25 What the fuck did I just make? Crime against humanity and decency!

William Davies had been a personal servant of the Astor family for many, many years. He was, in fact, a part of the family, from the wrong side of the sheets, so to speak. Most of the personal servants of his status were part of the family, actually. He had little contact with the family growing up, but he always had the feeling that someone was watching out for him a little bit. Things came a little easier for him; events seemed to occur to give him a little bit of a helping hand.

It could have been luck, but he later discovered it was at least half the family providing small benefits, such as securing his admission to one of the best schools in North America; specifically, he received an appointment to the US Military Academy at Westpoint. Some famous historical cadets, like Robert E. Lee, received no demerits in their entire four-year stint at the Academy, and others, like Ulysses S. Grant, received so many he was at one point almost tossed out. William was more in the middle.

He graduated, received his commission and was interested in combat arms. He figured that if he was going to be a soldier, then he was going to be a fucking soldier. He was an artilleryman, a redleg in US Army parlance.

After going through jump school and being selected for the 82nd Airborne Division, he got a tattoo on one arm that featured a historical cannon and the words "Ultima Ratio Regum." In English, that translated to "The Final Argument of Kings." The final argument of kings was, of course, canons.

Artillery was killing by the numbers. In historical conflicts, over sixty per cent of casualties could be attributed to artillery, although in modern conflicts, that dropped a little but only because air strikes accomplished a similar task. There was something that was just ultimately demoralising about being shelled by an enemy you couldn't see and couldn't fight against.

William's luck ran out in Colombia during the Second Central American War. What a shit show that was. Half of the time, he didn't even have a battery of guns but instead led a platoon of infantry. On one such mission, ironically, his life was altered radically by... artillery.

Looking back on it, he couldn't help but admire the skills of the Neo-Soviet gun team. The indigenous people they were fighting were never as good with an artillery barrage, so he instantly knew it was the Soviet "advisors" that blew him and his platoon to bits.

Somehow, though, he managed to survive. He woke up in America, paralysed and with half his body missing. That was when the family came to offer assistance. Not for free; he wouldn't really have trusted them if they offered something for free. But he had a certain set of skills, and if they gave him a new body, he would certainly be content to exercise them for them instead of the US Army.

It was discovered, amidst the Cyberware Revolution of the 2010s, that he had an incredible ability to integrate with cybernetics. He was one of the very first people to receive one of Raven Microcybernetics' full conversion systems. Even at this time, cyberpsychosis wasn't unknown, but he never had any issues with mental instability, no matter the amount of cybernetics he received.

Behind his back, people gossiped that he was just crazy to begin with, and perhaps that was true, but he never felt crazy. Certainly, he wasn't unpredictable and a hazard to everyone around him. But would a crazy person ever consider that they were crazy? He certainly wasn't going around randomly murdering people like some famous up-and-coming solos that also were highly augmented, like Adam Smasher.

Honestly, he was once told that the main symptom of cyber psychosis was the belief, reinforced after every additional augmentation, that you were better, more than regular people. But he already felt that way before he ever got any cybernetics!

He operated, for the family, discreetly in the same area that Adam Smasher did, the eastern seaboard of the USA, although he never met the man. During the Fourth Corporate War, the family brought him back to protect their strong places, and he occasionally provided bodyguard services to family members, who lived mostly in low earth orbit. The family didn't really have a stake in the conflict; in fact, their holdings were so diversified that they had a board member on both Militech and Arasaka's boards, at least until the NUSA government forced out their board member on Militech's board.

The corporation was in some ways indistinguishable from the NUSA government, and the Astor family was very much an international family, with most of their hard assets and real property in the United Kingdom and the European Community.

Ever since the Fourth Corporate War ended, he had shifted from less traditional military work and more of what the family called a personal servant, which included that but much more. He had been one of the primary servants for the Astor-Armstrong branch of the family, since then. If the Astor family mostly lived in space, then the Astor-Armstrongs were the ones that ran most of their businesses on Earth.

William remembered Annette well; she was a favourite of his. Her mom had many children, but she was always one to stand out. Always pushing the boundaries, so he wasn't surprised when she got the freedom that her mother never had. He had personally tracked down the NUSA direct action team that was responsible for her death and eliminated them all with extreme prejudice. For Annette's sake, he had brought in her husband on the op, and he had gotten his share of revenge. The fact that it was against the former agency he used to work for before he shifted to the private sector infuriated the man, William thought.

