11 Stormy Clouds

Himiko was relaxing as I checked Evelyn's implants. Hers was installed in a much better manner, albeit still not what I would consider good, which made me wonder as she claimed that she used the same doctor as Himiko did. Perhaps the doctor was just having a bad day? However, the same malware was installed in both her doll chip, which was made by a different manufacturer, as well as her operating system.

The same malware made me a bit suspicious. I might have suspected it was something that Clouds was installing, except there was no real need to. Doll chips gave incredible, even if it was temporary, permissions when they were connected to the doll server. Clouds would have no need to install malware to get anything from any of their dolls.

After verifying that Evelyn didn't mind me speaking in front of Himiko, I told her, "Your surgery was done a bit better, but I wouldn't go as far as to say that it was good. You've probably experienced slight headaches after using your implants. You're young enough that you would have likely adapted to it, but it isn't really a good thing to have to. There should be absolutely no discomfort in using any cybernetic implants. If there is, then something is wrong." I shared the opinion of the one cybernetic surgeon I trusted with my own body.

She agreed to the same fee for recalibration, and by the time I was done, Himiko was sighing in relief, "I feel so much better already."

I nodded at her, "That is mostly the anti-inflammatories; the calibration will help going forward, though." I pour her another glass of water for each of them, "You are also dehydrated. Both of you are, but that is pretty normal. Eighty per cent of people in Night City suffer from some level of chronic dehydration."

I grabbed a blank sheet of paper from one of the notepads I occasionally took to school. Although I took notes mainly through my deck, there were occasions when I needed to write things down. I tore a sheet out, carefully folded it in half and then tore it down the folds.

I wrote several things on each piece of paper and then slid each to the women, who took it and glanced at it. Himiko blinked and asked, "What does PRN mean?"

Uhhh... I wrote those on autopilot. That's a good question. I thought about it for a moment, "It's an abbreviation for Latin, pro re nata, which is used in the healthcare industry as a shorthand. It translates to as needed. So it means as needed for pain. That's the neural anti-inflammatory I gave you, I will give you enough for a couple of days, but you will probably need to buy your own; it's pretty cheap and widely available.

Evelyn asked, "I just got this one. Is this the one that is seven hundred eddies for a month? Oh, and why are you talking so fast?"

I nodded while grinding my teeth a little bit. I had been talking in slow-mo the entire conversation, from my perspective anyway. I slowed down some more, "Yes. It is standard to receive a couple of days of this particular prescription at any time you receive cybernetic work done. Even if the surgeon is gifted, and their equipment is top of the line, nobody is perfect. Generally, they send it home with you from the clinic." I showed them the bottle of pills that the Skyline clinic had sent me home with.

Himiko and Evelyn glanced between themselves, and then, finally, Himiko said, "I don't think either of us has ever been given something like that after visiting a ripperdoc."

I shrugged before saying, "I can't say that I'm surprised. It's public knowledge that this is the main way this particular medicine is used, though. If you search the net for the medicine name, you will find thousands of results of people asking why they got this medicine from the clinic after getting cyberware."

Evelyn shook her head, "No, no... we don't doubt you. We're just a bit upset, I suppose. Say... would you mind taking a look at some of our colleagues, as well?"

I fidgeted a little bit, "I don't know. That depends. You see... I live here, and I don't want to get on the wrong side of the Tyger Claws. It would be... a problem. I am getting the impression, for a lot of reasons, that maybe they don't know exactly how their employees are being treated, but I would need to know a lot more about how Clouds is run first."

I was fidgeting because I didn't think it was really in me to actually decline, even if it put me in a bad position with the gang that ran this building. The trojans installed in both Himiko and Evelyn's OS would have allowed, in addition to normal remote code execution, remote and invisible triggering of the BD hardware. An attacker could have had them scrolling BDs of every client they saw, which would be... very bad for the reputation of Clouds. Complete discretion and client confidentiality were one of their main selling points.

