like a fucking borg!"
"Well, I don't think I would be able to go toe to toe with one, but the armor does give me a bit of a boost," I responded. "Stronger, faster, tougher, the whole nine yards."
For a moment, Jackie stared at me before he started to laugh, full belly laughter that had him wiping an eye after he was done.
"And you were worried about getting into a fight? 'Borgs scare people, compadre! They might off themselves when you walk in!" He said, shaking his head with a smile. "C'mon pendejo, get in the van. We got scavs to kill."
Last edited:
Ah, yes, Atom Smasher, heard that the guy could flatten an atom into a pancake, can't imagine the MC reaching that level of strength
- Location
- England
written off
- Location
- UK
An MC who was scared to go out and was aware of the pervasive nature of the corpos truly didn't consider the implications of the usage of energy weaponry? Sounds kinda forced tbh… At least Jackie stopped him.
Chapter Five
Hey everyone, I'm here to say that I have a Patreon! Being a supporter has a lot of benefits, like early chapters and access to my original content. You could get up to four chapters early from this story and eight more for each of my other two. Board Members even get to vote on story beats, interludes, names, and more!
If you are interested in those benefits or just want to support my attempt to become a full-time writer, stop by and show your support. Every dollar helps!
We quickly found out that, with my armor on, I was just slightly too big for the passenger seat of the large van. Jackie joked about me running alongside him as he drove, but I just climbed into the back. I was worried I would be taking up room for the loot, but he assured me he had it covered. The van was just in case we found something either of us wanted to keep.
I climbed into the back and sat down against the outside wall of the vehicle. Thankfully, it was relatively clean.
"So, where is the den?" I asked as I shut the van's back doors and sat down. "Nowhere near here, I hope?"
"Ah no, never stir up shit where you eat and sleep, genio," Jacke responded as if he was giving sage advice. "Plus, I don't want to upset the balance between Valentinos and the scavs. Heywoods got enough trouble without mixing in agitated scavs in."
"Thought you said they won't care if we only hit a few?'
"I mean, they will notice, choom, but they aren't gonna come hunt oy down," He explained. "Might be agitated for a few days. They may work vaguely together, but trust me, scavs don't care about anything but themselves and their profit. Long as we don't move deep into their org and start cutting into their eddies, they won't really care."
I nodded in understanding before busying myself, checking over my weapons for the third time, making sure they were fully loaded and charged, ready for combat. After that, I just focused on keeping my breathing steady and calm. Luckily, the helmet of the warden armor was full of fans and cooling systems, keeping me surprisingly comfortable, considering it was a fully military design.
"Ey, choom, we're here. You ready to rock?" Jackie asked, startling me from the slight meditative state I managed to sink myself into.
"Yeah, I'm ready."
He nodded at my simple response, watching as I climbed out the back of the van, standing tall, feeling the musculature of the suit work around me. I had to admit, it was hard to not feel confident wearing so much armor. I scanned the area, with the armor giving me just enough of a height boost to look over the van.
Jackie climbed out of the driver's seat and started making his way to one of the many buildings along the street. It was heavily graffitied, and its doors were nearly hidden by several large mounds of trash. I took a moment to mentally thank Lily Shen that the original warden armor had built-in air filters before following after my new friend.
"According to T-bug, there shouldn't be more than ten of them here," Jackie said, leading the way into the first door. "The first floor is all garages, but we should clear it first. Just follow my lead… What should I call you?"
"Uh... what do you mean?"
"I gotta call you something if I can't call you by your name," He pointed out as he stopped, his hand on a solid inner door just a few feet from the main entrance. "How about Alloy? You said your stuff is made of a special alloy, right?"
"It is… Really, though? Alloy?"
"Trust me, choom, borgs love giving themselves names like that. Just look at Adam Smasher. You think his mama named him that?"
"I… Well, it will do for now, I guess," I said with a shrug, looking over my shoulder at the door we had just come through. "Should I call you something else?"
"Nah, Just Jackie. I'm not trying to be someone else," He pointed out with a grin before pulling out a single pistol, checking its magazine, and giving me a nod. "Alright, Alloy, let's do this."
I nodded and pulled my rifle off of my back, the electromagnets keeping it in place fighting me for a second before releasing the weapon. I flicked the high-tech weapon on, smirking as the whine of the charging capacitors filled the small entry room. I set the weapon to fire with a three-round burst before giving Jackie the thumbs up.
"I'm ready, lead us in,"
Jackie nodded and pushed the door inward with his shoulder, his pistol held out and ready as we walked in. I couldn't help but notice that while the large man clearly had experience, he also just walked into the room, crossing a clear, open space. Once he had crossed a three-meter clearing, he finally took cover behind the side of a large truck. Clearly, while Jackie had more experience than me, both with the people we were fighting and with violence as a whole, he was far from a strategic genius.
Still, I would rather have him here than anyone else I could think of, to be honest.
It just meant that I would need to take over V's job of being the brains when I got more experience under my belt. At least, I would if we continued to work together like this.
As I followed after him, I tried to scan around as much of the first floor as I could. Most of the space was taken up by three large parking spots, with two rows of storage along the wall behind them and three garage doors in front. Two of the parking spots were taken, with the large truck Jackie was taking cover behind, and a much smaller car on the opposite side of the room. The spot between them was filled with a cargo crate, sealed with a sturdy-looking lock. Across the building, a single set of stairs disappeared upwards, leading to the second floor.
As I looked around, I could see dozens of clues as to what kind of place this was. Blood spatter on the ground and along the back of the vehicle we were now hiding behind, and random personal belongings were thrown into a corner like trash. There was even more blood leading from the back of the car to the stairs.
"Alright, looks like ther-"
Jackie cut himself off and brought his gun up as someone came out from between two rows of the shelves that ran along the back of the room. The scavenger was rolling his one organic shoulder, a dark blue cyberware arm scratching his side as he yawned, almost as if he had just woken up. I could see glowing implants on either side of his face, and blood spattered along his shirt and pants. His eyes went wide when he spotted me, locking on and hardly even noticing my partner.
It seemed like Jackie was right. Borgs really do freak people out.
Seeing as though neither Jackie nor I had any silent options, something that I was already mentally noting to fix, I raised my rifle and squeezed the trigger. The sound of my weapon charging and launching three rounds of solid metal slugs broke through the relative silence of the garage. Jackie raises his pistol as well, firing twice.
Both of Jackie's much more experienced shots hit the scav, center of mass with a surprisingly tight grouping, especially considering how startled he was. Two of my shots went wide, but the single shot that did connect blew the man's orgninic arm clean off. Blood splattered against the floor, shelving, and even the low ceiling while the man dropped to the ground, already stone-cold dead.
"Puta madre ay güey! What the hell are you shooting out of that thing?" Jackie yelled before noticing the commotion our gunfire had generated upstairs. "Go around that way, take cover behind the crate so we don't get sidelined!"
Jackie pointed down and around the car he was hiding behind, and since his request made sense, I rushed around and managed to just make it into cover before a burst of bullets sparked off the floor behind me, chipping the concrete.
Shouting in Russian echoed from the stairs, and I peered around the corner, spotting three people of various fits and levels of augmentation making their way down the stairs. I pulled the trigger on my rifle twice, sending two bursts of AA tipped steel their way. Every single shot went wide, slamming into the stairs, wall, and door behind them, throwing up shrapnel but ultimately not harming anyone. I cursed, pulling back as all three of them focused on me, firing a barrage of automatic weapons fire that peppered the cargo container I was hiding behind. A few even slammed into my armor, denting several plates and rattling my left shoulder. Much of the impact was bled off from the artificial muscle layer, but at least one of them felt like getting slapped with a bat.
I cursed, rolling my shoulder despite the already spreading soreness, before hearing Jackie return fire, using the distraction I had made to take out one of the people firing at me. Cursing myself for not practicing with my mag rifle, I stepped out of cover the second there was a lull in the incoming bullets. I raised my rifle as the two remaining scavs looked at me in shock, seemingly just realizing what they were shooting at before they opened up.
My first burst slammed into the highest scav, obliterating the woman's gun and removing her left hand before putting her out of her misery by blowing a fist-sized chunk where her heart was supposed to be. I kept pulling the trigger, blowing chunks out of the stairs until I finally managed to control my aim to stitch three shots across a man with two replaced arms and glowing blue eyes. He collapsed into a bloody mess, like a broken puppet with its strings cut.
"You good?" I called out to Jackie as I pressed the mag release on the side of my rifle. The mostly empty mag dropped to the floor before I slid a new one into place.
"Yeah, I'm good," Jackie shouted back, making his way to the stairs between the shelving and the parking bays. "You got a fucking cannon, choom. Now I wanna know what your other toys do."
"Me too. I think I might have been underestimating them," I admitted.
In truth, I was relatively certain the extra power was a combination of me comparing the weapon's effectiveness against more armored targets and that I had made the mag weapons out of parts that were actually better than what XCOM had on hand. The mag coils, capacitors, and several other bits rated far above what XCOM used. I had restricted a lot of those parts and done quite a bit of extra math and programming to make sure it all still worked.
Looking at what the rifle was now doing, I might have miscalculated. Still, I couldn't have been too far off, as it had counted as close enough to the original design to confirm its creation for the tech tree. I was still learning how finicky that process really was, but it still seemed like a decent confirmation that this rifle wasn't that different from the original. I-
"Eh, focus up, Alloy, we got more to deal with," Jackie called out, waving me closer. "There are probably more upstairs, I will-"
"No, you're not wearing any armor, I'm going first," I said easily, surprising myself as much as I surprised Jackie. When he gave me a look, I just shrugged. "Next time, wear armor if you want to be the heavy."
"Fine, whatever, you can go first," He said, gesturing up the stairs. "Make it fast, though!"
I nodded, and after checking my gun one final time, I charged up the stairs. I shift my body as I move and slam my shoulder into the frame, crumpling the door around the lock area as it struggled to hold me back before finally bursting open, all in a split second. Part of me wanted to leap into the room in a combat role, but luckily, I had enough sense not to embarrass myself. I didn't even know how to do a combat roll normally, never mind while actively enhanced.
I was starting to realize I may have really jumped the gun on this.
As I burst into the room, I also realized I wasn't the only one going for the door. My impact had knocked someone back, a leather jacket-clad man with a submachine gun held in one hand, the weapon off target from the impact. Rather than try and shoot him, I just kept running, shoulder lowered, until I slammed into him as well. I crashed into him with enough force to drive him back, partially lift him up, and slam him into a concrete wall. I could feel his chest give in, sounding like bending metal rather than cracking bone, which told me he had some sort of bone replacement.