She had died during a joint Militech-Arasaka delegation, negotiating some aspect of each corporation's involvement in the Pacific Islands so as not to step on each other's toes. Remarkable, and the NUSA thought, dangerous. They didn't like the idea of a world where Militech and Arasaka routinely cooperated, so they used a giant truck bomb to blow up both sides. Neither William nor Danny cared about the reason, though.

When the Astor family AI, Edgecrusher, alerted him and Annette's mom that Annette's daughter might have been murdered, with someone stealing her identity, he volunteered to personally execute the person walking around with Annette's daughter's face.

Edgecrusher wasn't one hundred per cent confident, although the evidence was damning. Taylor Anne Hebert not only had a radical change in behaviour and interests but, more importantly, sought medical services. She had, under a false name, approached a biosculpt clinic and requested a number of modifications. Modifications she should have already had. Additionally, she became a patient of a cybernetics clinic and received cybernetics that she should also already had -- including a basic operating system.

Monitoring "disowned" and illegitimate family members was only one minor part of Edgecrusher's duties, so it wasn't until the imposter applied to Trauma Team that the AI backtracked and discovered these inconsistencies.

William had watched for about half a year before deciding that the only way he would know for sure was if he asked her himself. The operation was approved by Taylor's grandmother, and this was the result. He was now waiting, in VR, to brief his principal about what he had discovered.

His principal's ICON rezzed into the special, encrypted cybernetic space they inhabited. It wouldn't be wrong to say that this meeting was occurring inside the brain of Edgecrusher. It was certainly one of the most highly secure net sites in the world, anyway. Her avatar was a Gaelic woman with delicate features that were roughly based on her own, long hair and long ears, as a kind of aes sídhe.

"There were problems returning home?" she asked serenely.

William frowned a bit. His ICON was an idealised version of his body before it was blown to bits, "A little, mum. The private jet I was borrowing had an engineering casualty, so I am just going to wait for Orbital Air's suborbital six hours from now. I'll definitely get back faster this way, anyhow." Although the jet he borrowed was supersonic, it was barely so. There weren't daily suborbital flights from Night City to London, but there were usually a couple a week, and the timings worked out for him in this instance.

She shrugged her shoulders, "Such things happen. I read your preliminary report, although there were areas that seemed contradictory. Your report says the young woman doesn't consider herself to be Taylor Hebert, yet definitely is."

William winced slightly, internally, although he didn't show it. She would never be so crass as to order him to explain, but that was basically what she was doing, "Mum, a person's psychology changes as they have life events, especially traumatic ones. We verified her genome matched, and although I wasn't able to perform the full battery of tests under the cap, as we were interrupted, it was clear that she was born Taylor Hebert. She doesn't feel as though she belongs in this world and doesn't feel that she is "... and he made the air-quotes gesture, "...this world's Taylor Hebert, but that isn't uncommon with post-adolescent psychology. I suspect losing her father so soon after little Annette was very traumatic to her, and she has resolved to radically diverge from the path that she was on." He frowned a bit, "Although..."

"Although...?" she asked, with a smile.

He smiled, too, "Although... she has remarkable skills, and I don't mean in medicine." He shook his head, "I haven't had anyone detect me in over two decades. Maybe it was just a fluke or intuition, but she turned around at just the right time to spot me and almost was able to at least shoot at me before I closed with her. No hesitation. When I disarmed her, she shifted to using a Kendachi monowire to keep me at least a few metres away. With enough skill that she must have practised for hundreds and hundreds of hours; then, when she realised she was hopelessly outmatched, she just turned around and ran away. Again, zero hesitation. She shifted from attack to escape instantly. I would put her martial skills as comparable to a middling corporate black ops operator, at least with what I saw. She could be an Angel in five or ten years if she keeps at it. I was so depressed, so sure at that point that she was an imposter. I mean, she is only seventeen, mum." He shook his head.

"How interesting... if slightly uncouth. I suppose Annette's man must have been training her off and on since she was a child? We have no records of that, but that isn't surprising. That was his business, after all," the fairy woman mused.

William nodded, "It is really the only explanation. He got really jaded with both Militech and the NUSA after Annette's death; it is probable he advised her to avoid Militech after his death. Every year they intertwine more and more with the NUSA government after all, and he despised them."

"Mmm... anything else?" she asked.

William shrugged, "She might not be precisely psychologically stable. She is recovering from deep self-loathing, unknown why,... and uh... have you heard of the Japanese word 'chuunibyou'? She is convinced that her special affinity for medicine and science is a superpower. Like, from a comic book. The confidence levels for this were off the charts."