Honestly, the Tyger Claws seemed sort of the type of group to shoot the messenger in certain situations, so I wasn't sure exactly what I should do with this information. I could potentially see them flatlining the doctor, and then me too, just because I knew they were compromised. Like Alt-Dad had said, three people could keep a secret if two of them were dead.

Of course, that also was just as compelling a reason for me to go to them on my own terms. I couldn't see the secret of this lasting much longer than a few weeks, even if I tried to instil discretion into Himiko and Evelyn. They would tell their fellow dolls, and then it would be completely impossible to contain; only delay would work at that point.

I could approach Mr Jin, and then instead of someone unknown from the Tyger Claws approaching me to find out what I knew, I could deal with a known quantity. A known quantity that was outside the present chain-of-command of Clouds, too, which might be compromised.

Again Evelyn and Himiko glanced between each other, but this time Evelyn said, "Himiko knows a lot more about how Clouds is run; she can tell you everything."

---xxxxxx---

What I learned before I bid both of the women adieu was interesting. While there was technically a Tyger Claw in charge of the management of Clouds, in this case, his name was Kiryu Jirō, in actuality, Clouds was managed by a third party, a man who wasn't actually in the Tyger Claws at all and merely ran the day to day operations of the business and managed the "talent." His name was Rogan MacNeil, and at most, he would be considered an associate of the gang and definitely not an actual member. I could work with that.

The name of the ripperdoc was Finn Gerstatt, and he was a new ripper that had, over the past nine months, set up shop in a clinic in Jig-Jig street, with his main clientele being sex workers of one sort or another. He wasn't the ripper that Hamiko used to get her first doll chip, but that wasn't really an endorsement of her first doctor, either.

Himiko forwarded me a still of his face, and I ran it through both the NCPD as well as a fee-for-service background check site that was mostly used by private detectives. It turned out that wasn't his real name, and he was actually a former doctor named Ernst Streicher; he had a sketchy work history that her entry-level gumshoe site couldn't penetrate entirely, but what was certain was he had his medical credentials revoked and was charged with a bevvy of crimes in the European Community, mostly involving sexual assault, abuse of position, and some drug-related charges.

The charges were still pending, but there was a notation that they weren't serious enough to trigger the expense of extradition or rendition, but there was a reward if he was returned alive to the EC. That explained why he was in Night City, I supposed, and it made me worry about what he might do to anyone unconscious in his clinic.

I wanted a bit more evidence, so I asked Himiko to send a couple of other dolls, at least one of which had never patronised Mr Gerstatt, and asked her and Evelyn to be exceptionally discreet for the moment. My expectation was not that it would last longer than a week, but it should be enough to get things in order. In Order, huh? In German, there was an expression to reassure someone everything was okay; it was "Alles ist in Ordnung." All is in order. Well, it wouldn't be soon for Herr Gerstatt.

I spent a few hours working on the Kendachi monowire VR shard, managing only to decapitate myself once and dismember myself thrice. The VR simulation included pain, so it was very painful to do so as I expected that it did a lot more than anything to make people proficient quickly. You could even specify a time dilation factor in the training program, so I had been training on a time factor of three point oh, which would be me at full boost, which I would achieve... someday.

I would probably have to install the monowire in my arms and hands myself, as I had discovered having an integrated weapons system acted as a multiplicative factor as far as surveillance from the city's psycho squad was concerned. It wasn't surprising because I didn't think there were many cases of cyberpsychos going crazy that didn't involve one with at least one weapon system. Usually, mantis blades or a Projectile Launch System, though.

That meant that I could probably get one or two small additional pieces of cybernetics at the Skyline clinic before I installed the monowire. I was pretty sure I wanted some integrated self-ICE to help myself if someone tried to hack me. I could be immediately disabled, or potentially killed, by a proficient netrunner as easily as them flipping their hands at present. There were a number of commercial options, but I had been wondering if I could disassemble part of the Dragoon suit, as it had to incorporate a ton of electronic war and ECM countermeasures.

