Post by Veronica Strader on Apr 13, 2022 22:31:06 GMT -5
Wakako Okada’s Office
Jig-Jig Street Night City, California
April 6th, 2077
“So that’s the gig?”
“Yes, Ronnie-San. Miss Davis has gone missing, and your job is to find her and make sure she hasn’t left this earthly plane,” the petite Japanese lady says to the twins sitting across from her in the office of local Fixer Wakako Okada.
“Any idea who has her? Where to begin looking?” Vee asks, who has brought up a notepad through her optic implants and is taking notes.
“Miss Davies is a successful netrunner with top-of-the-line chrome installed in her. The Raffen Shivs or any other band of Wraiths, Victoria-San. Now, are we done with the questions? I am a very busy lady,” Wakako replies coldly, as she always seems to do; the twins had noticed since taking jobs from her.
“That’s enough to go on, I think. Come on, Vee, let's get out of Wakako’s hair.”
Vee responds as she rises, closing her optic notes.
“Yes, of course. Thank you, Miss Okada-San.”
“Do not disappoint me, ladies,” she responds without looking up from her desk.
Vee and Ronnie take a few steps out onto Jig-Jig Street, the hub of the seedier types of adventure for the perverse and dirty of mind. Male and female Joy-Toy’s are scattered amongst the XXX Stores, a conveniently placed weapons shop just down the street if you are the type to kill your hooker after. Plenty of dumpsters. Vee watches her breath crystalize as she leans against the rail, looking out at the blue and pink neon lights illuminating the marketplace of sex and depravity. She knew this wouldn’t be the easiest job they had taken since arriving after the match in Dublin.
“What a lovely neighbourhood, MWAH!”
While Vee leans forward, Ronnie leans her back against the rail and looks behind quickly before settling onto her elbows. She pulls out a cigarette case, motioning towards Vee, but she holds her hand up to decline. After a click of the lighter and drag of her cigarette, she looks over at Vee and taps her on the forearm.
“Hey, you there?”
“Yeah, I’m here. I was just scanning the city map. It looks like the client could be in one of two places: Rocky Ridge, east of the city or the unfinished tunnel that connects to Charter Hill and North Oak,” she replies, her pupils moving around setting markers. Ronnie can see the map close in her eyes from the reflection on her irises, making her own notes. Vee nods at Ronnie, making their way out onto the street, cars driving by well over the speed limit, but this wasn’t unusual. Vee brings up her left wrist and taps the LED screen on a black synth leather band around it.
“Ride is on her way.”
“Ya know, I think that might be my favourite thing about this place,” she says, and no sooner do the words leave her mouth…
HONK HONK!
Victoria’s hunter green Quadra Type-66 640-S rolls up in front of them. Ronnie slides across the front of the hood, and Vee shakes her head.
“You scratch the paint, and I'll stuff your ARCH’s tailpipe with a banana,” she says as she puts the car in gear when Ronnie is in.
“Synth-Banana, you mean. Man, no one is going to believe us… ya know, where we have been,” and Vee can hear the cosmic hilarity in Ronnie’s voice. All she can do is smile and hit the accelerator.
“Yeah, I know, but people still believe “australia” is a real place, so what they say is invalid. It’s not like we crash-landed off the coast of some island and doing Massacres every week in the wild.”
“Yeah, that would never happen.”
The neon lights of the cybernetically enhanced city are particularly beautiful as the sun starts to go down and all the colours glow brighter. Once they are outside of the city, Victoria looks in the rearview mirror and back at the city, and Veronica catches her because she was doing the same thing.
“Really is beautiful. I mean, I know the world is a wasteland. There are so many animals extinct we are eating synthetic animals, making clothes from synthetic leather…,” she says, trailing off in her thought.
“I know, Ronnie. The decay of the world, these badlands outside of cities… It's so sad, and the air is filled with death, yet the world still vibrates with life. Anyway, we are coming up on Rocky Ridge; keep your eyes open,” Vee instructs Ronnie as she takes the exit for Rocky Ridge.
It was supposed to measure up to Rancho Coronado - cozy, practical, and self-sufficient, offering a roof over the head for the families of every worker building the nearby highway. Rocky Ridge was sold to people as a paradise guaranteeing peace and quiet, but also just a stone's throw away from the big city and everything it had to offer. Unfortunately, it ended like most investments end in California - the construction became too expansive, and Rocky Ridge was no longer economically viable. From one day to the next, the construction sides were deserted, contractors lost their jobs, and Rocky Ridge's houses became vacant. Today the area is wholly abandoned and almost entirely forgotten by Night City - perfect for looters and the occasional band of Raffen Shiv. The Strader sisters scan the main drag, and it’s quiet.
“I don’t like this, Ronnie,” she says, looking over at her twin. “She’s not here. My scanners aren’t picking up anything except energy traces coming from the CHOOH2 station. Let’s go check it out.”
