The street outside the clinic looked like it had been forgotten by the city—no bright signs, no clean sidewalks, no comforting noise. Just dim light, wet concrete, and that constant smell Night City never washed away: rust, chemicals, and old blood hiding under cheap disinfectant.
Jackie stopped in front of the entrance and stared up at the yellowed medical sign.
"An underground clinic?" he muttered.
The sign was so old it looked like it should've fallen off years ago. The letters were faded. The light inside the "OPEN" panel flickered like a dying heartbeat.
Jackie's eyebrows rose, half surprised, half disgusted.
He'd seen ripperdocs in basements. He'd seen "clinics" run out of shipping containers. But this place… this place had the vibe of a trap. The kind of spot you went to only if you had no other choice—or if you didn't care whether you survived.
Then Jackie noticed someone sitting near the entrance.
A kid. Thin. Still in a torn school uniform. Punk-styled hair. Face swollen and bruised like he'd recently been introduced to the floor at high speed.
The boy sat stiff in the chair, eyes forward, hands clenched, like he was trying to keep himself together through force of will alone.
Jackie stepped closer.
"Hey, kid," he called. "Who are you waiting for, sitting there?"
The boy slowly lifted his head.
His eyes were confused, almost dazed, like Jackie's voice had to travel through a fog to reach him. The look on his face practically asked: Are you talking to me?
Jackie glanced around.
"Is there anyone else here?"
That's when he saw it—an Arasaka Academy logo still stitched onto the boy's uniform, half ripped but visible.
Jackie frowned harder.
"And you're an Arasaka Academy kid too," he said. "Damn. How desperate do you have to be to come here?"
The boy's lips twitched. He looked like he wanted to argue, but the fight drained out of him before it even started.
"I'm not…" he began.
Then he stopped himself.
"…Never mind. It's none of your business."
Jackie stared at him for a second, then sat down beside him without asking permission. His muscular body immediately pushed the boy sideways, almost knocking him off the chair.
The kid's anger flared for half a breath.
Then he saw the chrome on Jackie's body, the weight of his presence, and swallowed the reaction.
Jackie leaned back like he owned the sidewalk.
"That's not necessarily true," he said calmly.
The boy's eyes narrowed. "What do you mean?"
Jackie's tone turned sharp, almost mocking. He lifted his drink—unfinished—and held it out.
"What kind of hospital do you think this is?"
The kid didn't take the drink. His throat tightened.
"What are you saying?"
Jackie's gaze went toward the door. "This place is a Scavengers' slaughterhouse. R.E.O. has been rotten for a long time."
The name hit the boy like a punch.
R.E.O.
That was where his mom worked. A medical company that claimed it served the poor—cheap care for people who couldn't afford real hospitals, real machines, real help.
Years ago, R.E.O. wasn't completely hopeless. It had a reputation for doing what it could.
Then Trauma Team rose, swallowed the high-paying customers, and left scraps behind.
R.E.O. fell.
And a company that falls in Night City doesn't just "downsize."
It rots.
It sells itself in pieces.
The boy shot to his feet, panic ripping through him.
"Then my mom—?!"
Before Jackie could respond, a gunshot cracked from inside the clinic.
The emergency room door burst open.
A medical worker stumbled out—bare-chested under a transparent apron, hands red, face twisted in fear.
He didn't even get to run.
Jackie's gold-plated pistol was already aimed at his forehead.
A shot rang out.
The man dropped.
The sound made the boy flinch—but fear of bullets didn't matter anymore. His mind was only filled with one thought:
Mom.
He sprinted into the emergency room.
Jackie reached out instinctively, trying to stop him—
—but all he managed to grab was a piece of the torn uniform.
The kid was already inside.
"Damn," Jackie cursed quietly. "That kid's fast."
Then his expression tightened with real worry.
Not because the kid might cause trouble.
Because James and Lucy were in there.
And if the kid ran into the wrong scene, or made one wrong move… James might kill him without even meaning to.
Jackie stayed by the entrance.
He blocked the door.
He listened.
And he hoped the kid's luck held.
Inside the emergency room, the boy froze like his body had been turned into stone.