In terms of repairing it, I couldn't do much even with my power, but using it for parts gave me a lot of options so long as I used those parts in cybernetics. Though the Dragoon was over thirty years old, that didn't necessarily mean it had lost its relevance or that it was thirty years obsolete.

After Rache Bartmosse triggered the DataKrash and destroyed the Old Net, it set back technical advancement decades. Even recently, corporations were suspected of funding illegal deep dives into the Old Net, losing many netrunners in the process, trying to uncover what was essentially Lost Technology, like this world was that Earth Aleph game that Greg Vedor at school liked, with the mechs. BattleTech? Battle something, anyway. I remembered him talking about it at lunch periodically, back when I still ate my lunch in the cafeteria anyway.

Things were so backward after the DataKrash that corporations used punch card systems for almost a decade; you could still find remnants of these systems in old construction in and near Night City.

If so, I would have to incorporate a system that was somewhat user-serviceable if I wanted to be able to maintain any possible Tinkertech system connected to my brain. Self-ICE systems were usually installed right next to your operating system, so in this case, the back of my neck. I could find a commercial system that included user-serviceable panels, as customised ICE was actually not completely unheard of.

Usually, these types of implants were only used by serious netrunners, though, so I would appear to be a bit of a poseur to buy one of them. They were also priced accordingly, usually about twice as expensive as an off-the-shelf ICE system. But that was something I could live with. In fact, being underestimated was probably to my benefit.

I grabbed the sleep inducer wreath and settled it on my head before sitting comfortably in the La-Z-Boy-style chair I had in my apartment, setting it for three hours which would result in a maximum neural plasticity effect, which was good for both my training in the use of a monowire and for my training speaking and reacting at less than super speed.

I rarely slept in my bed anymore since I tended to use the sleep inducer every night, as it had a tendency to fall off and wake me up if I was in bed and could roll around. It figured. Just when I got a comfortable enough bed is when I stopped really using it.

---xxxxxx---

I shifted the boost level to fifty-five per cent when I woke up the next morning, and things seemed manageable. It would probably take some more time until I really forgot that people, such as the News broadcasts, were speaking in what seemed like slow motion, but I at least stopped myself from tapping my fingers at super speed on my kitchen table while listening to the morning broadcast today.

I continue my practice of hacking random people on the train after scanning everyone in the compartment, and I have gotten a lot better at deploying these quick hacks. Even if it was only Ping, a lot of the first steps to the process were similar despite what payload you were trying to deploy.

School was more or less the same as usual, although today was one of the days with quizzes in most of the classes, which resulted in me actually needing the little pencil case I carried with me. They were pretty old-fashioned here, with all of the quizzes being on paper and hand graded. Although, I noticed that both Antonio and Fiona gave me a side eye as I placed my pencil and eraser in my desk area.

After school, I walked into the library; I headed straight to the large room our group had more or less confiscated on an ongoing basis. Fiona was already there waiting, and she asked, "Yo, Taylor. What the heck is up with you?"

"I don't know what you mean," I told her, although I actually did think I knew what she meant. I carefully slowed my voice a little bit more, which caused her to chuckle.

She said, very amused, "You're overcompensating now; you sound a bit slower than normal."

Then she paused as Antonio peered at me from the back. Was he looking at my butt, no... he was looking to see if my spine had any obvious modifications to it. He asked suddenly, "Are you running some kind of Kerenzikov?!"

Well, shit. I guess it was a bit of a stretch to think I could keep it a secret from literal combat veterans. Xiao Li and one of the Trauma Team guys seem interested in my answer. I rubbed the back of my neck and said, "Uhh... maybe?"

Antonio slapped me on the shoulder and said, "Fucking nova, Taylor. That's wicked. I haven't actually seen anyone who actually had the balls to use one. I have a Sandy, myself."