Vee cranks the wheel and rolls into the fuel station, and turns off the Quadra muscle car. The doors auto open and lift as they step out, their Kiroshi optics scanning the area. Using the butt end of her Malorian Power Pistol, Vee shatters the glass window beside the powered-down locked door; otherwise, she would have hacked it open. She crawls through the window into what appears to be an office with a door to the garage. Suddenly the lights turn on, and Victoria is horrified at sight. It was a crude surgical station, and blood was everywhere.
“I found the power station and got us some power!”
“I see that…,” she says softly as her Kiroshi Optics starts up. She scans the area in front of her for clues on their client’s whereabouts.
“Find anything?”
“You could say that. It’s a bloodbath here.”
The garage door opens, and Vee looks over at Ronnie, who has a disturbed look on her face. Vee notices a freezer, and she feels a hardball form in her guts. She walks towards it trepidatiously as Ronnie has found the computer connected to the surgical table and has jacked into it. When Vee opens it, the wafting sound of the freezer unsealing fills her ears as the rotting smell of a dead body fills the air and hits the hot temperatures of the barren badlands, exasperating the situation.
“What’s in it?”
“A deceased female. Before you ask, no, from my bio scan, she isn’t our client, but she is someone's daughter. When we leave, I’ll shoot off a message to that PI we met a few jobs back,” she says, deep in thought about where their client could be.
“Not sure why you trust an ex-cop in this place,” the words don’t come across as the warmest at the mention of the police, but she wasn’t a real big fan of them back home in 2022 in the right dimension.
“Ward’s a good guy; he left the NCPD, didn’t he? Anyway, what does the computer say?” she asks, closing the freezer lid. She walks over as Ronnie disconnects her neural net cord from the computer.
“Well, the gonks set up their firewalls and a bunch of ICE on the security system in the unfinished tunnel so no one could sneak in beforehand, but it left a nice little trail through the net,” she shrugs. “Gonk is, as gonk does.”
“Well, maybe it’s time we go educate these idiots.”
Fifteen Minutes Later
The Raffen Shiv sit inside the construction office area in the abandoned tunnel connecting Rocky Ridge to Charter Hill and North Oak. From the west entrance on the left-hand side of the office area is a small elevated trailer where Natalie Davis is in a bathtub full of ice. Across the way to the northwest, the crew of them sit around the table playing cards in what must’ve been a cafeteria that was also up in the air like the other trailer. They don’t have a care in the world, but they should as Strader Twins (as they have been dubbed in the Afterlife Mercenary Bar) have crept up and disabled their security systems.
“How we doing this?”
“I’m gonna hack into the security camera system, and then I am going to hit them with the Cyberpsychosis quickhack I got down in Pacifica.”
“Voodoo Boys, huh? Should be deadly. None of them are near her, right?”
“Right, so as soon as you hear the first shot, sneak your way into the client and make sure she is ok.”
“Meet me when they are all gone,” Vee instructs as she scurries towards her destination.
The Strader sneer comes across Ronnie’s as she uploads the quickhack into their neural processors. She watches through the camera two of the Raffen Shiv get up and start shooting their allies. Ronnie fried their circuits, turning them insane. As the name of the quickhack, this was a real problem all over the world as it just seems to randomly happen unless triggered on purpose. Meanwhile, Vee has found her way and has removed a signal blocker used to keep the trauma team away. They are arriving in three minutes.
BANG!
After everyone was dead in the cafeteria, the cyberpsychosis victim turned his own gun on himself. Ronnie walks into the room, and she sees poor Natalie Davis laying on a blanket Vee had put down to put her own when she pulled her from the ice tub.
“Oh my god, what did they do to her?”
“Besides stealing her implants? I won’t know for sure unless I scroll her BD. Trauma team is on their way, let's make sure we are out of their way. They get pissy.”
Brain Dance. Suppose you were loaded with chrome, as it is called and have a neuro-processor separate from your brain. In that case, you could set to have what you are seeing, doing, and even feeling recorded. It was how Brain Dances were made, and that was the biggest form of entertainment in this place. You could live a murder, a robbery, your basic porno, all from the comfort of your own home or Brain Dance clubs throughout the city. The thing was when Ronnie was in the security system, it was also attached to their client, and she downloaded the data.
On the way back home to their apartment, Ronnie would watch the BD, and she instantly wished she hadn’t.
“Well, that was a hell of a job.”
Victoria stands at her sink, naked and pulling her hair back into her signature ponytail. She brings her hand up to her face and traces the line of the cybernetics that have been installed in her head. She steps away and steps into her shower, turning the water almost unbearably hot. The sanitizing and multiple filtration water systems fire up. The hot water begins to wash the blood off of her. She checks herself for cuts, but none of the blood belongs to her; it was all from her clients' abductors after looting the Raffen Shiv of their weapons. It wasn’t like they needed them anymore.
“Hope Ronnie is alright; she didn’t seem great after finding the client.”
She wasn't, and she would decide to ride the Netrunner chair and chill out in cyberspace. But that's when it found it her.
Valerie.