A wistful expression crossed the woman's face, "Annette was like that too. Remember when she would approach the automatic doors?" The woman shifted to a more active stance and thrust out her palm, and recited, "By my power, I demand you open!" Then she grinned for a moment before settling back into her serene countenance. "Little Taylor might not be wrong, though. There is nothing more powerful than knowledge, expertise and the will to use it. That can be very super. You had to depart before you removed the memories of the interrogation and capture. That is traumatic. How do you suppose we should make it up to her?"

William tilted his head to the side, "I didn't consider that we should, mum. Sure, that wasn't a pleasant experience, but it wasn't even a tenth of a per cent of what you or Annette had to go through growing up."

She waved a hand, "Yes, but the expectations, our own cages and torments were of our own design, William. Sparing her future children of things of this nature was part and parcel of the agreement Annette made. You expect she will continue to accumulate funds for medical school, then?"

William nodded, "Yes. She believes she has valuable intellectual property. Very valuable. I'm not sure if she actually does, she could be mistaken, but she is smart and knows if she sells it on the up and up, a corporation will rendition her. I believe she intends to sell it for a fraction of its worth on the black market, somehow. We could easily pay for her schooling, though, ourselves, though, so she doesn't have to take the risk."

She shook her head, "No. However, after she has accumulated the money and applied, we will arrange a full scholarship. I have been told by people who have made their own fortunes that the first million you make can be transformational. It's best to struggle a little, after all." She tilted her head to the side, "How valuable does she think her IP is?"

"Hard to say; that was around the time we were interrupted. But at least in the hundreds of millions or low billions per annum. Gross, not net. It's some kind of drug used to fight infections. She believes she already has it and has tested it," William said.

The fairy hummed, "Not that valuable then. Although, a billion here and a billion there, and pretty soon that adds up to real money, doesn't it? She's right. They'd black bag her and stick her in a gilded cage unless she's just delusional." There was a moment of silence, "Do you have any idea who she would approach to sell it?"

He shrugged, "It's a pharmaceutical of some kind, so possibly Biotechnica. Maybe Arasaka, as they have an up-and-coming life sciences division. Plus, she does live in the building run by and has a very good working relationship with one of Arasaka's cats' paws, a yakuza-style street gang."

The fairy made a moue of displeasure, "How distasteful. Well, we still have a board member in Arasaka, at least for the moment. I'll make a note to watch for any such operation. As for Biotechnica... we don't have an in with the Italians. Or any other Pharmcorp, for that matter... I suppose all we can do is watch. I'd like you to preposition a team in Night City that might be able to provide protection in the event she approaches one of these players. If they try to rendition her, they should be able to provide protection. I don't mind if they actually black bag her, but I just don't want them to kill her in the attempt; it would be an interesting perspective shift for her, and a couple of years working in the salt mines, so to speak, might do her some good."

William frowned a little. His principal was a bit too tough love at times, but at the same time, prepositioning a family team, not just hired mercs, for possibly years was an incredible outlay of funds. He had a team available, but if they couldn't be expected to take other missions? He'd have to onboard a new team and place both of them in Night City. Then they could alternate taking missions on the west coast so that one team was always ready.

She didn't want to spend a million right now to provide her granddaughter with an education unless the girl accumulated that much herself first, but she was willing to spend easily five times as much to provide protection for her in the shadows. Protection that wouldn't even protect her if all she was going to be was kidnapped. That was typical.

"Right away, mum," he replied.

She nodded, "Well, I'll see you tomorrow, William. Perhaps you'll let me win again at a game of tennis."

Let her win? Although the woman was almost completely biological, she was almost as fast and strong as he was. Every member of the Astor family was a miracle of modern genetics and biosculpting by the age of ten. And she was a lot better at tennis. He tried his best to beat her every single time, but he never let her win, not even when she was a child!

His principal's ICON derezzed, and he glanced around the endless white expanse. He shook his head ruefully and said aloud, "Alright, Edgecrusher. Send me out, bro." His accent shifted back to the American one he was born with when he was talking to the AI.

---xxxxxx---

I spent several hours being debriefed by the Trauma Team counter-intelligence people, as at first, they suspected my kidnapping was because of my work; however, after a while, it became clear that they did not think that anymore, although they wouldn't really discuss why they came to that conclusion. I thought the same thing, but I was interested in why they thought so, too. The process was annoying, but the people interrogating me weren't as bad as that British guy. They didn't want to scan my brain, at least.

