Blood, shit, piss, and cum stained walls? Check. Peeling paint and rusted metal panels with cracks in concrete running from base to roof? Check. Pitch-black darkness that gives the place a completely dingy look? Check. Sad-looking neon lights flickering like they're on life support? Check.
No Tell Motel.
It's a fucking perfect place for a shady deal, far from prying eyes—especially in a city where the "privacy wall" outside this whorehouse has more leaks than the fuckin' Iraqi navy. And I'm not exaggerating. I'm pretty sure at least one person in this city already knows I had a meeting with a high-level somebody in Dino's bar a few hours ago.
Walking in the hotel, I immediately put my hands in my pockets and continued to make my way up the floor. If anyone else were to see me right now, then they would think that I was overreacting by being like this, but the truth is that ever since I came back from death, I've been afraid of germs and getting any sort of disease-infested thing on me. Now don't get me wrong, I haven't turned into some sort of neat freak who can't go two seconds without washing their hands, but I now usually try to avoid getting dirty if it is possible. And that is probably why I dislike being here so much, this hotel is a breeding ground for the next regalia, or COVID variant. Or something equally dangerous.
But despite all that, I can't bring myself to hate this place. I do have some really wonderful memories of this place… "I should give Meredith a call again someday."
'Seriously?' Johnny asked, while lounging on top of the stairs with a cigarette in hand, again trying to pose cool and shit, for an audience of exactly one.
"What? She was a great output!" I shot back with an incredulous tone. I mean seriously, I may not like Militech, or military in general, but you have to admit, high-strung soldiers are some of the best partners to have in bed. Same goes for overworked nurses and doctors too, by the way.
'More like a great input from what I remember' Johnny replied, right as I walked by him. Ignoring him completely, I slowly walked in the hallway and reached room 210.
Opening the door, I slowly walked in and saw a female figure standing in the corner, facing away from me. She was dressed in a thick black hoodie, completely obscuring her identity, my suspicions of this being a cry for a fix got just a little stronger.
"I'm not hypocritical enough to say that this air of mystique that you've wrapped around yourself isn't doing it for me…" I lean on the doorframe. "But this dingy hotel is a bit much, no?"
She turns her head just enough for locks of magenta hair to spill out of the hood. "I'm sorry for calling you here like this, but I value my privacy."
"You and everyone," I said, rolling my eyes a bit, as I slowly walked into the room towards the couch.
Just as I was about to sit, the girl took a big sigh and slowly removed the hood. "Not more than me."
Holy shit! That's…
"Huh…" was the only thing I could utter. I mean it seems like an appropriate response. Considering who was standing in front of me, I think a little bit of awestruckness is permitted. It's not every day that you see one of the biggest pop stars of the decade. But to be fair, I've already had my fair share of musicians, what with the ghost of the dead rocker/terrorist in my head, so the novelty wears off pretty fast. "Alright, you win." And with that acknowledgement, I slowly sat down. "Now I understand your need for all this."
Without acknowledging my statement, Lizzy slowly circled around the table to also sit on the couch, trying to project cool, controlled diva energy, but my own experience and skills tell me that she was anything but in control at this moment. I could tell just by scanning her that her heartbeat was faster than Farrell Hitchcock's metronome, her hands were shivering, I doubt that it's due to fright, and she is stimming like crazy, if the tapping between her left hand's finger and thumb is anything to go by. All very clearly points out to a very nervous and twitchy client. It'll be best to make her a bit comfortable first. Mainly because nervous clients give shit intel, but also because seeing a pretty girl distressed is not something I like.
She really is pretty, isn't she? Haezy said in an uncharacteristically dreamy tone, that I didn't think was possible for her.
"God, these hands… a single brush, and sparks fly out…" Hearing her speak out, I focused back on her and saw her gently brushing her finger on the skirt she was wearing.
"I bet," I replied with a soft voice. "I always thought that having fully metallic skin would be bothersome, to say the least."
