41 Kyaaa~!

Although I had left my Quadra back in Night City, the car I got to replace it in Los Angeles was still fairly nice and a sports car, as I liked. From my study of Dr Hasumi's files, I came to the conclusion that she was kind of a Japanese nationalist. I came to this deduction from reading her files and watching the personal videos and photos she posted on social media. She wasn't on the level of some of the ultra-nationalists, but she definitely thought that Japan and its culture and governance were superior to all other options on the planet today, which made me slightly curious about why she came to the United States in the first place.

The woman also had an actual, honest-to-goodness diary in her files, although she was somewhat irregular about writing in it. It seemed clear that she had felt that she owed a lot to the Japanese government, which had taken care of her since her parents died when she was young. As such, I decided to try to find a Japanese car for her to buy and settled on the Mizutani Shion MZ2. It was a used model a couple of years old, and I had gotten a good deal on it. I would have gotten an even better deal on the Targa-style convertible version of the same model, but the weather and pollutants in Los Angeles were sometimes even worse than in Night City.

Far from wanting to drive in a convertible, I wanted to drive in an NBC-resistant hazardous environment tank. But I got the Shion instead.

However, the most troubling thing about Dr Hasumi was she was also the real identity of an online net serial novelist, and this gave me more indigestion than anything else. Was I expected to continue writing 'That Time I Got Transported To My Otome Game, The Rage Of A Villainess Turned White Mage!'? I mean, why was the title so long in the first place? It was over five hundred chapters long already, and I had notes for her planned plot outline for the next five hundred, although I had specifically not opened that file yet so I wouldn't read spoilers. A thousand chapters, really!

Each chapter was about two thousand Kanji characters long, so I hadn't even finished reading the entire thing yet, although I would find myself reading a chapter here and there as it wasn't terrible. Perhaps even entertaining. The main character was a doctor that died from overwork and was reincarnated into a romance game that she had cleared when she was a younger girl, except that she wasn't the protagonist but the villainess. A kind of interesting premise that I hadn't seen, although I didn't really have a lot of time to read a bunch of net novels.

I could tell that she had started writing this while in medical school, perhaps as a way to let off some steam, and she did use her knowledge of real-world medicine to give verisimilitude to the main character's White Mage healing magic. The story started when the main character was reborn, unlike my own isekai, which had me thankfully not have to redo puberty. I was only on chapter one-hundred-and-two right now and was kind of curious how the main character was going to deal with the protagonist and her capture targets while at the same time saving the country from invasion by the Fire Demons.

I glanced at the Shion's autodrive system, making sure it was functional before I pulled up chapter one-hundred-and-three. Los Angeles County was huge, way bigger than Night City, and the Japanese consulate was a good thirty-minute drive from Chinatown, where I lived. I had time for a chapter or two, right?

---xxxxxx---

Although Gloria, Kiwi and I lived in separate buildings, we lived very close to each other and often had lunch or dinner together for mutual support. It had started while we were with the Bakkars as we were the only outsiders around and then morphed into a way for me to assist Gloria in studying for the entrance exam for the UCLA nursing program, but she had already aced that test and had started her first term as a nursing student.

Now it was just because we all enjoyed each other's company and we could all provide assistance to each other, although with Gloria as busy as she was now, it was mostly us assisting her and David, but neither Kiwi nor I cared. Paying for both Gloria and David's tuition at school, Gloria at UCLA and David at a local corporate elementary school wasn't difficult. It wasn't a big deal to me. I was spending in total about sixty-five thousand Eurodollars a year for both of them, so I was surprised when Gloria said that she was considering applying for a scholarship.

"What kind of scholarship?" I asked curiously as I stir-fried some meat and vegetables. The cheapest cloned meat was small chunks and it was perfect for stir-frying, "Do you think you'll qualify? We had to make all of your grades more or less average when we created your identity so you wouldn't stand out." It wasn't that there weren't any scholarships, but a lot of them had a number of catches. For example, if I had accepted Kang Tao's job offer, that would have been classified as a scholarship to medical school.

