Nine to fiving it

April 2067

Tegucigalpa, Honduras

Confidential Arasaka Compound

"You know, Phillipé, if I had an eddie for every time I have been kidnapped, well... I would only have two eddies, but it is weird that it has happened twice," I told my former employee and current co-worker. It had been six weeks since my kidnapping, and it had taken almost a whole week to exfiltrate out of Los Angeles without being noticed.

I had become something of a celebrity, again, in my kidnapping, and there was continuous speculation about the economic and military impact of the widespread adoption of sleep inducers. The world had woken up to how useful and lucrative such a product was, though, and there had been several segments on them in the business channels and net feeds the week following my disappearance.

Then, when Arasaka publicised that I had been "rescued" and accepted a position with their Corporation, it had been enough to send the share price of Arasaka shares soaring almost fifty basis points, which didn't sound like a lot until you realised the total market capitalisation of Arasaka.

Sneaking out of the city had been slightly difficult, with everyone looking for me. The ninjas who rescue-napped me were from a group of "advisors" that had been working in Northern California and, for some reason, happened to be in Los Angeles. They had decided that it would be less likely to be discovered if they went south instead of trying to go north back into the Free States, so we ended up in Honduras. It looked like Phillipé didn't buy the company line either because he grinned, "Perhaps thrice?" He waved a hand to indicate our present location.

I inclined my head to surrender the possibility. I didn't know who was behind my first kidnapping. It was professionally done, and I was still a bit sore about how I had let my overconfidence let a random mook disable me. No, not just a random mook. My random mook. I had expected something to happen soon, but I hadn't expected to be betrayed by my own employees.

In the subsequent weeks, some of my Arasaka minders made sure that I saw articles that reported that the people behind the attack were traced to a group of mercenaries that Militech had hired. This was based on the fact that the aircraft used were drawn from stocks Militech was using for their mercs and Southern California militia members. But that didn't mean anything, as they could have been stolen. In fact, the armoured vehicle that Arasaka used to rescue me had been stolen from the Los Angeles police department. Why the LAPD needed an APC with an automatic Gauss cannon attached to it... actually, I could see why they needed it.

The fact was that I didn't know who was behind it, which rankled me. I liked to have neat lists of people or groups that wronged me, so that I could settle accounts later. I had started that habit back in Brockton Bay. I hadn't carefully detailed all of the Trio's bullying in one of my diaries solely for evidentiary purposes, after all. But now I was left with some uncertainty.

It could have been Arasaka themselves, attempting to glad-hand me, or it could have been Militech or any other Corporation. It could even have been exactly what my interrogator claimed, a private attack that sought to steal something from me and then sell it to the highest bidder.

My personal opinion was that the timing of Arasaka's rescue was mighty convenient. I had only been unconscious for about an hour before waking up and having that woman attempt to coerce me. Either they already had me under surveillance themselves for their own kidnapping and noticed the attack, or they arranged it themselves to rescue me right before I was tortured and possibly murdered. Their alacrity in responding could be explained no other way.

I had never conceived of the possibility that someone might kidnap me and then kill me afterwards, either. I had such a high opinion of my own value, so that seemed like an impossibility. Kind of stupid, in retrospect. Stupid, like talking to my security manager every Monday at ten in the morning on the dot.

I was also kind of upset when I learned that the original kidnappers had just shot him on the factory floor instead of paying him whatever bribe he was owed for his perfidy. I thought he got what he deserved, but... I also felt as though I got robbed of revenge myself.

At least I was self-aware enough to realise that wasn't exactly an opinion that helped my mental hygiene, though. Still, I couldn't help but go 'Tsk' when I heard about it.

With Phillipé, I decided to change the subject, "Have you heard anything from your team about any changes to the Arasaka version of the wreath?" Arasaka hadn't screwed Phillipe on what they had promised him. He was the Technical Project Lead for the sleep-inducer wreaths, both the consumer and military versions, but not for the cybernetic versions, which they thought that long-term would have even more of the market share than the wreaths.

After we got to Honduras, instead of shipping me straight "back" to Japan, Arasaka told me to start working on both the Arasaka-version of the wreaths as well as the cybernetic versions and had Phillippe waiting for me. It was a new and interesting experience trying to explain exactly how my technology worked.

The electronics themselves weren't that novel; it was how they interfaced with the brain that was the improvement, so there quickly was a number of neuro-scientists added to the team. These served as subject matter experts who could consult with both Phillipé's team as well as the one that was handling the cybernetics, which was tentatively being led by myself.

I already had designs of two different versions of cybernetics, but I had never even prototyped them; however, like the wreath, they had to be redesigned to use Arasaka electronics and design philosophies. Arasaka couldn't be seen to sell a sleep inducer that was based primarily, on a Fuyutsuki Electronics braindance wreath, for example. That wouldn't do, plus they wanted to cut them out of any potential future revenues from the licensing agreement I had signed with Fuyutsuki earlier.