Something thin and deadly pressed against his throat.
A monowire—unheated, but still sharp enough to cut an artery like paper.
The wire didn't tremble.
The hand holding it didn't hesitate.
The boy's breathing stopped.
He couldn't even swallow.
One wrong move and he would bleed out before he hit the floor.
Then James' voice cut through the tension.
"Let him go."
Lucy paused, eyes cold.
James added, "He's not part of the job."
Lucy retracted the monowire and stepped back to James' side like a predator returning to its pack.
The boy's eyes flicked to her—just for a second.
And in that second, he knew the truth:
She really would have killed him. No hesitation. No guilt.
Fear still spun in his chest, but he forced himself to stay upright, forced his voice to sound steady.
"I'm here for my mom…"
"Your mom?" James repeated, then pointed casually to the operating table.
A dismembered female corpse lay there—cut open, ruined, butchered.
James spoke like he was asking about lunch.
"You mean this one?"
The boy's vision went black.
"Mom?!"
His legs nearly gave out. He crawled toward the table, hands shaking, stomach turning, brain screaming.
Then he looked closer.
It wasn't her face.
Not his mother.
Color returned to his cheeks like someone had poured life back into him.
Thank god.
Thank god.
James' voice stayed calm, almost amused.
"It's not? Then try looking over there."
He pointed toward the corner.
A pile of body parts.
Arms. Legs. Pieces. A horror stack of stolen lives.
The boy gagged, but pushed forward anyway, trembling hands flipping bodies over, searching like his entire soul depended on it.
Because it did.
After several minutes, he fell to his knees, blank.
No mother.
He'd seen her brought in.
He'd seen them wheel her past him.
So where was she?
The room was full of dead staff now.
No one left to ask.
His eyes rose… and landed on James.
James raised an eyebrow at the look.
"Don't stare at me like that," he said. "If you were a girl, maybe. But I'm not into guys."
Lucy's eyes narrowed, already moving.
She hacked into the clinic's systems, pulled camera feeds, ran through recent footage fast.
Then she gave James a quick confirmation.
The only woman admitted recently hadn't been treated.
She'd been dumped straight into the morgue.
The "doctors" hadn't even bothered to cut her open yet—not because of mercy, but because she wasn't worth it.
No valuable cyberware.
No organs worth selling.
No profit.
In Santo Domingo, pollution ate people from the inside out. Poor organs were damaged organs. That wasn't merchandise.
Wealthy people bought cloned organs or top-tier chrome. No one wanted the parts of someone who'd spent years breathing poison and drinking dirty water.
The boy's heart sank as he understood.
He rushed down into the underground morgue.
And this time… he found her.
His mother.
Still breathing.
Barely.
Relief hit him—then the cruelty of it followed.
She was alive.
But she was slipping.
The boy grabbed her and tried to run, desperate to get her out.
Then James' voice stopped him like a wall.
"Use your brain."
The boy froze mid-step.
"If you had the ability to save your mom," James said calmly, "she wouldn't have been brought here in the first place."
The words were harsh.
But true.
The boy stepped back into the room, holding his mother like fragile glass, and dropped to his knees in front of James.
James stared at him like he didn't know whether to laugh or swear.
"Why are you kneeling?" James snapped. "Put your mom on the operating table."
The boy fumbled, struggling with the weight, the fear, the panic. He finally managed to lift her onto the table, hands shaking, eyes locked on James like he was watching a miracle worker.
James scanned her with his cyber-eye.
"She's not dead yet," he said. "But her body's almost done."
He paused, then added bluntly, "You don't look like your mom. Your mom's much prettier than you."
The boy didn't know how to respond.
His mother's life was in James' hands. He wasn't about to argue.
James only stopped talking because Lucy's gaze beside him turned sharp.
Jealous.
Possessive.
The kind of stare that warned, watch your mouth.
James pulled the mother's coat off, handed it to the boy, and nodded toward the door.
"You. Out."
The boy's lips tightened. "Can't I stay? I can help."
"You can help by leaving," James said, eyes cold. "Get out. Now."