Despite the impact, he was still moving, raising his weapon just enough to aim it at my legs, pulling the trigger, and dumping his mag into my thigh and waist. None of the bullets made it through, but it still felt like dozens of light punches to my leg.
With a curse, I slammed my fist into his mechanical shoulder, the one holding the gun, feeling the cyberware there buckle under the blow. I hammered it again and again until it was a sparking mangled mess, the limb hung limply. Finally, I stepped back, brought my rifle back up, and wasted a three-round burst to finish him off.
Needed to add a knife to my list of things to make.
By now, Jackie was at the door, taking cover against the frame. I turned around slightly to look for cover as well, only to feel something slam into my side hard enough to spin me around. I could feel a deep dent in my armor on my right side, deep enough that it was already restricting my movement. Jackie popped out of cover and fired his pistol, giving me time to recover and take cover. As I moved, I saw a scav wielding a double-barrel shotgun drop his weapon and slump to the ground. He must have been shooting slugs, judging from how much damage it did.
"You good?" Jackie asked as we stepped further into the first room on the second floor.
"Yeah, armor stopped it…" I said, reaching down to check the large dent before adding. "Barely."
Jackie didn't have time to comment because a pair of scavs burst out of a nearby door, screaming in Russian, immediately opening fire. I saw Jackie take a pair of shots to the chest before I raised my rifle and opened fire. The first three rounds ruined a woman with some sort of projection implant on her face, punching through her chest, stomach, and neck. The second burst missed the second person completely, letting him fire his pistol at me over and over. Finally, I managed to pull my shots tight enough to punch two rounds through his shoulder and chest.
Through all of that, I was shot several times, all of them leaving only streaks of lead and copper on my armor. It seemed my armor was more than enough to handle smaller rounds.
With the current threats terminated, I turned to check on Jackie, only to find him already standing, rubbing his chest. I could see holes in his jacket and shirt, as well as the armor underneath.
"Maldita Perra!… Looks like your armor works, amigo," He said with a pained grunt, shaking it off and reloading his pistol. "The plate took it easy, but the scales sting like hell!"
"Would hurt a lot less if you were wearing some armor," I pointed out in a sing-song voice, getting a slightly annoyed look in return. "I can't force you, but I can definitely pester you about it."
He chuckled and shook his head before motioning to go around a set of chests and boxes in the center of the room. Now that we weren't being shot at, I could better appreciate our surroundings. The room was simple enough, with a couch along one wall, a desk and computer nearby, with containers, shelves, and other stuff around the room. So far, save the occasional dry bloodstain, it looked pretty ordinary.
We crossed the room on opposite sides, eventually converging on the last door in the room. I couldn't be sure, but judging from how big the building had looked from the outside and how the garage had looked, there was only really enough space for a medium-sized room on the other side. As we approached it, I caught Jack's eye, who gestured for me to go ahead.
"By all means, compadre, do you thing," He said.
I nodded and lined up with the door, spartan kicking it just next to the lock. The door, which wasn't the most impressive-looking fixture, caved in immediately, slamming open with a surprising amount of force. The sound of some random song, with way too much bass and set way too loud, filled the room, getting even loaded as I moved forward. I stepped into the new room to find a scav cowering in the corner, trembling with Unity in his hand. His apron was covered in blood, and only a few feet away was a DIY operating table, complete with a "patient." Between the amount of blood collecting on the table and the pale blue tinge to a lot of "patients" skin, it was obvious that they were dead.
As I stepped into the room, the last scav fired at me, their Unity going off as quickly as they could pull the trigger. More than half the shots didn't even get close to me, hitting the concrete walls, cabinets, and crates stacked around me. The few bullets that did impact my armor barely did anything but cosmetically mark it.
When the scavs gun clicked empty, I took aim with my rifle, flipped it to semi-auto, and damn near blew their head off.
After a moment, I looked around and used another shot to scatter chunks of the radio all over the right side of the room.
"You good?" Jackie asked, coming in from behind, noticing that I had obliterated the radio. "Not a fan of music, Alloy?"
"Just couldn't hear if we were alone," I responded, stepping further into the room, checking around the corners and behind a few crates. "I think we are clear."
"Yeah, I think so too...." Jackie said, watching me closely. "You feel okay? You said this was your first gunfight…"
I took a moment to collect myself, taking a deep breath and letting it out. My adrenaline, which had been pounding in my ears, was slowly fading into the background, leaving me feeling drained and uncomfortable. I looked over at the corner of the room, where the scav lay dead, blood and brains splattered against the wall. I felt… fine. And even more, the fact that I felt nothing didn't phase me either. These lunatic's murdered and killed people, and I wasn't going to waste perfectly good guilt and emotional trauma on them.
Especially considering it was likely that I would have better reasons to feel guilt or be traumatized eventually.
"Yeah, I'm good," I responded. "Like you said, these guys are scum. Killing them is practically a public service."
"Aye, it is. Good to see you can hack it."
"So, what happens next? We fill up the van or…"
"No, I got some cleaners coming, just gotta give them a call," He explained, his eyes already glowing. "They come in, strip a place of anything useful, and give you a cut of the profits. Even help you take out any chrome you might want from people you kill."
"I… I really shouldn't be surprised something like that exists in Night City," I said, shaking my head. "What's the cost?"
"Five thousand eddies or twenty percent, whichever is higher," He explained.
"... I don't know enough to know if that's fair or not," I said after a pause, Jackie snorting at my admission.
"It's steep, but it's to keep punk gonks from calling them in for dumb shit," He explained, waving away my concern. "But for things like this… it's worth it. As long as you're not working for a fixer. T hey tend to dislike people messing with their work."
I nodded, and after another run-through of the second floor, we made our way back down to the first, then outside. Jackie stayed out front, just inside the first door, to wait for the cleanup crew while I did a quick sweep around the building. I saw some signs of a homeless camp and a dumpster that smelled a bit too much like rotting meat for it to be anything other than where the scans threw their "waste." Other than that, there wasn't anything worth noting. When I was done, I quickly joined Jackie back at the front.
"We should claim one of the vehicles," I said once we settled in to wait. "Whichever is in better condition."
"Would be useful," The usually bigger man agreed with a nod. "But I don't have anywhere to store it without coughing up a chunk of eddies."
"I can keep it at the H2 parking garage," I explained. "Only five hundred eddies a month."
"Good deal, I'm running out of favors for cars and rides."
I chuckled, though I kept my eye on the road that marked the front entrance. The likelihood that the scavs had anyone coming to avenge them was small, but it could still happen. Much more likely was someone coming to claim their loot, but even that was unlikely, according to Jackie.
After about twenty minutes of waiting, the cleanup crew arrived. It was a team of five people, all hopping out of two vans and a truck. They seemed calm and collected, armed and relatively professional, until they spotted me. Immediately, three of them reached for their weapons, only for Jackie to step into view and hold his hands out. He spoke in rapid-fire Spanish, and after a minute of back and forth, they slowly pulled their hands away from their weapons.
As they moved into the building, they still looked at me warily until they were inside.
"What did you say?" I asked once they were all inside, and we were out front, still keeping watch.
"What? Oh, right, no translator. I said you were a friend of mine, and we were working together," He explained. "I told you borgs make people nervous."
"And you said I was a borg?"
"Yeah. It's a good cover, right?"
"It's good for now. Thanks."
We stood guard for two hours, occasionally walking around to check the perimeter before the cleaners were finally done. They ended up moving their vehicles around to the back and using the garage doors to load up everything worthwhile. There were a few crates of cyberwar, some tools, a few containers of equipment, weapons, and even some of the clothes the scans were wearing. I felt like that was a bit much, but again, I wasn't going to waste time feeling bad for a bunch of psycho-murdering bastards.
At some point, Jackie took a quick look at the two vehicles and ended up telling the cleaners that we would be keeping the truck, which apparently was a Thorton Mackinaw Larimore. They seemed disappointed because, apparently, it was by and far in better condition than the car. Thankfully, they had no choice but to agree since the agreement they gave said we get first dibs on anything we find.
When the cleaners were finally done, our cut was just over sixteen thousand eddies, which Jackie and I immediately split evenly. Watching my account roll up by over eight thousand eddies was the perfect way to end a night of getting shot at.
"Well… I won't say that was fun, but it could have been worse," I said once the cleaners had left. "Well worth the time spent as well."
"Not a bad bit of work, aye? You want to head the Coyote to celebrate?" Jackie asked.
"Nah, I need to get home. I have a lot to do over the next few days. That said… if you come up with anything new for us to do anytime soon... let me know."
"Sure thing, compadre," Jack said, seemingly genuine. "You did well for your first time. I'm looking forward to working with you more.
The truck, which was now linked to my keyfob, followed behind Jackie's borrowed van perfectly as we made our way back to Jackie's garage. The cleaners had done a decent job of wiping away any evidence of the vehicle's previous owners, both digitally and physically, so as far as anyone would be able to tell, the vehicle was mine. I would have preferred to drive it back myself, but I didn't want to take off my armor quite yet.
When we finally stopped back at Jackie's garage, I quickly took off my armor, layer by layer. Once it was off, I surveyed the damage. The worst, by far, was where I had tanked a slug from a shotgun. The divot in my plating was as wide as my thumb and was deep enough that it damaged the artificial muscles underneath. There were a dozen other dents from various other bullets, but only three of them that really needed immediate repair. The others were barely past cosmetic damage.
I quickly removed the panels that needed repair, as well as the entire side chest piece, since the damage was much deeper there. Thankfully, everything was designed to come apart for relatively simplified repairs. Once I was done, I stuffed everything into a duffel bag happily donated by Jackie.
"Alright, I'm heading out," I said, sticking my head into the side room of the garage where Jackie was sitting. "I'm probably gonna be dark for the next few days, probably longer. I have a few ideas bouncing around in my head, and I want to get them out before I start to lose them."
"Sure, no problem," He said, looking up from his phone to stand and walking me out.
I put my stuff down in the passenger seat leg space before climbing into the large truck and closing the door. Jackie leaned on the side of the truck, talking through the open window.
"Listen, Jackson. Your shits impressive, let me know if you need a runner or loan," He said seriously. "Your armor and tech weapon is nova, and those energy weapons sound crazy as hell. I'm all for helping you make stuff like that, just be careful who you show it off to. You'll get snapped up quicker than you can say corpo slave."
"Yeah, I know. Why do you think I've been so anxious about showing my face and sharing my stuff," I pointed out, the solo mercenary nodding.
"Fair enough. See you later, choom. Keep me in the loop if you're looking for anything."
I nodded before starting the truck and pulling away, immediately activating the truck's self-driving, leaning back in my seat with a smile. It was strange to me that most cars were capable of entirely self-driving, and yet people never really sat back in the driver's seat and napped or skipped the driver's seat at all. According to Jackie, it was because they were locked to the speed limit and usually drove far below it, but that just sounded stupid to me. Why would I care if my ride was going ten miles under the limit if I could sit in the back seat and read or watch a movie?