Hearing my words, she gave out a startled, hollow laugh. "You have no idea. I have to be careful while doing everything! Glass surfaces get scratches if I don't pay attention, a brush against a metallic surface can cause sparking, and the skin density is a problem of its own!"
"Let me guess, you're stronger than you look." Classic side effect of ferrous synth-skin. On the other hand, some in my line of work might call it an added benefit. But I could see how it would be problematic for someone like Lizzy.
"It's—it's more than that," she said in a quiet voice. "This procedure is not without its drawbacks… changing your skin causes—"
"Chronic pain, yes, I know," I completed when she trailed off in the middle. I may not have a full body conversion like her, but my legs from knees down and feet up are completely artificial, due to the reinforced tendons, and an implant like that can cause a lot of phantom pain, especially in the beginning.
"I had to get a pain reducer implant, just to not grimace in pain on stage," she replied after a few seconds in a small, whispered tone.
"That… sounds… God, that sounds really bad, Lizzy…" It's hard to imagine how much she must be going through. I remember when I first got hormone regulators, and small stuff like a biomon for the first time when I started at Arasaka. It was so disconcerting when I constantly felt the foreign objects in my body. The uncomfortableness I felt throughout the day, and sometimes the pain that I felt in the middle of the night was not something that I got used to for months. But I can't even imagine how much it would've sucked to have had a full body conversion.
During our conversation, I watched as her shoulders slowly lost some of their tension. The more I related to her and talked to her, the more relaxed she got. Which is probably why, after a few seconds of silence, Lizzy leaned back in her seat and stopped trying to mask her nervousness as much as before.
Looking at her hands, Lizzy slowly took a deep breath. "I have to be careful that I don't crush someone when I hug them… 'cause my sensation is so low now…" Lizzy added in the same small voice.
"I get it, more than you know. Being a merc, I have to get all these implants like these monowires, or these reinforced tendons… And they completely zap all feeling from my limbs. Instead of nerves, I've got wires that don't convey sensations but electric current. I feel pressure, but not if the item I'm holding is hot or cold…" "It's the price we pay for the lives that we lead." Shrugging my shoulders, I gently placed my hand on her knee, and softly added, "It's a fucked up trade-off."
Hearing my words, and watching my hand, she just gave me a small smile before lighting up a cigarette. "Thanks for listening," she said in that same soft voice as before, but this time, it was lighter.
"It's the least I could do," I replied with a smile of my own. "I can't imagine how hard it must be to be a pop star while you're going through all this." I said it absentmindedly while leaning back and getting a bit comfortable.
"You a fan?" she asks, smirking around the filter.
With an amused expression, I shook my head. "Can't say I am."
"Really?" she asked with a little surprise and mock disappointment.
"I won't say that I don't like your stuff, I mean of course I do, but I like old stuff more."
"Old school?"
Smiling, I nodded, and started counting on my fingers. "Linkin Park, Samurai, AC/DC, Nirvana, Old Gods of Asgard—"
With a loud laugh, Lizzy threw her head back and, with amusement, said, "That isn't just old, that's proper ancient stuff, V."
"What? They are good to set the mood of my job. And it's not just that, I sometimes listen to old-school rap too."
"Oh really?" Lizzy commented in a low voice, looking at me with interest, which pretty quickly turned into a mischievous grin. Taking a drag of the cigarette in her hand, she leaned forward with her elbow on her knee and the back of her hand under her chin. She gave me a playful expression, almost bordering on seductive… Might just be my brain, but still… "East Coast or West Coast then? And remember, this answer will determine whether we'll be friends by the end of this day, or just close acquaintances."
"Ooohh. That is a very heavy question, with very grave consequences…. But I'd have to say… West Coast." Hearing her gasp, I quickly raised my hands in a surrendering gesture. "It's nothing against Biggie or Jay-Z, but come on! Nothing tops artists like Tupac, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, or Kendrick. You just can't."
"That is a bold statement, V."
"Hey, you asked."