Fiona's eyebrows were raised, "You seem remarkably not losing it, so I guess you're either well suited for that type of thing, or it's a low-end model?"

Xiao Li's eyes shifted colour as I saw the hints of text scrolling past his optics, while internally, an alarm sounded, indicating I was being port scanned. Hey! I resent that! I didn't have a lot of room to throw stones from my glass house, considering I did this to hundreds of people a day, so instead, I just triggered a temporarily elevated firewall state. Xiao Li was clearly not a super hacker in that I noticed his attempt, but he seemed a little more proficient than I was. I told him, annoyed, "Stop probing my ports!"

That caused Antonio to start laughing and Fiona to nod seriously, going along with my unintentional double entendre, "I don't think Xiao Li has yet got a woman to agree for him to probe any of her ports yet in his entire life."

The Kang Tao soldier turned medic fumed, "I'll have you know that I, Xiao Li, am quite the lady's man! Besides, you're wrong! That's not a shitty Militech Kerenzikov! She has it locked down pretty well, but it is definitely a superior Kang Tao product; I couldn't figure out the model, but it bares some similarities to the Type K-03, which is generally only used by the People's Liberation Army and internal Kang Tao Special Forces."

He shrugged, not at all bothered, "Although I have no doubt the company would sell them to pretty much anyone who asked if there was enough money involved. In any case, it isn't a small boost." He looked at me and nodded respectfully.

Well, tell everyone, why don't you, you ass! However, everyone here seemed impressed, so that was something. The fact that he didn't seem to care that I might have sensitive Kang Tao electronics in my spine made some sense; even total company men didn't always have a full range of company implants. I had already discovered that the mantis blades Antonio had were made by Arasaka, for example, and I was curious where he got them too, but I realised there were any number of ways it could have happened.

Fiona said, "Nice. I thought you weren't interested in putting yourself in any danger, Princess."

"I'm not! If you can point me to anywhere on this planet that is safe, I'll appreciate it," I told her, slightly churlishly.

Antonio chuckled and nodded, "She's got a point there, Fi. Besides, she's young enough that I imagine she has had less of an issue adapting than us old-timers. I remember hearing that the younger you were when you got boostware for the first time, the better you responded to it, but I don't think anyone would publicise actual experiments if they did any with kids, so that may just be bullshit I heard."

I didn't have any illusions that Militech and other corporations had done exactly that kind of research. They didn't even need to do it themselves, either. There were tons of conflict areas in the world where child soldiers were common; you just had to ship in a few crates of "free" boostware and then track the performance, longevity and mental state of the "soldiers" involved. It was a double win since Militech, and other companies routinely supplied arms to conflict areas. Low-intensity brush wars were good for business, I guessed.

I nodded, "It makes sense. The younger you are, the more neural plasticity you have left. Adapting has been a little annoying, but not the psychosis-inducing thing a lot of people told me it would be. It's not like I got it put in by a back alley hack, either."

Xiao Li nodded, "It does make sense. But you know what doesn't? This stupid fucking American pig-dog national curriculum we're being tested on. Can we go over some of the pharm we'll be tested on soon? If I fail this class, then I, Xiao Li, will likely be put up against a wall! They don't even give you good American cigarettes before they shoot you, you know! It's cheap shit from the Soviet Union, I hear!" I wasn't sure how much he was bullshitting and how much he was serious. He probably wouldn't be shot for failing.

In any event, I nodded, and we sat down and got to work.

---xxxxxx---

In the next week, three more dolls came to my door, one of which had never been to this Finn Gerstatt. She had some similar issues, although less pronounced. However, what she definitely didn't have was any obvious malware on her system that I could detect. That was enough evidence for me.

One of the dolls that frequented that ripperdoc often told her that he offered to give her discounts in exchange for what amounted to sexual favours. The dolls weren't poor, though and didn't need to provide payment "in kind" like that. That made me wonder if Himiko's shoddy installation wasn't, perhaps, intentional, as it would be a different non-monetary type of leverage if he could "fix" her later.