As my new vehicle took a leisurely pace back to the megabuilding complex, I couldn't help but yawn. It was late, and I was tired. The night's action left me worryingly tired. Luckily, I didn't foresee any issues falling asleep with how tired I was, which was great. I only had four full days left with the XCOM tech tree, which meant I had a lot of work to get done and not a lot of time to do it.
If you are interested in those benefits or just want to support my attempt to become a full-time writer, stop by and show your support. Every dollar helps!
We quickly found out that, with my armor on, I was just slightly too big for the passenger seat of the large van. Jackie joked about me running alongside him as he drove, but I just climbed into the back. I was worried I would be taking up room for the loot, but he assured me he had it covered. The van was just in case we found something either of us wanted to keep.
I climbed into the back and sat down against the outside wall of the vehicle. Thankfully, it was relatively clean.
"So, where is the den?" I asked as I shut the van's back doors and sat down. "Nowhere near here, I hope?"
"Ah no, never stir up shit where you eat and sleep, genio," Jacke responded as if he was giving sage advice. "Plus, I don't want to upset the balance between Valentinos and the scavs. Heywoods got enough trouble without mixing in agitated scavs in."
"Thought you said they won't care if we only hit a few?'
"I mean, they will notice, choom, but they aren't gonna come hunt oy down," He explained. "Might be agitated for a few days. They may work vaguely together, but trust me, scavs don't care about anything but themselves and their profit. Long as we don't move deep into their org and start cutting into their eddies, they won't really care."
I nodded in understanding before busying myself, checking over my weapons for the third time, making sure they were fully loaded and charged, ready for combat. After that, I just focused on keeping my breathing steady and calm. Luckily, the helmet of the warden armor was full of fans and cooling systems, keeping me surprisingly comfortable, considering it was a fully military design.
"Ey, choom, we're here. You ready to rock?" Jackie asked, startling me from the slight meditative state I managed to sink myself into.
"Yeah, I'm ready."
He nodded at my simple response, watching as I climbed out the back of the van, standing tall, feeling the musculature of the suit work around me. I had to admit, it was hard to not feel confident wearing so much armor. I scanned the area, with the armor giving me just enough of a height boost to look over the van.
Jackie climbed out of the driver's seat and started making his way to one of the many buildings along the street. It was heavily graffitied, and its doors were nearly hidden by several large mounds of trash. I took a moment to mentally thank Lily Shen that the original warden armor had built-in air filters before following after my new friend.
"According to T-bug, there shouldn't be more than ten of them here," Jackie said, leading the way into the first door. "The first floor is all garages, but we should clear it first. Just follow my lead… What should I call you?"
"Uh... what do you mean?"
"I gotta call you something if I can't call you by your name," He pointed out as he stopped, his hand on a solid inner door just a few feet from the main entrance. "How about Alloy? You said your stuff is made of a special alloy, right?"
"It is… Really, though? Alloy?"
"Trust me, choom, borgs love giving themselves names like that. Just look at Adam Smasher. You think his mama named him that?"
"I… Well, it will do for now, I guess," I said with a shrug, looking over my shoulder at the door we had just come through. "Should I call you something else?"
"Nah, Just Jackie. I'm not trying to be someone else," He pointed out with a grin before pulling out a single pistol, checking its magazine, and giving me a nod. "Alright, Alloy, let's do this."
I nodded and pulled my rifle off of my back, the electromagnets keeping it in place fighting me for a second before releasing the weapon. I flicked the high-tech weapon on, smirking as the whine of the charging capacitors filled the small entry room. I set the weapon to fire with a three-round burst before giving Jackie the thumbs up.
"I'm ready, lead us in,"
Jackie nodded and pushed the door inward with his shoulder, his pistol held out and ready as we walked in. I couldn't help but notice that while the large man clearly had experience, he also just walked into the room, crossing a clear, open space. Once he had crossed a three-meter clearing, he finally took cover behind the side of a large truck. Clearly, while Jackie had more experience than me, both with the people we were fighting and with violence as a whole, he was far from a strategic genius.
Still, I would rather have him here than anyone else I could think of, to be honest.
It just meant that I would need to take over V's job of being the brains when I got more experience under my belt. At least, I would if we continued to work together like this.
As I followed after him, I tried to scan around as much of the first floor as I could. Most of the space was taken up by three large parking spots, with two rows of storage along the wall behind them and three garage doors in front. Two of the parking spots were taken, with the large truck Jackie was taking cover behind, and a much smaller car on the opposite side of the room. The spot between them was filled with a cargo crate, sealed with a sturdy-looking lock. Across the building, a single set of stairs disappeared upwards, leading to the second floor.
As I looked around, I could see dozens of clues as to what kind of place this was. Blood spatter on the ground and along the back of the vehicle we were now hiding behind, and random personal belongings were thrown into a corner like trash. There was even more blood leading from the back of the car to the stairs.
"Alright, looks like ther-"
Jackie cut himself off and brought his gun up as someone came out from between two rows of the shelves that ran along the back of the room. The scavenger was rolling his one organic shoulder, a dark blue cyberware arm scratching his side as he yawned, almost as if he had just woken up. I could see glowing implants on either side of his face, and blood spattered along his shirt and pants. His eyes went wide when he spotted me, locking on and hardly even noticing my partner.
It seemed like Jackie was right. Borgs really do freak people out.
Seeing as though neither Jackie nor I had any silent options, something that I was already mentally noting to fix, I raised my rifle and squeezed the trigger. The sound of my weapon charging and launching three rounds of solid metal slugs broke through the relative silence of the garage. Jackie raises his pistol as well, firing twice.
Both of Jackie's much more experienced shots hit the scav, center of mass with a surprisingly tight grouping, especially considering how startled he was. Two of my shots went wide, but the single shot that did connect blew the man's orgninic arm clean off. Blood splattered against the floor, shelving, and even the low ceiling while the man dropped to the ground, already stone-cold dead.
"Puta madre ay güey! What the hell are you shooting out of that thing?" Jackie yelled before noticing the commotion our gunfire had generated upstairs. "Go around that way, take cover behind the crate so we don't get sidelined!"
Jackie pointed down and around the car he was hiding behind, and since his request made sense, I rushed around and managed to just make it into cover before a burst of bullets sparked off the floor behind me, chipping the concrete.
Shouting in Russian echoed from the stairs, and I peered around the corner, spotting three people of various fits and levels of augmentation making their way down the stairs. I pulled the trigger on my rifle twice, sending two bursts of AA tipped steel their way. Every single shot went wide, slamming into the stairs, wall, and door behind them, throwing up shrapnel but ultimately not harming anyone. I cursed, pulling back as all three of them focused on me, firing a barrage of automatic weapons fire that peppered the cargo container I was hiding behind. A few even slammed into my armor, denting several plates and rattling my left shoulder. Much of the impact was bled off from the artificial muscle layer, but at least one of them felt like getting slapped with a bat.
I cursed, rolling my shoulder despite the already spreading soreness, before hearing Jackie return fire, using the distraction I had made to take out one of the people firing at me. Cursing myself for not practicing with my mag rifle, I stepped out of cover the second there was a lull in the incoming bullets. I raised my rifle as the two remaining scavs looked at me in shock, seemingly just realizing what they were shooting at before they opened up.
My first burst slammed into the highest scav, obliterating the woman's gun and removing her left hand before putting her out of her misery by blowing a fist-sized chunk where her heart was supposed to be. I kept pulling the trigger, blowing chunks out of the stairs until I finally managed to control my aim to stitch three shots across a man with two replaced arms and glowing blue eyes. He collapsed into a bloody mess, like a broken puppet with its strings cut.
"You good?" I called out to Jackie as I pressed the mag release on the side of my rifle. The mostly empty mag dropped to the floor before I slid a new one into place.
"Yeah, I'm good," Jackie shouted back, making his way to the stairs between the shelving and the parking bays. "You got a fucking cannon, choom. Now I wanna know what your other toys do."
"Me too. I think I might have been underestimating them," I admitted.
In truth, I was relatively certain the extra power was a combination of me comparing the weapon's effectiveness against more armored targets and that I had made the mag weapons out of parts that were actually better than what XCOM had on hand. The mag coils, capacitors, and several other bits rated far above what XCOM used. I had restricted a lot of those parts and done quite a bit of extra math and programming to make sure it all still worked.
Looking at what the rifle was now doing, I might have miscalculated. Still, I couldn't have been too far off, as it had counted as close enough to the original design to confirm its creation for the tech tree. I was still learning how finicky that process really was, but it still seemed like a decent confirmation that this rifle wasn't that different from the original. I-
"Eh, focus up, Alloy, we got more to deal with," Jackie called out, waving me closer. "There are probably more upstairs, I will-"
"No, you're not wearing any armor, I'm going first," I said easily, surprising myself as much as I surprised Jackie. When he gave me a look, I just shrugged. "Next time, wear armor if you want to be the heavy."
"Fine, whatever, you can go first," He said, gesturing up the stairs. "Make it fast, though!"
I nodded, and after checking my gun one final time, I charged up the stairs. I shift my body as I move and slam my shoulder into the frame, crumpling the door around the lock area as it struggled to hold me back before finally bursting open, all in a split second. Part of me wanted to leap into the room in a combat role, but luckily, I had enough sense not to embarrass myself. I didn't even know how to do a combat roll normally, never mind while actively enhanced.
I was starting to realize I may have really jumped the gun on this.
As I burst into the room, I also realized I wasn't the only one going for the door. My impact had knocked someone back, a leather jacket-clad man with a submachine gun held in one hand, the weapon off target from the impact. Rather than try and shoot him, I just kept running, shoulder lowered, until I slammed into him as well. I crashed into him with enough force to drive him back, partially lift him up, and slam him into a concrete wall. I could feel his chest give in, sounding like bending metal rather than cracking bone, which told me he had some sort of bone replacement.
Despite the impact, he was still moving, raising his weapon just enough to aim it at my legs, pulling the trigger, and dumping his mag into my thigh and waist. None of the bullets made it through, but it still felt like dozens of light punches to my leg.
With a curse, I slammed my fist into his mechanical shoulder, the one holding the gun, feeling the cyberware there buckle under the blow. I hammered it again and again until it was a sparking mangled mess, the limb hung limply. Finally, I stepped back, brought my rifle back up, and wasted a three-round burst to finish him off.
Needed to add a knife to my list of things to make.