The cybernetics versions I had designed mostly from the ground up, but now that I had a team of cybernetics engineers behind me, I could see how amateurish I had been. I had reinvented the wheel in a lot of places, so it was mostly being redesigned, as well.

Phillipé smiled and nodded, "Yes, the final version for the MkI entered fullscale series production a few days ago, with tens of thousands already running off the assembly line in the factories in Osaka. They're focusing on the militarised versions right now, with a small run of the consumer-grade versions being run off and sent to product reviewers, VIPs and the like. A couple hundred of each version should be couriered to this base soon."

I nodded. I had heard from my temporary boss how they were prioritising the military versions of all of these products due to how much of an advantage their strategic planners felt an Army with reduced sleep needs could achieve over a peer adversary that didn't have a similar technology would have. The tempo of modern combat was high, and thinkers (not Thinkers, though) felt that an equivalent force could be fifteen to twenty per cent more effective if they had the sleep inducers in a straight attrition-style war. That was a lot.

My "boss" was pushing my team to finish the cybernetics versions as quickly as possible, as this would be the main version rolled out to Arasaka forces and possibly included as an upgrade to the higher-end Araska operating systems moving forward. The wreaths were being sent mostly to Northern California and given to Arasaka-hired mercenaries in the area, so they could be seen to have an immediate effect on the war between the federal government and the Free States.

In a world of dangerous netrunners, it might sound like a shortsighted decision to include a piece of cybernetics specifically designed to make the user fall asleep, but there were already a number of black viruses and quickhacks that could put people into temporary comas, so it really wasn't that big of a deal so long as the security was tight.

That was another area that I had been a bit lackadaisical in, but only because, at the time I designed the cybernetics, I didn't have the design files to integrate it into an operating system closely. I did now, but my team was the one who was handling most of this work, as they all had experience working on Araska OSes. I had already been told that when we released our first version of products, I would be replaced as the Project Lead for this project and return back to Japan, where I would be placed in a more research and development role.

Right now, I was working as an engineer, basically, instead of a researcher, but they were very firm in their desire to get these products rolled out as quickly as possible. I had the feeling that they were kind of concerned that I was going to be some kind of "one-hit wonder", but they were committed to funding a number of subsequent projects even so. A sinecure was a small price to pay to ensure I would not be able to license my technology to competitors, after all. I would have to give them at least a few more winners, though, before I was valued enough that I could do whatever I wanted to do, which was my entire purpose for trying to get myself kidnapped.

I nodded and stretched out in the chair I was sitting in, tugging at the collar of my blouse, straightening the lapel pin that featured Arasaka's three-limbed-tree logo. I wasn't wearing a uniform precisely, but Arasaka definitely had a dress code and grooming standards. They were a very socially conservative company.

Well, at the lower level, you'd see as much skin as you wanted, but I was, theoretically, an executive and researcher, so I had to dress the part. It wasn't that surprising when you considered that the man that ran the company was born during World War One and fought as a fighter pilot in World War Two. Gram had referred to Saburo Arasaka as "a bit stuffy" when we had briefly discussed some of the larger Corporations of the world, and I felt that was something of an understatement.

That said, I kind of liked the clothes even if I wasn't used to this cut and style. They were right up my alley and in subdued colours to boot, but they definitely were not Sakura's style of choice. She always preferred dressing a little more provocatively than would be acceptable here.

"I've been told that I'll be sent back to Japan when my product launches. I doubt they'll keep you or your team here after that, either," I told him conversationally.

He grinned, "I can't say I will miss this place. Even if this wasn't a highly-classified facility, this city is amongst the most dangerous in North or Central America." That was true, and that was saying something. We were off to a side, sequestered from most of the facility we were in, and it wasn't permitted to go nosing about, and nobody was allowed outside into the city proper, escort or not. I was sure my freedom wouldn't be that much different even when I got to Japan, but at least there, I would probably have nicer accommodations and a lot more distractions available. Here, I really only had one, and he wasn't one that I was really interested in partaking in.

A message caused me to pause, frowning, 'Think of the devil, and his cute face will appear.' My personal assistant was requesting my presence to go over something or other. I sighed and stood up, "Well, I have to go." He nodded and went back to working on his implants, kind of staring off into space and fiddling with something only he could see on his augmented reality system. Most of his and my team wasn't actually on this base; it was just that this was one of the closest locations that had a secure enough connection that we could send sensitive documents back and forth and teleconference with the members of our team back in Japan.

Arasaka wouldn't be comfortable sending the design files of their products over the net, no matter how much encryption was used. I didn't know what kind of connection this base had back to Japan, only that it was "secure." I assumed that it involved a dedicated satellite uplink, though, or perhaps some secret undersea cable.

