14 Proper effed

NC Med Ambulance had a "traditional" EMS schedule of twenty-four hours on, twenty-four off, twenty-four on and then four or five days off. You ended up working about fifty hours a week unless you worked an extra half or complete shift on your days off. The burden was below average for normal Night City workers, who usually worked between fifty-five to sixty hours a week, with some working much more than that.

I kind of liked the schedule since it gave me a lot of time off. However, it was kind of rough on the days when we had a lot of calls. Typically, there was time for napping, and we weren't running back-to-back calls the entire shift, but that situation wasn't actually rare, either. EMTs were very superstitious, but I didn't know if I noticed anything crazier during the shift I had worked on the full moon, but both Theresa and Jim had assured me it was a factor, if only for the Animals gang.

In the case of situations where there was no time to take naps at all, the company provided free stimulants, although they were little better than various mixed amphetamine salts, so I wasn't really interested in using them. A few of the employees offered to sell me better, as in better for me, stimulants on the side, and I was shocked when one offered me the same neuro-stimulant that I had made my first day here. It was a proprietary stimulant made by Biotechnica, and it was definitely not in its trademarked tablet form.

At first, I accused him of trying to rip me off, but he gave me a small sample to take home. I didn't have a mass spectrometer, but in some ways, my internal biomonitor did in its toxicology processor, so I ended up just diluting some highly with water and then tasting a small portion like I was a Dark Ages alchemist until I got a report that it was indeed the same chemical formulation that I was expecting.

The next shift I was working, I asked him about it, and he told me that most sales of that substance on the street were in its powdered form. Apparently, Biotechnica were kind of assholes and included a formulation in their tablet coatings that would ruin the active ingredient in their stimulant about thirty days after the product was exposed to air. The entire tablet would turn black, then, so you would know it wasn't effective anymore.

So, it was very common for organised groups to buy second-hand pills a few days before they were no good and unencapsulate the active ingredient as a powder from the tablet, then sell either the straight powder or make your own tablets for them.

As such, I was currently making my own pill press at home. I didn't intend to get involved in the drug trade, really, but I felt that even if I brought my sleep-inducer to work and slept for thirty minutes or so when we were on lunch, there would be times when I would actually be legitimately fatigued, to the point where I would be a hazard to caring for my patients. If this was America I remembered and not Night City, I would guess that we would have the option to call for a few hours of sleep and go out-of-service, but even though NC Med Ambulance had a pretty good reputation for treating their workers well, all we got was free speed.

As such, if I was going to be forced by necessity to occasionally use stimulants to keep myself awake, then I would be using the least damaging option available to me. A twenty-five-milligram dose of this stimulant would keep you alert and awake for forty-eight hours, plus or minus four hours. That was... too much. So the little press I had made had a die that was small, with the binders that comprised most of the pill, which was basically just sucrose; the small tablets would keep someone alert for eight to ten hours.

I stared at the pill press, rapidly chunking out small little tablets with a little apprehension. When I decided I might have to have this stimulant as an option at work, I very quickly decided that I didn't want to carry some baggy of loose powder; it didn't exactly send a professional message. My power was a little off and on about what it would actually help me make, but "medical tools" was definitely one of the things that it was more than happy to oblige with... however, I think it went a little all on this thing.

I had built it from a number of random parts that I had in my apartment, some of which came from the doctors' stock of cybernetics that I had been gifted, as I recognised the micro-rotor from a busted cybernetic leg being the main motor involved. I thought I would end up with a hand press or something, but this thing seemed a bit too industrious.

It was rapidly punching out little things that looked indistinguishable from peppermint Tic-Tacs, including the hard vanilla shell, somehow. Tic-Tacs did not, thankfully, exist in this world. The company that invented them, Ferrero, went out of business a long time ago, I had just conducted a few net searches to confirm that, so at least there wouldn't be any cases of accidental overdose if a bottle of these fell out of my pocket and someone picked them up.

"I... don't need this many..." I told the machine, unsure. Why did it seem like my power was always trying to get me involved with the drug trade?! I sighed, but thankfully after a few hundred pills were run out, the machine ran out of some of the ingredients, and the production came to a halt.