By now, Jackie was at the door, taking cover against the frame. I turned around slightly to look for cover as well, only to feel something slam into my side hard enough to spin me around. I could feel a deep dent in my armor on my right side, deep enough that it was already restricting my movement. Jackie popped out of cover and fired his pistol, giving me time to recover and take cover. As I moved, I saw a scav wielding a double-barrel shotgun drop his weapon and slump to the ground. He must have been shooting slugs, judging from how much damage it did.
"You good?" Jackie asked as we stepped further into the first room on the second floor.
"Yeah, armor stopped it…" I said, reaching down to check the large dent before adding. "Barely."
Jackie didn't have time to comment because a pair of scavs burst out of a nearby door, screaming in Russian, immediately opening fire. I saw Jackie take a pair of shots to the chest before I raised my rifle and opened fire. The first three rounds ruined a woman with some sort of projection implant on her face, punching through her chest, stomach, and neck. The second burst missed the second person completely, letting him fire his pistol at me over and over. Finally, I managed to pull my shots tight enough to punch two rounds through his shoulder and chest.
Through all of that, I was shot several times, all of them leaving only streaks of lead and copper on my armor. It seemed my armor was more than enough to handle smaller rounds.
With the current threats terminated, I turned to check on Jackie, only to find him already standing, rubbing his chest. I could see holes in his jacket and shirt, as well as the armor underneath.
"Maldita Perra!… Looks like your armor works, amigo," He said with a pained grunt, shaking it off and reloading his pistol. "The plate took it easy, but the scales sting like hell!"
"Would hurt a lot less if you were wearing some armor," I pointed out in a sing-song voice, getting a slightly annoyed look in return. "I can't force you, but I can definitely pester you about it."
He chuckled and shook his head before motioning to go around a set of chests and boxes in the center of the room. Now that we weren't being shot at, I could better appreciate our surroundings. The room was simple enough, with a couch along one wall, a desk and computer nearby, with containers, shelves, and other stuff around the room. So far, save the occasional dry bloodstain, it looked pretty ordinary.
We crossed the room on opposite sides, eventually converging on the last door in the room. I couldn't be sure, but judging from how big the building had looked from the outside and how the garage had looked, there was only really enough space for a medium-sized room on the other side. As we approached it, I caught Jack's eye, who gestured for me to go ahead.
"By all means, compadre, do you thing," He said.
I nodded and lined up with the door, spartan kicking it just next to the lock. The door, which wasn't the most impressive-looking fixture, caved in immediately, slamming open with a surprising amount of force. The sound of some random song, with way too much bass and set way too loud, filled the room, getting even loaded as I moved forward. I stepped into the new room to find a scav cowering in the corner, trembling with Unity in his hand. His apron was covered in blood, and only a few feet away was a DIY operating table, complete with a "patient." Between the amount of blood collecting on the table and the pale blue tinge to a lot of "patients" skin, it was obvious that they were dead.
As I stepped into the room, the last scav fired at me, their Unity going off as quickly as they could pull the trigger. More than half the shots didn't even get close to me, hitting the concrete walls, cabinets, and crates stacked around me. The few bullets that did impact my armor barely did anything but cosmetically mark it.
When the scavs gun clicked empty, I took aim with my rifle, flipped it to semi-auto, and damn near blew their head off.
After a moment, I looked around and used another shot to scatter chunks of the radio all over the right side of the room.
"You good?" Jackie asked, coming in from behind, noticing that I had obliterated the radio. "Not a fan of music, Alloy?"
"Just couldn't hear if we were alone," I responded, stepping further into the room, checking around the corners and behind a few crates. "I think we are clear."
"Yeah, I think so too...." Jackie said, watching me closely. "You feel okay? You said this was your first gunfight…"
I took a moment to collect myself, taking a deep breath and letting it out. My adrenaline, which had been pounding in my ears, was slowly fading into the background, leaving me feeling drained and uncomfortable. I looked over at the corner of the room, where the scav lay dead, blood and brains splattered against the wall. I felt… fine. And even more, the fact that I felt nothing didn't phase me either. These lunatic's murdered and killed people, and I wasn't going to waste perfectly good guilt and emotional trauma on them.
Especially considering it was likely that I would have better reasons to feel guilt or be traumatized eventually.
"Yeah, I'm good," I responded. "Like you said, these guys are scum. Killing them is practically a public service."
"Aye, it is. Good to see you can hack it."
"So, what happens next? We fill up the van or…"
"No, I got some cleaners coming, just gotta give them a call," He explained, his eyes already glowing. "They come in, strip a place of anything useful, and give you a cut of the profits. Even help you take out any chrome you might want from people you kill."
"I… I really shouldn't be surprised something like that exists in Night City," I said, shaking my head. "What's the cost?"
"Five thousand eddies or twenty percent, whichever is higher," He explained.
"... I don't know enough to know if that's fair or not," I said after a pause, Jackie snorting at my admission.
"It's steep, but it's to keep punk gonks from calling them in for dumb shit," He explained, waving away my concern. "But for things like this… it's worth it. As long as you're not working for a fixer. T hey tend to dislike people messing with their work."
I nodded, and after another run-through of the second floor, we made our way back down to the first, then outside. Jackie stayed out front, just inside the first door, to wait for the cleanup crew while I did a quick sweep around the building. I saw some signs of a homeless camp and a dumpster that smelled a bit too much like rotting meat for it to be anything other than where the scans threw their "waste." Other than that, there wasn't anything worth noting. When I was done, I quickly joined Jackie back at the front.
"We should claim one of the vehicles," I said once we settled in to wait. "Whichever is in better condition."
"Would be useful," The usually bigger man agreed with a nod. "But I don't have anywhere to store it without coughing up a chunk of eddies."
"I can keep it at the H2 parking garage," I explained. "Only five hundred eddies a month."
"Good deal, I'm running out of favors for cars and rides."
I chuckled, though I kept my eye on the road that marked the front entrance. The likelihood that the scavs had anyone coming to avenge them was small, but it could still happen. Much more likely was someone coming to claim their loot, but even that was unlikely, according to Jackie.
After about twenty minutes of waiting, the cleanup crew arrived. It was a team of five people, all hopping out of two vans and a truck. They seemed calm and collected, armed and relatively professional, until they spotted me. Immediately, three of them reached for their weapons, only for Jackie to step into view and hold his hands out. He spoke in rapid-fire Spanish, and after a minute of back and forth, they slowly pulled their hands away from their weapons.
As they moved into the building, they still looked at me warily until they were inside.
"What did you say?" I asked once they were all inside, and we were out front, still keeping watch.
"What? Oh, right, no translator. I said you were a friend of mine, and we were working together," He explained. "I told you borgs make people nervous."
"And you said I was a borg?"
"Yeah. It's a good cover, right?"
"It's good for now. Thanks."
We stood guard for two hours, occasionally walking around to check the perimeter before the cleaners were finally done. They ended up moving their vehicles around to the back and using the garage doors to load up everything worthwhile. There were a few crates of cyberwar, some tools, a few containers of equipment, weapons, and even some of the clothes the scans were wearing. I felt like that was a bit much, but again, I wasn't going to waste time feeling bad for a bunch of psycho-murdering bastards.
At some point, Jackie took a quick look at the two vehicles and ended up telling the cleaners that we would be keeping the truck, which apparently was a Thorton Mackinaw Larimore. They seemed disappointed because, apparently, it was by and far in better condition than the car. Thankfully, they had no choice but to agree since the agreement they gave said we get first dibs on anything we find.
When the cleaners were finally done, our cut was just over sixteen thousand eddies, which Jackie and I immediately split evenly. Watching my account roll up by over eight thousand eddies was the perfect way to end a night of getting shot at.
"Well… I won't say that was fun, but it could have been worse," I said once the cleaners had left. "Well worth the time spent as well."
"Not a bad bit of work, aye? You want to head the Coyote to celebrate?" Jackie asked.
"Nah, I need to get home. I have a lot to do over the next few days. That said… if you come up with anything new for us to do anytime soon... let me know."
"Sure thing, compadre," Jack said, seemingly genuine. "You did well for your first time. I'm looking forward to working with you more.
The truck, which was now linked to my keyfob, followed behind Jackie's borrowed van perfectly as we made our way back to Jackie's garage. The cleaners had done a decent job of wiping away any evidence of the vehicle's previous owners, both digitally and physically, so as far as anyone would be able to tell, the vehicle was mine. I would have preferred to drive it back myself, but I didn't want to take off my armor quite yet.
When we finally stopped back at Jackie's garage, I quickly took off my armor, layer by layer. Once it was off, I surveyed the damage. The worst, by far, was where I had tanked a slug from a shotgun. The divot in my plating was as wide as my thumb and was deep enough that it damaged the artificial muscles underneath. There were a dozen other dents from various other bullets, but only three of them that really needed immediate repair. The others were barely past cosmetic damage.
I quickly removed the panels that needed repair, as well as the entire side chest piece, since the damage was much deeper there. Thankfully, everything was designed to come apart for relatively simplified repairs. Once I was done, I stuffed everything into a duffel bag happily donated by Jackie.
"Alright, I'm heading out," I said, sticking my head into the side room of the garage where Jackie was sitting. "I'm probably gonna be dark for the next few days, probably longer. I have a few ideas bouncing around in my head, and I want to get them out before I start to lose them."
"Sure, no problem," He said, looking up from his phone to stand and walking me out.
I put my stuff down in the passenger seat leg space before climbing into the large truck and closing the door. Jackie leaned on the side of the truck, talking through the open window.
"Listen, Jackson. Your shits impressive, let me know if you need a runner or loan," He said seriously. "Your armor and tech weapon is nova, and those energy weapons sound crazy as hell. I'm all for helping you make stuff like that, just be careful who you show it off to. You'll get snapped up quicker than you can say corpo slave."
"Yeah, I know. Why do you think I've been so anxious about showing my face and sharing my stuff," I pointed out, the solo mercenary nodding.
"Fair enough. See you later, choom. Keep me in the loop if you're looking for anything."
I nodded before starting the truck and pulling away, immediately activating the truck's self-driving, leaning back in my seat with a smile. It was strange to me that most cars were capable of entirely self-driving, and yet people never really sat back in the driver's seat and napped or skipped the driver's seat at all. According to Jackie, it was because they were locked to the speed limit and usually drove far below it, but that just sounded stupid to me. Why would I care if my ride was going ten miles under the limit if I could sit in the back seat and read or watch a movie?
As my new vehicle took a leisurely pace back to the megabuilding complex, I couldn't help but yawn. It was late, and I was tired. The night's action left me worryingly tired. Luckily, I didn't foresee any issues falling asleep with how tired I was, which was great. I only had four full days left with the XCOM tech tree, which meant I had a lot of work to get done and not a lot of time to do it.