I walked back to the room that was set aside for my personal accommodation and met a smiling young man in my living area. This was Yuki, my Arasaka-provided "personal assistant." He made me a little bit uncomfortable because I thought he was close to what Sakura Hasumi's "interpersonal ideal" would be. Namely, a few years younger than her, male, pretty to the point of being androgynous and with a submissive personality. Sakura liked bishōnen, and Arasaka clearly had a file on her preferences from before she entered America.

Sakura was the opposite of me in many ways. I had a very good understanding of her personality and sexual preferences from all of her files, which included a disturbingly large amount of explicit virtus that she had scrolled of herself with a number of sexual partners, all of which were similar to Yuki here.

Sakura had been almost hypersexual and borderline aromantic, which was about the opposite of my proclivities. This made things difficult because if I was really Sakura Hasumi, this pretty boy would have already been "serving" underneath me in many ways that I wasn't that interested in. Yuki had clearly been expecting the same thing, as he had asked me if there was something wrong with him about a week after the meeting, and if so, a replacement could be found.

I told him bluntly that since my kidnapping, I wasn't generally interested in sex anymore. I was pretty sure that he, and now Arasaka, thought that my durance vile was a lot more vile than it probably had been in actuality. Still, them making the assumptions about sexual trauma I didn't experience did stop them from wondering why I wasn't tumbling the pretty boy dangled in front of me like free candy.

I kept Yuki on because he really was good at his job, and it was unavoidable that I would have some Arasaka minders, so it might as well be the one I was already familiar with.

"Hasumi-sama!" he called out as he stood up, smiling in his pretty-boy way. He had a soft way of speaking, to go with his subservient personality. Although I hadn't found that too attractive in a potential male mate as Sakura had, I did find it pleasant for a company-provided minder. "I heard that you will be finishing up in a month or so. Is that true? I wanted to go over the plans moving forward. Also, there are some other things we need to go over if you have time, of course."

I rubbed my wrist lightly, which had become a habit lately. I had been seen by an Arasaka cybersurgeon on base, and to my surprise, they allowed me to keep my monowire, sort of. They hadn't discovered anything out of the ordinary in my cyberbrain, either, nor the importance of the more than a dozen Haywire pairs I had installed. I had gotten them very small now, about the size of a grain of rice, which was good because I needed spares. Both so I could handle maintenance on them periodically and also for expansion opportunities in the future, as it might be some time before I could send and receive arbitrary parcels between Hasumi and the rest of my bodies.

They didn't notice them at all, but they were quite interested in the modifications I had made to my monowire to make it more concealed, so they removed it and replaced it with a stock Kendachi version. As far as I could tell, it hadn't been modified in any way that would allow Arasaka to install a kill switch in it, but just in case, I had reflashed the firmware with the latest version Kendachi released a few days later.

They did make me demonstrate proficiency with it, though, with the base security forces. That wasn't generally required with other integrated weapons systems that Arasaka offered to its executives, like its Mantis Blades, but it was a lot easier to kill yourself with a monowire, so I couldn't really blame them. My proclivity for weapons and boostware was also noted as a divergence from Sakura's preferences, but I believed they also thought that it was down to me being concerned about my safety after being kidnapped. I made sure to demonstrate all of the hallmarks of mild post-traumatic stress disorder, too, in order to sell the illusion.

I sat down at a couch across from him, noticing that Yuki remained standing until I took a seat and nodded, "That's right, Yuki-san. The first prototypes are being tested now, and soon there won't be much for me to do anymore. What do you need to go over?"

He smiled pleasantly and said, "First, we need to formalise your plans to draw down your former company, as your first quarter revenues are due to be paid to this entity." I raised an eyebrow and nodded, and started reviewing the paperwork he offered me carefully. I was, as I had in the past, listening to any legal advice that Arasaka offered me, but I double-checked everything. The last time they offered me a contract, an employment one, they had brought in what was allegedly an independent attorney to advise me. However, at the same time, I had taken everything they had given me to another attorney in Night City as Taylor, just with the names altered so the Night City attorney wouldn't know the source of the contracts that I wanted them to review. I was already on the phone with the firm I somewhat trusted to review these documents, too.

Arasaka didn't know I had any net access, so I was curious if they were attempting to screw me over in some way. So far, not, but I would continue this process, especially as it pertained to my solely-owned holding company. Yuki said, "Please review these documents, and if you'd like me to bring in some legal counsel, that would be fine, too."

I nodded and carefully adjusted the scanned documents, removing any items that could identify me before forwarding them to the firm to review while I simultaneously looked them over also. It took about ten or fifteen minutes to review everything, along with the on-call attorney I hired.