Gloria looked slightly nervous before sending me a link wirelessly. She had gotten a lot better using all of the features of the Gemini, which included a very full-featured operating system, "There is a scholarship for two and three-year nursing students who happen to be full-body replacements."

I paused and then hummed, "So you've decided to keep the Gemini, then?" I was kind of expecting this now, as the more she had gotten used to it, the more she seemed to like it. She had been a bit traumatised from her near-death experience, and I thought that she liked the fact that she was a lot more sturdy, strong and quick than she used to be. Although to be honest, I didn't think her current body would handle two four-gauge shotgun blasts to the chest any better than her last one. Not buckshot or slugs, anyway.

Gloria had been, from all appearances, very, very tolerant of being inside a full-body replacement. Still, I had provided some therapy before we got to Los Angeles while we were travelling with the Bakkars, but I was exactly the wrong person to be her therapist. I wasn't really that suited to it, despite my encyclopedic knowledge of the subject, but most importantly, as both one of her friends and, arguably, the one responsible for her present circumstances, she might need to talk to her therapist about me most of all.

As such, I had arranged for her to see a therapist in Los Angeles, but not before Kiwi and I did a deep dive into the psychologist, including breaking into his office and hacking all of his everything.

I wanted to ensure that he wasn't on anyone's specific payroll and that he wouldn't sell or give his patient information to other parties. Kiwi and I had to break into four psychologists' offices before we found one that wasn't crooked in some way. Either they took kickbacks from drug suppliers or mental hospitals, or they were just a front for the Los Angeles County psychosquad and would have reported Gloria or coerced her into registering as someone at risk for cyberpsychosis, which rarely ended well unless you had some sort of Corporation backing you. And not even then, sometimes.

Still, we finally found a relatively honest actor, and both she and David had been seeing him since we arrived in LA. It seemed to be working fairly well, and I kept up with her treatment plan through persistent backdoors on the man's system.

It was tempting to go see him myself, but clinical psychology was a field where it didn't work as well if you already knew all the techniques. Through my power, I had a deep look behind the curtain, and I knew exactly what a good psychologist would tell me, to the point where I could just talk to myself in a mirror if I wanted. This was one reason that psychologists often suffered from depression themselves. There was some value in just having a person listen to me, but I didn't need a trained clinical psychologist or psychiatrist to do that.

Real, in-person psychotherapy was a bit of a niche industry too. There were still such clinicians around, but more and more, they were being replaced by individualised artificial intelligence performing therapy over the net, but I was one hundred per cent sure such services were likely funnelling all patient data somewhere, even if it was just to create individualised advertising. Plus, Kiwi and I couldn't hack or break into their offices, as the security on actual services like these was impeccable, so I wouldn't trust them or recommend them to anyone.

Gloria still looked slightly nervous, "I mean, if you don't mind." I glanced at her sideways and knew what she was trying to do. She knew exactly how much her Gemini cost me and was probably trying to save me some money to make her decision to keep the body less burdensome on me. Speaking of which, I would need to dissolve the half-grown clone I had been fast-growing now that we didn't need it. I could still use all of the biomatter for other projects or as a base for biosculpting. David just grinned as he thought the whole idea of his mom as a robot was awesome.

"I really don't. I would probably make the same decision if I were you as well," I told her with a smile. I plated some of the stir-fry and handed it out to everyone, along with some white rice from the rice cooker. Now that I was rich, I could afford such luxuries as actual rice, after all. "But if we associate this identity as a full cyborg user, you'd definitely have to continue to do so if you planned on reclaiming your old identity."

I held the large serving spoon up in thought, "Although, that might make a lot of things easier. It isn't uncommon for someone to get a new identity after they've had trauma sufficient for a full body replacement, so people and Corps won't look askance at you when you come back and reclaim your old identity if that is what you end up wanting to do." I took a brief look at the scholarship requirements and nodded, "To be eligible for this, you'll have to take a concentration in clinical psychotherapy... it's pretty clear the scholarship involves helping someone with psychological research about cyberpsychosis, so expect to be a research subject, probably a combination research gopher and part of the control group as a well-adjusted full-body user."