And just like that, The conversation flows easy after that, looping through music, random crap, life. An hour slips by, before I finally manage to ruin the vibe.
"It must be hard, having a relationship when you have to always watch your every move," I said in a sort of absent-minded tone, because I was actually trying to picture how fucking hard it would be to live under a microscope. I've always heard that it is pretty exhausting being a celebrity, but watching Johnny's memories paints a different picture. But that may be because of how fucking weird and unique his life has been in and of itself. The guy went from being a soldier, to a deserter, to a nomad, to a rockerboy, to a terrorist. That shit is not exactly the control group for "normal celebrity experience."
"Yeah… it's hard. Actually, that is why I called you here, V."
Sensing the shift in the tone of the convo, I straightened up and leaned forward. "Do you… do you want me to deal with your chrome? Because I don't know how much help I would be, I mean I can offer you the name of a very discreet ripper that can help you but—"
Waving her hand in a dismissive motion, she cut me off in the middle. "No, V! I—I don't want your help with my chrome… I actually wanted to—"
Seeing her trail off in the middle, I gently placed my hand on her back, and encouraged her to go on. "It's fine, you can tell me."
After looking at the ground for a few seconds, she finally raised her head and said, "I'm in a relationship with someone…" Why was that so hard for her to say? Who the fuck is this guy? Anyone bad? A simple search, and Haezy had almost the entire history on the guy in front of me Liam Northam. Her manager. Looks harmless really. But i don't trust the fucker.
What is going oin with her? I thought to myself, while keeping my outward appearance normal. With a slight nod to myself, I looked at Lizzy and slowly asked, "Let me guess, Liam Northam?"
"And you say that you're not a fan," she whispered to herself with a small laugh, before turning to me again. "But yes… it's him… I… I suspect that he's cheating on me."
"Okay." So it's that kind of a job. The worst kind really. But I can't really decline the job either, especially when the client is so high profile.
'Sure. It's the professionalism that is stopping you. Not the obvious puppy crush you have on her.'
Ignoring Johnny, I kept my focus on Lizzy, and asked her, "How did you reach that conclusion?"
"I don't know, the usual stuff!" she exclaimed in a frustrated tone. "Secret calls, meetings, and stuff. He sneaks out a lot, and he comes back late."
"Okay. It's enough to go on, but don't think the worst, maybe he isn't cheating but… I don't know, doing something else." It was pretty evident that this was the wrong thing to say at this time, because the more I spoke, the more I watched Lizzy's expression go from distraught and frustrated to stony and closed off. Clearly she thinks that I'm just dismissing her claims and concerns. Practically saying "you're overreacting."
Raising my hands, I quickly backtracked and explained, "I'm not trying to defend him or anything, but I have tackled a case just like this before." Once I knew that I had piqued her curiosity enough, I took a deep breath and leaned back on the couch, and began, "A guy suspects that his wife is cheating on him. His reasoning? All the same as yours, plus his kid looks completely different, so I investigated, and found out that she was actually meeting a ripperdoc, not a sidepiece. Turns out the wife has had full body conversion, had her skin, hair, eyes, and any and every outward identifying feature changed, that is why their kid looked different too."
"That is quite the story…" was the only thing Lizzy could utter out, while blinking owlishly at me. "Why are you telling me this?" she asked after thinking about the entire thing for a while.
"Because I want you to be ready for anything, Lizzy," I said, stressing how crucial it is for her to be ready for almost anything. "Maybe what we'll find is not bad at all."
"Or maybe we'll find exactly what I'm expecting."
Relenting to her train of thought, I nodded slowly, while unconsciously raising my hand as if trying to calm down a child. "Maybe. Or maybe it's worse than that." In any case, it's not my place to question her, she gave me a job, and it is my duty to finish it. "Okay, so where should I begin?"
"He'll be in Riot Club by now…" she said softly while deeply thinking about it, "he spends most of his time there." Nodding my head, I was just thinking what I should do now, when Haezy's icon pulsed in the corner of my HUD, and she quietly opened a command prompt on the datapad.