He was about to open her chest.
He didn't need a kid breathing down his neck and begging every second.
"…I understand."
The boy gave his mother one last look and stepped out.
Outside, Jackie saw him alive and let out a quiet breath of relief.
Back inside, Lucy sterilized tools while James injected a stabilizer—Forticon Type III—directly into the mother's system.
The surgery wasn't pretty.
But it worked.
James saved her life.
Her injuries alone weren't fatal.
But they were the last straw.
Her body had been weakened by exhaustion, stress, and the slow poison of the city.
She'd need months of recovery.
And even then… her organs were already showing signs of breakdown. Without upgrades, without replacements, she wouldn't last long.
The mother regained partial consciousness, blinking slowly as if waking from deep water.
"…Who are you?" she whispered.
"Don't move," James said firmly, pushing her back down. "You're not stitched up yet."
"Where… am I?"
"Scavs' territory."
Her pulse spiked instantly.
Fear flooded her.
James spoke quickly, bluntly, in the strange way only someone experienced could comfort someone in hell.
"Don't panic. If they really wanted to do something to you, you wouldn't have been able to stop them anyway."
It shouldn't have been comforting.
But it was.
Her body relaxed slightly, accepting the ugly truth.
James called toward the door. "Kid. Come in."
The boy rushed in the moment he heard it, almost throwing himself onto her.
James caught him by the shoulder hard.
"Do you want to kill her? I just saved her!"
The boy flinched, brain finally catching up.
"Sorry," he whispered.
The mother touched her son's head gently, relief spilling out of her eyes.
She didn't cry.
Night City didn't give people the luxury of crying for long.
"I'm fine," she told him softly. "Thank this gentleman."
The boy swallowed hard, fighting tears like it was a war.
"Thank you," he choked. "Thank you so much."
James nodded once, like it wasn't a big deal.
Then he spoke to Jackie outside, loud enough to be heard.
"Jackie. Take them home."
Jackie answered instantly. "No problem."
As they prepared to leave, the mother turned her head weakly.
"Wait… I still don't know your name."
Jackie, being Jackie, answered for him with a grin.
"He's BT."
James shot him a glare sharp enough to cut steel.
Jackie kept going anyway. "Yeah. The famous BT."
The boy looked confused.
But the mother's eyes widened—she'd heard that name before. She'd dealt with edgerunners enough to know the legends.
She couldn't pay for her son's education on a nurse salary alone.
She'd survived by selling cyberware on the side, the dirty hidden economy R.E.O. quietly allowed when they couldn't pay wages.
She still had a line she wouldn't cross.
She wouldn't help someone die early.
But the city punished kindness too.
James waved once, already moving away. "Go. Maybe we'll meet again."
Jackie wheeled her out.
James and Lucy left with Falco, who had been waiting in the car.
Jackie pushed the mother into the clinic's medical vehicle and drove them back.
At the apartment entrance, the mother suddenly asked, weak but sharp:
"David… where's my coat?"
The boy handed it over immediately.
She clutched it, checking the lining, making sure something was still there.
Whatever it was, it mattered enough that losing it would've meant disaster.
She sighed quietly.
If it was gone… living would've felt pointless.
Pain and exhaustion swallowed her again, and she drifted back into sleep.
They reached the apartment door.
And the boy's face froze.
A red projection flashed across the entrance:
NO ENTRY.
Evicted.
Just like that.
One accident.
One bad day.
And the whole life collapsed.
That was how it worked for the lower class in Night City. No safety net. No second chances.
The boy stood there, lost.
Then Jackie stepped forward and paid three months of rent on the spot.
Not a huge amount.
Just over three thousand eurodollars.
He turned back to the boy.
"Consider it a loan," Jackie said. "Pay it back someday."
The boy's throat tightened.
"I will," he promised. "Thank you."
Jackie pushed him lightly toward the door. "Open it. Get inside."
The boy did.
He settled his mother into a bed.
Jackie didn't linger.
He left the boy his contact info and walked away into the rain.
A mother lived.
A son was forced to grow up.
And Night City kept moving—cold, hungry, unstoppable.
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