I made a note to research which department and professor were sponsoring this scholarship. Research into the area of cyberpsychosis was perennial and also perennially terrible, but so long as they didn't try any wackadoo methods on Gloria, it should be fine and lucrative for her, as the scholarship included a small stipend.

I nodded, "It seems fine. But, I tell you what... any amount of money you can get from this scholarship to reduce the tuition I'm paying for your University, I will return half of that to you as living expenses."

Gloria frowned and said, surly, "But the whole idea was to try to pay you back some..."

"And you are... some. But a student needs living expenses, and the less time you spend working odd jobs, the more time you are studying," I said reasonably. I had been the one handling routine maintenance on her body, as well, and one addition I had added to her biopod was a built-in sleep inducer of my design, so she could trigger herself to fall into a mentally restful sleep at any time she wanted.

"Yeah, Mom!" piped in David. He was in favour of anything that involved his mother working less, which I definitely approved of.

She sighed but nodded after a moment and then looked curious, "When is your clinic going to open, anyway?" Kiwi looked interested in the answer to that question as well.

"Soon," was all I said. I had leased the whole three-story building we were standing in for virtually nothing since it was in such terrible shape. With an introduction from Wakako as well as the Tyger Claws themselves from Night City, I had been working with the Lotus Tong here, who controlled Chinatown, in refurbishing the building. Although I was a little put out at making capital improvements on a building I wouldn't own, at least the agreement to do so had me paying almost nothing in rent, so it was kind of a wash.

At first, I was going to open a biosculpt clinic and pharmacy, as I had the required credentials to open those types of businesses. It was going to be all above board, too, a legitimate business, although I would be paying an extra five per cent tax to the Lotus Tong for protection and had agreed to do some discreet work beyond merely biosculpt for them on the down-low.

I had prioritised getting this one apartment in livable condition, but now the workers were working on the ground floor, and that had to be done to a considerably better standard, but everything should be done shortly. After that, I had an appointment with the local Militech sales rep to get a security system, complete with surveillance, autonomous turrets and hopefully a couple of combat drones, if I could get them or a similar non-Militech system on the used market for cheap enough. I didn't mind spending as much money on this security as I would be ripping it out when and if I left the building.

When your friend was a fairly high-class netrunner and could help you secure your computers, automated defences and security systems looked a lot better than a contract for on-premises security guards, and one of the others would be needed here. The Lotus Tong did not have as strong of a grip on Chinatown as the Tyger Claws had on Japantown, so the protection fee I was paying, while less than what I paid the Tyger Claws, was realistically only protecting me from the Lotus Tong themselves, not the unwashed masses.

"And, of course, you'll be able to work there. However, you'll have to take a primer on biosculpt treatments. It is as much an art as it is medicine, so you might not be entirely suited for it," I told her, frowning, "But even if not, we'll have the pharmacy and similar unofficial clinic, just like I had in Night City. Tell me, what do you know of traditional Chinese medicine?"

"Uhh.. that it doesn't work?" she said in a tone that made it seem like she was asking a question instead of making a statement.

It mostly didn't work, but some of it was quite effective, even if the reason it was effective didn't have anything to do with Pestilential Qi or a yin-yang imbalance. Still, one couldn't criticise too much as they were accidentally right far more than European medicine of the same time period was.

It was just weird that the practices continued in the modern age, I felt. But, given our location and the demographics of everyone around us, I had already had a number of requests, mainly from old Aunties, as to whether we would be providing such services. Some of it, I wouldn't because it was only a placebo or even actually harmful like moxibustion. Others would be difficult to implement because the herbal components that did work were kind of difficult to obtain. They were almost all imported products, and I didn't presently have a source for them. You just couldn't get raw ginseng in North America, for example.

But, there were a limited amount of herbal remedies that I could source that were efficacious, in addition to massage and acupuncture, both of which were very effective. I could teach the latter two to Gloria fairly easily. Full-body replacements often had almost preternatural memory for complex dextrous physical tasks, and her Gemini's on-board machine learning system would help her target the correct places to use in acupuncture in the same way it would help her target the correct places on an enemy to shoot, once it realised what she was trying to do.