I eyed it, curious. The binders were made of simple dextrose or sucrose, and I had plenty of that, and two hundred Speed-Tacs hardly put a dent into the active ingredient hopper...

"Oh," I said, chagrined. It ran out of the vanilla extract. Or faux-vanilla extract, I assumed, since I didn't think it was actual vanilla.

I sighed, shrugged, and then used a small pill bottle to gather up the tic-tacs and carefully used a marker to write the drug name and dosage on the outside of the bottle, just in case I lost it.

Honestly, I thought the two hundred little tic-tacs would probably last my entire stint with this company, but I supposed I could buy some more vanilla extract and make some more later. If I just sold them to my co-workers, then I wasn't really a drug dealer, was I? No, that sounded like an excuse, even if they were much better than the company-provided stims.

Still, this would be better than the brain surgery on myself that I had considered to remove or reduce the need for sleep. Although the idea of being a "Noctis" cape, like Miss Militia, appealed to me, I wasn't yet at the point where I felt that implanting self-made brain implants was wise.

But I did have an idea for one that would supercharge the default mode network of the human brain. That was the operating mode of your brain when you weren't actually doing anything in particular. If you've ever found yourself daydreaming, then your brain was operating in the default mode network. My change would allow mental and psychological rest to be achieved a little bit at a time every day, every time your brain switched into this mode of thinking. It wouldn't be a complete replacement for sleep, as a lot of physical healing and important hormonal issues were conducted while you slept, but it would be a good first start.

But... I definitely wasn't ready to do elective self-brain surgery on myself. No how, no way. And I wasn't going to ask Dr Taylor to install some obviously custom implant, either. I was actually pretty leery of installing anything Tinkertech into my brain in the first place. But that just meant if I studied hard, hopefully, and eventually, I could get to the point where I understood the operating principles of such a device.

I shook my pill bottle of illicit tic-tacs. I really wondered what they tasted like. Were they mint? The outer "hard candy shell" ought to be vanilla flavoured, but... the diluted and minute amount of the drug I tasted for identification purposes was absolutely disgusting, even diluted, so I somehow very much doubted it would taste very good. It was probably best to swallow them whole if I ever needed to use them.

---xxxxxx---

"So, you've had the implant for some time now. How do you feel with it? You seem remarkably well adjusted from what we can tell here, so this will be the last time you have to come in," Dr Taylor asked me.

I always had the Kerenzikov in one-hundred per cent mode when I came to visit Dr Taylor, as he took a number of readings from my biomonitor, which included information on all of my running cybernetics and a brain electrical map similar to a functional MRI and thought he'd notice. My speech was getting close to normal, and it was one of the things the doctor remarked favourably on. I was up to eighty-five per cent in my day-to-day life, but I had reached the realm of diminishing returns. I was getting used to the faster speeds slower, but I still thought I should be in full speed mode after another month or two at the most.

I coughed a little and said, "Pretty good. People hardly notice, or if they do, I am not speaking or acting at such a speed that they remark on it. Perhaps they're just being polite. I have to admit that it has been quite challenging to get used to, but it has been nowhere near the psychosis-inducing ordeal that I had been led to believe."

Dr Taylor made a humming and non-committal noise and said, "It's possible that you're just well suited to reflex-enhancing boostware. Two to four per cent of the population tolerate kerenzikov's pretty well, so it is quite rare but not unheard of." He glanced up in the corner of his vision, obviously consulting something he had displayed on his optics, "How about the interactions with your Biotech Sigma MkI? The combination of an integrated cyberdeck and boostware isn't seen too often."

I scrunched up my face, "I've decided to constrain my use of it to augmented reality mode, curtailing any deep dives until I am well and truly adapted to the higher subjective speed. When you deep dive, so long as your connection will allow it, the net provides whatever experience you can handle. The kerenzikov just acts as a time-dilation factor, I guess. But all the software interactions and VR environment seem to run at exactly the same speed you do unless you're interacting with another real person's ICON, so it was a big adjustment going back and forth. One thing I've actually enjoyed quite a bit is that it is almost like I have three times as much time in the day to read or study material at work."

