AN: I apologize for the lack of a chapter yesterday and for the late chapter today. I have been busy, and it honestly slipped my mind.
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"Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall."
- Proverbs 16:18
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There was about a minute of silence before Growl FM's automated playlist kicked back in with another song, but no one was paying any attention to music anymore.
Santi's hands were still on the engine block, his fingertips white against the aluminum surface. He was involuntarily gripping as his mind was still in the middle of processing the information. After a few seconds, he pulled up multiple feeds on his Kiroshis. He looked over the reports from N54, WNS, and three other independent Night City news aggregators. They populated his eyes with the same story, just in different words.
"Santi," Sasha said from the couch, but he didn't react.
She called his name a few more times, and it was only when she called him "Santiago" that he finally snapped back to reality. He blinked and let go of the engine block, his hands trembling a bit as he began wiping his hands with a rag.
"I've got some calls to make," he said, and his eyes immediately flickered yellow as the Agent's interface activated across his overlay. He had hit up his mother's line, and it didn't take long for her to answer.
Wherever she was, there was a lot of background noise on her end. Music played, and what could be distinguished as the background noise of a restaurant or bar. That was the problem with Agents that weren't fully integrated with your neuralware. They would catch all the surrounding sound.
"Hola, mijo," Julia said. "You never really call me during the day. What's going on?"
"Ma, have you seen the news?" Santi asked.
"The news?" Julia asked, and there was a pause on her end before she replied. "No, papacito, I've been out. What news?"
"It's the damn NUSA," Santi said. "They just confirmed that there is one of their military divisions approaching Night City from the northeast. The radio even had their music stream interrupted to give out the announcement."
On the other end of the line, Julia's face was drained of color and she turned white as a sheet of paper.
"¿Qué dijiste?" she said, her voice shaky.
"That there's a full division of NUSA soldiers, Ma," Santi repeated. "It was just like I thought. They are going to attack Night City."
"Dios mio," Julia gasped.
"How fast can you come back to the building?" Santi asked.
"I'm leaving right now," Julia said as the sound of a chair scraping as it was pushed back played through her end.
On the other end of the line, Santi heard someone ask his mother what had happened in Spanish, and she fired back too fast for him to fully catch with his limited Spanish. Thankfully, his neuralware was able to parse some of it and displayed it in his Kiroshis. She had said something about the military, Night City, and getting the hell out of dodge.
"I'll be there in thirty minutes," she finally said, speaking to Santi.
"Alright," Santi nodded to himself. "Drive safe."
"Don't tell me to drive safe, mijo," Julia sai. "Your father used to get all paranoid when things suddenly got out of control, and you are just like him. So you need to tell me what you're going to do."
"I..." Santi said, stumbling over the comparison with a father he barely remembered now. "I'm going to make some more calls."
"Santiago," Julia said, using his full first name to get his attention. "Whatever you're thinking about doing, you promise me you won't do anything stupid before I get there."
"You don't have to worry about that, Ma," Santi said as he ran his hand through his hair. "But if it'll make you feel any better, I promise I won't do anything stupid before you get there."
"That is not as reassuring as you think it is," Julia said.
"Yeah..." Santi sighed, speaking in the meatspace rather than in his mind.
"I love you," Julia said.
"I love you too, Ma," Santi said back. "Now please get to driving."
Julia ended the call, and the yellow glow in Santi's eyes barely had any time to die down before he started another call.
"Ghost," Faraday said, answering the call almost immediately. "What do you need?"
"HMG turrets," Santi said. "How much?"
"Hmm..." Faraday hummed. "Given the current circumstances, the news, and the fact that every fixer that deals in weapons trading and helping you mercs build your hidie holes in Night City is about to get the same call you're making right now, each HMG turret is going for thirty-five thousand eddies."
"I need fifteen," Santi replied instantly, not even caring about the price tag. His quick response caused Faraday to pause briefly.
"Fifteen HMG turrets?" Faraday asked.
"Yes, fifteen," Santi confirmed. "Kang Tao network-compatible, with automated targeting. And I need them delivered today."
"Today is going to be difficult," Faraday said. "I've got supply chains that are already tightening up, and the traffic situation coming out of the northeast is going to..."
"Look, don't give me your corporate bullshit," Santi said. "If you wanted more eddies, you just had to say it. I'll give you an additional fifteen thousand eddies for same-day delivery."
Faraday remained quiet for a few seconds. He was calculating whether to push for more eddies or take the massive payout.
"I can move some things around," Faraday finally said.
"Good," Santi said. "Deliver it to the same Northside Watson address you have on file. Drop them off, and my building manager will handle the installation."
"If I recall correctly, you don't have a building manager," Faraday said.
"Things change," Santi replied. "Plus, this person might genuinely be scarier than a building manager. She'll handle it until I get the targeting network programmed."