When I mentioned that, one of them chuckled and laid it out for me with no prevaricating, "You can't just put people under the cap for no reason. Not only is it a lot of work and takes a special skill set to interpret the results, which are always in high demand, but it tends to make people think that we don't trust them. That has a marked impact on the quality of an employee's work product…" he trailed off and then shrugged, "Random interrogation under brain scan is basically a pre-requisite for service in the Intelligence or Counter-Intel divisions, though. That's pretty much the industry standard. Buuuut… If we suspected you were lying, I would probably instead be telling you that brain scan interviews are standard in this type of situation and quickly calling in one of the specialists." The last sentence, he said with a cocky grin.

I chuckled at that. After they cut me loose, I briefly went by the base. The crew was out on a flight, which suited me because I needed to embezzle something out of our medical supply room. I took a handful of specimen sample kits, which were nothing more than a long, optionally damp Q-tip and a plastic tube to place it in and sat down at a chair in the kitchen, humming. I carefully used a q-tip and rubbed it underneath my fingernails, specifically the fingernails I knew had penetrated pretty deeply into the ninja's hand.

I suspected he was a Gemini or similar, full-body replacement. The fact that he wasn't paralysed was a big clue, although there were certain other small signs. Gemini's were, reportedly, almost impossible to detect even at close inspection. Raven's website claimed that this included "intimate" inspections, as well. I found that probably to be true. There were only a few signs that they weren't biological. His infrared signature at high exertion was off, his breathing a bit off, and the way that his veins pulsed in time with a supposed heartbeat was off, now that I thought back about it. Hardly anyone in the world would notice that with their eyes, but I could. I could almost take someone's blood pressure just by staring at them for a while.

And while a Gemini was a full borg, it wasn't entirely mechanical. A lot of the features that tended to fool a person into believing they were human were biological. And with custom biological features came protein tagging. I wasn't entirely sure why, but I thought it might be for intellectual property reasons, but there was a good chance that there might be data encoded in the genome of the skin and fake blood that would tell me more about who this guy was. Maybe even a serial number for the body he was wearing, and if I had that, I could, eventually, track the sale down. Well… maybe.

It was a bit traumatising to be outclassed, beaten down, knocked unconscious, threatened, and interrogated. I did not want it to happen again if I could at all help it. For hours I had been thinking about how to stop it in the future, and honestly, I was coming up with a lot of ideas, but none of them was definitive. That guy was just better than me. I had the impression that he could have incapacitated me with the initial strike to my solar plexus and instead was playing around with me. Certainly, he hadn't used that electrical taser attack that must have been built into his hands when he struck or disarmed me. It felt almost like a spar, and that was humiliating.

After I was finished and was sure I had collected anything that was under my nails, I nodded and departed. I could ask the lab here to run a DNA sequence, but I definitely didn't want to. The results would be in the hands of those counter-intelligence guys before I ever saw them and worse, they might filter the results before I got them; that said, I didn't have a DNA sequencing machine.

Scowling at an e-mail from the company, which was an invoice for services rendered. I only had to pay the cost, but that still included a flat charge for each scramble and all the fuel expended, plus a charge for the depreciation, maintenance and insurance on the aircraft, which was billed by the minute. They had looked for me for over ten minutes. Jamming Trauma Team wasn't normally effective, because there was radio-direction finding equipment on all of the aircraft, and they could home in on the jammer, which was what they intended to do, but the jamming stopped quickly, with no further transmissions.

I had learned that they had placed me in what amounted to a wire-mesh lined body-bag after they knocked me out and then just carried me around like a sack of potatoes. The blonde ninja was kind enough to pick up my pistol, which was recovered at the scene. That was good because they weren't on sale yet, and I no longer counted as a Militech dependent. It would be a pain in the ass to replace, not to mention these first-generation beta-test models would probably be collectable!

I ended up owing slightly less than ten thousand Eurodollars. Although that was a lot, it probably would have been three times as much for a regular Silver client. I paid it immediately; I was probably going to end up spending a lot more money, too if I wanted to increase the level of protection I had.

I took a cab back to Japantown, and on the cab ride there, I called Wakako on the phone. She had some questions to answer, and depending on what she said, I wouldn't feel safe returning back to my apartment, so it was important to get answers right away.

"Ah, Miss Hebert. What can I do for you today?" she asked with her slight Japanese accent.

I frowned, "Mrs Okada, perhaps you are not aware of this. However, at the conclusion of the gig you assigned me, as I was walking home, I was the victim of a targeted and sophisticated attack, which was successful. I was kidnapped, stuck in a literal faraday cage and only managed to escape due to my ingenuity and Trauma Team membership." I paused, "I do not intend to accuse you of anything at the moment, but the timing was such that I felt I needed to speak with you about it."

That was the first time I ever saw Wakako surprised, although I couldn't be sure it wasn't faked for my benefit. The woman was old and surely had been around the block.