That caused him to briefly cough and laugh a bit as if he was unexpecting that, "Sorry. I met someone a few years ago who had a similar implant, although his version wasn't quite as advanced as yours, and he said the same thing. He was definitely amongst that two per cent, or so that tolerate it well, as you are. I am wondering if that isn't a universal opinion amongst your cohort. I could see the attraction. It basically means you can live twice or three times as long, perhaps not objectively but subjectively, and that's mostly what people care about." He had an odd look on his face as he stared off into space, "Hmmm... both slightly introverted, too. A factor?"

Hey! I... resembled that remark! Before I could say anything, he stood up and nodded, "Well, I'd say we can call it a day... Oh, by the way. I called my supplier, and they can ship me one of the items you requested. The one I can get is the Zetatech ArcticPRO Legend series. This year's model. Uhh... unfortunately, that is one of the most expensive of the possibilities you requested; total fees would be over twenty thousand eurodollars. I'd need half up front to make the order. Sorry, with something as specialised as this, I'd sit on it forever if you backed out."

Fuck! I had been building back my bank balance slowly, but this would drop it below ninety thousand. As an entry-level paramedic, I didn't really make very much money, but I made enough to pay the rent, food and a little left over. I had been making a little bit of extra money from seeing any of the dolls of Clouds anytime they got ill, thought they got ill or had a question or concern about one of their implants, and then that shifted to the same thing for most of the workers on the twelfth and tenth-floor mall areas, but only on my days off.

There wasn't actually a doctor's office, legitimate or not, in the building, so I guess I was serving a bit of a niche. I didn't charge much, either and had actually been making most of my money selling pharmaceuticals. Legitimate pharmaceuticals! I had already started buying them wholesale straight from the manufacturers when I was setting up my own personal stash, and a few people asking if they could just buy the drugs from me instead of taking my recommendations to a pharmacy had me increase the scope of what I was ordering.

I didn't stock anything really interesting, just the normal things one might find over the counter at a pharmacy and about twenty of the most commonly prescribed prescription drugs. It was definitely illegal for me to sell them, but it was also illegal for me to provide any kind of medical advice or service. Nobody, even the NCPD officers that lived in the building, cared one whit.

A few of the lower-level Tyger Claws had even started coming to me now and then, and these were the type of people that I was most worried about. They weren't good people. I mean, Mr Jin and Mr Inoue weren't good people either. But these low-level enforcer types were especially not good people, but they were very polite with me, so I supposed it was alright. I wasn't patching them up after gang wars or anything, but I had a few with regular maladies and one with an infected tattoo. Everyday things.

"Introversion sounds like a hard factor to quantify, although it does sounds like it would track. What about the extreme? Has there been any famous street samurais on the autistic spectrum?" I asked him, slightly amused.

He grumbled, "There was a rumour decades ago that Arasaka prized high-functioning children on the spectrum, earmarking them for some special service. I always figured if the rumour was true, it would have been for runners or some technical field. But I could have easily been stereotyping, and now I'm curious... there's no way to know, though."

"You want me to transfer the funds or pay at the counter?" I asked him after we both stood up.

He shrugged, "Go ahead and send it my way. I'll make the order right now. My rep will probably ship it, space available, on the next aero-zep from Cupertino, so it'll probably be here in just three or four days."

Seeing the large cargo zeppelins for the first time made me think of the Empire 88 from Brockton Bay, as I had a mental image that was no doubt wrong of the pilots speaking with a thick German accent and wildly gesticulating. The huge things were filled with tons and tons of hydrogen, like the Hindenburg, and powered mostly by solar panels or CHOO2 if it was windy. They didn't go particularly fast anywhere, but they were cheap to run and flew high enough to be safe from ground fire unless it was actual artillery.

It was a popular way to ship cargo between cities in California, just to keep the shipments safe from ground hazards. There was only the occasional report of air piracy to contend with. The very idea that there were actual, real air pirates made me feel conflicted; on the one hand, it sounded terrible, but on the other hand, it sounded cool.