After helping her, I made a phone call to Mr Jin, who picked up on the second ring, "Ahh... Taylor, how are things going?"

"Pretty well for me, but I was wondering if I could speak to you in person. Can you come by my apartment? I have some things that I don't feel comfortable discussing with you over the airwaves," I told him, keeping my face respectfully serious.

That caused him to blink several times, "Sure. Can I ask about the general nature of what you want to discuss? I might need to bring someone else with me, depending on what it is."

That caused me to frown slightly, and I paused as I considered how to respond. Finally, I nodded and said, "I have reason to believe that someone, not part of your organisation but entrusted by your organisation to conduct business, has been potentially breaking their trust with you both by harming those he is entrusted to protect, taking kick-backs, possibly embezzling and more importantly been complicit in the breach of discretion expected by your customers."

There was a silence that lasted quite some time on the line before Mr Jin asked, totally serious now, "Is this in relation to some of the visitors you have had over the past week?"

I nodded, "Yes." Although I wasn't a doctor, I did try to take the idea of patient confidentiality seriously. So I wouldn't actually identify anyone, but that was really only making myself feel better and possibly getting some respect from the Tyger Claws for not telling them who my "patients" were. But I was sure they knew more or less who had been visiting me in any case.

If I didn't think this whole thing would blow up in my face if I didn't mention it to anyone, I likely wouldn't have called Mr Jin at all... although, I would have tried some way to screw this "doctor" on Jig-Jig street.

Mr Jin nodded, "Okay. I think I understand at least a little bit about the situation. I will have to bring my boss along. Be at ease that neither of us is in the direct... how do you say, chain of command of the place that you are worried about. We'll be there in about thirty minutes."

With that, he disconnected the call. I sighed, feeling very nervous about the upcoming discussion. The way I had decided to handle this was based on what I read in the library about Asian cultures and Japanese culture specifically. For all I knew, this Kiryu Jirō could be completely involved. However, if I said that was a possibility, then I, an outsider, was suggesting that one of their brothers was betraying them, more or less. Everything I read said I should definitely not do that.

Instead, I was putting everything on this outside manager and the ripperdoc. I figured he was the actual culprit anyway and that Jirō was mainly a victim of not actually doing his job well enough and treating it as a no-show job that he didn't need to bother doing. But if I couched what I was going to report as this outsider was betraying the trust that Mr Jirō showed in him, it would be up to the Tyger Claws themselves to investigate and determine any culpability that Jirō might or might not have. It wouldn't have anything to do with me at that point.

I had a number of refreshments that I had bought specifically for this meeting, just to be polite, and I gathered them from the refrigerator and sat them on a tray in the convenience store area of my apartment. There was more furniture set up there as well, so they could sit and discuss.

I triggered the electric kettle to start boiling water in case they wanted tea and waited.

---xxxxxx---

About twenty-five minutes later they politely rang my doorbell instead of letting themselves into my apartment as I knew they could if they wanted, so I greeted them at the door and invited them in.

"Taylor, this is my boss Mr Inoue. Inoue-san, this is Taylor Hebert-san," he said, the last in Japanese, which my auto-translator subtitled.

However, this Mr Inoue spoke in English, "Miss Hebert, thank you for calling us, and I assure you that so long as what you say is true and you can maintain the current level of discretion you have shown thus far, we will have nothing but thanks to give you. Can you tell us what you suspect is going on?"

I nodded and showed them in, to the chairs by the table, "There are some refreshments here, if you wish, while I talk."

At first, Mr Inoue seemed ready to wave off my offer, but he blinked, "Wait, are those real fruits?" He asked at my fruit and cheese spread.

"Well, I have no way to actually verify the authenticity, but they taste as though they are," I told him amusedly. "I suspect that they're actually cloned and genetically engineered slightly, but then again, what isn't these days?"

Mr Jin was less polite, "Oooh... Kirin beer, nice Taylor..." He helped himself, and after a moment, Mr Inoue did as well.