My outside attorney zeroed in on a few clauses, and I motioned, "I'd like to speak to one of those attorneys if you don't mind." Yuki nodded and said, "Of course, Hasumi-sama. We have a couple on base; it will just take a few minutes to get one here."

We waited in companionable silence for a time before the doorbell rang, which Yuki sprung up to get. He ushered a woman into the room, and it was the same lady as last time. Yuki smiled and said, "Well, I'll leave you two alone, then."

He started to leave but I waved a hand and said, "You can stay, Yuki, if you like."

I kind of wanted to see what this woman would say to that, and she frowned and shook her head, "Hasumi-san, I really have to advise against that. Whatever he hears, he will definitely be obligated to relay to any authorised agent of Arasaka Corporation. He's not able to offer any kind of pledge of privacy."

Yuki nodded rapidly, looking very bashful, "Ano... Hasumi-sama... she is quite correct."

I didn't know that I believed the Arsaka-provided attorney was any different; still, I shrugged, "I don't need any privacy for these questions." That caused Yuki to raise an eyebrow and glance at the woman, who was still frowning, but she finally shrugged. The pretty boy scampered back over to me and sat beside me on the couch.

Our implants negotiated a connection between each other, and our operating systems entered into a shared AR-mode, where we could produce and review documents and other files together. It was a pretty common working mode and theoretically was the basis for all "paperless offices."

The implementation of this system differed based on the OS you had, with low and even mid-tier models featuring only a floating, shared audio-visual GUI window. However, high-spec systems like in my MoorE technology OS and the attorney's Arasaka system could negotiate realistic virtual objects, so the digital file I had been reviewing turned into a stack of paper, complete with both tactile sense and weight, using the physics engine of my own system to provide a very realistic version of physical objects.

She could take a pen and mark on the document, and that would be reflected in the digital file, and I could even, if I wanted to, drop the sheets of paper, and they would make a mess on the floor, although it would be as simple as derezzing them and rerezzing them to get them back, instead of forcing me to pick up each sheet of paper individually. It was a very intuitive system, and the verisimilitude level of the simulated objects was pretty high, going as far as to even smell like actual paper. I shuffled through some pages before I handed the packet of documents to the attorney, parts of it already having been highlighted by me digitally based on areas that my outside attorney had identified as potential areas of concern.

I said, "I've highlighted a few areas; for example, it seems this section is somewhat restricting me from restarting production of a product competing with Arasaka, and another area seems to prevent me from producing products in certain geographic areas, but it isn't clear on what those areas are."

The attorney raised her eyebrows at me and inclined her head, "Let me review the whole document, and then we can go over these areas." I nodded and waited a whole twenty minutes objective time as she read the packet twice. I worked on editing a few chapters of Rage of a Villainess while I waited.

Finally, she nodded, "It is as you say, with the caveat that the restriction from producing competing products only applies while you are also an employee of Arasaka. It is a pretty standard boilerplate language often given to employees who also are either majority shareholders or solely own a separate enterprise. In your case, you would be required not to resume production of sleep inducers, and possibly other products if you develop similar products for Arasaka... although those products would generally be covered under separate intellectual property agreements, as employees wouldn't generally own the IP of products you developed while a researcher at Arasaka, if for one reason you did then you wouldn't be permitted to compete while you were also an employee." She really liked adding qualifiers like "generally" to everything she said, as did other attorneys I had talked to, but what she said pretty much agreed with what I thought it said, as well as what my other attorney had claimed as well.

She raised an eyebrow, "This other section is a bit more problematic, as it is vague. It is a prohibition on you from producing such technology or products in certain geographic areas, even after your employee relationship ends, so long as the Arasaka has either a license from you to produce them, for example, your sleep inducers would qualify, or shared ownership of IP. It is listed as a protective measure to ensure the continued confidential nature of any shared or licensed technology, but it isn't clear where this would apply or which geographic locations would be prohibited. I can't recommend you sign this agreement with this vague language attached." She turned to Yuki and asked pointedly, "Shindo-san, can you enlighten us as to the purpose of these clauses?"

Yuki blinked and glanced down at the virtual sheet of paper before pausing and nodding, "Of course! It's meant to prohibit Hasumi-sama from, for example, building a factory in a location with either lax patent protection laws or lax rule of law in general. Basically, we don't want you to start production in an area where your inventions will be immediately seized, either by some corrupt application of local patent law or through simple lawless force of arms. I didn't realise the language was so broad, and we can definitely adjust it. This language was added at the last minute after we received word from our Intelligence division about some developments in the NUSA. I was going to talk to you about them after you read these documents... if you don't mind me speaking in front of your attorney, I can elaborate."