- Location
- My happy place
I saw some typos, like 'loaded' instead of 'louder' for music, and some others. Also, I think he is being careless with his secrets. I noticed when he dropped a magazine with a little ammo still inside on the floor and forgot about it. And that got me thinking all the rounds he left in bodies. That feels like a threat of someone looking at his Alloy bullets. I don't know how much of a problem that is, and it's not like he is going to dig rounds out of bodies. Still, he didn't even think about keeping a hold of the mag or picking it back up after. Kind of sloppy.
- Location
- 𐌂 ̢͎̩̤̲̙͓̑̀͂͒̀͆̏𐋏 ̛͏̫̚𐌀 ̛͉̥̩̤̰͈̂̅͒͊͟𐍈 ̣͛𐍃 ̡̅̈́
Hmm, can someone find alien allow bullets shot there and see something odd about metal? 🤔
Exactly, what I thought about. However, it is pretty much in character for random dude without experience to be sloppy in such things. It would be weird, if everything was going perfectly from the start.
Last edited:
- Location
- England
You don't have to roll to be in a combat role, but that was a typo that time. You got it right on the very next line, too.
With our tech, yes. With their tech, most definitely.
That said it does make some sense in that he basically has zero experience outside of video games.
Policing brass has to be taught, and policing projectiles would be well beyond that in terms of making it through the adrenaline and into the current thinking queue
Last edited:
- Location
- 𐌂 ̢͎̩̤̲̙͓̑̀͂͒̀͆̏𐋏 ̛͏̫̚𐌀 ̛͉̥̩̤̰͈̂̅͒͊͟𐍈 ̣͛𐍃 ̡̅̈́
Now I am curius about, what someone with really good sensors on hand and scientists on pay could tell about found alloy. They probably can detect, that it is not a combination of any elemental particles known to physics? Just imagine the whole confusion! 
Well, not immediately, no. But if we are unlucky, someone may find these interesting. Especially, if at least one stuck in a scav corpses, because I feel like people going to take them apart for chrome. Could be a good hook for plot in the further future, I guess.🤔
Last edited:
I'm pretty sure nobody would bother checking what type of ammu has been used to clear a scav den, who would care honestly ? But in the future it may indeed pose some problems. I'm not too worried tho.
- Location
- UK
First MC needs to develop some sort aiming program. Or man needs a lot more time in the range.
Second, why AA bullets? When he first made them I had thought they would be reserved for Borgs or other heavies. And leaving them lying around for people to pick up is quite worrying. It just takes one curious person and I doubt the corps would let go of an entirely Alien alloy they've never seen before. But considering MC is planning to sell armour, he clearly doesn't care.
Just feels like the initial paranoia was just words and not particularly well heeded.
Second, why AA bullets? When he first made them I had thought they would be reserved for Borgs or other heavies. And leaving them lying around for people to pick up is quite worrying. It just takes one curious person and I doubt the corps would let go of an entirely Alien alloy they've never seen before. But considering MC is planning to sell armour, he clearly doesn't care.
Just feels like the initial paranoia was just words and not particularly well heeded.
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
If you're worried about being found out maybe police your ammo?
leaving AA slugs/bullets/whatever around may get people to notice.
leaving AA slugs/bullets/whatever around may get people to notice.
Chapter Six
Hey everyone, just a reminder that I have a Patreon! Being a supporter has a lot of benefits, like early chapters and access to my original content. You could get up to four chapters early from this story and eight more for each of my other two. Board Members even get to vote on story beats, interludes, names, and more!
If you are interested in those benefits or just want to support my attempt to become a full-time writer, stop by and show your support. Every dollar helps!
I parked my new truck in the large parking structure attached to the Megabuilding and paid the first month's fee in full, despite the fact that it was more than halfway through the month, before making my way back up to my room. I went through my evening routine of refilling the Elerium generator and the AA smelter before setting an alarm and collapsing into bed.
It felt like I had just closed my eyes when I was awoken by my alarm. I bolted upright and slapped the alarm interface, turning it off. A quick shower and a nasty burrito later, I was sitting at my workroom table, slowly spinning in my chair with my eyes closed, trying to figure out how I would spend my last four days with my current tech tree. I had intended to spend a chunk of the time finishing off the weapons branch so I would have access to everything, but as I had discovered, they were already pretty clear. Between completing plasma weaponry and having a solid understanding of every level of XCOM weaponry, I could pretty much design all of the other weapons in my head without using the blueprint.
Sure, it wouldn't be exactly the same, but at this point that hardly mattered. What did matter was the fact that I could check them off my list of things to do, leaving me completely open to other things.
The first on my new list was the fusion blade. It would be a relatively easy build and surprisingly cheap when it came to Elerium and AA. I wasn't at all satisfied with how it looked or functioned since it was only a one-sided blade that didn't even have a pointed tip, but that would be a problem for later. I would build the original blade and deal with using it until I had the systems in place to make customizing it a short and easy project.
Beyond that, I also wanted to build two of the many explosives on the tree, the plasma grenade and the frost bomb. As far as I knew, neither of them had any equivalent in Cyberpunk, and both were pretty powerful tools in my arsenal. They would also easily be converted to grenades I could launch out the magnetic grenade launcher, which would be even easier to make without a blueprint than the mag sniper rifle. Both of the explosives would take special materials, especially the frost bomb, so they would have to wait for my next delivery to arrive.
The skulljack, a tool to hack into a brain chip, almost made it to the list as well, but I quickly realized it was way too specific to be useful. There were hundreds of different types of neural links alone, and each one would require a slightly different tool. Not to mention, if I wanted to hack into someone's brain, I could just use the access point on their neck. Or tear the link out of their skull if I was really desperate.
So far, I had a list of three things, only one of which I could do today. The fusion sword would hopefully only take me half a day, and the grenades even less. I also wanted to take a crack at the bluescreen rounds, which were EMP bullets. Unfortunately, those two would take some specialized parts and materials, even if I was only going to build them for my mag rifles.
Realizing that I was running out of things from the game that were worth making and that I could feasibly make in four days, I started pushing around the edges of the tech tree, trying to uncover anything that I missed. Then I remembered the Gremlins.
I focused for a moment and brought up what I had on the small flying drone. As far as I could tell, it was a pretty simple device. It was built on a steel frame, mounted with cameras, gyroscopes, a decently powered computer that allowed it to brute force hack some simple alien systems, and a straightforward payload system that could do a couple of different simple tasks. I was also pretty sure I could skip over at least the first iteration, which was basically just an all-around minor upgrade.
Initially, I had ignored the Gremlin because the simple drone didn't solve any of my current problems. I knew in the game they could be used to replace engineers in some of the rooms, but according to everything I was picking up from the basic information I had access to now, that was just gamified crap. They didn't seem nearly as precise or advanced enough to perform any sort of complicated function beyond what they were already made to do. At least not without constant input from a human controller. Which was unfortunate because a few extra drone workers was exactly what I needed to step up production.
Now, on second thought, I realized that the gremlins might be worth the time to build. Not because of what they could do but because of their flight system. They were surprisingly nimble, ridiculously fast, and functioned off completely human tech. Or at least completely understood technology, rather than the half-and-half combination the majority of XCOM tech seemed to have.
Even if the lift system was utterly impossible to upscale in size, it would still be incredibly useful. The idea of a fuelless thruster system was still science fiction in Cyberpunk, and having such a nimble, robust, and simple system in my pocket could be incredibly useful.
My first project selected, I turned back to the computer, quickly opening up the several shopping services that I had been using so far. I had a long list of special chemicals, materials, and parts that I would need for my last few projects, so I wanted to get most of the shopping done as early as possible.
When my shopping was complete and scheduled to arrive over the span of the following day, I got to work on the CAD program, starting to build out the specific parts I would need. I planned on skipping the first level of Gremlin and going straight to the Mark II model since the only difference seemed to be better energy generation in the form of four Elerium nodes and a better computer system and hacking assistant.
I would have tried the mark III, but it seemed to depend on understanding alien systems that I hadn't fully absorbed yet. Fortunately, with some AA paneling and a few more upgrades, which were easy to source in this world, I could make a significantly improved version once I finished Mark II. It probably wouldn't count as the Mark III, and definitely wouldn't be done anytime soon, but I knew it was possible.
It took three hours to finish designing all of the pieces and getting the frame and casing all set. Both my 3D printer and the fabricator were working on parts while I started preparing everything. Funnily enough, the four paddles that were responsible for the Gremlin's ability to float did not actually require any new parts, though I did have to modify some of the electromagnets and a few of the extra X-ray emitters, which I did while watching the parts print out.
The general principle of the Gremlin's lift system was ionizing air. The system used an advanced charging method to ionize the air around each of the four lift paddles, giving it a strong negative charge. The system would then flip, using a strong electromagnetic field to push against the negatively charged air. It would then flip again and repeat the process. This would happen hundreds of times in a second, each flip causing a minor amount of force, which would accumulate into enough thrust to hold up the Gremlin. The constant flipping back and forth was the source of the small drones' easily recognizable sound, the air getting yanked back and forth many times in a second. Even better, the system naturally evens out the ionization with each pulse, meaning it could be used indoors without having to worry about filling a room with ozone.
When all four paddles were finished, most of the metal fabrication was also complete, so I started working on other projects, getting as much done as possible so I could focus on putting everything together as my materials arrived. I spent the rest of the day designing the parts for my fusion blade and getting the fabricator running on it. While that was going on, I started working on the Gremlin's programming.
The next morning, I woke up to my front door ringing and the first wave of materials being delivered. The first batch, the parts for the Gremlin, all arrived between seven and eight-thirty in the morning, and the small drone was assembled by eleven AM. There were some small bits of modifications to the parts that I had to make, but for the most part, everything was smaller and better than what I required. Thankfully, the Tinker of Fiction seemed happy to accept things built that were as good or better as the original as counting towards an item creation. I assumed this was because having to dumb down every aspect of my creations, just so they would count, would be a pain in the ass when my tech got more advanced.
Once I was done with the assembly, I quickly downloaded the programming I had completed the previous night and flicked it on. It took a second for the cute little robot to boot, but when it did, it floated off from the ground. It bobbed in the air, looking around the main room of my apartment, scanning a bit before focusing on me. What little knowledge was left from the process filled my head, and before I could regret it, I immediately grabbed the droid and deactivated it, going as far as to pull out its battery. I quickly unscrewed its shell and started pulling things out.
There was a lot to be paranoid about in this world, but one of my biggest fears was having my tech turn against me. When every gonk could pop down to the store and buy a fistful of premade hacking systems, and AIs stalked the web, any tech open to connection was at risk.
So I would have to make everything closed.
I finished disconnecting the radio system before moving on to the WIFI connection system, carefully removing the small antenna and leaving the small droid completely cut off from the outside world, save its cameras and microphones. I then added a more complicated voice and body language recognition system so it would have an easier time parsing verbal and hand signal commands.