I nodded and shifted my interface to direct a digital transfer to the doctor of ten thousand eddies, trying to avoid wincing as I did so.

---xxxxxx---

I still commuted to work in my normal clothes and changed there in the locker room. Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to carry my pistol. I could have done so anyway, and I knew a few medtechs that did, but it was technically against the rules, and I would likely end up fired if I ever had to pull my gun or use it. Although my being in the uniform of a paramedic lessened the possibility of that actually happening, so it was a trade-off. But, the idea of trusting my life to that felt wrong to me.

This was going to be my first shift off third rider status, and I was about to meet my partner for the foreseeable future. Unless two people just didn't get along, the company preferred to keep people together for periods of months before potentially shifting their schedules. Sometimes that never happened. I thought it was mainly just laziness, as there were definitely some advantages to different perspectives from different clinicians, but I just worked here.

Jim had told me that he selected my partner because she and I were supposedly quite similar; we both were hired at the company when we were young, and we both were excellent clinicians and hard workers, and I had to admit I liked the sound of that. It would be really awful if I got stuck with a longtime partner that was lazy and I ended up doing most of the work.

Our shift change was at six in the morning, so I set out especially early this morning, figuring I would need some extra time to introduce myself and it was quite dark when I got off the train, and like many ambulance companies, NC Med was not based in the best part of the city. There were a number of stations, but the one I worked at was based in Heywood. However, the low-light mode in my Kiroshis just shifted things to a kind of grayscale when the light level was too low. It took the practical absence of any light whatsoever to make them completely useless.

So I wasn't completely surprised when I saw a man hiding next to a dumpster on the next street I had to take. I paused and didn't walk down the street. I wasn't stupid. I was going to continue on to the next intersection, then cut across and back around, however, just before I started moving again, I noticed something moving in my peripheral vision, and something told me to move out of the way, so I did and at full speed. I shifted to one hundred per cent on the boost and stepped out of the way. Glancing back, I see another man swinging an honest to god blackjack and trying to cosh me in the head. He's moving kind of in slow motion to me, but his expression seems like he is putting his all into the swing.

I gaped in surprise for a moment while simultaneously pulling out my pistol and dropping my purse; my first instinct was to run away, but however, I quickly discovered what I was dealing with when I heard a slow-mo complaint in Russian, "Blyyyyaaaaaatt!"

Eastern Europeans, dirty, shitty cyberware, and trying to take me down from ambush with a non-lethal weapon without demanding any money meant nine out of ten I was dealing with Scavs, and my fate would not have been a good one if they had managed to knock me out. I recognised the man trying to bash me in the head from the train, and my boosted memory told me he had been there the last two times I had gone to work, too. Had they been casing me in particular? I couldn't recall any port scans on myself on the train, but there were a couple of days recently when I found potential netrunners and didn't do anything in my commute.

I found the possibility plausible that they might have cased targets on the train just based on visible cyberware. I didn't have a lot, but just my current year Kiroshi Mk3s would probably be enough to tempt them. What were my options here?

By the time I had figured all of this out, the man trying to bash me had reached full extension on his swing. I intended to step back to put some distance between us, but my peripheral vision saw the man in the dimly lit connecting street begin to slowly run in our direction, carrying something that looked like a gun.

So, instead of taking a step back and giving him a potential shot, I stepped forward, inside the swing of the first man and casually placed the muzzle of my Lexington against his extended elbow and started squeezing the trigger. My brain was telling me to shoot him in the head, but despite these people clearly intending me a gruesome death, if I was lucky, I didn't know if I could just kill them.

My eyes shifted to the second man and were locked on him, lines of information quickly scrolling down my vision as the loud report from my pistol and the scream of pain from the first guy hit my ears. I had already modified the parameters to his shitty decades-old optics and begun uploading a Reboot Optics quickhack before the cosh the first guy was carrying even hit the pavement.

The second man began slowly raising his weapon anyway, yelling, "Annnnddreeeeeyyy!" but before he could even reach his aim point and have to decide whether or not to shoot through his friend, the upload finished.