I inclined my head, and he continued, "We received word from our NUSA sources that the fix, as they say, is in." He waggled his eyebrows and even tapped the side of his nose in the British spy gesture, which was amusing. He continued, "The NUSA government will be invalidating your patent on technical and legalistic grounds. They don't have any actual grounds to do so, but they'll just make something up. Militech is already working around the clock to reverse engineer your design, and we expect them to succeed within eight to fourteen months, hence our desire for alacrity on releasing our own product. We need to build an initial market share, plus... uhh.. other considerations..."

He then frowned, looking annoyed on my behalf, which I found cute, "That's basically the reason for that clause. There does need to be some amount of leeway in it, though, to deal with situations where a country might have, on the surface, robust patent protection but, in practice, might seize your invention anyway, like the NUSA. I'm talking to my former boss right now, and at a minimum, we would be willing to specify that this clause wouldn't apply to Japan or the European Community as a whitelist. It's not a huge issue, as these clauses would mostly only apply if you left employment at Arasaka in the future."

Our discussions lasted several hours, as my legal situation was complicated by the contract that I had paid Veritas to execute for me. Arasaka couldn't just pay me individually for my IP, as that would trigger Veritas to execute. So, Arasaka had to pay my company the royalties. I was transforming it into, at least while I worked here, more of a paper entity to hold my IP and to receive payments on my behalf. I was surprised that Arasaka wasn't trying to screw me over for the royalties, as they would amount to slightly over a hundred million Eurodollars a year for the foreseeable future.

It was later when the attorney left and Yuki went over my options for where I would live when I got back to Japan, I discovered that they had screwed me over, at least a little. Honestly, it felt comforting, as if a Corpo didn't pull something with you, then it was really worrying.

Arasaka was paying me my total owed royalties. However, they were charging me for "security services" that I was required to have that they would provide. They were, in effect, billing me for my own gilded cage. There were also additional requirements as to where I would live, which made only the most expensive options compliant with my employment contract.

A large apartment in Tokyo which was the most expensive city for housing on the planet, additional apartments next door for my security service, buying or leasing an aerodyne or two for transport to and from the office, the salaries and equipment for almost a platoon of security specialists for full twenty-four-seven coverage, even Yuki's salary, I was paying for. They probably would have had to provide all of these things for free just so that I could do my job, but they were making me pay for it all out of my pocket. What cheeky little bastards.

All-in-all, it would cost something like twenty million Eurodollars per year, so it wasn't as though I would beggar myself; I would still be pulling tens and tens of millions of Eurodollars in profit, but it was amusing noticing that the company I worked for had managed to arrange things so that they gave me a bunch of money and then immediately grabbed handfuls of it back. That had been an area where both I and my outside attorney had failed to realise the scale of the liabilities.

Surprisingly enough, the Arasaka-provided attorney-woman had noticed that part in the employment contract in the past and had even told me that the associated charges might be substantial; I just hadn't guessed how substantial. However, the company had insisted on such a clause in exchange for shortening the employment contract from a standard ten years to three. I didn't really have any expectation that Arasaka would let me go after three years, so I had just negotiated that to make myself feel better at not acceding to all of their demands at first. Now I was a bit regretful.

Still, in some ways, it was good. There were, no doubt, many middle managers in Arasaka involved with my hiring and management of my licensed patents, so if I didn't give them some relatively benign way to screw me over, they would invariably look for some other method. I was sure that it was part of their KPIs to "recoup" some money, lower costs, or increase the "value" of the investment, i.e. myself. This ensured the obvious way to screw me was taken and not something I wouldn't expect.

Also, I wasn't surprised at all at NUSA's decision to use some figleaf to invalidate my patent. A number of defence magazines were humming with the idea of sleep inducers becoming a force multiplier for essentially any military force. That made it not only a valuable invention but a strategic imperative to acquire. And nations just took things when they thought it necessary. It was the standard behaviour of all polities. I was a little surprised at the length of time that Arasaka guessed would be necessary to defeat the copy protection I had installed in the wreaths, though.

I wouldn't have guessed more than six months, but I supposed I had done something right in the DRM department. Even after they cracked the protection and could build and sell their own versions, they'd run into issues of not precisely knowing exactly why it worked, too.

After I finished with all of the paperwork, Yuki made me dinner, and then we sat down to watch a film. I didn't get much out of the experience, as watching films when they weren't on my operating system so that I could speed them up resembled something akin to a slide show rather than a video. In order for me not to detect individual frames in a video, they had to be played at least one hundred and thirty frames per second, and that wasn't standard at all. Still, the pretty boy had seemed so enthused at the prospect that I didn't have the heart to correct him.

He had fallen asleep in the first fifteen minutes, too, and now was draped somewhat awkwardly on me. Sighing, I rearranged him on the couch so that his head was resting on my lap. While I didn't have any desire for a sexual relationship with him, especially since I knew his first loyalties were not to me, he was cute in the same way as a pet kitten or helpless rabbit was, and affection didn't have to be sexual.

I'd let him sleep for now. I'd gift him one of the sleep-inducer samples when they arrived, too.