After that, I laid pretty much all I knew on the table. Inoue was quiet for most of it, but towards the midpoint, he asked, "What I have heard thus far is very troubling, but you mentioned a possible breach of client confidentiality. At Clouds, that is... not good. Can you speak to that now?"

I nodded, "Yes. There are two separate incidents, one much more serious. The doctor in question, one Ernst Streicher, who now goes by the name Gerstatt, in order to save fifty eurodollars on the legitimate firmware for a Cyberdyne doll chip, jailbroke it and had it configured to run in a diagnostic safe-mode. This caused the personality of the previous session to be saved and not erased, as I found out when I went to put this particular doll into diagnostic mode, and she started acting out her last session."

I pursed my lips in distaste at that memory and then continued, "That is mere negligence. However, on every doll I have examined that he worked on, malware was installed that would permit both remote code execution and, more troubling invisible scrolling of BDs anytime he wanted. Considering his past criminal history with sex crimes, I feel it a good possibility that he might have taken advantage of that already."

Mr Jin groaned, and even Inoue pinched between his nose and shook his head, "Can you prove that?" he asked, finally.

I nodded, "I have only examined four dolls that saw him; I am sure Clouds has a number of others that have seen him. I'm not willing to identify my patients, despite the fact that I am not any kind of doctor, but I can't help it if you have some way to know. If you do, then all you would have to do is examine the chips of the dolls I never saw. I imagine the same malware will be on them."

I then reached in my pocket to pull out a data shard and slid it over the table, "And of the ones I did see, I took an image of the malware, and there are copies on this shard. If you have netrunners at your disposal, I am sure you would be able to identify not only the purpose but probably also backtrack the command and control and identify the actual culprit. I am just guessing that it was this Dr Streicher."

Mr Jin took it and placed it in his pocket, and finally, I said, "Lastly, you could just grab the ripperdoc and uhh... you know, ask him. I presume you have ways to get truthful answers out of him." This last, I said a bit unsurely, which caused Mr Jin to chuckle and even Mr Inoue to smile slightly.

Inoue nodded, "Three options. Good," he turned to Mr Jin and said, "I'd say we should do all three. Plus, I'm sure there are some questions about the manager Kiryu-kun hired. He's obviously got his hand in the till, but that is a much more minor matter." He then turned to me, "Now... Miss Hebert, it looks as though you will have the gratitude of the Tyger Claws. I appreciate that you weren't willing to identify your patients to us. That speaks well to your discretion. However, I have to stress that the potential matters about client confidentiality you mentioned must be mentioned to no one. Ever. In your entire life. Do you understand?" He was quite forceful and even menacing with the last bit, which caused me to gulp slightly.

"Yes, absolutely. That was the main reason I called Mr Jin," I finally squeaked out.

He continued to stare at me for a moment before nodding, "Good. We very much appreciate this." He started to rise from the table, so both Mr Jin and I did the same, and he turned to Jin and said, "Ryuichi-kun, take a quick reaction force and secure Clouds. No more customers today. I've already called Kiryu-kun over for dinner and will talk with him myself. Place the manager and all administrative staff under close confinement and wait until we can get an independent Med-Tech to check the dolls. Once you get Clouds secured, take a second team and apprehend this Doktor..." he intentionally used a terrible German accent, "...and place him under confinement as well. I'm arranging a Med-Tech and a netrunner from Okada-sama as we speak."

Mr Jin, the man of so many words usually, just said, "Hai!" I don't know why but I found that amusing. Also, I guess his first name was Ryuichi?

Mr Inoue glanced back at me and smiled, seemingly genuinely, "Thanks for the beer, even if it came with a double dose of overwork for me tonight."

I nodded and watched them leave my apartment before sighing and sitting down, nibbling on some cheese with shakey hands. That was a bit stressful. I had the impression that the conversation could have gone a different way, one I definitely would not have liked.