"Some of it does, but mostly you're right. I think a lot of our customers might be people who want this type of therapy, though. We might set up a small clinic, separate from the pharmacy and biosculpt clinic, so that they can get prophylactic IVs, vitamins, herbal remedies, acupuncture and massage. I won't turn away customers as long as the services I provide are helpful. I can easily teach all of that to you," I said, grinning.

She looked thoughtful and nodded. She wasn't the type of person to turn down learning a new clinical technique or three if she thought it was actually effective. After that, we all sat down and ate. Gloria's plate was a bit smaller than ours as she didn't exactly need as much food as us. The Gemini was mostly powered by batteries and a small radioisotope thermoelectric generator, after all. She could go a week without a charge, but it did have a fully functional digestive system, and eating and tasting food like a regular person was an excellent way to keep her attached to her humanity.

It was one of the reasons that Gemini's had so few cyberpsychosis events while generic Alpha models had the most. Not only did the entry-level Alpha models not look like a human, merely humanoid, but they couldn't eat, and usually, their voices didn't even sound like the previous organic person.

After I finished dinner, I said mildly, "Oh, also... I might be getting deported." That got the predictable response that I was hoping for, and with a small smile, I explained what I had done today and my meeting with Immigration.

David was cracking up, "I'm sorry, that's so funny, Dr Tay--err Hasumi... hahaha..." I frowned at him because I could tell he had made that slip on purpose. He knew that as long as I looked like this, I was to be Dr Hasumi.

Kiwi, however, looked wistful, "A vacation to Canada sounds nice. It's just a shame none of us can get a passport at the moment." That was true. Gloria and David could, under their old identities, but the fake identity that all of them had was likely not to the point where it would survive the background investigation necessary to get a passport.

I nodded, "I'll be going next week. Can I count on you and Gloria to make sure the workers continue as they have been? I'd appreciate it if one of you spent the night in my apartment here. I have a lot of expensive equipment just sitting around, after all."

Kiwi volunteered right away, "I can do it, no problem. When you get back, do you think you can do some work on some of my new team members?" Somewhat surprising to me, she wasn't letting her betrayal keep her down and had already started searching for a new team of mercenaries. I suppose that was what she knew how to do, after all. However, this time I did notice that she was both taking the leadership role and she was picking people that were quite "new to the game." I suspected that she wanted to train them on her own and in her own image.

Apparently, they had been taking less risky jobs, which made a lot of sense when they were just starting out. She had gone through about eight different people to get her four-person team, discarding and firing people if they didn't meet her standards or, I suspected if they reminded her overly much of Ruslan or Jean.

"A couple of them aren't sure if they want to go with cybernetic limbs eventually. If they don't, we will all want a full course of the biosculpt treatments, to include nanosurgeons," she said simply. "I'm standardising all of the augmentations for my team as a minimum requirement. So, for right now, we will just need three nanosurgeons and three muscle and bone lace treatments. We've been working small jobs for a month or so to afford it, although I am subsidising slash lending them a little bit."

I nodded slowly and thought she was likely subsidising more than a little bit. To get a good deal on the specialised nanosurgeon organs, I had to buy ten at a time, so it would be good to sell some of them. I sold everything to Kiwi at cost, but her new mooks would only get a ten per cent discount, "Yes, that shouldn't be a problem. But, the muscle and bone lace takes about six to eight hours in the tank, as you remember." Kiwi had gotten both the muscle and bone lace as well as the ballistic weave and nanosurgeons.

I really needed to get two or three more biosculpt tanks if I wanted to run a real clinic, but I definitely didn't want to buy them at several hundred thousand dollars a pop. I was thinking I could duplicate the one I had, though. My power would definitely help me with that, and with Kiwi's help, we had already cracked the software of the first tank, so I could use that as a base for the software for my duplicates as long as I bought the same microcontrollers. The software was always my weakest area in the first place, even on medical devices where my power gave me the most assistance.

It was David's turn to do the dishes, and I watched him carefully because he had a habit of not scrubbing enough and leaving spots on the plates as they dried.