I thought he would... not start shooting, but I saw the moment he was blinded and realised what he was going to do and just kept backing up out of the intersection. I was hiding behind a building wall when he let several blasts from the semi-automatic street sweeper, raising my pistol to take a carefully aimed shot. I winced as I saw his blasts tear his friend's calves to pieces, and I wasn't sure I would fair much better. Sure, I had ballistic skin weave, but heavy buckshot at close range could go through a car engine, supposedly.

Everything in my training and everything my Alt-Dad told Alt-Taylor was telling me to go for the simple centre body mass shot, but I was aiming low on one of his legs, almost at his feet and hard already flipped the switch on my concealed Lexington to three round burst. His shitty optics would take another ten seconds to reboot, so I might have been able to just run off, but these weren't good people!

The report of the pistol almost surprised me, and I had aimed low and let the short burst walk up his leg and scored two out of three hits, including one directly on his kneecap, which put him on the ground. His friend was already rolling around on the ground, moaning and pain and bleeding profusely. I would have to render aid to him right away. Otherwise, he would die from the shredded arteries very rapidly. A couple of bystanders around began running away from my shot towards more well-lit areas of the street while I still looked down at the second man.

Seeing the shotgun slip from the second guy's hands when he fell to the ground, and sure that the man's vision was still impaired, I quickly ran at my top speed directly at him and, with a running kick like I was playing soccer, kicked him in the head.

I did it before I even thought about it, and immediately I was aghast and apprehensive that I might have killed him right there, as I was running really fast, but a quick check confirmed he didn't have a broken neck, but he definitely had a concussion. I glanced at his gunshot wounds, and luckily I didn't perforate an artery, so he wasn't bleeding too seriously. I grabbed both his shotgun and his belt and ran back to the first guy, who had lost consciousness by now.

As I used the two men's belts as makeshift tourniquets, I called 911 and reported that Scavs had attacked me and two people had been shot. Then, I called my boss.

"What?! That's almost right by the Heywood base. Have you called the cops yet?" asked Jim, looking like he was not entirely awake.

I nodded, "Yeah. One of them shot the other with a twelve gauge twice, and just about destroyed his two lower extremities from the sural down. I've got the bleeding mostly under control, but he's fucked. The other uhh has a serious concussion and two GSWs to the lower left extremity, courtesy of myself."

"What? Proper fucked?" asked Jim in his odd British accent.

I yelled, "No, not proper fucked! I think that means something dirty. Damnit, Jim.."

"Alright, sorry. Okay, we'll get toned for this for sure, I'll call your partner, and if you don't mind, I'll give her access to your locker; she can grab your uniform and meet you there at the scene. You might be detained by the coppers briefly, but it shouldn't be a big deal. Then you can just start your day from there. I'll even clock you in now; it's like I'm paying you for shooting those idiots. I'm talking to Dispatch now. Put their gun and yours on the ground and make sure to be far away from them when the coppers come, lass," he said after a pause.

I glanced down and nodded, "Alright. That sounds fine. Tell Dispatch to send at least three units of blood if they're gonna come at all."

He hung up, and I sat my pistol and the Scav's shotgun on the pavement, but I stayed a bit near it until I started hearing sirens in the distance, then I walked a good five metres away. I was a bit impressed with their response time; they must have been nearby. The north part of Heywood was well-policed, but this part was... less so. One squad car rolled up, beating the ambulance. I could also hear just a few blocks away and as they got near, I held my hands in the air just to be safe.

It was a good decision; two policemen jumped out with their guns drawn and aimed in my general direction. It took a force of will not to dart away, and they started yelling, "Hands up! Hands up! Put your hands on your head, interlace your fingers!" I complied, slightly annoyed, but I wasn't about to show it.

One of them covered me with their weapon while the other frisked me quickly, glancing down at the two downed Scavs. Just seeing the difference between how I and the two Scavs were dressed, they had already calmed down significantly. Then they both put their pistols away, and one said, "Sorry about that, ma'am. Alright, you can put your hands down. You're the one who called this in? You said you shot one, and the other... shot his friend? Where's your gun? Where's theirs?"