---xxxxxx---

April 2067

Night City

Gloria's Apartment, Santo Domingo

Gloria and David had made it back to Night City along with Kiwi and her entire mercenary team, although it took them several weeks in the end, and apparently, according to David, there were thrilling adventures along the way.

Gloria was a bit peeved with me, but not as bad as I thought she might have been. Still, she didn't precisely appreciate me dragging her off for her own safety and away from all of her plans twice, but at least she already had tentative plans to return to Night City; it was just she wanted to work at least a year in the ER in LA first.

She was especially irked with David being pulled out of school on a moment's notice, but that really wasn't a big deal at all. It would have been if he had been going to public school as in the past, as it would have taken a significant amount of time for his "benefits" to catch up with him.

People on public assistance were denied mobility in many ways, from not being able to enrol their children in a new school if it was out of their district to having a food assistance debit account that would only allow charges to go through within a few kilometres of your "home address." The stated reason was that if you moved, then your public assistance was supposed to go through a different regional office which generally had a backlog of nine months to a year to process new claims. I felt the actual reason was just to keep the underclass in place and easy to control, personally.

Still, Gloria wasn't amongst this underclass anymore and moving on a few minutes' notice was pretty common amongst some kinds of Corporate workers. Sure, we had lost some of the tuition we paid, but it was simplicity itself for them to transfer David's grades and student records to his new school in Night City. Nobody cared that his family had represented themselves using a different last name in LA, either, as that happened somewhat frequently too. I had memories of NC-Taylor going by Taylor Dubois for a few months, briefly, when she was in kindergarten in a different city.

Still, I had the feeling that if I dragged Gloria away from her entire life again for her own safety, she might not welcome me back around again. I probably wouldn't blame her, either. We were all together this evening as a kind of housewarming. Although Gloria was going back to her old Megabuilding, she was paying for a larger and better apartment.

After dinner, she pulled me to the side, taking me out onto her balcony. As I gazed out at the skyline of Santo Domingo, Gloria followed me out and sat on a chair next to me. Santo Domingo wasn't as developed as downtown or Japantown, so the two Megabuildings in the district dominated the sky. Gloria's apartment was only about halfway up the structure, but still, she was at least twenty stories above the rest of the district. I gave her a side-eye, wondering what this was about.

She sighed and asked, "I wanted to talk to you, as I think you're the most highly augmented person I know, except for, I guess, myself now." Oh. That's good. I was a little concerned that this was going to be a love confession or she was kicking me out of her house. I was much better able to deal with discussions about cybernetics. She continued, and asked, "Do you ever find yourself thinking that you're better than the average person?"

I blinked and then tilted my head to the side, "What has brought on this line of questioning?" It was a standard diagnostic question for screening possible cyberpsychosis, as Gloria would know, and she would know that I knew, too.

She sighed, "Well, something happened while we were in the desert coming back to Night City. We were attacked, and I was forced to shoot someone, and they died. And I have been worried since then about how it hasn't seemed to have bothered me. In fact, I feel good about it." Oh. She was worried about herself. For a second, I was worried she wanted to have some sort of intervention with me. I put on my therapist hat for a moment.

"Ah... I see. And you sometimes have feelings that you're better or superior to average people? And you're combining this with the fact that you had to defend yourself and don't feel bad about taking someone's life when they were attacking you? And you're worried about becoming a cyberpsycho?" I asked, slightly amused.

She nodded rapidly and sighed, "I just had the feeling tonight; after I saw my mom and all of her friends, it was as if nothing had changed at all. They're like a fly trapped in amber, and I had a sudden feeling of disgust when I thought about it. Combining this with how I felt after I shot that Wraith guy..." she trailed off.

I turned to face her completely and continued leaning back on the railing of her balcony, crossing my arms under my breasts before saying, "To answer your question, of course, I consider myself both better and superior to the average human being." I mean, how could I not? Your average person experienced life at a snail's pace, couldn't think about more than one thing at a time and could only be in one place at one time. I was obviously better than them in almost every respect.

This caused Gloria to widen her eyes in surprise, but I waved a hand, "But I felt the same before I had more than a couple of implants. It isn't as though people are equal. They never have been; the best we can hope for in some ideal utopia is that people might be treated equally." And that wasn't too likely, at least in the near term.

I sighed and paused for a moment before glancing at her, "Plus, I imagine you would have felt this way even if you weren't in a Gemini. She's reminding you of your past, and it isn't based on your cybernetics that you've achieved something for yourself; it is from your own hard work and effort. You intuitively recognise that she is, basically, demoralised. She has no further ambition or desire for growth. Ten years from now, you suspect, correctly, that she'll be exactly as she is today, except older."