---xxxxxx---

I was attacked leaving my building a week later when I was on my way to the airport by a junkie-looking guy with a knife. I really missed carrying pistols and felt I needed them more than ever right now. Still, I saw him coming at me in slow motion after yelling something about giving him my money. I let go of my luggage, stepping backwards and letting out a girly-sounding "Kyaaaa~!"

I then easily dodged him and threw out my hand in what looked like a random, untrained slap from a girl, but it had close to my half-strength behind it, and it struck the assailant on the side of his face, slamming his head against the indestructible DataTerm that would have looked so familiar in Night City. The guy was rendered unconscious instantly, his knife slipping out of his hand and clattering to the ground as he slumped bonelessly to the hard concrete of the sidewalk.

I glanced around left and right, looking to see if anyone saw my performance, but nobody was around, which caused me to sigh. The effort I put towards my fake identity, and nobody even was there to appreciate it. I casually picked up the knife and frowned. It was a cheap blade, not really worth anything. I held it by its handle and flipped it around slasher-stabber style, and used my entire strength to ram it into the concrete sidewalk, causing the blade to penetrate a few centimetres and get stuck.

Nodding at that, I grabbed my luggage and started walking across the street to the temporary parking arrangements for my car. When I got my security setup, I would be parking in my parking lot, of course, but right now, if I did, my car would be gone in the morning. I glanced over my shoulder at the unconscious man, who should survive. He could have his knife back if he pulled it out of the stone like Excalibur.

As I went through security and was pulled aside to get another bracelet, with the average traveller staring at me curiously as I put it on, I decided that I would have to do something about this. I had a few ideas in my head about modifying my monowire to look less like a monowire, but the problem was that scanner technology had, for the moment, exceeded stealth technology.

I was pretty sure I could do it, but I wasn't one hundred per cent confident, and what would happen if someone caught me trying to board an international flight with a hidden cyberweapon system? I was pretty sure that was considered terrorism or something. Maybe if I could get a cheap scanner myself, I could use it to practice and iterate any camouflage system, as I was pretty sure they all worked on similar principles.

I had splurged a little for a business class ticket and was flying direct LAX to Vancouver International on an All Nippon Airways flight. Orbital Air Subsonic had two more flights to Vancouver a day and reputedly had a better reputation for on-time arrivals, but I still felt that Dr Hasumi would rather give her money to ANA.

The flight was a little less than two thousand kilometres, so it would take about two hours on this high-efficiency subsonic jet. My last airline experience had been going to Seattle on a prop plane, but this was something akin to a 747.

I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep, although, in truth, I was reading Dr Hasumi's novel. However, about thirty chapters into the flight, I was "awoken" by a quiet but urgent-sounding "Sumimasen." I opened my eyes to the smooth, bare thighs of one of the flight attendants in my face and coughed, and quickly looked up at the woman's face. There were about equal male and female flight attendants on this flight, and they were of all of one type -- beautiful, regardless of sex.

This one smiled down at me and said quietly, "Sumimasen, Hasumi-sensei. Records indicate you are a medical doctor; is that correct?" I blinked and nodded. Was this the overused trope where someone became ill on the flight, and I would have to save them?

She brightened and said in Japanese, "You are the only one on the aircraft right now, and for some reason, our telepresence medical assistant is not functioning. I know it is an imposition, but can you come with me to first class? A passenger is ill, and the pilot needs to know if he should divert or continue on to Vancouver."

I was getting a few stares from the other passengers, and the peer pressure was real, so I sighed and nodded, "Of course. Although I'm on vacation and don't actually have any tools or supplies with me." I suppose I could have said I only have a medical doctor's degree and not really the right to treat patients, but now I was curious.

I was in the aisle seat, so I just got up and followed the woman to the much more spacious first-class cabin. So nice! But I couldn't rationalise doubling the cost of my ticket. Business class wasn't bad. Actually, even the economy was a lot superior to what I remembered about airline travel from Brockton Bay.

My patient was obvious, as he was pale, diaphoretic, seated by himself and in the process of vomiting into a prepared emesis bag. He was someone of European descent and was wearing designer but not bespoke clothes. So rich, but not really wealthy, was my take. The wealthy would take an Orbital Air spaceplane to get to Vancouver suborbitally or a private jet.