While one was giving me the fifth degree, the other took a moment to inspect both downed nar-do-wells, relieving the legless one of a BudgetArms piece of shit pistol that I should have checked him for. I pointed a few metres away, for the benefit of the first cop, to where the weapons were sitting on the asphalt; it was still dark, so it wasn't too surprising he hadn't spotted them.

"Over there, sir. I figured that maybe you wouldn't want me to be, you know, carrying them when you approached," I told him mildly.

He chuckled, "Smart. We appreciate that. Phil, take a look. I hear an ambulance, so maybe this idiot will make it. How the fuck did his friend shoot him?"

About this time, one of our ambulances showed up, and two Medtechs popped out, and the cops motioned to the two downed Scavs. I didn't precisely recognise them, but I had to shift to a new working schedule to match up with my new partner, so it wasn't too surprising.

I told the cop the whole story while the other cop briefly inspected both my pistol and the shotgun. After a moment, he grabbed my pistol, dropped the magazine out and then removed the round from the chamber before placing the loose round into the magazine. Then he walked over and offered me the pistol and magazine and said, "Just don't load until we leave, please, citizen."

I blinked, nodded and took the pistol and placed it back in my holster without the magazine in it and then put the mostly full magazine in my purse, picking it up off the ground. "Thank you, sir," I tell him.

"Wait, you're a paramedic?" the first one asked after I told him my story.

I nodded, "Yeah, I was on my way to work; it's just a couple of blocks that way. That's one of our trucks. My partner should be here soon, too. In fact, we'll probably be the ones to take the guy I shot to the hospital. He's a lot less injured."

Both of them seemed to find this very amusing. The one who had been talking to me said, "Oh, that's preem. Fuck, it's a shame he's unconscious... nice kick. Cause I would have loved to see you ask him if he was in any pain." That set the other one off, laughing even harder. The first one turned to me and said seriously, "Hey, next time, just save the city some money and uhh... don't save their lives, right?"

Well, I guess I wasn't getting in any trouble. The first crew was already wheeling the first guy to their unit; I had watched them work on him for a couple of minutes, and they were pressure-infusing a lot of fluids and running blood besides, but I didn't know if the guy would survive. I was almost certain I could save his life, but in this case, it depended on how adventurous the doc at the hospital was. He might live if they amputated both legs below the knee immediately, but if they tried to do something fancy, he probably wouldn't.

I rubbed the back of my neck, "Ah... it's kind of a reflex," I explain away. It's weird, feeling like I did something bad for not shooting these two guys in the head or letting them die on the street. The police spent a moment talking to the first ambulance crew and got the information on which hospital they were going to take the guy to so that they could have him arrested if he survived.

At about that time, a second ambulance pulled up, and a woman jumped out of the driver's seat. She was a redhead, and fiery red, to boot. She ran around, looking, "Taylor?! Taylor!" I waved, and she ran up to me, "Oh! You look fine, actually. Hahaha, the way Jim said it, I thought we'd have to transport you. No wonder he had me get your uniform. Uhh... I'm Gloria, Gloria Martinez. Nice to meet you."

She looked fairly young, in her early to mid-twenties if I had to guess. Jim had told me she started working for the company when she was seventeen, having gone to a specialised health science high school and graduating with a basic EMT certificate. Now she was up to an intermediate, and he said she was as good as many Paramedics, that she really had a gift.

"Taylor Hebert. It's nice to meet you too, Gloria. Uh, yeah. Our guy has two GSWs in the lower left leg, missed the femoral and isn't bleeding too badly. He also had some blunt-force trauma to the face..." I begin telling her, finding myself blushing as I reported the injuries I dealt this man in the passive voice as if I hadn't inflicted all of them, "Can you start assessing him while I go change in the truck?"

She snickered, "Yeah, no problem. We can try some of that new pain medicine if he wakes up, the normalisine." It took me a second to understand what she said, and then I laughed a little, despite myself. She said the words "normal saline" as one single word, and pronounced as if it was a medicine. She was implying he would receive nothing for pain, at all.

She did a fist bump, "Yes! Jim said this was your first job; all these hundred-year-old EMT jokes will seem brand new to you!"