If I couldn't guarantee that my software was strong enough to deal with even the best Netrunners, then I would make it impossible to wirelessly interact with my creations at all. Even if that did drastically reduce their effectiveness for now, it was better to take it slow and deal with the reduction than to open myself up for a massive infiltration. There was no way to hack through an air gap, after all. I still had a way to access its programming and a way for it to interface with a computer, but it was a physical connection only, and it was hidden behind a trick panel.
When everything was clean, partitioned, and reassembled, I flipped the drone over onto its "back," quickly attaching a pair of simple extending utility arms. I have no idea why the original version didn't have some, but mine certainly would.
When everything was ready, I activated the drone again. It booted up, and once more began to float. It ran another scan of me before letting out a curious boop and bobbing in the air, waiting for me to tell it what to do. Even though I knew it was one hundred percent not an AI, it was hard not to immediately personify the cute little thing.
The drone was something the XCOM universe called a Response Program, or RP for short. This was basically a program designed to respond to and answer questions and requests as fluidly, efficiently, and fully as possible, but wasn't intelligent, capable of learning or evolving without direct editing of its program. Early versions of Siri and Alexa would have been considered RPs, but AI image generators would not be since they could learn from image scraping without much input from their creators.
"Hey buddy… let's see, the first version of your model ever created was called Rover," I explained, despite knowing it meant very little. "Let's keep with tradition and go with Spot for your designation. Understand?"
The drone beeped and bobbed in confirmation, shifting and gliding around me with its signature sound. I could just barely detect a hint of ozone as it flew by, but only for a second before it vanished.
"Spot, do me a favor and pick up the trash around the apartment and put it in the trash barrel over there," I said, pointing to the can of trash in the corner.
Another beep and the drone started flying around the apartment, picking up empty bags, wrappers, and other bits of trash, all with its new little gripping pinchers. When it caught something new, it would float over to the trash barrel and drop it in before zipping away to repeat the process.
I watched for a minute, unable to stop myself from smiling. Even with how simple the drone was, it would be able to help in plenty of ways. Already, I could think of a few ways to automate something like the AA smelter or the Elerium generator. Unfortunately, I didn't have the time to dabble.
The next project I tackled was the fusion sword. Most of its pieces were already printed, meaning that all I had to do was modify a few parts and assemble it. In all honesty, the weapon was even more disappointing than I would have thought. Whenever you gripped the handle, it automatically turned on, projecting a thin layer of Elerium plasma along the AA blade. There was no on or off switch, it just turned on whenever you gripped it. Not only that, but while the blade was hilariously effective at cutting, it was held in place by a thick, blunt, chunky support brace, which no doubt made cutting through things much harder. I had to assume that the XCOM engineering staff had simply made the blade and then said, "Eh, good enough," because I had only been holding it for a few seconds, and I could already see half a dozen ways to improve the design.
It took a dedicated moment of actual willpower to put the sword down and focus on other things. Thankfully, by the time it was done, the day was more or less over, leaving just enough time for me to set up the fabricator one last time and start up a batch of Elerium and AA. When that was done, I crawled into bed, told Spot to power down, and to wake me up early the next morning.
The following morning was mostly just assembly. Cyberpunk had several methods of generating EMP blasts, one of which matched pretty well with the primary method of EMP generation in XCOM. That meant that creating the bluescreen rounds was as easy as reinforcing an already existing part and adapting it to survive the initial impact. Once I did that, I simply sheathed it in a steel shell and added a charge monitor display on the side. I was definitely not going to do that for future rounds since it was a huge waste of parts. Still, the knowledge of bullets, especially the knowledge of what I could put into the simple steel rounds for my mag rifle, was well worth the hour and a half it took to make.
The plasma and frost grenades were even easier. A metal shell, a trigger mechanism, and a timer were more than half the parts. All I needed for the frost bomb was a short list of liquid chemicals stored in two separate vessels and mixed with a tiny detonation of C-6 explosives.
The Plasma grenade was, surprisingly, even more straightforward. Just a tiny chip of Elerium and an X-ray emitter built into an electromagnetic containment vessel. Throw the grenade, and the emitter starts charging the Elerium, which puts off its plasma-like energy. The electromagnetic field holds it back for a moment before it drops, and Kaboom, plasma explosion.
I made sure to carefully put both of the explosive devices in a small box. Technically both of them were completely safe as long I didn't intentionally fuck with them, but it was the principle. You had to respect the dangerous things you make, or someday they might go off in your face.
At this point, it was about two in the afternoon, and I had already finished my latest list of things I wanted to finish before I lost this tech tree, potentially forever.
Once again sitting in my workshop chair, spinning around with my eyes closed, I explored the vast expanse of my current tech tree. There was a whole chunk of it that I hadn't explored, but all of it was going back in time for that reality, the tech devolving to pre-2000s level almost immediately, which was obviously useless given my current setting. So, once again, I focused on the main chunk of the tree, the one specific to the XCOM project.
There were several things that I wanted to build, but I knew I couldn't, even beyond the Psi Labs. Ghost armor, which was a sort of stealth field, was one, as was its quasi-replacement, Wraith armor, which let the wearer walk through walls. Both of them would have been amazing since I probably could have added at least one to my armor and only activated it when I knew it was safe or in extreme emergencies. Unfortunately, I couldn't make heads or tales out of either of them.
I was beginning to think that higher "leveled" tech wasn't just obscured by my knowledge but by a much more fiat-backed aspect, something that was forcing me to figure out lower-level things before moving on. At this point, I knew plenty about the XCOM universe tech, but I could hardly make heads or tails of even the simple portions of their blueprints.
Either way, I could tell that there was no way I would be cracking either of them in the time I had left, mostly because I didn't even know what I would need to build first in order to start understanding how they worked. From what I could see, I suspected that they lay somewhere on the same path as psionics, strangely enough, but that was all I could tell.
In my exploration of the tech tree, I also managed to parse out the two sub-branches of body modifications that XCOM had access to. I also discovered the reason why I had never mentally spotted it before. Frequently, items all along the branches would refer back and forward along the tree, recalling something like AA metallurgy or production methods or connecting to where a specific advancement would lead. This helped me push around and single out new things to build. The cybernetics and genetic modification sub-branches, however, were completely disconnected, essentially free-floating by themselves. They were also apparently impossible for me to make since both sub-branches relied heavily on the alien tech referred to as Meld, which the tree did not provide a black-boxed production method.
It would have been much more annoying if the reason hadn't just popped into my head when I was taking my cursory look at the first genetic mod. Meld was a collection of cybernetic nanomachines, suspended in a neutral goo, created by the aliens to speed up and simplify their attempts to modify the alien races under their control. It also contained no exotic materials. No Alien Alloy, no Elerium, no special alien materials at all. This meant that if XCOM hadn't been so pressed for time, they could have studied and eventually, potentially, replicated the substance. That meant I could replicate it, which firmly removed it from the list of materials I could create with black-boxed tinker shenanigans. But since XCOM didn't have the faintest idea of how to replicate it, neither did I.
I barely even knew what it looked like!
While this was disappointing, I was glad it happened now with this tech tree. While I remembered a few of the genetic enhancements being pretty interesting, the game had always presented the Meld options as firmly being "but at what cost?" sort of options. The cybernetics were even more brutal than all but the worst cyberware here, and the genetic mods always came off as changing the individual, making them… off.
On top of that, knowing there could be floating sub-branches to my tech tree was absolutely invaluable information. Had I been in more of a rush, I could see myself missing this for multiple tech tree rolls, missing out on who knows how many useful bits of tech.
After spending a while making sure there weren't any other missing branches and making sure there weren't any interesting bits of tech that I could make, I finally decided that I was done with the XCOM tech tree. There was nothing else I needed, and everything I wanted was either too big for me to reasonably put together or too complicated for me to understand. That, or it was being purposely obscured, though I suspected that was the same thing in my case. It had been a decent place to start, but now, with most of the interesting bits made or at least understood, it was time for me to prepare for my next tech tree. I had no idea what it would be, but it couldn't hurt to cover my bases.
I spent the next day and a half preparing. I spent a big chunk of change and half a day on a used circuit board printer. It was an impressive-looking machine that could take circuit board blanks and rapidly lay down circuits before attaching chips, diodes, resistors, or any number of parts onto the board before soldering and finishing it all off. It did so with an absolute flurry of miniature arms and whirring servos. It used a program similar to CAD but significantly more complicated. That said, once I got the hang of it, I would be able to create much more compact and customized systems, something that I had a feeling would become necessary for certain tech trees.
Spot and I spent two hours combing over the program's programming, as well as the CB printer, looking for backdoors and watching programs. While there weren't any active feeds, we did find several back doors that would have made it child's play for Arasaka, the company that made the printer, to tap into its records should they want to. We obviously removed them, but since they were only being attached to my own air-gapped network, it was just a precaution.
Several deliveries, including a basic chemistry kit, were also purchased and delivered. Once again, I was happily surprised by how easy it was to purchase random and potentially dangerous things. As long as money could be made, people were happy to sell me whatever I wanted, even set up express deliveries. Most of my last day with the XCOM tech tree was spent setting up a relatively advanced vacuum hood from that world, hooking it directly up to my air venting, and using several filters to keep really dangerous fumes from escaping. The hood was only about two feet wide, but it would make dealing with any chemicals much safer.
The chunk of information I got about filtration systems and using air pressure to control the flow of gasses wasn't bad either.
By the end of my shopping spree, I had spent everything I earned clearing out the scav den, plus a significant chunk of my remaining funds from selling the three sets of AA underarmor. I was starting to run low again, but hopefully, I would be well-stocked and prepared for whatever my new tech tree was.
When I was done working on my new workshop additions and received all my deliveries, it was about seven PM. Rather than repeat the rather dramatic experience of my tech tree switching happening while I was asleep, as I had seven days ago, I told Spot to wake me up at eleven-fifty PM, before heading to bed. This way, I would get at least some sleep, so when my excitement made it impossible to go back to sleep once I switched, I could start working immediately.
Assuming my next tech tree had anything I could build immediately.
I woke up to Spot nudging me awake, the little drone flying away as I started to sit up and stretch. Unsurprisingly, it was dark outside, or at least what counted for darkness in Night City. With the shifting imminent, I could feel the nervous energy flowing through every inch of me. I tried to sit down on the couch, only to jump up a few seconds later to pace around the room.
The next ten minutes were the longest ten minutes I had yet experienced in my life. I managed to burn a few of them, starting some AA and Elerium going, mostly out of habit, but other than that, I couldn't do anything other than pace around and worry about how I had done with the XCOM branch. I felt it had been a good start, providing me with some decent bits of tech and knowledge, but I couldn't help but question my choices. Should I have focused on psionics? Should I have tried to create a full AI? Maybe tried to make some spark units?