Should we just?
Looking at the datapad, I just shook my head in amusement, and quietly said to Haezy, "You know what? Sure."
Getting comfortable on the couch, my fingers started dancing on the glass surface of the datapad, and I watched as terminal after terminal opened and closed in quick succession in my HUD. It didn't take long for a small involuntary smile to come onto my face. In that moment, I realised how much I've missed actual coding, and not just spamming quickhacks and scripts.
"What are you doing?" Lizzy asked with an incredulous voice, pulling me out of my zone.
Looking away from the blank wall, I focused on her and saw a confused expression on her face. I mean, I think it's warranted. From her perspective, I just started tapping incredibly fast on a datapad on my wrist, while staring intensely at the blank wall in front of me.
Masking the grimace that came onto my face, I just shrugged my shoulders and coolly and confidently said, "I am hacking into the cameras of Riot Club."
Hearing that, her eyes widened, and she looked at me and the datapad with a surprised expression. "From here?! You can do that?" Soon the surprise turned into excitement, and she scooted closer to me and watched as I again got to typing. I'm sure that it didn't look as glamorous as one could've imagined, but it seems she was amused and entertained nonetheless. To be fair, this kind of stuff is so archaic nowadays that just seeing someone code is a fucking novelty in its own right. Everything is automated now. So I get why she was so fascinated with my typing.
"Where are you?" I muttered to myself as I tried to find Riot Club on the NC subnets…. This is gonna take a while. "Soooo, seen any good shows lately?"
Hearing my question snapped Lizzy out of her musings and she looked at me with a little confusion before thinking about it for a few seconds. "I… I have been binging the old recordings of The Great British Bake Off, recently."
"Oh, I remember them! I used to watch that show in my late teens. That show was the only thing standing between me and my suicide." Clearly my answer was not something that either of us expected, but thankfully I didn't have the time to unpack my teenage trauma right now, "There," I said, pulling up the feed from a club's camera on my datapad.
"See! I told you! He's with a woman!" Lizzy exclaimed with all the anger and hurt she could muster, right in my ear. Grimacing, I pushed her away and focused on the live feed. "Let me listen, will ya." Liam is there, yeah, and a woman, sure—but the energy is all wrong for a fling.
It only took me five minutes to gather what was actually going on here, but my God were we both wrong here.
'Oh fuck…' was the only thing Johnny said while standing behind my shoulder, and to be fair, yeah… fuck.
Out of all the things I could've imagined, this was not it. I didn't think that we would be looking at something like this so early, but now that I'm thinking about it, getting the top artist as an engram would be just the thing that Arasaka would want, considering how easy it would be to edit and change the engram. They could essentially get a flawless performer, compliant, eternally on-brand. No tantrums, no refusals, no moral qualms. All the benefits and no fucking headache.
And this bitch Liam is offering Lizzy so easily to 'Saka on a fucking silver platter! I could understand the decision if she was just another client to him, but this asshole was her boyfriend! "Fucking cunt."
"So he is cheating, huh?" Lizzy asked from beside me in a dejected tone, her question also snapping me out of my angered musings. Looking up at her, I saw that her hands were clenched on her knees while her lips were quivering, and wide eyes brimming with tears, looking at me.
Sighing, I switched off the datapad, turned to fully face her. "No, Lizzy… it's so much worse than that."
Hearing my words, her expression turned from sadness to confused frustration, and she exclaimed, "How can it be any worse?!"
'Chick has no idea. Almost feel bad for her,' Johnny commented from where he was laying on the bed.
"The woman he was with was Arasaka. He is trying to get them to make a copy of you. an engram… and he wants to edit and remove parts of you from that engram that he either dosen't like or isn't comfortable with…"
Hearing those words was enough for her to finally understand the gravity of the situation. This was truly so much worse than just cheating, not only did Liam take her trust and turn it into confetti, but he then tried to sell her, then rewrite her into something more convenient, all behind her back.
