15 Borg to the Bone

"Ese, why exactly should I get in this tube?" Pedro asked as he looked at the AutoDoc located in the corner of my workshop.

"I think it's best that I take point on this." Came the even military drawl of the medical unit, "Listen here, cabroni, you ain't the fittest horse that ever ran a race, but from aggregate medical records from the region that isn't a surprise. Now you can go get your cyberlimbs and implants done by a back alley chem fiend whose neurons are still hot from what ever pornographic braindance has taken his fancy today, or you can hop in the world's premiere health services unit and never even consider going anywhere else ever again."

"You make a convincing argument, Tube-homes, but doughboy (Cyberpunk slang for someone wearing a lot of armor) over here is making me nervous." Pedro indicated to me as I stood around in my completed Stealth Suit Mk III.

The suit looked like someone put armor plating and data ports on the CryNet Nanosuit. I'd started with the essential systems of the Mk II Stealth Suit and covered them in a perfectly planned out Myomar Strand musculature protected in a wondrously articulated battle armor with advanced sensory tech in the helmet such as CrystalDome plating in the visor to allow for full covered protection and full field of view and a whole host of other benefits such as thermal imaging and the most advanced trajectory and explosives analytics possible.

It resulted in a suit of semi-powered armor that added its lifting and striking power to my own frame rather than take the load entirely like a traditional PA System with the most advanced stealth and perception tech in the world. In Fallout terms I was rocking some high damage threshold armor with +1 Strength, +2 Perception, +1 Agility, +25 Stealth, +20 percent to crouched movement speed, and an automated medical system that dispenses appropriate chems when needed.

"The Operator and I are in the process of neural calibration. Separation would be… messy." when I cleaned up the audio on the default automated personality for the suit, it resulted in the voice heard in Christine Royce's audio logs from New Vegas.

"Hey, ese." Pedro frowned, "Why does your AutoDoc sound like a soldier and your battle suit sound like a sexy mama?"

"The ways of the world are very mysterious, Pedro." I shrugged, a freakishly silent gesture considering the amount of armor over me, "Another mystery is why we are still talking when the Doc could be installing your chrome."

"Tch, whatever floats the boat, homes." Pedro shook his head, "Let's go Doc. It's time I chrome the fuck up."

The Caduceus bearing door to the AutoDoc opened and Pedro stepped in before it slid back shut. I extended a line from the Mk III and jacked in to fully observe the surgery, my 100 in medicine allowing me to recognize any potential problems as they occur rather than after and the link between my mind and the automated system allowed instant direct override.

I never needed to intervene, even in a procedure as invasive and installing Bioplastic blood vessels into his circulatory system that provide a strong healing factor enabling Pedro to survive wounds that don't outright kill him via intensity or rapid accumulation. It synergized really well with the supra-dermal weave that clenches down and prevents external bleed out. He also replaced his arms with a set of my personally designed rugged mantis blades and his eyes with standard optics tech.

Overall it was a significant cyberload for a normie, but we'd calced out his estimated neural sustainability prior and the way my personally designed cyberware worked together for a lighter total load meant Pedro wouldn't be under any threat of cyberpsychosis unless he suffers damage to his gear or his brain that remains untreated.

Juanie was scheduled for a similar upgrade but he wanted one arm to be a rocket launcher. Once he was done I'd go under for my next set of upgrades.

It wasn't much work to integrate the Spineless Tech and Implant GRX with the Sandevi-zerk, and I'd be getting two of the Heartless techhearts installed to go with a pair of Bionic Syn-Lungs and the Bioplastic Blood Vessels that maximized in efficacy with the techhearts and with the Phoenix Monocyte Breeder Implant which was far weaker regenerative healing but far greater immuno support. Cutting edge Bioconductors would further cut down intersystem heat build up, bringing my cyberware a fat increase of 35 percent uptime.

It was a lot, but I was going full borg, and that meant down to the bone. An extremely Densified Marrow was at the core of a titanium-gold alloy skeletal system with a three to one ratio that far outperformed the standard Titanium Bone systems used currently. It was a metallurgy bitch that I hadn't come across in any Corpo files that could only be outperformed in bone replacement by platinum gold, an alloy as hard as diamonds and the most abrasion resistant biofriendly alloy in the world hands down. Expensive as all hell too hence my use of the far more readily available titanium.

The Synaptic Signal Optimizer rounded out my internal changes as I'd have to Soulkiller myself to make Brainless work, and until I can scientifically prove whether or not the soul exists within digital engrams that's on the no list for augments. Fortunately I know how the Big MT preserved their brains for hundreds of years, so I'm in no rush to replace my grey matter with tech.

Of course all of this took time and money to build. A lot of it. Fortunately I had more of both working as a sicario and enforcer with Gus. We rarely worked more than five hours in a day and made more eddies than when we were busting out six cars a day for Manny. And either the death of Ralph or the presence of Gus put a spine of steel into Jaunie and Pedro. The pair of them took to the killer's way of life like fish to water, and transitioned from dangerous boys to dangerous men. Hard men, reliable even as the stress of a situation piles on.

The added chrome just made them all the more capable, and they needed it. There was always skirmishes with the 6th Street gang as the Valentinos hit that perfect intersection of criminality and money that they can't resist popping off at, and the Tyger Claws were always looking for opportunities to murder folk in red and gold. Teams like ours were mobilized near on the daily to respond violently to those actions.

We didn't always get our guy or gal, but someone always paid the price. Maybe their cousin, significant other, or best friend. The criminals might be slippery, but there was always someone to hurt to make them hurt, though on occasion were dealing with someone, usually a Tyger Claw assassin or ex-spec ops 6th Street vigilante, who was a hardcore loner. Those were the days where work lasted longer than five hours because we'd need to either find them or find a way to fuck with their eddies.

And for every image we captured of death or destruction it was fat stacks dropping into our accounts. A drop in the well of Night City brutality and another weight for us to carry until we could unload it all in a beautiful night out working charity through the Ralph G. Lopez Scholarship Foundation.

That's how I met a gorgeous hardworking redhead who was actually putting herself through med school on our eddies. And that David, is how I met your mother.

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Next chapter will be a bit jarring as it will shoot foreword into the story for a bit to 2076. It is 2068 in the current narration, getting close to 2069 and the Metal War.

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