After a moment, she raised a hand, "Just a moment; I'm blocking out more than a few minutes for this call. Can you tell me precisely what happened?"

I didn't feel the need to hide much, and I told her. Although I didn't go into specifics about the questions, the blonde ninja had asked me, informing her that they were mostly of a personal nature.

"Assaulted by a full-borg conversion utilising thermoptic camouflage, plus six well-kitted out mercs with non-lethal weapons..." she said and shook her head several times. Then she paused and said, "I can see why you were a bit suspicious, but this was clearly an attack targeting you, correct?"

I nodded, "Yes, definitely."

"In that case, do you believe it possible that you could have been under surveillance from the time you left your apartment? If so, did you speak to the client in public at all? He seemed the talkative sort, the type to blurt his business in front of God and everybody. Somebody could have been listening with a parabolic microphone, got his entire itinerary and then set up the ambush as soon as they knew which particular clinic you were taking him to," she finished reasonably.

That... was possible. She had talked to him right in front of the NCART terminal. She didn't notice anyone lurking around, but if they were good, she wouldn't have noticed. She told Wakako as much.

"I don't mean what I am going to say next as a threat, so please don't take it that way. However, if I wanted to sell you out to someone who wanted to kidnap you, then you would just wake up in their custody. Don't forget where you sleep," she said, raising an eyebrow.

I wasn't so sure about that. I had added a number of protections on my inner apartment door, including explosives. I had no doubt that the Tyger Claws could take me, but it wasn't as though it would be as simple as them grabbing me in my sleep without me putting up a fight. I would definitely at least be conscious of it and likely would take out a number of attackers; at least, I hoped so.

But her point remained. Mrs Okada didn't need to contrive a fake gig to do it. I hadn't thought she was responsible, but I had to speak to her about it. I nodded, "You make a lot of good points. I hadn't really thought you were behind it, but I needed to hear you say it. Now I come to you as a client. Can you look into this?"

She tilted her head to the side and then nodded, "Yes. Partly on my own dime, as if my own communication channels or clients were compromised -- and that is a possibility, I need to know. We can speak about the price later if I don't find anything there."

I nodded and, with that, disconnected the call. Perhaps it wasn't wise to discuss such business in the back of a Delamain, but for some reason, I trusted the discretion of the bald SkyNet. Plus, it honestly wasn't anything I intended to keep a secret. What I was going to do in response definitely was going to be to kept at a much higher level of confidentiality, though.

I had the cab take me directly back to the clinic I left my previous client and retraced my steps back to the street I was attacked at. It had been hours, but I was hoping I could still find what I was looking for.

I found my expended gas grenade canister on the side of the road, nodded, picked it up and casually put it into my coat pocket. It was trash, but the residue inside could theoretically tell people about the chemical agent, even if it was mostly Tinkertech.

Then I found the area where I had "disarmed" the mercenary. What I was looking for was his blood, and I found a fair bit of it in a discoloured area that might have been a pool where he had been rendered unconscious. Frowning, the blood looked wrong.

Then I sighed as I realised that someone, probably either the blonde ninja or some of his additional backup, had sprayed the blood pool with a DNA inhibitor, the cheapest was probably a solution of water and bleach, but there were specialised products too, which were used to destroy any traces DNA. What would Alt-Dad have called that? Tradecraft? That was better tradecraft than I was expecting, but I was pretty sure they couldn't have gotten all of it. I followed the blood trail, frowning as the entire thing was sprayed carefully.

The blonde ninja had to have additional helpers, as Trauma's AV would have been homing in on this location very rapidly. They had to have done all of this, plus get me into a bag and drag all of their unconscious compatriots out in a hurry. Perhaps, though, they had come back after the AV left to do this part, as they seemed to be pretty thorough.

I stepped back and found the location where I was when I attacked him and went through the same whipping and scything motions, sans having the monowire out, and nodded. I wasn't being merciful in that attack that took his arm; I was actually aiming to take his head clean off, but he partially dodged, and I only got his left arm.

As such, there had been mostly a horizontal component to the attack. When I aimed for people's necks, I liked coming in from the side so the wire wrapped around rapidly and then yanking their heads off like a cork in a Champagne bottle. I paused and realised that sounded really bad, even in my head. But that was how I usually practised in the VR simulator, not to mention I had actually done it in real life a couple of times.

I zeroed in on something a little to the side of where my attack would have connected and smiled widely as I saw a much smaller spot of red on the side of a steel dumpster. I wasn't a blood spatter analyst, as my expertise in blood was more when it was in the body, but I could tell it was fresh, and it was in about the right spot. It had to be the guy. I took several samples of his blood, stuffing the plastic tubes holding each q-tip in my pocket.