"As you wish," Faraday said, and Santi could envision him shrugging. "I'll be sending you the invoice now."
Santi's account pinged with the invoice request, and he authorized the transfer for five hundred and forty thousand eddies. He watched as his balance dropped from 4.7 million to approximately 4.16 million. It was still more money than most people in Watson would see in a lifetime, but he wasn't quite sure it would be given the situation.
"Anything else?" Faraday asked.
"No, not from you," Santi said. "Thanks, Faraday."
"Stay alive, Ghost," Faraday quipped. "You've brought me good business, and dead clients don't remodel."
Faraday ended the call, and Santi went straight to calling the next name on his mental list.
"Kid," Vik answered after a few seconds of calling. His agent was propped against something, and he had his hands clasped as if he were in prayer over his desk. "I was just looking at the news and figured you'd call me eventually."
"I think it's about time I chrome the fuck up, Vik," Santi said,
Vik shifted his seating position, leaning closer to his mobile device, but he didn't say anything.
"I know what you said about my growth," Santi continued, talking fast to stop Vik from formulating an objection. "I know you wanted to wait until I was done growing. But I'm six-six, Vik. I'm already taller than ninety-nine percent of the people in this city, save for some of the chromedome mercs. I'm about to turn seventeen in like a week or two. One year of potential growth is not going to make much of a difference at my height, and what's happening right now may very well leave me dead. So I need to be as ready as can be to make sure that doesn't happen."
"What do you want?" Vik sighed, but it didn't come out as a question. It was more of a defeated sigh mixed with annoyance.
"I'm trying to get subdermal armor for my torso and limbs," Santi stated off. "I also want a sandy along with getting the Mantis Blades I've had sitting in that damn case for the better part of a year installed. Let me see... hmm... I also want an internal jack link, a pair of reinforced tendons with reinforced ankles, oh, and a thermal monowire."
He was staring off at the wall directly in front of him in silence for far longer than he had previously done. He then sighed and shook his head, turning to his Agent's camera.
"Yeah, no," Vik said flatly.
"Vik," Santi started, but was interrupted.
"No. The answer is simply no," Vik said, his voice hardening as he spoke. "And you know what, I swear to God, if you don't listen to me this time around..."
Vik clenched his fists and then brought them in front of him in a praying pose while keeping his head low.
"This is a conversation that will determine whether you live long enough to see eighteen," Vik started without an ounce of sugarcoating the subject. "First of all, the legs alone would be a major session. You're talking about replacing every major tendon in both legs with synthetic fiber bundles that need to be anchored to your existing bone structure and integrated with your existing Kerenzikov reflex pathways so the enhanced response times don't tear the tendons off the anchor points when they fire. On someone your age, who is still growing, whether he wants to admit it or not, that procedure would come with a calibration window of weeks, maybe months."
Vik paused momentarily before continuing.
"Now, if that was the only thing you were asking me to install, then it would be manageable. But you want the tendons, subdermal armor, two conflicting forearm weapons, the addition of a new conflicting operating system, and a jack link, all at once," he said. "Then there's the fact that the Mantis Blades and the monowire are both forearm-mounted systems. Forget about how hard they would be competing for the same neural pathways, motor control interfaces, and yada yada. Your nervous system will get caught in the crossfire, resulting in involuntary deployment, phantom activation, motor control degradation, and, if you're unlucky, a Mantis Blade deploying into your own thigh while you're trying to take a shit."
"I can write firmware to manage the conflict," Santi said with confidence.
"Screw rewriting firmware to manage the conflict," Vik said, while running a hand through his hair. "In practice, you are asking a software solution to override a hardware problem. You don't have enough physical space or neural bandwidth to run two competing weapons systems without interference. Firmware can prioritize, but it cannot create space that doesn't exist."
"Vik, you let me worry about that," Santi interrupted. "I'm sure I can make it work."
"And the Sandevistan," Vik continued, ignoring the interruption while prancing back and forth, "is an Operating System. Your Cyberdeck is also an Operating System. You do not run two operating systems at once. That's basically the only rule that exists because every ripper that has tried it has killed whoever they're operating on."
Vik stopped prancing and stared directly at the Agent's camera. "In a sense, a Sandevistan slows the world down around you, lets you move and fight and react while everything else is still crawling. The way it does that is by taking full control of your neural processing and redirecting everything you have into perception and motor function for the duration of the burst. Your cyberdeck does the opposite since it needs to maintain stable processing for extended network operations. When the Sandevistan activates and tries to seize your processing for a time-dilation burst, your Paraline is going to fight it for control, because that is what operating systems do when another operating system tries to take the wheel. You will have a tug-of-war inside your skull at the speed of thought, with your brain as the rope."
"I already have a Kerenzikov," Santi said. "That slows time too, and it hasn't conflicted with the Paraline."