I then shrugged my shoulders, "The reason for this can be debated. Perhaps it is as some say that she is a product of her circumstances, or maybe it is her own fault. It doesn't really matter because you're not really disgusted at her. You're disgusted at what you might have been. A mother to a daughter is a mirror of oneself, one path of life that you could have taken, following her footsteps. That's what disgusts you, I think. You see a path in life that you might have taken, that you now abjure."

It was for the same reason that I had a romantic attachment to English literature, but I had a much more healthy relationship with Mom before she passed away.

Gloria was silent for a long time before saying slyly, "And you said you hated psychiatry and clinical psychology. You sound more insightful than my professors."

I snorted, "I said I didn't like it. I didn't say I didn't know about it. I don't have the emotional temperament to be a good therapist, but I can certainly fake it for small periods of time for a friend." That caused her to smile, and I continued, "Now, about this man you shot. Honestly, I envy you. You killed him; that's good. You shouldn't feel bad about it; in fact, you made the correct moral decision. You shouldn't be confused, thinking that this is a symptom of incipient cyberpsychosis; this is just you being a good person."

"Huh?" she said, confused, "Uhh... I'm pretty sure that's not the correct reaction. You shouldn't feel good for killing someone, Taylor."

I sighed, "You shouldn't, right? That's what I thought, too. Let me tell you a story. Do you remember how we met?"

She grinned, "Yeah, of course. You got mugged on your way to work. We ended up transporting your muggers to the Shock Trauma Centre; it was kind of funny."

I nodded, "I thought so, too, at the time. Well, one of them had a shotgun and ended up shooting the other. That one died in the OR, but the shotgun wielder survived. I took more risks myself in order to take that one down alive. I specifically aimed for his kneecaps so that he would survive. Surprisingly, he wasn't charged with felony murder for his compatriot's death, only my mugging. So, he was out of jail in less than nine weeks." And it really wasn't even a mugging; they were Scavs, and I was sure I would have been disassembled and left for dead if their "mugging" had succeeded.

Gloria started to look uneasy, and I continued, "A few months later, I was curious about what happened to him, so I looked him up and discovered that since he got out, the NCPD shot him to death after he killed his next-door neighbour, a woman in her thirties and a girl about as old as David is right now."

I stared at her, completely serious, "Those people are dead because of my squeamishness, Gloria. I really envy you that you put down the guy who attacked you and don't have to live with guilt knowing that you're partly responsible for what he did afterwards."

She shook her head, "No way! That wasn't your fault!"

"Wasn't it? Even the cops, at the time, told me just to kill these types of people in the future. I thought that they were so jaded and cynical at the time, but really they were exactly right," I shook my head and leaned back against the railing, glancing up at the night sky. The sky was black, with barely a few stars visible through all the light pollution, "There are a lot of different types of people in the world. Most work a dead-end job, doing what they can. Some are like your mom, grifting what they can out of the system. But some people... pick up a gun and decide to take what they want, and create pain, terror and sadness in their wake. It sounds anti-social, but in the absence of a real, working system of justice, which we do not have, it is the correct moral decision to shoot these people. You probably saved ten lives with the one guy you killed, and you should feel great about that, not conflicted and worried that you don't feel guilty. You don't feel guilty because you intuitively understand that you did a good deed."

Gloria looked quiet and thoughtful for some time.

I hadn't ever actually put these thoughts into words before, and they would have shocked pre-Night City Taylor, but living in Night City had a way of changing you, or rather revealing the true you underneath all of the extraneous polite bullshit society foisted off on people. Night City was a jungle, and in a jungle, it was possible to have a biblical view of good and evil, of right and wrong, of black and white. It wasn't that there were no greys; in fact, the whole city was grey. It was just that, for some reason, the grey made the black stand out better when you saw it. The badlands, the wastes where she had shot that man, was even more stark.

Still, I was long past feeling anything but a sense of satisfaction when I had to put down the real scum of the Earth. Perhaps I was being hypocritical in the extreme because I did realise that some of the systemic issues this world lived under brought this type of person to the forefront, and I was presently working for people who were responsible for a lot of the systemic issues.

Still, I would do what I could do and be satisfied with that. I grinned and said, "Let's go have some cake."

---xxxxxx---

May 2067

Tegucigalpa, Honduras

Confidential Arasaka Compound

I was in a part of the base that I normally had no access to, but I was completely done with my work on the first-generation cybernetic sleep inducers and was just waiting to be transported to Japan. Apparently, there were only certain windows where they felt I could be transported safely, as they felt that until Militech finished reverse engineering the wreaths, they would definitely intercept me if they knew where I was.

So I was bored and offered to help their cybernetics surgeon, so I was doing a number of small surgeries. Their clinic was stocked very oddly, and they had an absolute ton of neural, cognitive and netrunner cybernetics. I asked Yuki, "Just what does Arasaka do in this base?"