I shook my head and did my best to drive those thoughts out of my head. If I held on to every little bit of regret and spent my time worrying about what I could have done better, I would always be miserable. I looked around my room, seeing some of the weapons I had made, then over to Spot, who was hovering a few feet away. I had made some solid progress, made some really cool stuff, and learned a whole lot. It might not have been perfect, but that was okay.
Finally, after what felt like forever, it was eleven-fifty-nine. I sat down on my couch, closed my eyes, and leaned back, waiting to feel the transition.
Just as before, as midnight approached, I could feel the specialty pulling away. This time, however, I could feel that nothing I could do would stop it. It grew more and more distant until, eventually, the connection snapped completely. On instinct, my mind ran through what I had learned, and, sure enough, the knowledge I had earned stuck with me, but I couldn't feel anything else through the connection to the XCOM tech tree.
With the old connection gone, I took a deep breath and waited for the new one to settle in.
A minute passed…
Then another…
Five minutes passed, and I was quickly falling into a full-blown panic. I anxiously searched my mind, finally stumbling on something. There was a connection, but it was so small I hadn't even noticed.
Rather than any new tech, all I could feel was a mental timer, one slowly counting down. Six days, twenty-three hours, and fifty-four minutes.
A full week. That was how long I had to wait for my new tech tree.
If you are interested in those benefits or just want to support my attempt to become a full-time writer, stop by and show your support. Every dollar helps!
I parked my new truck in the large parking structure attached to the Megabuilding and paid the first month's fee in full, despite the fact that it was more than halfway through the month, before making my way back up to my room. I went through my evening routine of refilling the Elerium generator and the AA smelter before setting an alarm and collapsing into bed.
It felt like I had just closed my eyes when I was awoken by my alarm. I bolted upright and slapped the alarm interface, turning it off. A quick shower and a nasty burrito later, I was sitting at my workroom table, slowly spinning in my chair with my eyes closed, trying to figure out how I would spend my last four days with my current tech tree. I had intended to spend a chunk of the time finishing off the weapons branch so I would have access to everything, but as I had discovered, they were already pretty clear. Between completing plasma weaponry and having a solid understanding of every level of XCOM weaponry, I could pretty much design all of the other weapons in my head without using the blueprint.
Sure, it wouldn't be exactly the same, but at this point that hardly mattered. What did matter was the fact that I could check them off my list of things to do, leaving me completely open to other things.
The first on my new list was the fusion blade. It would be a relatively easy build and surprisingly cheap when it came to Elerium and AA. I wasn't at all satisfied with how it looked or functioned since it was only a one-sided blade that didn't even have a pointed tip, but that would be a problem for later. I would build the original blade and deal with using it until I had the systems in place to make customizing it a short and easy project.
Beyond that, I also wanted to build two of the many explosives on the tree, the plasma grenade and the frost bomb. As far as I knew, neither of them had any equivalent in Cyberpunk, and both were pretty powerful tools in my arsenal. They would also easily be converted to grenades I could launch out the magnetic grenade launcher, which would be even easier to make without a blueprint than the mag sniper rifle. Both of the explosives would take special materials, especially the frost bomb, so they would have to wait for my next delivery to arrive.
The skulljack, a tool to hack into a brain chip, almost made it to the list as well, but I quickly realized it was way too specific to be useful. There were hundreds of different types of neural links alone, and each one would require a slightly different tool. Not to mention, if I wanted to hack into someone's brain, I could just use the access point on their neck. Or tear the link out of their skull if I was really desperate.
So far, I had a list of three things, only one of which I could do today. The fusion sword would hopefully only take me half a day, and the grenades even less. I also wanted to take a crack at the bluescreen rounds, which were EMP bullets. Unfortunately, those two would take some specialized parts and materials, even if I was only going to build them for my mag rifles.
Realizing that I was running out of things from the game that were worth making and that I could feasibly make in four days, I started pushing around the edges of the tech tree, trying to uncover anything that I missed. Then I remembered the Gremlins.
I focused for a moment and brought up what I had on the small flying drone. As far as I could tell, it was a pretty simple device. It was built on a steel frame, mounted with cameras, gyroscopes, a decently powered computer that allowed it to brute force hack some simple alien systems, and a straightforward payload system that could do a couple of different simple tasks. I was also pretty sure I could skip over at least the first iteration, which was basically just an all-around minor upgrade.
Initially, I had ignored the Gremlin because the simple drone didn't solve any of my current problems. I knew in the game they could be used to replace engineers in some of the rooms, but according to everything I was picking up from the basic information I had access to now, that was just gamified crap. They didn't seem nearly as precise or advanced enough to perform any sort of complicated function beyond what they were already made to do. At least not without constant input from a human controller. Which was unfortunate because a few extra drone workers was exactly what I needed to step up production.
Now, on second thought, I realized that the gremlins might be worth the time to build. Not because of what they could do but because of their flight system. They were surprisingly nimble, ridiculously fast, and functioned off completely human tech. Or at least completely understood technology, rather than the half-and-half combination the majority of XCOM tech seemed to have.
Even if the lift system was utterly impossible to upscale in size, it would still be incredibly useful. The idea of a fuelless thruster system was still science fiction in Cyberpunk, and having such a nimble, robust, and simple system in my pocket could be incredibly useful.
My first project selected, I turned back to the computer, quickly opening up the several shopping services that I had been using so far. I had a long list of special chemicals, materials, and parts that I would need for my last few projects, so I wanted to get most of the shopping done as early as possible.
When my shopping was complete and scheduled to arrive over the span of the following day, I got to work on the CAD program, starting to build out the specific parts I would need. I planned on skipping the first level of Gremlin and going straight to the Mark II model since the only difference seemed to be better energy generation in the form of four Elerium nodes and a better computer system and hacking assistant.
I would have tried the mark III, but it seemed to depend on understanding alien systems that I hadn't fully absorbed yet. Fortunately, with some AA paneling and a few more upgrades, which were easy to source in this world, I could make a significantly improved version once I finished Mark II. It probably wouldn't count as the Mark III, and definitely wouldn't be done anytime soon, but I knew it was possible.
It took three hours to finish designing all of the pieces and getting the frame and casing all set. Both my 3D printer and the fabricator were working on parts while I started preparing everything. Funnily enough, the four paddles that were responsible for the Gremlin's ability to float did not actually require any new parts, though I did have to modify some of the electromagnets and a few of the extra X-ray emitters, which I did while watching the parts print out.
The general principle of the Gremlin's lift system was ionizing air. The system used an advanced charging method to ionize the air around each of the four lift paddles, giving it a strong negative charge. The system would then flip, using a strong electromagnetic field to push against the negatively charged air. It would then flip again and repeat the process. This would happen hundreds of times in a second, each flip causing a minor amount of force, which would accumulate into enough thrust to hold up the Gremlin. The constant flipping back and forth was the source of the small drones' easily recognizable sound, the air getting yanked back and forth many times in a second. Even better, the system naturally evens out the ionization with each pulse, meaning it could be used indoors without having to worry about filling a room with ozone.
When all four paddles were finished, most of the metal fabrication was also complete, so I started working on other projects, getting as much done as possible so I could focus on putting everything together as my materials arrived. I spent the rest of the day designing the parts for my fusion blade and getting the fabricator running on it. While that was going on, I started working on the Gremlin's programming.
The next morning, I woke up to my front door ringing and the first wave of materials being delivered. The first batch, the parts for the Gremlin, all arrived between seven and eight-thirty in the morning, and the small drone was assembled by eleven AM. There were some small bits of modifications to the parts that I had to make, but for the most part, everything was smaller and better than what I required. Thankfully, the Tinker of Fiction seemed happy to accept things built that were as good or better as the original as counting towards an item creation. I assumed this was because having to dumb down every aspect of my creations, just so they would count, would be a pain in the ass when my tech got more advanced.
Once I was done with the assembly, I quickly downloaded the programming I had completed the previous night and flicked it on. It took a second for the cute little robot to boot, but when it did, it floated off from the ground. It bobbed in the air, looking around the main room of my apartment, scanning a bit before focusing on me. What little knowledge was left from the process filled my head, and before I could regret it, I immediately grabbed the droid and deactivated it, going as far as to pull out its battery. I quickly unscrewed its shell and started pulling things out.
There was a lot to be paranoid about in this world, but one of my biggest fears was having my tech turn against me. When every gonk could pop down to the store and buy a fistful of premade hacking systems, and AIs stalked the web, any tech open to connection was at risk.
So I would have to make everything closed.
I finished disconnecting the radio system before moving on to the WIFI connection system, carefully removing the small antenna and leaving the small droid completely cut off from the outside world, save its cameras and microphones. I then added a more complicated voice and body language recognition system so it would have an easier time parsing verbal and hand signal commands.
If I couldn't guarantee that my software was strong enough to deal with even the best Netrunners, then I would make it impossible to wirelessly interact with my creations at all. Even if that did drastically reduce their effectiveness for now, it was better to take it slow and deal with the reduction than to open myself up for a massive infiltration. There was no way to hack through an air gap, after all. I still had a way to access its programming and a way for it to interface with a computer, but it was a physical connection only, and it was hidden behind a trick panel.
When everything was clean, partitioned, and reassembled, I flipped the drone over onto its "back," quickly attaching a pair of simple extending utility arms. I have no idea why the original version didn't have some, but mine certainly would.
When everything was ready, I activated the drone again. It booted up, and once more began to float. It ran another scan of me before letting out a curious boop and bobbing in the air, waiting for me to tell it what to do. Even though I knew it was one hundred percent not an AI, it was hard not to immediately personify the cute little thing.
The drone was something the XCOM universe called a Response Program, or RP for short. This was basically a program designed to respond to and answer questions and requests as fluidly, efficiently, and fully as possible, but wasn't intelligent, capable of learning or evolving without direct editing of its program. Early versions of Siri and Alexa would have been considered RPs, but AI image generators would not be since they could learn from image scraping without much input from their creators.
"Hey buddy… let's see, the first version of your model ever created was called Rover," I explained, despite knowing it meant very little. "Let's keep with tradition and go with Spot for your designation. Understand?"
The drone beeped and bobbed in confirmation, shifting and gliding around me with its signature sound. I could just barely detect a hint of ozone as it flew by, but only for a second before it vanished.
"Spot, do me a favor and pick up the trash around the apartment and put it in the trash barrel over there," I said, pointing to the can of trash in the corner.