I glanced around and didn't think I was going to find anything more useful, so I nodded and walked back to my apartment like I had intended to do hours ago. This time nobody stopped me; in fact, people seemed to stay well out of my way for some reason.

—-xxxxxx—-

The first thing I did when I returned to my apartment was shove the specimen tubes into my freezer, and the second thing I did was take a long, hot shower. It relaxed me, and I realised I was quite tense.

After the shower, wearing only a towel, I sighed when I realised I needed to do laundry. I was down to the themed panties that I didn't really like to wear.

I put them on anyway. It was some Militech swag that Alt-Dad got for Alt-Taylor. They both thought it was hilarious. They were black, with Militech's logo and the text printed: "Contents protected by Militech." I thought it was super cringe and I hated wearing them, but they were very comfortable. It was interesting to see how my tastes and preferences diverged wildly from Alt-Taylor in certain areas. I mean, she had a boyfriend before she left the Militech school, and I had memories of her getting to at least second base.

Although, she was considered rather frigid and old-fashioned by almost everyone in her grade level because that was as far as she would go.

After the pyjamas were donned, I sat in her comfortable chair and searched for the correct address in my contacts before nodding and starting a call.

The phone rang several times before a man answered, "Hello?"

"Professor Hildago, this is Taylor Hebert. I'm not sure if you remember me—"

The older man interrupted, "Of course I do! Hahaha, how have you been?"

"Well, pretty good, but I was hoping I could call in that marker if you were genuine about it," I told him.

That caused him to raise his eyebrows, "Well, I was, but I have to draw the line at most felonies." He then waggled his eyebrows, perhaps to suggest some felonies that he might be open to. On the other hand, I was probably too hard on him, as he likely thought I was in my twenties, given that he had last seen me at a University.

"Barely a misdemeanour, I assure you. I need two things sequenced, and I don't want anyone to know that I requested it," I told him.

This caused him to raise his eyebrows in interest, "Oooh... interesting. Cloak and dagger, huh? Yeah, that should be no problem. DNA?"

"One is DNA, for sure. Human, from a wet whole blood sample; the other is unknown proteins. Possibly DNA or possibly unknown proteins encoded to carry digital data or some combination of all of the above," I told him truthfully.

He nodded, "Like in a synthetic bioform?" Although he was an epidemiologist, he was still a real medical doctor, too, even if he probably hadn't practised in some time.

"Yes, precisely," I told him.

He hummed over the call and then nodded, "I'll have to stick the second one in the universal protein sequencer, but it shouldn't be an issue. Expect maybe a 4-hour turnaround time if you can get them to me tomorrow morning."

"I'll courier them over to your office, and tomorrow will be fine," I told him, and then after a minute or so of small talk, we hung up. I considered. I could have sent the samples to a commercial lab, but I honestly felt my privacy of the request was in better hands with the Professor, despite his seeming interest in it.

Nodding, I called the RCS courier service and asked them for a pickup and to bring a small container with a half-kilo of dry ice inside. I probably didn't need to refrigerate the DNA samples. These days the sequencers could run a million sequences simultaneously on separate proteins in the sample, even if it was small, and get the correct genome even with minor degradation, but it was still better safe than sorry.

I pulled up the notes I had been taking, starting when the counter-intelligence guys had interviewed me. My best guess was this was something related to Alt-Dad. The first series of questions the blonde-haired man gave me seemed to imply he was verifying my identity.

I swear to god if one of Alt-Danny's friends beat the shit out of me and interrogated me as a favour to Alt-Dad's memory, thinking I was some kind of... identity thief? Pod person? Such crimes did happen in Night City. There was cheap enough body alteration technology so you could easily mimic someone if you had a similar build to them, but why the fuck couldn't they have just either knocked on my door or surreptitiously dug through my trash to get a DNA sample?

Altering your DNA to match your target was a much harder proposition. I could do it fairly easily if I had the correct DNA sample and equipment to fashion a vrius, but, generally speaking, that was something that only Corpo or government-level spies could hope to achieve. It wasn't a common thing at all. Even the cheapest and easiest to acquire version of the treatments, which only altered your epidural DNA and kept the rest the same, was not something even edgerunners with connections could usually hope to get.

It was included in my plan Z if things ever got too out of hand. I would alter my appearance and DNA and start over somewhere else. It would make me sad to give up the name of Hebert and my mom's hair, but it wouldn't kill me. I could do it, especially if it was temporary.