He frowned and looked unsure, "Uh... beyond basing a small fighter squadron here, I believe that, for the most part, this is a research centre focused on portions of the Old Net, but I don't really know any more than that, and furthermore, neither you nor I have a need to know, and it is classified. Just like their workers have no need to know the extent of your work here, either... but if you are really curious, I can see about requesting you to be read in on the project."

"Yeah, yeah... I don't think that will be necessary," I said, waving a hand. I didn't really care that much, plus I wanted to save any favours like that for things that I was really interested in or really needed to know. I hadn't done any surgeries on any secret netrunners, but I had done a couple of Arasaka fighter pilots, and they had a number of interesting augmentations. They all had boostware and sophisticated neural interfaces that were similar to a cyberdeck. They would interface with the computers in the aircraft, and the pilot would fly the plane in a virtual reality interface. The aircraft's sensors would be his eyes, and the aircraft's control surfaces would be their limbs. It was quite fascinating, I thought. Each had enough physical augmentations to live continuously at 9Gs, so they could accept a tremendous amount of acceleration, too.

A few days later, after that conversation, I found myself in the clinic on a Sunday. The base surgeon didn't work weekends, so I offered to come in and do a few elective surgeries for the people of the base. After I was finishing up installing a new pair of cybernetic eyes in a girl that worked in the administration, suddenly, the lights went out, as well as my connection to the base subnet.

Blinking, my eyes shifting to low-light mode, I quickly took stock of my patient. I didn't need any of the further equipment, thankfully, so I finished in the dark, the base's emergency lighting not coming on for a full minute.

Now that my patient was safe, my curiosity was taking hold. I left her there after adjusting her sedation levels and walked out of the clinic, having to force open the door manually. The corridor was lit dimly by the red-tinged emergency lighting installed on the walls, and I could hear some gunfire down the hall. If I was smart, I would quickly go hide back in my clinic, but instead, I walked towards the gunfire.

I found a dead body no more than ten metres further. It was a member of the Arasaka security forces on base, in their matte black and red armour, but he appeared to have died from a self-inflicted gunshot to the head, specifically a pericranial entry point to the temple with the sidearm that was still in his hand. Frowning, I kneeled down and relieved him of his weapon, doing a quick function test, "Virus attack...?" I asked myself questioningly and quickly shut down all external radios on my cyberware. The base wireless connection was down hard right now, anyway. One of the few modifications to my cybernetics that Arasaka insisted on was changing out my normal wireless card with a version that would only connect to the access point in the base. This was apparently pretty standard for anyone "on deployment" at a confidential and classified location, I supposed. It would have been a real problem if I didn't have all my other ways to connect to the outside world.

With a gun in my hand, I felt a lot better now and I continued my exploration, going into a large hangar or garage, and instantly I froze when I detected movement. Glancing around I saw one lone Arasaka security forces member raising his HJSH-18 Masamune slowly at a group of four people that seemed to be stealing a vehicle.

Blinking, I zoomed in on the nar-do-wells before changing my classification. These children were stealing one of the Ō-yoroi mine-and-ambush-protected armoured vehicles. They all had dark form-fitting coolant suits with Arasaka markings on the back, and I could instantly identify some cybernetics installed on each of them. They couldn't be more than eleven years old.

My body moved without thinking, running towards the man who was still lifting his rifle up and hadn't quite reached his aim point yet. I got to him long before he pulled the trigger, and with a hand, I grabbed his head and smashed it into the side of a nearby vehicle, instantly knocking him out. I thought smugly, 'No, I don't think you'd be shooting children today, sir.' It was fortunate that I had enough time to disable him that way without shooting him, as that would have caused a lot of questions later. I didn't know what was going on precisely, but I knew shooting kids was not going to fly with me.

Two of the children who were stealing the vehicle gaped at me when I did this, one of which was a pale girl with pink hair in a pixie-cut with intense eyes, staring at me as she jumped up on the side of the vehicle as they got it going. She stared at me for a long moment before finally nodding and then jumping into the cabin of the vehicle, closing the door behind her. The car then drove straight through the thin garage door like it wasn't even there, leaving a gaping hole behind.

Stepping away from the scene of my crime, I wondered what the fuck had just happened. I was thankful that the entire base seemed to be deactivated, so I was hoping that included any of the audio-visual cameras inside this garage. It was only a few more minutes before an entire squad of security guys showed up, swarming me. Rather than being upset, though, they seemed relieved, with the leader speaking over his speaker, "Hasumi-sensei, please come with us. This facility is no longer secure; we're going to fly you out immediately."

I let them lead me off and even let one of the guys take the pistol that I was carrying. Me and Yuki were bundled into an AV-8 which took off and immediately turned to the south.

As we flew over the city, I noticed that at least half of the city was as dark as the base, completely without power. Now that was impressive.