Another beep and the drone started flying around the apartment, picking up empty bags, wrappers, and other bits of trash, all with its new little gripping pinchers. When it caught something new, it would float over to the trash barrel and drop it in before zipping away to repeat the process.
I watched for a minute, unable to stop myself from smiling. Even with how simple the drone was, it would be able to help in plenty of ways. Already, I could think of a few ways to automate something like the AA smelter or the Elerium generator. Unfortunately, I didn't have the time to dabble.
The next project I tackled was the fusion sword. Most of its pieces were already printed, meaning that all I had to do was modify a few parts and assemble it. In all honesty, the weapon was even more disappointing than I would have thought. Whenever you gripped the handle, it automatically turned on, projecting a thin layer of Elerium plasma along the AA blade. There was no on or off switch, it just turned on whenever you gripped it. Not only that, but while the blade was hilariously effective at cutting, it was held in place by a thick, blunt, chunky support brace, which no doubt made cutting through things much harder. I had to assume that the XCOM engineering staff had simply made the blade and then said, "Eh, good enough," because I had only been holding it for a few seconds, and I could already see half a dozen ways to improve the design.
It took a dedicated moment of actual willpower to put the sword down and focus on other things. Thankfully, by the time it was done, the day was more or less over, leaving just enough time for me to set up the fabricator one last time and start up a batch of Elerium and AA. When that was done, I crawled into bed, told Spot to power down, and to wake me up early the next morning.
The following morning was mostly just assembly. Cyberpunk had several methods of generating EMP blasts, one of which matched pretty well with the primary method of EMP generation in XCOM. That meant that creating the bluescreen rounds was as easy as reinforcing an already existing part and adapting it to survive the initial impact. Once I did that, I simply sheathed it in a steel shell and added a charge monitor display on the side. I was definitely not going to do that for future rounds since it was a huge waste of parts. Still, the knowledge of bullets, especially the knowledge of what I could put into the simple steel rounds for my mag rifle, was well worth the hour and a half it took to make.
The plasma and frost grenades were even easier. A metal shell, a trigger mechanism, and a timer were more than half the parts. All I needed for the frost bomb was a short list of liquid chemicals stored in two separate vessels and mixed with a tiny detonation of C-6 explosives.
The Plasma grenade was, surprisingly, even more straightforward. Just a tiny chip of Elerium and an X-ray emitter built into an electromagnetic containment vessel. Throw the grenade, and the emitter starts charging the Elerium, which puts off its plasma-like energy. The electromagnetic field holds it back for a moment before it drops, and Kaboom, plasma explosion.
I made sure to carefully put both of the explosive devices in a small box. Technically both of them were completely safe as long I didn't intentionally fuck with them, but it was the principle. You had to respect the dangerous things you make, or someday they might go off in your face.
At this point, it was about two in the afternoon, and I had already finished my latest list of things I wanted to finish before I lost this tech tree, potentially forever.
Once again sitting in my workshop chair, spinning around with my eyes closed, I explored the vast expanse of my current tech tree. There was a whole chunk of it that I hadn't explored, but all of it was going back in time for that reality, the tech devolving to pre-2000s level almost immediately, which was obviously useless given my current setting. So, once again, I focused on the main chunk of the tree, the one specific to the XCOM project.
There were several things that I wanted to build, but I knew I couldn't, even beyond the Psi Labs. Ghost armor, which was a sort of stealth field, was one, as was its quasi-replacement, Wraith armor, which let the wearer walk through walls. Both of them would have been amazing since I probably could have added at least one to my armor and only activated it when I knew it was safe or in extreme emergencies. Unfortunately, I couldn't make heads or tales out of either of them.
I was beginning to think that higher "leveled" tech wasn't just obscured by my knowledge but by a much more fiat-backed aspect, something that was forcing me to figure out lower-level things before moving on. At this point, I knew plenty about the XCOM universe tech, but I could hardly make heads or tails of even the simple portions of their blueprints.
Either way, I could tell that there was no way I would be cracking either of them in the time I had left, mostly because I didn't even know what I would need to build first in order to start understanding how they worked. From what I could see, I suspected that they lay somewhere on the same path as psionics, strangely enough, but that was all I could tell.
In my exploration of the tech tree, I also managed to parse out the two sub-branches of body modifications that XCOM had access to. I also discovered the reason why I had never mentally spotted it before. Frequently, items all along the branches would refer back and forward along the tree, recalling something like AA metallurgy or production methods or connecting to where a specific advancement would lead. This helped me push around and single out new things to build. The cybernetics and genetic modification sub-branches, however, were completely disconnected, essentially free-floating by themselves. They were also apparently impossible for me to make since both sub-branches relied heavily on the alien tech referred to as Meld, which the tree did not provide a black-boxed production method.
It would have been much more annoying if the reason hadn't just popped into my head when I was taking my cursory look at the first genetic mod. Meld was a collection of cybernetic nanomachines, suspended in a neutral goo, created by the aliens to speed up and simplify their attempts to modify the alien races under their control. It also contained no exotic materials. No Alien Alloy, no Elerium, no special alien materials at all. This meant that if XCOM hadn't been so pressed for time, they could have studied and eventually, potentially, replicated the substance. That meant I could replicate it, which firmly removed it from the list of materials I could create with black-boxed tinker shenanigans. But since XCOM didn't have the faintest idea of how to replicate it, neither did I.
I barely even knew what it looked like!
While this was disappointing, I was glad it happened now with this tech tree. While I remembered a few of the genetic enhancements being pretty interesting, the game had always presented the Meld options as firmly being "but at what cost?" sort of options. The cybernetics were even more brutal than all but the worst cyberware here, and the genetic mods always came off as changing the individual, making them… off.
On top of that, knowing there could be floating sub-branches to my tech tree was absolutely invaluable information. Had I been in more of a rush, I could see myself missing this for multiple tech tree rolls, missing out on who knows how many useful bits of tech.
After spending a while making sure there weren't any other missing branches and making sure there weren't any interesting bits of tech that I could make, I finally decided that I was done with the XCOM tech tree. There was nothing else I needed, and everything I wanted was either too big for me to reasonably put together or too complicated for me to understand. That, or it was being purposely obscured, though I suspected that was the same thing in my case. It had been a decent place to start, but now, with most of the interesting bits made or at least understood, it was time for me to prepare for my next tech tree. I had no idea what it would be, but it couldn't hurt to cover my bases.
I spent the next day and a half preparing. I spent a big chunk of change and half a day on a used circuit board printer. It was an impressive-looking machine that could take circuit board blanks and rapidly lay down circuits before attaching chips, diodes, resistors, or any number of parts onto the board before soldering and finishing it all off. It did so with an absolute flurry of miniature arms and whirring servos. It used a program similar to CAD but significantly more complicated. That said, once I got the hang of it, I would be able to create much more compact and customized systems, something that I had a feeling would become necessary for certain tech trees.
Spot and I spent two hours combing over the program's programming, as well as the CB printer, looking for backdoors and watching programs. While there weren't any active feeds, we did find several back doors that would have made it child's play for Arasaka, the company that made the printer, to tap into its records should they want to. We obviously removed them, but since they were only being attached to my own air-gapped network, it was just a precaution.
Several deliveries, including a basic chemistry kit, were also purchased and delivered. Once again, I was happily surprised by how easy it was to purchase random and potentially dangerous things. As long as money could be made, people were happy to sell me whatever I wanted, even set up express deliveries. Most of my last day with the XCOM tech tree was spent setting up a relatively advanced vacuum hood from that world, hooking it directly up to my air venting, and using several filters to keep really dangerous fumes from escaping. The hood was only about two feet wide, but it would make dealing with any chemicals much safer.
The chunk of information I got about filtration systems and using air pressure to control the flow of gasses wasn't bad either.
By the end of my shopping spree, I had spent everything I earned clearing out the scav den, plus a significant chunk of my remaining funds from selling the three sets of AA underarmor. I was starting to run low again, but hopefully, I would be well-stocked and prepared for whatever my new tech tree was.
When I was done working on my new workshop additions and received all my deliveries, it was about seven PM. Rather than repeat the rather dramatic experience of my tech tree switching happening while I was asleep, as I had seven days ago, I told Spot to wake me up at eleven-fifty PM, before heading to bed. This way, I would get at least some sleep, so when my excitement made it impossible to go back to sleep once I switched, I could start working immediately.
Assuming my next tech tree had anything I could build immediately.
I woke up to Spot nudging me awake, the little drone flying away as I started to sit up and stretch. Unsurprisingly, it was dark outside, or at least what counted for darkness in Night City. With the shifting imminent, I could feel the nervous energy flowing through every inch of me. I tried to sit down on the couch, only to jump up a few seconds later to pace around the room.
The next ten minutes were the longest ten minutes I had yet experienced in my life. I managed to burn a few of them, starting some AA and Elerium going, mostly out of habit, but other than that, I couldn't do anything other than pace around and worry about how I had done with the XCOM branch. I felt it had been a good start, providing me with some decent bits of tech and knowledge, but I couldn't help but question my choices. Should I have focused on psionics? Should I have tried to create a full AI? Maybe tried to make some spark units?
I shook my head and did my best to drive those thoughts out of my head. If I held on to every little bit of regret and spent my time worrying about what I could have done better, I would always be miserable. I looked around my room, seeing some of the weapons I had made, then over to Spot, who was hovering a few feet away. I had made some solid progress, made some really cool stuff, and learned a whole lot. It might not have been perfect, but that was okay.
Finally, after what felt like forever, it was eleven-fifty-nine. I sat down on my couch, closed my eyes, and leaned back, waiting to feel the transition.
Just as before, as midnight approached, I could feel the specialty pulling away. This time, however, I could feel that nothing I could do would stop it. It grew more and more distant until, eventually, the connection snapped completely. On instinct, my mind ran through what I had learned, and, sure enough, the knowledge I had earned stuck with me, but I couldn't feel anything else through the connection to the XCOM tech tree.
With the old connection gone, I took a deep breath and waited for the new one to settle in.
A minute passed…
Then another…
Five minutes passed, and I was quickly falling into a full-blown panic. I anxiously searched my mind, finally stumbling on something. There was a connection, but it was so small I hadn't even noticed.
Rather than any new tech, all I could feel was a mental timer, one slowly counting down. Six days, twenty-three hours, and fifty-four minutes.
A full week. That was how long I had to wait for my new tech tree.
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Time to go make some money I suppose lol.
That's a nice bit of down time. This way he's got time to do any jobs he needs to do so that he can build up his cash before he gets a new tech tree and spends it all.
Helps a lot with removing the urgent feeling of missing out due to simply not being able to work on a tech tree because he's completely out of cash and still has to eat.
Helps a lot with removing the urgent feeling of missing out due to simply not being able to work on a tech tree because he's completely out of cash and still has to eat.