"Because in essence, the Kerenzikov is a reflex booster," Vik explained. "It triggers situationally, during a dodge, a slide or whatever the hell specific combat maneuvers you pull. It works with your existing motor pathways without touching your cyberdeck's processing architecture. However, the Sandevistan does not work in tandem with your deck. It is meant to replace your deck. That is how it is designed. Running both simultaneously is a known incompatibility that gets people killed."
"Well, my Kerenzikov doesn't really trigger situationally," Santi said, which caused Vik to shut up. "Ever since I rewrote the activation firmware, it triggers whenever I want it to. I get full time-dilation, any time, at any posture, and in any situation."
"That's not how a Kerenzikov works," Vik said as he took a seat once again.
"Yeah, well, that's how mine works," Santi shrugged.
"The situational trigger is a hardware limitation, Santi," Vik said, leaning into his Agent, "It's built into the reflex arc interface. The Kerenzikov's activation pathway is physically wired to fire in response to specific proprioceptive inputs. You can't just..."
"Couldn't, wouldn't, shouldn't, I did it anyway," Santi said, sending Vik's brain into a restart.
"Let me get this right..." Vik said. "You rewrote the hardware trigger with a software override."
"I guess I did," Santi said.
"And it works?" Vik asked.
"Hasn't given me any issues to date," Santi replied, which caused Vik to go quiet once again. "Vik."
"Okay. And on top of all of that, you walked into my clinic less than forty-eight hours ago hallucinating things from behind the Blackwall," Vik said, pushing past Santi's revelation. "Your Neural Link has foreign code integrated into its firmware that you have only partially quarantined, and you want me to stack six new implants on top of a system that is already compromised."
He paused and laughed to himself while shaking his head. "The amount of chrome you are asking me to install would push you past what any sane ripper considers acceptable for a human nervous system. There is a threshold, Santi. And do you know what happens to those who cross it? They go into Cyberpsychosis. The chrome starts talking louder than the meat, and the meat stops being able to tell the difference between itself and the machine. All the while, the person who used to live inside that body stops being a person. I have watched good people, smart and strong all the same, dissolve into something that wears their face and speaks with their voice. But their eyes are as soulless as they come."
"I'm not going to go cyberpsycho, Vik," Santi sighed.
"Oh, really?" Vik scoffed. "Nobody who goes cyberpsycho thinks they're going to go cyberpsycho. That is the entire fucking point. The threshold exists because the human nervous system has a carrying capacity, and when you exceed that capacity, the consequences are not negotiable, and they do not care how good your firmware is."
Vik's voice hardened, and he gripped his hair. "What you are proposing to put in your body would give a Maelstrom ganger pause, Santi. Maelstromers wouldn't do that. The gonks who replace their faces with optical arrays and cut their own skin off to make room for more chrome. Even they have limits. Even they know that there is a point past which the body starts rejecting the mind, and you are asking me to push you past that point."
"A war is at our doorstep, Vik," Santi said softly.
"A war is always at somebody's damn doorstep," Vik shouted. "That doesn't mean you burn your body down trying to fight it."
"Yeah, well, I am not going to stand back and just take it," Santi said, his voice hardening with resolve. "I'm not going to sit in this warehouse and watch as the NUSA rolls right into Night City while I'm running around a bag of flesh and bones, with nothing between my skin and a bullet except a t-shirt. You can tell me it'll kill me. You can tell me the systems will fight each other. I hear you. I hear all of it. And I'm telling you, let me worry about the conflicting chrome. I will find a way to make them work in tandem. That's what I do. Apparently I write the firmware that makes impossible shit work. I think I can manage a Sandevistan and a Paraline in the same architecture. Just give me the chrome, and let me handle the rest."
Vik was quiet on the other end of the line for a while.
"You are as stubborn as your damn father," Vik said finally, and his voice sounded tired. "And this will kill you, kid. Maybe not today, and maybe not this month. But the kind of stress you're proposing to put on your nervous system is cumulative, and the bill always comes due."
"Death waits for no one, Vik," Santi said. "Only thing I can do is smile in its face."
Vik let out a long and slow sigh while shaking his head.
"Sure, kid," Vik said. "If you don't want to save yourself, then what right do I have to stand in the way? I'll see what I can do."
"Thank you," Santi said.
"Don't," Vik shook his head. "Don't thank me. You're asking me to do something I'm going to lose sleep over, and the fact that you're thanking me for it tells me you don't understand how much the decisions you make affect others. You made your eddies, you've killed, you snuck around, you've become a man. There's only so much I can do... I'm done trying to baby you..."
"I understand," Santi said. "I just don't have the luxury of caring about it right now."
"Yeah," Vik said quietly. "That's what your father used to say too."
Vik reached over and ended the call, leaving Santi standing in the middle of the floor with his hands at his sides.
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Stones motivate ya boy...
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