I glanced more at the notes, which were labelled under the header: "How to stop this from happening again."

The ideas were half more escape and defence oriented and half-oriented around making me more dangerous. Except for the first one listed, which was: "Find those responsible and make an example out of them." I frowned. Was I slowly becoming a cyber psycho after all? I had thought, especially with my power, that I would be more or less resistant to such things. That kind of thinking was kind of presumptuous, though.

I sat there for a while thinking. I didn't want to hurt anyone. I just wanted to be safe. Honestly, while I did want to find those responsible, I didn't precisely want to make an example out of them. I didn't think that would work in any event; if anything, it would just cause the danger level to increase wildly.

"Upgrading my Kerenzikov. Ninja man definitely had a Kerenzikov, I think, too. And his version was better than mine but not so better that it completely outclassed me. Unless he was just playing with me all along," I mused aloud.

I've had ideas of how to upgrade the Kerenzikov since I got it. I didn't include them in the minor changes I had made because it would cause me to have to do periodic maintenance on the device, which was implanted into my spine. But that was looking less and less important. I'd take sitting on my tummy while I used microwaldos on my back for an hour a month over getting murdered. I had been too overconfident, thinking myself special. I was, but not in a way that made me especially dangerous compared to the monsters of this world. There were stories that Adam Smasher one vee one'd a main battle tank, ripping it apart like it was nothing. And Morgan Blackhand, someone who was allegedly mostly biological, could one vee one Smasher.

It didn't make any sense, but I knew I was nowhere in their league, and I probably never would be unless I turned myself into a literal mech. The sense in the back of my head was telling me we could easily replace one of our arms with a giant canon, like the Earth game Megaman. I nixed that idea.

The thermoptical camouflage that the ninja was utilising made me want something similar. It wouldn't necessarily make me more dangerous, but it would make me a lot better at both running away and not being noticed. That was a highly restricted piece of cybernetics that was installed underneath the skin. Rather than early versions that would work similarly to a chameleon and therefore required you to be naked, modern thermoptic camouflage utilised a special field that warped light around the user. Not entirely, otherwise, the user would be blind, but enough that you could easily stand in front of someone and they not notice you if you didn't move. I didn't know how it worked at all, and my tinkering sense wasn't giving me very many ideas, although I was very interested in the concept. This, I would have to buy.

I could modify it after receiving it to add an insulating layer, so I wouldn't be knocked unconscious by a taser again, too. But I'd have to get this installed by a Ripperdoc, for sure. I might be down for a little self-surgery, but not of this level.

As I started to consider how I could modify my brain to prevent a trainable brain image scanner from working, Wakako called me, so I answered on the second ring, "Hello, Mrs Okada."

"Hello, Taylor. I have some, perhaps, bad news. It's only been about six hours, but the client that you escorted around Japantown has dropped off the face of the Earth. I didn't mention this earlier, but one of the client's requests was that the merc should be a pretty girl, if possible. Honestly, that isn't an unusual request, especially with bodyguard jobs, and it doesn't have anything to do with your end of the job, so I don't generally tell my mercs. It tends to just alienate them, rightfully, from the client," the old woman told me, raising an eyebrow at the end.

I blinked. If someone had a profile on me and had me under surveillance, then they could have easily approached Wakako with a more or less custom gig tailored to me specifically. A tour of Japantown, where I lived as a bodyguard. A medical speciality and to introduce them to Ripperdocs, which I had business with. The pretty girl part didn't really fit, though.

I replied, "That is suspicious."

"It gets slightly weirder. I was curious, so I had a discussion with the doctor he saw. The implant he had installed was a high-end Faceless system," she said, with her tone indicating slight incredulity.

That was quite weird. A Faceless implant was a name for a type of implant of a similar class. It used to be the brand name, but the original manufacturer went out of business. Still, it had already reached the Vernacular and became a generic name for all types of implants of this type, like some people that called every carbonated beverage a Nicola.

They were, almost universally, illegal. Even more so than the thermoptical camouflage I wanted to buy. They were used to radically change facial structure and skin tone in an instant. A person could go from an old European man to a young Hindi girl more or less instantly, so long as their stature was the same. They were a staple of bad films and braindances, even more so than the monowire I used.

I nodded slowly, "Okay, that is very suspicious but weird and not definitive. Maybe it was a coincidence, and he created this whole identity with you just for the purpose of getting a Faceless installed. That sounds like something someone who would want a Faceless, without anyone knowing, would do."

"That's true. I just thought you should know," she came back.

I stretched back in my chair, "Speaking of high-end illegal implants. Do you have the contacts to get me a middle to high-end thermoptic subdermal system?"