Luckily, the plane did have a supply of medical supplies, as well as a few devices. I put on some nitrile gloves and quickly connected him to the combination cardiac monitor and automatic defibrillator, humming a little as I kneeled down in the aisle next to him. "Mr..."

The flight attendant behind me supplied his name to me, "Wilson-san."

I nodded and said, "Mr Wilson, I'm Dr Hasumi. I can see you're not feeling well. Can you tell me anything that isn't immediately obvious? You're sweating, vomiting... when did it start, and is there anything else?"

"Yeah, diarrhoea... That happened first; I about destroyed the first class commode, lemme tell you. It came on a little bit after take-off and has gotten progressively worse," he said but was smiling in a friendly manner.

I made a non-committal noise and nodded, "I assume you have a biom. Can I connect to it using my personal link, sir?" I got a nod from him, and I pulled my personal link cable from behind my neck and plugged it into one of his interface sockets.

Immediately a large amount of his vital information scrolled past my eyes, but I frowned. Everything looked normal, and that wasn't normal. You didn't usually just start expelling material out of your body from both ends while being perfectly normal. How unusual! Maybe this would be interesting.

He noticed my frown and nodded, "Yeah, doc. I checked it as soon as I got the squirts, thinking it must be some sort of food poisoning, but nothing was listed. Does that mean I am fine?"

I shook my head and gave him one of my standard quips when someone trusted their biomonitor too much, "Sir, you're clearly not fine. Cybernetics are only a tool, and tools can make mistakes, or..." I trailed off before finishing the statement and then blinked. I closed my mouth, quickly disconnected my personal link, remained silent for a moment and then said, "If you don't mind, I'm going to palpate you. That means I'm going to touch around your body. Please speak up if I get to a tender spot." He grinned but didn't make the obvious lewd joke, so I put him in the category of a gentleman, at least for the moment.

As I squeezed and prodded him, I asked, "So, why are you headed to the land of Maple syrup?"

He grinned, "I'm not! After the stop in Vancouver, ANA continues this flight to Anchorage. I'm headed to Alaska, one of the few places you can still hunt deadly wild animals in the wilderness... well, if you have enough eddies to buy one of the few slots every year, anyway."

"How interesting," I said in a tone that meant exactly the opposite. I tried not to judge a man for hunting, but I honestly would have felt like it was less of a sin to hunt humans in this world than some bears in Alaska. There was no shortage of really terrible humans; just find some that were trying to murder some people and hunt them down Running Man style. However, his statement did give me important information, namely that he intended to be in the wilderness in a couple of days.

I got through his entire body, but as I was squeezing his left calf, he let out a startled, "Ouch! That really hurt, Doctor." I hummed and lifted his trouser leg, noticing an incredibly inflamed area centred around what appeared to be a small wound on his calf.

"Do you remember something poking you in the leg today? A bug bite or anything?" I asked him mildly.

He shook his head and said, "No, not at all. Was I bitten by a venomous insect or something?" I smiled. He got a lot of credit from me for saying venomous and not poisonous, as most people did.

"No, you weren't bitten by an insect, but you were po---" my statement cut off instantly as my Zetatech system started three different kinds of alerts.

[Wireless connection established! Bearing 260 degrees, less than one metre.]

[Intrusion detected! Heightened security state engaged!]

[First level ICE, bypassed!]

About the same time I stopped talking in mid-sentence, the man sitting across the aisle from Mr Wilson suddenly went rigid as sparks started emitting from the back of his head. In slow motion, I immediately realised I was being stupid for trying to tell Mr Wilson he was being poisoned. I should have left with the flight attendant and told her in privacy, but I didn't expect the poisoner-cum-netrunner that hacked Mr Wilson's biomonitor to be on the plane. You'd think you'd use a slow-acting poison, like heavy metals if you weren't going to be around afterwards.

I was kneeling in the middle of the aisle, so there wasn't any real way to make this look like an accidental flailing of a startled woman, but I supposed I could try anyway. I yelled, "Virus attack! Kyaaaa~!" And with that, I punched the stunned and sizzling netrunner directly in the face. I was really glad that their attack seemed a bit on the weak side and had only penetrated my first level of defences, but at the same time, it would have made things much easier if he had just died right away.