Clearly, I was not the only one who was thinking this. I watched as Lizzy slowly figured my exact line of thinking and her expression crumbled into one of extreme heartbreak and sadness.
"Come here," I said softly and gently, pulling her into a hug. Wrapping my arms around her, I tightened my grip and urged her to do the same. "I won't break easily, Lizzy, you can hold on tightly."
The bruises on my body and my tear-soaked coat might become a problem for tomorrow, but for the life of me, I can't bring myself to regret it in the morning. The poor girl was shivering in my arms, she was completely distraught and I understand why. Probably more than anyone.
'Well… I'd say that the netrunners trapped in Mikoshi understand it better, but I'm not one to rain on someone's parade.'
I glared at Johnny over Lizzy's shoulder. "Oh you don't rain on anyone's parade, just drop fucking nukes on them! Now why don't you shut up for a while?!"
Yeah! There is a very pretty and defenseless girl crying in our arms, let's not distract V into turning this moment into a generational fumble!
I don't even know what to say to that. "...Not what I was getting at, Haezy." Shelving the frankly disturbing idea at the back of my head, I focused my attention back on Lizzy, who was still treating me like a stress toy. "I– I'm sorry for being lik–"
"No, Lizzy, don't be sorry. Believe me, if someone close to me was planning something like this, then I would go on a fucking rampage through NC and probably make sure that their DNA couldn't continue on."
Hearing my words, she gave me a small hollow nod, before straightening up and trying to calm herself down as much as she could. "What should I do now?" she asked with a lost sort of expression.
"Dump him. Hard," I said intensely, punctuating each word. "Lizzy, that man not only went behind your back to turn you into a consumer-grade Relic, but he is also planning on changing you, turning you into something you're not! In my eyes, that is the worst thing you can do to someone."
Wiping the tears from her face, she gave me a look full of sadness, frustration, and anguish. "I– I want to… but I have an image to keep…" But suddenly, her expression changed to one of deep contemplation as she trailed off, without finishing her words. It was jarring to see someone go from so much pain and anger to just contentment and, dare I say… satisfaction.
Touching her shoulder, I gently nudged her. "Lizzy?"
Whut the fook happenin'? Haezy whispered, also completely baffled by the sudden change in mood.
Turning towards me, she gave me a blank expression which slowly turned into a fake smile. "I'm fine, V. Thank you for all your help." Okay, this doesn't seem normal. This looks and feels like cyberpsychosis… "You have given me the perfect idea." Yeah, this is cyberpsychosis alright.
Standing up from the couch, I slowly crouched in front of her, and looked into her eyes. It's clearly obvious that this is nothing but a temporary psychosis, it'll pass, but it still doesn't sit right with me. "Lizzy, I don't think that you're—" I don't even know where I was going with it, but just as she started to focus on me, I got interrupted by a call as I watched my holo light up. "Del?" Why was Delamain calling now?
Giving Lizzy an apologetic look, I turned away from her and picked up the call, but all I could see was Del glitching and asking for help. Looks like it is that time of the timeline. Del is about to die… or evolve… I have to go.
Fuck! Why now!? That stupid clanker had to go and ruin this entire thing!
"Okay, enough with racist slurs, Haze."
I'm an AI, I can say it.
Disregarding the very valid answer, I turned back to Lizzy, who looked like she had finally snapped out of her episode, but still looked loopy enough to pick the absolute worst course of action. I hate leaving her like this, but I can't abandon Del, especially after what he's done for me.
Once again surprising both her and myself, I quickly moved forward and gave Lizzy a quick short hug, before running towards the door. "I'm so sorry for leaving like this, Lizzy, but a friend needs my help. We'll talk later!" And without looking back at her, I ran out of the room.
"See you later, West Side!" she calls after me.
I guess there is still some hope left.
"what is happening to you?!"
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Howdy guys! first of all thanks for reading! second of all, I was wrong!! I really do need powerstones it seems! please guys give me powerstones!!! give me 50 powerstones or 10 reviews, and I'll drop another chapter!