That caused her to grin and ask, "Are you planning to broaden your horizons into assassinations, Miss I'm-Not-Interested-In-Edgerunning?"

"No! I just feel... it would be good to run away. Running away is a great tactical strategy," I told her, embarrassed.

She chuckled and said, "The old versions that only bend visible light, the pure optical camo, can be had pretty cheaply. Like five thousand or so. A middle-tier version of the current generation, which blocks infrared and bends light in the radar spectrum, would be four times that."

"Put me down for the latter version. I'm already going to be wrecking my savings with a bunch of other things," I sighed to her.

The doorbell rang, and I quickly ended my call with Wakako to check the cameras. It was RCS. I grabbed Alt-Dad's trusty Militech Crusher as well as two of the specimen samples from the freezer.

The courier was a bit taken aback to see a girl in her pyjamas with a shotgun, but he didn't comment about it and let me seal the two tubes into the small dry-ice-lined soft pack. I gave him the delivery instructions, having already paid the full balance online, and bid him a good day.

I considered asking Wakako for help tracking down armless after I got his genome sequenced, but I still wasn't one hundred per cent sure she wasn't behind my attack. I just thought it was much more likely that she wasn't, but in the event that she was and I asked her help to track someone down using their genome, that person would be out of town or at the bottom of the waterfront forthwith. Besides, I had a very Tinkery idea of how I could do it myself. In fact, I was itching to do it, having to hold my hands to avoid making a go of it right now, even when I knew I didn't have everything I needed. I had to make a few shopping trips first.

---xxxxxx---

It was fortunate that I didn't have to go back to work for three more days because I awoke from my fugue to discover over twenty hours had passed.

My work area looked completely wrecked, but there were two things on my table. The first looked like something out of an HR Giger painting and was alive. It looked like a throbbing, pulsating cyst suspended in a mysterious-looking semi-gel-like liquid, with a small, narrowing flesh tube protruding out into a dryer area.

It looked completely, utterly disgusting, and I had a moment where I was questioning all of my life choices. I didn't entirely know how I made it, but I did know what it did. It gave birth to flies, basically. Fuck, I would totally have a kill order on myself if I was back in Brockton Bay; although each fly was sterile, this entire setup looked so creepy they'd do it anyway.

A bloodhound didn't actually detect blood but scents. And it could detect individual particles in the air at utterly inconceivably small concentrations. These flies were similar, except they were created only to be attracted to a specific person. One side of the cyst already had one of the specimen Q-tips with the armless guy's blood jammed into an open orifice.

These guys didn't have a long range, but I could make thousands of them and deposit them in various parts of the city. Not only would they tend to concentrate on any, even microscopic, levels of the blood of the target in the surroundings, but they would find the person himself, even if he wasn't bleeding anymore if they were close enough

The second thing was a small handheld tablet of some kind. The flies emitted a bio-electrical radio signal that this device could detect and track. Again, not over long distances but within a kilometre or a kilometre and a half. After releasing a suitably large swarm, I would have to drive over large parts of the city with the tracking device. However, if the man was still in Night City, I would definitely find him.

I was tired but not sleepy. I saw a bottle of tic-tacs and realised I must have dosed myself with the stimulant during my fugue. Sighing, I spent two hours cleaning up my work area as the ... hive mother-thing laid egg after egg. They wouldn't hatch until they received a suitably large dose of UV light, so I needed to keep them inside and only transport them in an enclosed, dark space.

A text message from Professor Hildago sent over twelve hours ago had an attachment which I downloaded. The first was the sequenced genome of Armless. The second was the sequenced proteins on the Gemini.

Raven didn't publish their data-encoding schemas, but there were only so many different ways you could encode digital data with DNA and RNA, and I decoded it only after fifteen minutes of attempts.

Most of the data was the genome of the skin replacement. Still, there was a header with binary data encoded within. It was a Raven Gemini, after all; it was manufactured a little more than eighteen months ago in the United Kingdom. And it was listed as "CUSTOM." However, the data fields where the serial number should be were completely blank.

Slurping up some instant yakisoba, I couldn't help but be a little disappointed. I was hoping for more data, at least a serial number. But I suppose I got some data. It was a relatively new model and custom, and that meant it probably cost a fortune. Plus, the owner paid Raven enough to obfuscate the serial number, too.

Anyway, I looked at it; it looked like the blonde ninja man was bad news. The type of person who could buy and sell me with his pocket change.

Perhaps it was stupid to try to track the mercenaries he hired down. I couldn't exactly stop, but caution was definitely in order.