Mr Wilson gaped at me open-mouthed, and one of the male flight attendants simply said, "Straighto!" My Japanese language chip identified this as an assimilated English word that had become a Japanese word over time. Namely, it meant a straight punch or a cross. A boxing term, which probably meant that I didn't fool anyone with my 'Kyaa!'

One of the first class passengers suddenly getting electrocuted, followed by me yelling about a virus attack and punching his lights out, got at least one of the hidden air marshals to jump to his feet, badge and gun out. Initially, I was treated as a suspect, as I had done the punching, but the air marshal quickly reviewed the in-flight video recorders and realised what was happening very rapidly.

Taking the handcuffs he had placed on me; he said, "I'm sorry, Dr Hasumi. Were you about to say that this passenger was poisoned? And do you mind forwarding me the logs for your ICE that detected the alleged attack by the man you struck?"

I rubbed my wrists and smiled, "Of course." I forwarded him the logs wirelessly while I said, "Yes, I believe so. Mr Wilson has definitely been poisoned; he's exhibiting all of the standard symptoms for massive and acute heavy metal poisoning." This got the flight attendant, who I was calling Thighs-chan internally, to say, "I'll have to tell the Captain! Is there anything else he should know?"

I hummed and then nodded, "Mr Wilson will need rapid nano-treatment at a level one trauma centre within the next four to six hours. So he should only divert to a large metro area. Otherwise, he should continue to Vancouver." This caused Thighs-chan to nod and sit down, obviously communicating with someone through an implant.

The Air Marshal pulled out a device and plugged it into the unconscious net runner's interface socket on his neck, and said to Thighs-chan, "Please have the Vancouver police meet us when we land, as well, ma'am." He glanced at Mr Wilson and went into detective mode, "You know any reason why someone'd want to poison you, sir?"

He growled, "Yes, I fucking do. But I'd rather not talk about it. Certainly not here. What I don't get is why I'm still alive..." he glanced at me.

I shrugged, "My guess is that they used some small capsule of a dissolved heavy metal, combined with a local anaesthetic and poked it into your calf muscle. I'm guessing that the capsule was designed to break down so that you got sick on your safari..."

Mr Wilson interrupted me, "A safari is only in Africa." I just glared at him until he said, "Sorry, continue..."

"So that you got sick on your hunting expedition away from any real assistance, and they hacked your biom at the same time so you wouldn't know how badly you were ill until it was too late. But something went wrong, and the capsule is cracked or something, letting in the poison a little too early," I said, feeling like Sherlock Holmes with my deductions. The air marshal made a non-committal humming noise, so I couldn't tell if he thought I was right, though.

He blinked, "Uhh... then can you get a scalpel and yank that thing out of me?" The air marshal glanced at me and nodded.

I shook my head, "Well, yes, I could. But I refuse to do so. The most likely heavy metal that is this toxic... there is a very good chance it is an isotope of polonium. And if so, if I yank it out, I might contaminate the entire cabin with a highly-toxic, highly-radiological aerosol, depending on how they packed the capsule."

Apparently, there were some things you shouldn't say on a plane. Amongst them, of course, was "bomb", but another few words that got a lot of people very excited was "highly-radiological aerosol." The air marshal, who was joined instantly by a second, demanded to speak to the Captain, and apparently, very rapidly, we were being diverted to a Royal Canadian Air Force base in Vancouver instead of Vancouver International Airport.

At least they would still have an ambulance waiting for Mr Wilson, but it looked like at least the first day of my vacation was shot.

I really hoped it was polonium and not, say, dissolved lead in a solution. My medical sense seemed to think it was polonium, but if it wasn't, I think I was in big trouble. At least, they let me put a tourniquet on Mr Wilson's leg to hopefully prevent blood flow, and therefore more polonium, from travelling from his calf, but he was going to need some serious nano-treatments to extract it all and repair all of the radicals damaging his DNA. On the plus side, the bears would be safe.